25 Levels of Freestyle Soccer: Easy to Complex

My name's Caitlyn Schrepfer.

I've been challenged to do freestyle soccer skills

in 25 levels of increasing complexity.

[upbeat electronic music]

Freestyle soccer is unique in that it really is the art

of movement with the ball.

To me, complexity is increasingly difficult techniques

and fluidity of movement.

There truly are an unlimited amount of tricks,

but this is my personal interpretation of the challenge.

Level one, knee juggles.

We're starting with knee juggles

because they are the simplest thing

for an absolute beginner to learn.

The most common mistake is people actually make contact

with their literal knee, but it's actually

on the thigh where you wanna hit the ball.

You will drop it from your hands.

Bring your leg up to contact the ball

with about the middle of your thigh.

You wanna start with one juggle

at a time right back to your hands,

and then do two and then alternating right, left

before you start doing multiple knee juggles.

Most people tend to bend over just a little bit,

but make sure you're not bringing your chest down

to the ball, but you're bringing your knees up.

Level two, feet juggles.

Feet juggles require a couple

of more techniques than just knee juggles.

It's about the positioning of your foot.

It's locking your ankle.

It's striking the ball right on the knuckle of your big toe,

and you'll know if you make proper contact

because the ball shouldn't have too much back spin on it.

You want 50% or less of your power when you're juggling.

It's not striking the ball like you would in soccer,

but it's also not a hacky sack lift.

It's a light swing as if you were sitting

in your chair just like this.

Level three, foot stalls.

The techniques in order to learn a foot stall

and balance a foot stall really come in helpful

for later levels when you get into things like head stalls

and things like that.

The best way to start is to start with the ball

in your hands and literally place it onto your foot.

Sometimes you wanna pull your toe back

to help cushion the ball

and control it right there between your toes and your shin.

You'll know you have the foot stall down

when you can just kind of stand there more relaxed

and you don't really ever feel out of control.

Now that we've got foot stalls, knees and feet juggles,

let's move on to level four, flick ups.

Flick ups are the techniques that you use to get the ball

from the ground into the air to start freestyle.

For the most basic flick up, you roll the ball back

and you just chip your toe right underneath the ball

to pop it in the air a little bit.

When you wanna get a little bit more interesting,

you go from the inside, from the outside.

You can even flick it up with your heel,

but that becomes a little bit more complicated.

There's a whole spectrum of flick ups.

One of my favorite flick ups is called a slap.

You start with the ball in between your ankles.

You roll your right foot behind your left

and with your right foot,

you roll the ball up your left leg to flick the ball

up in the air and start juggling.

Level five, blocks.

Sidebar, freestyle can be broken down

into 40 different categories, lowers, any sort

of revolutions and tricks you do standing up, uppers,

which are tricks that you do chest and above, sitdowns,

which are any tricks you do when you're sitting

or laying down on the ground.

Blocks are any sorts

of catches with the ball, whether it's your knees, ankles,

that's a block, the knee catch.

Drop the ball with some backspin,

let it bounce, and then catch the ball nice

and gently between your knees.

So with the ankle catch, you want the ball in

between your ankles right on the bone, whereas a foot stall,

the ball is staying right on top of your foot.

The key with blocks is everything is gentle.

You don't wanna squeeze the ball too hard.

So even with these five levels,

you can already start to build your own freestyle combo.

As simple as a flick up into a couple of juggles.

Level six, crossovers.

They are introduction to lowers.

They're what we call a half a revolution trick.

You can do it off of a juggle or even off foot stalls.

After you flick that ball up,

you wanna swing your left foot over the ball,

and then you hop up to make contact with the ball.

You wanna make sure your body weight is centered still,

and you're standing mostly upright,

if not a little bent over.

You wanna hit about the same place

that you do when you're juggling.

So when you juggle,

your foot is about parallel to the ground.

When you do crossovers,

you wanna pull your toe back just a little bit

to keep the ball closer.

Level seven, hop the world.

We're moving from a 0.5 revolution trick

into the hop the world, which is one full revolution.

Hop the world is a little more complicated

because you actually incorporate both feet.

You start with your left foot

and you end with your right foot.

With crossover, the left foot is there,

but it doesn't actually touch the ball at any point.

From here, we can start to build a more interesting combo.

You have a couple of lowers tricks now, and we could build

with what we call the basics of freestyle.

Level eight, around the world.

Around the world is the most famous trick

in freestyle soccer.

You might've seen Ronaldinho do it.

You've seen it from the Joga Bonito ads.

It is a one revolution lowers trick where you start

with say your right foot, one revolution around the ball,

and then you end with a touch with your right foot.

When you're normally juggling with the ball,

you hit just like this,

but when you're doing it around the world, you're slicing,

which gives it a little bit of spin.

A lot of the times, people will kick the ball

and then try to get their foot around.

