Jump to content

Moon Walk Help!


lomcevoc

Recommended Posts

My appologies if this topic has already been posted.

Tonight I practiced my Inverted Hovers and Inverted flight from the top of the window and stopping it just above the ground (cool)!

Although I will keep praticing this and other things, I really like to start working on the slow moon walk. I think those look so cool. Is there any simple exercise or starting point or process you all can suggest? There doesnt seem to be too many videos (that I have found) on this manuver. Although Iwas up to my ankles in water in the grass tonight (3 Days of rain here) I had a blast!

Lom

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you subscribe to KiteLife ($32.95/year) you can view and/or download the tutorial videos by John Barresi. The one titled "Travelling Bicycle" is the one you want to watch for this info. Not as easy as he makes it look, but if you do it in the stages he recommends you'll learn it quicker. Don't expect immediate results. This takes a long time to develop the muscle memory to make it look good. The crappy Midwest winds you and I fly in don't help. I find the moonwalk to be a bit easier than the cartwheel, whereas most people feel the opposite is true.

Each day you fly make it standard procedure to do at least 5 repetitions of the basic skills you have already learned. This reinforces the muscle memory you have already built up. Pay particular attention to being able to move your kite in any direction in every possible position, since that is basically all the cartwheel and moonwalk are essentially.

P.S. -- Both these moves were originally known as the "Hadzicki Shuffle" if I am not mistaken.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Travelling bicycle is a great tutorial, as the all are. Well worth the subscription to get access to all of them.

Moonwalk is reverse rotation to direction of travel. Clockwise rotation for travel right to left.

Main thing is to pull on your leading wing as it transitions through vertical.

Practice slow spins that rotate at the centre of your kite. As you get that, introduce some pull on a wing that has gone past vertical then back to "neutral". Then as the other wing comes past vertical pull on that one. You don't need to pull much.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think there were a couple of moves I did that helped with the moonwalk. I started doing these moves as part of my competition choreography (i.e. practiced them a lot), and not intentionally as a way of learning the moonwalk, but after a while, I discovered that the moonwalk became much easier.

One of the moves is an inverted side slide interspersed with some 360 degree tip rotations. Basically, start from the right side, slide left a quarter or however much you feel like of the wind window, and then fly/rotate (forward direction) around the leading tip. Once you get back to an inverted position, keep sliding and repeat a few times. If you imagine doing the sliding and rotating at the same time instead of one after the other, that turns into the moonwalk.

The other is flying a series of half circles, forward, reverse, forward, reverse, etc. Using more words, start in an inverted hover close to the left edge. You will be flying to the right at all times. Fly the bottom half of a circle flying forward and stop. Now the kite is in a leading edge up position. The next half circle, you still fly the bottom half but now you're going in reverse. When you get back to inverted, stop and fly the next half circle forward, etc. If you imagine doing this without stopping and without dipping down for each of the half circles, it turns into the moonwalk.

Of course, you should do these in both directions, not just the direction I described. I included the directions because those were the directions that I primarily flew each in (because of my choreography). I will say that it is much easier for me to do a moonwalk now from left to right than from right to left, so the second option may be much more helpful in terms of helping to learn the moonwalk. Hmmmm, maybe I should try flying that routine mirror imaged, hmmmm.......

Good luck, and remember to have fun.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I have been practicing the traveling bicycle for a while, it is an awesome move and John makes it look so easy. I never knew there was a name for the variation that you call the Moon Walk. Dragonfish , you have some good helpful tips that I will try , thank you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...