Freestyle is a cooperative sport that combines the basic Flying Disc game of throw and catch with aspects of gymnastics, dance, martial arts, and other physical disciplines. It’s both a creative art and an athletic challenge.
It fits perfectly an urban sport setting and is popular a sport played on beaches. Freestyle was included to the 2019 GAISF World Urban Games and featured as a demonstration sport at the 1st ANOCA African Beach Games in Cape Verde in 2019.
In competition, pairs or trios perform choreographed or spontaneous routines set to music all while spinning, twirling, tossing or rolling one or more discs.
Routines are judged on their artistic merit (composed by 5 subcategories: teamwork, music choreography, flow, form, variety), difficulty (based on the difficulty and risk of the moves attempted in each phrase), and execution of the attempted moves (Ex: from a perfect score of 10, a dropped disc is a 0,3 deduction, a minor bubble is a 0,1 deduction..). Judges are always other players competing in the same tournament.
Outside of competition, freestyle is an improvisation between players in which each move, throw, catch, hoop, or touch of the disc inspires and encourages the next one. This is called jamming, and to most players, it’s the most important part of the sport. Like skateboarding, snowboarding, or surfing, freestyle has its own lexicon of names for body positions, disc manoeuvres and techniques.