That presents a couple of issues.

One, the ball tends to go too high, and then two,

in splitting that into two different motions,

the kick and then the revolution, you lose time,

and it's a lot harder to get your foot around in time.

When you do it in one fluid motion,

you get the ball with the right height,

and you have the time to get your foot all the way over.

Level nine, Touzani around the world.

Touzani is actually the name of the creator of this trick,

one of the more notable figures in freestyle.

The Touzani around the world is a 1.5 revolution trick,

which is one full revolution,

and then a half a revolution to finish.

So you strike with the knuckle of your small toe right here,

one full revolution around like an around the world,

and then to finish, it's a crossover motion at the end.

The difficulty with this is striking the ball

with the outside of your foot

is a smaller surface and a lot less room

for error than it is with the inside of your foot.

Level 10, Lemmens around the world.

Lemmens around the world

is the most recognizable two revolution trick.

Imagine your right foot is starting in the air,

and that's the one that's going to be interacting

with the ball.

You're jumping off your left foot

and doing the revolutions with your right.

It's the same striking technique as the around the world.

But the difference with this one

as you make contact with that ball,

you wanna hop up off your other foot

to give you a little more height.

You're making contact here, but at the same time,

you're jumping and you make that first revolution,

complete the second revolution as you come down,

and then you finish the trick.

Level eleven, advanced blocks.

Advanced blocks, you can take the basic blocks

and then you start to spice it up a little bit.

So rather than knee catch straight down to an ankle catch,

you go from a knee catch into a crossed ankle catch.

Or you could do things like a thigh grab

and then pop the ball back up to start juggling.

Advanced blocks could come in

in a routine, say after a basic block like a knee catch.

You go knee to like, X ankle catch, a slap flick up.

It is the spice

of the routine rather than just the building blocks.

Level twelve, clipper.

Clipper is one of the more famous tricks in freestyle.

It is a stall the same way that you do a foot stall,

but with clipper, it's on the inside of your foot

while your right leg is wrapped behind your left leg.

The biggest difficulty when it comes

to clipper is your foot positioning

because you have to flex your ankle so that it sits parallel

to the ground with the inside of your foot face up,

which is actually not a natural position

for anybody's foot to do,

so a lot of people have to stretch their foot

in order to get it to reach that position.

Now that we've started to incorporate a little bit of spice

into our routine, we can get a little more interesting.

Now we're gonna move to the floor,

and we're gonna do level thirteen, sitdowns.

Sitdown crossovers are one

of the simplest tricks that you can learn sitting down.

You wanna be sitting upright, hands on the floor behind you,

cross your left leg over the top,

and make contact with your right foot.

When it comes to sitdowns,

the biggest difference is in the foot positioning.

Lock your ankle still, but rather than parallel

to the floor, it's a little bit more pointed,

and you wanna make contact with the same part of your foot.

But the key with this

is your foot can't be super far from you.

You need to keep your knees bent

and your feet close to your chest.

Whenever I think of sitdown crossovers,

I always remember the show when I had to learn them.

I was front and center on the stage on Broadway,

and I was probably about six, seven months into freestyle.

I had to do sitdown crossovers

never having learned them before.

And so now every time I do them,

I just get a nice little flashback.

Level 14, sole stall.

So with sole stall, you're going to be laying on your back.

Your leg's going to be up in the air almost locked out,

and the ball's going to be balancing on the sole

of your foot while it's right above you.

The easiest way to train this is to just place the ball

on top of your sole and learn to balance it.

It's an awkward thing for most people,

and you really have to learn the technique

of just balancing the ball at first.

You're ready to learn a sole stall

when you have basic sitdowns down,

you need the patience that it takes to learn all

of the previous tricks in order to learn sole stall.

It took me eight months.

Level 15, raised sole stall swipes.

Same technique as a sole stall,

except now you're rolling back,

so you're just balancing on your shoulders.

Your hands are supporting your waist,

and your leg is gonna be a little bit higher up in the air.

You have that ball balanced in a stall.

You're gonna pop the ball up,

and you're gonna swipe your left leg underneath the ball

and then catch it again.

So it's here, pop the ball up, swipe under, and catch.

[upbeat electronic music]

Level 16, thigh pop.

Thigh pop is often used as one

of the most beginner transitions,

but it can be used just as a trick in and of itself.

So with the thigh pop, you'll start sitting down.

You'll catch the ball right behind your leg in a thigh grab,

you wanna roll onto your side,

point the ball up towards the sky,

and you'll straighten your leg to pop the ball up.

Level 17, no touch combo.

No touch combos are combinations of two or more tricks.

Take a crossover and Touzani, but the difference here is

that you're not doing the two tricks individually.

You're taking out all

of the excess touches to make it one fluid combination.

To do a no touch combo,

you take out the extra trick in the middle, crossover,

and you would go straight into a Touzani.

