Been throwing for a few months after finding an old fireball in the basement of my parents house. I’ve since picked up 7ish new throws and am completely into it(time permitting). I have learned a bunch of tricks but am struggling starting to combo stuff and making tricks looks smooth. Stuff I have got down are matrix, cold fusion, gondola, shockwave, magic drop, boingy boing, wormhole, rewind, and am working on branding now. I can do all the basic stuff as well. At this point I am just doing “tricks” and want to take it to next level. Any advice would be much appreciated!
make sure you have the basics solid… they are the rock on which everything advanced stand on. if you don’t have them smooth go back and work harder on them. It may take you longer, but it will save you pain in the long run.
It’s what I’ve been doind. Trying to avoid boredom though…with work and all just don’t have that much time
Plan out a combo before trying to throw it.
Sort of like music notes.
Try Kamikaze, magic drop, shockwave, gondola, bind.
The end of Shockwave puts you in perfect position for gondola.
The transitions are what it sounds like you are trying to get smooth, so focus on making that clean from one trick to the next, but plan it out so you don’t have to stop and think about what the next trick coming up is.
Thanks for the advice!
Like some other people said, learn some more of the advanced tricks and I think you will find the path of making your own tricks or combos way easier. I, myself find it really hard to make my own combos and tricks, but I still make some up due to the amount of tricks I have learned from watching other people and learning tutorials. Good luck on the journey.
For me, it’s been a long while since I decided to pick a tutorial and follow through with learning a trick in its entirety. Lately (as in the past 3 months or so) I’ve been watching tutorials and cherry picking elements from it or just tinkering around with “what if I land the yoyo on this string segment instead of that one?” or “what happens if I roll onto that segment over there…” kind of things. Also just watching yoyo videos (especially in slow motion) is a great way to spark up some ideas.
I am in the process of (slowly) picking up Ladder Escape as I’ve been itching to actually pick up an entire trick, I think my last one I learned back in August was And Whut.
I also just learned And Whut. I wish I could land the jump rope more easily. I’ve been throwing yo yo for just about 9 months so you guys are doing great. You’re way ahead of me.
I think I’m going to go back to the lesson page and just start at the beginning and work through them. My original plan was to use the trick ladder as my progression but those tricks ramp up the difficulty really quickly. I stalled out at the jade whip and I only rarely get the 2nd hop of Spirit Bomb. Black Hops looks insane.
So it’s back to basics for me. I should get my mounts and binds down solid first I think.
It’s a journey isn’t it?
Nice.
That jump rope is tough till you get the feel of it.
Even then, I still miss it sometimes.
That jump rope move…I was at my yoyo club with most of And what down, up to the jump rope. I went to ask one of the people there how to do it, and showed them what I could do, then attempted the jump rope move. Out of nowhere, it happened…So my question ended with a “Whelp, nevermind, looks like I just figured it out.”
Life has hit and I have been at stand still lately with not much time to throw. When I do its a little repetitive. Working on some front mount combos mainly because barrel rolls and brain scrambler boingy boing and all those can kind of be mixed together a little easier. Also my front throw is stronger than my breakaway. Any ideas to a stronger breakaway?
The not fun answer is just keep throwing.
Probably it’s more about the string planes on the side style stuff vs the front mount, but it’s all practice unfortunately.
I find that I overestimate how big a jump to make and as I bring the string under the yoyo I go too far and the yoyo falls out the front. Making the jump smaller seems to help (sometimes).
Then again, lately I’ve been missing a simple trapeze. So, as I was telling myself, I just need to go back to basics and get all my mounts solid.
A typical focused practice session is now:
15 trapeze.
15 1 and a half mounts.
15 "kinda 1 and a half mounts where you throw over the NTH and the TH, hit the upper string but instead of looping it around the TH you drop it back on the lower string.
15 Double or nothing
15 triple or nothing
15 Rewinds because it’s a bunch of basic mounts, Trapeze, Trapeze and his brother, Double or nothing, Double or nothing and his brother, triple or nothing, unwind and bind.
That little routine will really show you how accurate your throws are and your string plane is.
