well the first thing you will need is a yoyo and when you are first starting off this can be quite a difficult experience because there are so many different yoyos to choose from. well when choosing a your first yoyo you will most likley want to look for something that is responsive. Some first yoyos that i would recommend are:
yoyojam
Kickside
speedmaker
lyn fury
journey
YoYoFactory
ONE
Fast 201
Spinstar
Duncan
Mosquito
Flying Squirrel
Dragon fly
Freehand 2
Freehand Zero
Throwmonkey
Metal Drifter
Yomega
Dash
Maverick
Well now that you have your yoyo now you need some string. this could also be a difficult experience because there are alot of different material types that you can buy. when i was first starting i loved the half cotton half polyester and half cotton. The two most common materials for string are cotton and polyester so i would recommend that you start with one of these two. cotton is better for responsive play so if you want your yoyo to be more responsive use cotton. Polyester is the kind of string that most everyone uses nowadays, it is great for more unresponsive play and it will not fray as fast as cotton. And also when you are starting off you dont need those fancy specialty strings. you can just go on your favorite website to order yoyos from and buy what ever you want, this is much cheaper than buying the special hand twisted strings and you can get a ton of strings for a much cheaper price.
Well now that you have your yoyo and your string it is time to put them together
so you have your string on your yoyo now comes your first real challenge in your yoyoing journey, your first throw. when you first start out, it is important to practice your throw so you can throw the yoyo and it wont tilt and wobble and spin out. your throw is the most important trick in your trick arsenal so you need to practice it a ton.
Congratulations you have completed your first yoyoing milestone, you can now throw the yoyo. so now is the time you will want to start learning tricks. there are a ton of dvds and videos that will teach you how to yoyo but you can save money by just finding trick tutorials on youtube. Andre boulay has a great trick tutorial section on expertvillage on youtube. you can also just go on youtube and search “how to do beginner yoyo tricks”
Some good tricks to learn if you want to impress your friends are:
Eiffel tower:
Walk the dog:
How To Do Basic Yo-Yo Tricks : How To Do The Walk The Dog Yo-Yo Trick
Rock the Baby:
Around the world:
Once you have yoyoed for a while and you get into the more advanced tricks you might want to look into getting an unpesponsive yoyo. Unresponsive yoyos are great because they dont come back when they are pulled on so that makes it easier to do some tricks and also they have a larger gap than the responsive yoyos, but if you get an unresponsive yoyo you will need to learn a new way to return the yoyo called a bind:
Now once you start looking into unresponsive yoyos it can get even more confusing than picking your first yoyo because there are alot more unresponsive yoyos than there are responsive yoyos now. Some great first unresponsive yoyos include:
YoYoJam
Darkmagic II
SpinFaktor X (sfx)
Yoyo Factory:
Counter Attack
Northstar
Protostar
Starlite
Plastic Grind Machine
Glow die-nasty
Pocket Change
Velocity
So now you have your unresponsive yoyo and can bind return it. now is when the real fun begins, unresponsive yoyos make it possible for more tricks to be done at one time. Some good tricks to learn with your unresponsive yoyo are:
Gyroscopic flop:
Suicide:
Snap start:
Matrix:
Remember when you are learning a new trick if you are starting to get mad at either your self or the yoyo just move on to learning a different trick or you could just put the yoyo down for a few hours and come back to it.
Once you learn the one handed string tricks you have only just begun because there are 4 other types of yoyoing
1a: is string tricks like you have been learning with one yoyo
2a: is looping with two yoyos at the same time
3a: is string tricks with two yoyos at the same time
4a: is offstring yoyoing when the yoyo isnt even attached to the string
5a: is counterweight yoyoing when the yoyo isnt attached to your finger and you have some sort of weight attached to the end of the string.
if you want to learn these styles of yoyoing some of them require special yoyos to do them.
1a: requires just a normal yoyo
2a: Requires two imperial shaped looping yoyos
3a: Requires two normal butterfly shaped yoyos
4a: Requires a larger butterfly shaped yoyo
5a: Requires a butterfly shaped yoyo with a counterweight on the other end of the string
there are also lots of tutorials on youtube for these other styles of yoyoing so just search them up and you can start learning.
Sometimes your yoyo will start acting funny. this is when Maintenance comes into play. here are some various Maintenance videos:
Adjusting your gap:
Axels:
Lube:
Spacers:
Removing caps:
if you have any questions about any of the things covered in this post feel free to send me a private message and i will answer your questions for you.
Im sure i missed some stuff so just comment and i will add things.
