Interview of Pako Fernadez (Pako) ,14693 RPM on February 2006.

-Hello Pako, can you indroduce yourself? When did you buy your first Powerball? 

Hello. My name is Francisco Fernandez, I'm 31 years old. I live in Bilbao (Spain) and work as a software developer for a computer anti-virus company. I enjoy watching moviez and powerballing. I'm also a gym addict. :-) I knew that gyroscopes where sold long time ago, but they didn't catch my attention until a friend let me used his powerball (August '05). I knew from that same moment I had to buy one for myself. I also watched the impressive Akis videos, and bought not one, but two powerballs, just in case :-)

-Your currently world top 10 , how do you feel about it? How did you get there? 

I didn't expect to get there that early. On the past I trained a lot of hours.As a result, my right hand fingers were hurting badly for several weeks but didn't care much. Now I regret about that. I had to spend lots of days resting.
I think it was this rest that made me improve my speed score. Now I'm taking iteasily. I want to avoid injuries.

- Do you have  some special technique? Some tricks to give us? 

I think my grip on the powerball is quite standard: the counter facing the palm of my hand.

First of all, I always do some muscle warming using my IronPower or my Phantom at low speed; then I continue warming with my old powerballs (regulars and light-neons). After that, I start my speed sessions, one after one. When I'm hunting for a speed record, I rarely do any 90s run, although for some people that works nice. After some minutes (or hours), hot-mode is enabled, and I suddenly start getting scores very near my current record. I continue fiercely until I achieve the new record or my skin is gone :-)

If I set a day to break my record, I try to be mentally focus and avoid overtraining at gym (which makes my arms sluggish) 

- How do you train?

For speed sessions I train with lots of speed runs and some 90s in between. I like a lot to change from one regular powerballs to light-neon ones, and back.
For all the powerballs I touch, I write down the score to keep track of my improvements. I also record myself on video, right now I have a DVD full of videos.

I don't train much with 90s sessions. I rather use extreme endurance (1 or 2 hours) at 9k-10k 

- What do you like on Gyrotek? 

I like the forum, where you can discuss just about anything (most of the times getting off topic heheh). It's well organized and lots of people helping (like keeping several scoreboards updated). I also enjoy chatting with gyrotek members at IRC.

But, most of all, I love live competitions. It's the perfect day to break your record. 

-What do you think the future for Powerballs is? 

I think the powerball community is still very scarce. I hope it gets more and more widespread, and maybe someday it can be recognized as a popular sport, if not Olympic :-)

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Regards,
Pako.

Okay that's all, thank you for the time you took to answer my questions and your readers thank you too!

Interview of Pako  by Obiw4n February 2006.

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