When a footbag player recently asked me how to get started in the net world, here's what I wrote to him. If you have different advice or other advice, please post it here for the benefit of new players lurking here.
My comments:
"The best way to learn to play net is to get touches with a net bag. Form wise, the kicks are similar, however learning to control the net bag takes probably 50,000-100,000 kicks, whereas with freestyle, you might get control with only 10-15,000 kicks.
That being said, the best ways to get touches are to 1) power kick, basically 1 touch passing back and forth with rainbow-arching kicks, or 2) kicking a net bag against a wall, practicing all 4 kicks, standing about 2-3 feet from the wall and aiming at a 3-4 foot mark.
Wall kicking is probably the more preferable choice unless you have a partner who is also interested in learning to kick a net bag. Whereas a human partner will often miss, the wall will always feed the ball back to you assuming you kick it with the right trajectory. The only prob with wall kicking is the boring factor. It is hard for me to do it for more than 15 minutes at a time unless I'm really focused on developing a skill.
My advice is to find a wall that is flat and is at least 15 feet high; its actually quite easy to kick the bag on the roof with lower walls. Try 15 minutes a day, or until you reach 300 kicks against the wall. Keep in mind that the best and most important kicks to learn for net are the outside kicks done at the side of the hip or slightly behind your body (blocking the bag and using it's momentum to send it forward).
In terms of progression, I'd say doin your wall kicks will help to get control. Also, work your alternating insides as in freestyle consec kicking.
Practice until you can get 100. You should try to keep those kicks at no higher than 3-4 feet in the air, which means barely touching the bag. Also, try consecutive right and left foot outside kicks, aiming for a target height of about 10 feet. Eventually you can alternate btwn left and right, as in doing rainbow kicks, but this is actually quite difficult.
Spikes are fun to learn but typically require you to have a net and the knowledge to set one up correctly. If you lack these, you might try hanging a bag from a beam in your house or from the roof at about 6 feet high. A slip knot deal will work the best so that you can lower the ball to as low as 5 feet or as high as 7ish. A hook and some shoelace is typically all you need (plus a creative way to feed the shoelace through a net bag). There's a pic in my footblog 2-3 pages back of me kicking a hanging ball if you need a reference."
Subject: How to Get Started in Net 
Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:04 pm
