Unlike the 100 days of street soccer challenge I had very little by the way of freestyle football skills. In fact I only learnt how to do a kick up with my weaker foot in December. I had no intention of even attempting freestyle football till I met John Farnworth back in April.
I spent a few hours with John at an event being hosted by Mark Senior our managing director. A some what disappointing event in terms of numbers, this was a free event for a junior club that had gained funding. But for some reason numbers were low. Nothing Mark or John could do as they still delivered a great event. Over the event both John and I talked about skills and tried several variations of skills we knew. It was at the end that John suggested I take up freestyle football and do that as a 100 days challenge.
I politely declined, in truth I was a little scared, the last challenge had been immensely draining more in terms of video editing than the physical demands. I wasn't really ready to throw myself into such a commitment again. Needless to say though the entire journey back to my hometown I had a niggling 'what if?' in my head.
It didn't take much niggling as the next day I was hitting the court, camera in hand ready to face another 100 days of.
This time I reduced my filming schedule and would only post a 15 second daily clip via Instagram and after every 10 days I would post a larger video on YouTube. Despite a less rigorous filming schedule I instantly knew this challenge was going to be far more difficult n terms of physical demands.
Freestyle Football is very taxing on the body and mind. Especially in the early stages as you battle to over come the basic of skills. I found I was rather heavy of touch and uncontrolled with movements, I could only preform an around the world (ATW) from a foot stall (balancing the ball between foot and shin,) and only from my stronger foot. I rapidly changed training sessions from 30 minutes to 60 often touching 120 minutes in the later stages of the challenge. I spent most of my time training on hard surfaces. Along the challenge I picked up a few impact injuries and I fell on several occasions, one being particularly dangerous narrowly missing my garden wall.
These falls and injuries may have put me off a year or two ago but after completing one challenge I wouldn't lose face and fail at this. In fact I was more determined to complete this challenge in the 100 days and avoid having to take time off.
Thankfully Football Freestyle has 3 main sections of skills to learn for beginners. Uppers, Lowers and Sits. I'm not including the different styles each of these can have too.
Uppers being skills preformed with the head, neck and chest.
Lowers being skills preformed with the feet, knees, shins and heels.
Sits being skills preformed with all parts of the body from a sitting or laying position.
Okay maybe not so thankful after all, because there is an incredible amount of skills to learn in each of these sections. Though if you do pick up minor injuries, say to the ankle at least you can give the ankle rest by moving onto uppers for a couple of days.
I focused on the basic lowers (Inside and Outside ATW, hop the world (HTW,) crossovers, half ATW and toe bounces) mainly throughout the challenge with the odd deviation of trying more complex moves such as the Touzani ATW (TATW.) My main aim was to be able to put a small routine of those skills together at the end, sadly I failed that main aim due to the complexity of developing consistency. However this failure wasn't a loss.
I still feel over the 100 days I made incredible gains in skills development. I went from not being able to an ATW, HTW, Toe Bounce or Crossover on either foot to managing to preform all on both feet (my toe bounce isn't great with my stronger foot if honest.) I was also starting to link small combinations together and including new styles such as blocking moves and stalls into what I knew. I also managed to land the TATW.
Needless to say I had gone from being a complete beginner to being somewhat ok at performing several freestyle skills. Freestyle Football is a sport that takes a good couple of years to develop large amounts of consistency in, but I have managed to show that with hard work and dedication you can make amazing leaps in skill development in a relatively short amount of time.
My main thing here though is I'd like to say thank you to all those that offered help and support along the way.
Article By
Kieran Beech
Video 1 and 10 of the challenge are posted below.
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