Redirects: Quickly Change Directions When Flogging

The cool thing about finger floggers is that you can easily (well, easily … with some amount of practice) flog in both a downwards and upwards direction.

Once you have that down, here’s how you can quickly and stylishly reverse the direction of your floggers. In poi spinning, the move is called a bounce. But I refer to it as a redirect, because I find it more similar to a nunchaku (nunchuck) redirect than a poi bounce, mostly because of the amount of impact I’m putting on my own body.

Basically, I flog myself. To switch directions.

Okay, so here’s how that works …

Warming Up

Before you make impact on anything, warm up by spinning your floggers in the air, then bouncing then back and forth off your triceps. Start by moving and redirecting the floggers in unison (together-same in poi terminology). To give your floggers an even surface to bounce off, point your elbows out and rotate your shoulders with the movement of the floggers.

Next, spin the floggers in an alternating pattern (split-same in poi terminology), redirecting one after the other.

A quick note on flogger length: If your flogger tails are so long that they wrap around your arms during the redirect, you’ll find it challenging to quickly bounce and change directions. You can accommodate by straightening your arms a bit, but then they won’t be at as nice an angle to bounce the tails off of. Overall, I recommend doing these moves with floggers that aren’t much longer than the length of your arms.

Basic Flogging Drills

Once you’re warmed up by spinning the floggers in the air, you’re ready to start flogging. Start in together-same.

Front view:

Side view:

Gravity Helps and Hinders

When you redirect from flogging down to flogging up, the floggers are traveling upwards when they bounce against the underside of your triceps. The bounce redirects the floggers back down. In this case, gravity works with you, because it’s pulling the floggers down as you’re wanting them to go down.

The opposite happens when you redirect from flogging up to flogging down. Now, the floggers are traveling downwards when they bounce against the top of your triceps. The bounce redirects the floggers back up, meaning that you’re now working against gravity.

In execution, this means that when you redirect from flogging up to flogging down, the transition will naturally take a split-second longer than the redirect from flogging down to flogging up. If both floggers are moving in the same direction and redirecting at the same time (together-same), this slight lag isn’t too noticeable (unless you’re a percussionist and used to keeping perfect time). However, if the floggers are moving in opposite directions (together-opposite or split-opposite), or if you’re redirecting at different times (split-same), it becomes difficult to keep a steady flogging rhythm.

For this reason, during the redirect from flogging upward to flogging downward, you may need to rotate your shoulders and give the flogger an extra nudge up with your triceps. This allows you to catch up to the beat, so to speak. You’ll start noticing this now in the following drills.

Back to Our Drills

Move on to together-opposites, where both floggers make impact at the same time, but are moving in opposite directions. Because of the aforementioned gravity issue, during each redirect, you’ll have to move one arm slightly more than the other in order to keep a consistent rhythm. This may take some practice.

After together-opposites, shift to split-same. To start, keep one flogger going in the same direction and at the same speed while you redirect the other back and forth. Timing gets more challenging now, as you’ll have to match up each redirect with the rhythm of the other flogger.

Left hand steady, right hand redirects:

Right hand steady, left hand redirects:

Advanced Redirects

Now you’re ready to level up. Flog in split-same, but reverse directions back and forth with both floggers. If you want to be meticulous, still try to keep a consistent rhythm.

Next, try split-opposite, where you’re flogging in opposite directions and redirecting one after the other.

And finally, now that you’re boss at this, incorporate the redirect into your weaves.

Got that all down? Awesome. Here’s what the technique looks like in action. Notice how you can barely even tell when I’m switching directions with my floggers. Believe me, though, your bottom will know.