i am terrible at 5a. its hard for me to avoid the counterweight hitting the yoyo and its hard to balance the counterweight along with the yoyo when they vary at very different weights. please help.
Practice makes perfect. Keep working with just sleeping and breakaway’s and keeping them balanced. Once you can keep them balanced move on to trick.
This helped me: try to practice grabbing the counterweight at just the right place, just do pinwheel or 360 or something like that until you can do it more consistently. The most annoying thing for me with 5A is when the counterweight swings around the yoyo and you have to go and unwrap it… and your yoyo stops spinning so you have to wind it up. Also, try different counterweights if the weight doesn’t feel right.
the counterweights i have are a red die with a face, and a bouncy ball. i lost my blue die. which one is best?
Nothing is BEST.
It is all about PERSONAL PREFERENCE
Yep. Just find one that you like, and then practice.
However I personally recommend the Bouncy ball. Not because of the balance, but because rubber can’t ding your Yo-Yo. The plastic counterweights can.
thank you. that helps a lot! i didnt know that the bouncy ball doesn’t ding my yoyo when i hit it. once some of the candy blast coating rubbed off. 
Your welcome 
I suppose it might be possible that rubber can ding metal, but then again how impossible does that sound XD