I’ve found that all of my tricks look a bit sloppy and I move too much. Any advice on how to make tricks flow a little more?
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Honestly practice, and practicing on more unforgiving throws. As an example, generally if I can hit a trick on my bassalope; a small bearing, high wall, .555 response, buzzon spacers etc, I can hit it smooth on anything. Reason being is that to perform a trick on that yoyo you have to have it smooth. It cant take many string wraps, tilts and snags easily, so if I’m off my game It will shoot back at my knuckles. This forces me to make my tricks smoother.
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^ this and my advice would be just to calm down, a lot of the throwers I know are always in hyper drive when doing their tricks - it’s easy to fall into this because of the way the comp scene works
I’ve found when you slow your pace down you can begin to let the momentum of the yoyo dictate what tricks you should do because it just “fits”
Sometimes practicing just the trick itself isn’t enough, practicing transitions smoothly into the next trick or element could be a “trick” in itself
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@MoosaK - here’s some inspo for the flowiest homie in nyyyc
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Trick tutorials usually break down tricks into steps, and that’s how you end up learning them: step-by-step.
Once you can get through a trick, focus on smoothing transitions between the different steps to make it flow into one smooth trick.
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To be completely honest, I kinda suck, so take this for what it’s worth. I however grew up as a musician and played drums for several years, so I am experienced with keeping a beat in several different time signatures. Imo flowing with yoyo is much the same. When I want to make my basic AF combos flow, I nail the elements to an internal time/clock signature. Imo rhythm and beat are just as much keys to “flow” as is nailing your tricks smoothly.
I also agree with slowing it down. Slow your tricks down, but also keep it in rhythm. If you have trouble with rhythm, you will inherently lack flow. Not sure what to suggest at that point though.
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Hey. I actually have kinda a differing opinion on all this. Yes, organic yoyos are less forgiving, but i doubt that the spintime and stability that’s taken from you when you play with those yoyos is the thing that causes you to become smoother (this is coming from someone who plays organics/flat bearings/fixie as much as i play anything else).
Honestly after giving some thought to it, the key is repetion and focalized practice. “Flow” is not something you can grind and nail like a difficult hook or whip. It comes after you have mentally internalized and memorized the elements of the tricks you want to do, therefore your brain and hands have enough muscle memory to optimize and give emphasis to the motions you want to do. Also, “flow” is a term people loosely give to “acceleration”. Tricks that flow have a controlled sense of acceleration, and that comes only with humongous amounts of practice.
One solid advice i can give is try to come up with your own stuff. Stuff that flows is stuff that you’r brain understands how is done and how is composed.
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I think this is good advice. Give your tricks some rhythm people!
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Uh oh that’s me stuffed then 
Agreed about keeping a rhythm, like music.
Each trick suggests its own internal rhythm. Finding what that rhythm is, is the path to flow.
Smoothness I think about differently, where smoothness and flow are linked because you need to be smooth to execute things in a controlled, rhythmic, way.
However, smooth is also a type of flow, where I think there are some really cool flows that are not necessarily “smooth” because there may be a lot of hops or direction changes.
How to put it all together? Find the internal rhythm of a trick and practice it like it is a metronome. Another classic is to lock your elbows at your side and focus on using a minimum of movement from wrist and forearm - basically the point is to make the yoyo move by using a minimum of body movement.
When making tricks, try to just carry the motion and create stuff from there
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Don’t let the spinning yoyo “hang” or remain still while in motion. Let the momentum of the throw and trick movements continue until you bind return.
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I think most of the advice given pretty much covers it and I’m not great myself. So you’ve seen the mentions of rhythm and music. I have always done my best stuff when I’m listening to music that has me hyped up. I think it helps a lot just blasting music and starting off super simple, when I’m feeling good even landing a simple eli hop to a double on trapeze feels great if you hit it well timed to whatever music you like is playing, then it starts to translate into other other tricks, like a warm up.
Full disclosure I feel I’m pretty stiff most of the time, I just notice every once in a while I’ll ALMOST do something cool when I was feeling the music and got into the moment. I guess the short cliche version is really just enjoying yourself cause it always comes together best when I’m genuinely having fun playing 
idk if anyone else knows about this but Evan Nagao did a video about how he flows like years ago that I happened to come across while scrolling through his stuff.
It’s basically what @eternalmetal talked about tho. Keeping rythm to your tricks as well as making sure your movements are purposeful will improve your trick execution.
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Pausing a certain points, it’s up to you, and finding the rhythm on the string hits.
Lets say you are doing kwyjibo, the rhythm could be when the yoyo hits after a pop.
Skin the gerbil is probably a better example, it can repeat, and you can perform it in time to music.
Honestly, I think flow or whatever is just a measure of control over the yoyo. We’ve all seen phenoms who can hit some crazy trick, but you can just tell they haven’t been throwing all that long.
Keeping up the with meta through a paradigm shift or two seems to increase that intangible with some players, but yeah there’s so much great specific advice in this thread on how to improve your flow quickly. I don’t know much about that. What I can say is something you might not want to hear but, as others said, it might just take time. Then again some newbs be flowin, I’d prolly call them “old souls” 
(edit: not implying anyone’s a newb…)
But, in general, as a long time hobbyist yoyoer, I’d just say that if you don’t stop throwing (you can slow way down, just don’t ever stop) you’ll get ur own flow without even meaning to… eventually 
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I think it’s pretty much already been said. Most of it really is just practice and repetition. When you learn a trick, you break it down into pieces, and there’s always pauses and you put the elements together. But the more you do the trick, the less frequent the pauses become until they are non existent. Muscle memory takes over, and flow develops out of pure repetition. Eventually, flow develops between entire tricks not just their elements.
Also, I agree that listening to music helps. Sometimes you can just feel the music and that rhythm transfers into your play. Gentry if one of the best players to watch incorporate music into their routine and match the flow to it.
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