Level 18, head stall.

Now we're moving on to uppers, and head stall

is the most basic uppers building block to learn.

The ball is on your hairline.

You wanna make sure you're looking up

at the ball the whole time,

and you wanna stand a little bit upright

with your head tilted back

and your knees bent just a little bit.

Head stalls coming in at level 18 because in a combo,

you would be kicking the ball up

and then balancing the ball from there.

But you're working with your head here

so you can't really flex your head or things like that,

and it's really about using your entire body

to cushion the ball,

and you shift your whole body weight to balance the ball.

Level 19, around the moon.

On around the moon, your head is moving around the ball

rather than the ball moving around your head this time.

You would start from a neck stall.

You would flick it up to the side,

and your head and your chest rotate

around the ball to catch again on the back of your neck.

The way I explain to everyone is

you kind of have chicken wings.

The ball is sitting on the back of your neck.

From there, rotate off to the side

and flick the ball up at the same time,

almost like tossing it up to the side.

You're really just isolating your upper body.

Your feet should stay planted,

and it's just your chest and head that are moving.

Level 20, lip stall.

Lip stall is a little bit harder than

around the moon because you're working

with a very small surface to balance the ball with,

and it's not flat.

Your lips are in an odd place where there's not a lot

of body behind it.

When you're doing it,

you're tilted back and your lips are right here.

You really have to get the perfect positioning

to stall that ball for more than say a second at a time.

To do a combo incorporating a lip stall,

typically I would do something like neck stall,

around the moon into a head stall, and then the simplest way

to transition into a lip stall would be tilt your head back

and let the ball roll down right onto your lips.

Level 21, Lemmens Mitch around the world.

The Lemmens Mitch name comes from the creators

of two individual tricks with the techniques combined.

So a Lemmens Mitch around the world

is a 2.5 revolution trick.

You jump off your left foot, you make the two revolutions.

That last revolution has to be a little bit quicker

because at the same time,

that left leg will come over the ball,

cross over the top, and then you pop the ball up.

This one is a little bit more complex

because it requires a lot more speed.

It requires a little bit more power

in your jump than say, a Lemmens around the world.

If you're trying to become a complete,

well-rounded freestyler learning all

of the different four categories,

you would want to learn the basics of every category

before you start incorporating the higher difficulty tricks.

Things like anything

above a two revolution trick that require weeks

and months of practice.

Level 22, transitions.

Transition is any trick

that will take you from one category to another,

whether it's lowers to sitdowns, sitdowns to lowers.

So we briefly mentioned transition tricks before,

but we're putting it as level 22

because now you're starting to incorporate fluidly

in the middle of a combo, not just at the end.

For this one, it would be a step

over slap into sitting down.

You would go from a knee catch,

drop it like you're doing a crossed ankle catch,

but right away, you're going to roll the ball up the back

of your left leg, duck under the ball,

and then transition to sitting down.

There's really no set in stone number of transition tricks.

They are how everyone expresses their own personal style.

It is kind of the pinnacle

of personal flare when it comes to freestyle.

These advanced combos become a lot more complex

because you're taking out all

of the unnecessary touches and you're replacing them

with little bits of personal flares.

[upbeat electronic music]

Level 23, acrobatic tricks.

These tricks are anything from like, flips to handstands.

I used to be a gymnast, so I incorporate a lot

of gymnastic movements into my tricks.

Flip tricks are anything like a kip-up.

When you're laying on your back,

the ball is stalled in a sole stall, roll back a little bit,

push off of your hands, kick up into a standing position.

Level 24 is my signature trick, cat flip.

It comes from rhythmic gymnastics.

You start with the ball in a neck stall,

and you will kick up into a handstand.

The ball is still stalled on the back of your neck,

flip your feet over your head into a back bend.

The ball is still caught between the back

of your neck and the lower part of your back.

From there, you'll stand up and drop it into a thigh catch.

[electronic music]

Level 25, the final combo.

The point of the final combo is to fully express yourself.

It's really about taking all

of the small techniques that you can

and incorporating as many as you possibly can.

You wanna do the big tricks,

the Lemmens Mitch around the world, the transitions.

But what really creates the full combo

is the small style points that you add in between.

You don't wanna see a seam.

It's like when you create clothing,

you don't wanna see the seam of the clothing.

It's one fluid, almost dance routine.

[upbeat electronic music]

The beauty of freestyle is that there's no limits to it.

We're constantly inventing new tricks, more revolutions,

more acrobatics, more unique tricks.

This challenge was so interesting to do

because it kind of felt like a very condensed journey

through all of my 10 years of freestyle,

but also, it's making me reexamine freestyle

through the lens of someone just starting it all over again.

Now that I have all of these techniques,

now that I've incorporated my own personal style,

it's making me see how I can share that with you

and see what kind of freestyles we can create.

Take your time, be patient, and you'll get there.