Operation: ICU 2012: In English

We are taking part in the TV Show 'Talent Finland!!' Now we already made it to semifinals, like us at www.facebook.com/mikamijastunts and you can help us get to the FINALS!!

WORLD CHAMPIONS 2011!!!! NATIONAL CHAMPIONS 2011!!!

This is Mika's and Mija's partnerstunt blog! We are both members of Finland's Funky Team Gorillaz. We won the ICU world championships in April 2011, as now we are the current partner stunt world champions! We started this blog a year ago and posted updates and videos from each practice. Now we're looking at starting season 2 'Operation: ICU 2012'. This season's theme will be to work twice as hard, as now we have a title to defend and a reputation to live up to! We will be posting videos onto this english part of our blog and hopefully also some small texts on what's up with practicing! You can also follow the video updates and other updates from www.facebook.com/mikamijastunts if you're more of a facbook user :D

Below you'll find ALL the videos we've filmed starting from season 1, day 1!! We update the finnish part of the blog after each practice (titles day 1, day 2...) and add a video from that practice after the text too. We wont update this english version of the blog as often as we do the finnish one, but we will post links to youtube videos and hopefully we'll be inspired to write some of the text in english as well if we notice that people actually want that.. SO if you pop by to read this and wanna know more, please comment ! :)

A bit of history:
The first time we competed in partner stunts was the Finnish Nationals in 2008. We won the national title, but never got around to actually compete at the Europeans that year in Slovenia. We started talking about stunting together again after Mija came back from her exchange year in Kentucky (summer 2011) and held our first practice and created this blog right after Europeans 2011.

Our goal was to practice hard, learn new stunts, and compete at finnish nationals in order to get qualified for worlds! Lol, we actually made a bet for a thousand euros at the european's after party: The bet stated that if either one of us wants to bail from practicing or competing, she/he has to pay the other thousand euros... SO, there was some motivation ;) We ended up winning nationals that year and got the chance to represent our country at the ICU worlds both with our team Gorillaz and in partnerstunts! So we did achieve our goal and well, honestly, we seemed to be over achievers as we became world champions, something we would've never even dared to dream of a year earlier.

Peace and Love to everyone :D
ONE ARM REWIND TO CUPIE!!!

Great Practice:
WOOOOHOOOO! WHAT. A. PRACTICE. !! We seemed better than ever, we were kinda hitting our straddle double up, and we were doing one arm rewinds to a target and for the first time it seemed as there was actually sense in the whole stunt!!AAAND then we also managed to do a handstand cupie that we switched to a target also! :) Check out the video!

Day 6+7: THREE new stunts!!! Cupie fullaround (yeah, doesnt sound too exciting, but we had only been working on cupie fullarounds earlier=), handstand to an aerobesque and a fronthandspring without hands!! :) We also worked on doubleups but... we'll that stunt didnt go too well. or like, it didnt hit at all! So gotta keep practicing!!

For the love of stunting (day 3,4,5) Good practices!! And in our opinion, its a fun video also! :) heh, told u i'd get better :D We learnt anew way to go up to a handstand, worked on rewind cupies, fronhandsprings, fullarounds, and backrolls to stunts!!

Season 2, day 1 and 2... Hehe, we'll we've had quite a break and we gotta tell u that stunting doesnt feel as great as it id right after competitions. But who'd expect to get better when u dont practice ;);) From now on, it'll be only uphill... (never is though:) Strech fullarund, one arm tictoc and one arm rewind in this video...

Season 2 start. This is a collection of different clips we've filmed while we've been stuntig after the competition. We havent yet started practicing well, but here's from random times we've still ended up not' having practice :D:D :

Comedy stunting in Funky Team's annual Funky Fun competition:

A tribute to the World Champion title, we love this video. There's first clips from practices in Orlando, then also from earlier days. The video includes the award ceremony and some stunting right after the competition!

Our World Championship routine:

Day 64:

Day 62

Day 53:Working on the last bit of our routine...

Day 52: This is a great new video with a great song :) Two months till ICU world championships of cheerleading! In this video we have full-over cupie for the first time and also a handstand stunt done in a way that we dont stop before the handstand! We were also working on fronthandspring ups to bring the stunt back to our minds.

Day 50:

Day 48:

Day 47:HIT a rewind cupie once again! Now it seems that the time we've put into perfecting the reqular rewind has paid off and makes it easier to do a rewind cupie also :D:D Also worked on a BHS full up, but that stunt doesnt really go that well... but then again, it was only the 3rd time we worked on it :D

Day 46,another great practice. Worked on some rewind technique to get it better and so that Mika doesnt tilti his head and so that Mija really places her feet into Mika's hands. We also worked on handstands and figured out that its pretty hard to catch it into a left cupie instead of the the right one :D:D

Day 45! Again a good practice. We had no spotters in the beginning so we decided to work on 'basic stunts' and put them together so that we'd build some edurance already before we start working on the routine!

Day 44! I think this one is a cool video, I really like the song :D heh, so we were working on basic stunts first cuz we had no spotters and then two guys from our team came early to practice and we managed to lure them to spot us, wohoo, and then we worked on the straddle-ball-fulllup strech and our rewind! :)

Day 42, Cupie full over. Apparently doing a cupie full over might be easier than a cupie full-around... We aren't quite sure of that yet but here's a clip of us working on it, hit it a couple of times... Or well I guess hitting it is not the right term, but we managed to keep it up a couple of times ;);)

Stunt Camp: We tried many different stunts and here's some footage of them fro m4 different practices. We kinda wanted to try a lot and not ttry hit them, but just understand a little bit of what they are about!

Day 39
Just a lil something something we were working on today! :) We hit it a bit cleaner also before but didnt catch that thing on tape! Now we're off to camp tomorrow!!! :D So be ready for some cool stunts after this weekend :D:D

Day 38, HANDSTAND CUPIE!!! Tried it the first time, man it was fun but really hard :D:D

Day 37, back in the game after a long pause cuz of unfortunate events! Got a couple of new stunts like the first one and a new way to go up to a handstand and then also managed to get the bhs so that it doesnt go to a block/target but to a lib! :)Worth watching and dont mind they way we go into the shoulder sit in the first stunt, we were concentrating on the part where we move the stunt from the shoulders!

Day 36, worked on one-arm rewinds... got a couple of them to stay up (in the end of the vide clip) but we need to figure out how to actually do it, but this was really the first time! :)

Day 35, started practicing on fronthandspring 1.5 up!! We didnt quite hit it yet...at all BUT we learnt so many new things about how we Think it shd be done at least ;);)

DAY 34!!! First practice after nationals and we're ON FIRE!! :D Hit out rewind cupie AND did the handstand to a cupie also! :D:D Gotta say that we are both SUPER EXCITED to start practising again after nationals!!! :D:D

Gold winning partner stunt routine at finnish nationals! We also did get enough points to be sent to the ICU-worlds, still gotta wait a while if our federation will give us the spot or not :)

Day 33 last practice before nationals!!

Day 32 - Funky Team's showcase before nationals

Day 31 - It seems that the last video has some technical troubles, we'll try fix it this week! And in this video, my camera's battery ended half way thru practice, but you can still get the idea that this practice was a good practice! :) ONE WEEK TILL NATIONALS!!

Day 28+29

Day 27, two weeks till nationals!!!

Day 26!

Day 25 and footage from some stunts we did at the competition this weekend

Day 24 with extra stuff cuz we have preliminaries for nationals this weekend in Finland and we're wishing luck to everyone competing and made a bit longer video! We on the other hand still have a month to go before nationals as partnerstunt division doesn't have any preliminaries!