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I find that the “art” of it comes from the mastery of the inbetween. The spaces that fill up the beginning of one trick and the end of another.
By paying attention to the inbetween you find the elusive flow.
When I used to compete in freestyle footbag, I used to struggle the same way as many of you. I would drill drill drill the tricks until I was just sick of em. I thought that was how to do it (and it may be for some!) but I always found a hard time stitching it all together. I had the tricks down, but was akward inbetween. It never clicked with me and I fizzled out after a few years of “trying.”
fast forward many years and I always was into skill toys. Contact juggling, toss juggling, poi, buugeng. All these things and more showed me that what I was looking for to help advance to the next level was not to do the same trick over and over, but to find ways into and out of that those tricks that felt good. During this time I was a professional fire dancer (fire poi mostly) for several years in the music fesitval circut and I got to see myself on video alot showing ME how THEY saw it go down. What we see and what they see are radically different and taught me alot in a short amount of time. By using video I was able to spot the rough spots, the wrong timing, the bad posture, all these things that affected the performance in some way or another.
Long story short, (TOO LATE! (i know… )) Use Video as an aid to yourself.
Instead of drilling repititious tricks over and over, try to build a sequence of the tricks you already know. Any time you do something that feels good, Do It Again. drill the sequences of simple mounts, and then step it up with a couple bigger tricks in stead of several smaller ones. Then put a small one before your big trick or two and close with a random mount and flash out of it to the bind of your choosing. It will look MAD skillful and you will only really be hitting one or two “tricks” there in the middle. The rest is just filler and flair. An eli hop here, a flip there, a cross arm trapeze just cause? perfect.
The motto ive lived by for over a decade now is “Make the hard look easy and the easy look beautiful.”
Pay attention to your facial expressions, be relaxed. This all sounds like performing advise but it all helps you stop “trying” and start feeling.
breakaway>brent>wrist mount>magic trick>snap GT>Exit>bind
mmmmm
feels good don’t it? and mostly pretty simple too! 8)
For the jump rope in And Whut? just make it a small circle. There very little distance to cover. You can actually do it really slowly to if you bend you knees kendama style. 
For stronger breakaways, a tight bind is really important. Muncle memory is key though. Nothing but doing it a thousand times will get it dialed down. It a bout finesse, not force so dont worry about “throwing” hard to get it right. spend a day doing nothing but breakaways and keep at it. youll have it in no time!
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Thanks for the advice! Ive been just doing basic throws and mounts lately. Seem to be getting stronger throws lately. I have also stopped doing tricks and am trying to have fun and figure stuff out on my own with what looks cool. IDK if its helping but its sure making throwing fun!
I take a look at some of the old time throwers of the past and notice that they have tricks that are incredibly controlled and smooth. The reason for this is literally years of practice of trial and error, and gaining the muscle memory to know what to do. Smoothness comes with muscle memory, and that comes with constant repitition. While repeating old tricks may seem boring, the advantage of gaining fluidity is worth the bit of boredom I feel.
As for combo creation, just practice doing what you know now and expand on it. Maybe take a mount from another trick you know, and throw it into place of another half step between a trick. Lots of possibilities. And of course checking out some videos online for inspiration always helps.
Dust:
That was a great post. I find the same thing in playing music. I may be soloing to a jazz tune and I’m thinking “This variation of this lick will fit really well right here”. Then there’s the next lick, and the next. But the real music happens in the transitions between licks and the morphing of those licks into what fits the music at the time.
Transitions, it’s all about transitions.
I’m going to have to think about applying that same idea to yoyoing.
This makes me smile to know that you “know”
I get a lot out of repetition. Enjoying making small changes to a trick I’ve done a thousand times… feeling satisfaction from the perfect bind (sometimes I’ll just do trick binds over and over)… I don’t really need a LOT of diversity to enjoy yoyo.
Your mileage may vary (we’re all wired so differently!) but if you start to look for the possibilities for change/optimization/whatever within tricks you already know, you might find that you don’t “need” to learn as many new tricks to stay motivated.
(but you may…haha!)