"Black Hops" Trick Appreciation Thread

@Grapes it’s your turn here :slight_smile:

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Here’s a bonus variation I’ve been doingbc I really still love this trick!!! I guess I gotta figure out this responsive now too…

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Dang dude. I am about 100,000 light years from this sort of insanity. Many of you have put so much into these tricks and even gotten to the point that it looks effortless. How often do you actually take a moment to appreciate what a feat you are accomplishing? I mean….dude!! All the little finger placements and machine like string grabs and whips and just……DANG!!!

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Hah thanks! I spent a ton of time grinding this trick pretty early into starting yoyo because I understood it pretty quick and I just really like it! It’s deceptively simple of a trick because it’s just like ToN then back and forth but I really like how mechanical it is! I don’t need to use my brain the same way as I do for like tech stuff and I like that! You can do it too, just one hop at a time!

ooo and I don’t stop enough to take it in because I still have so so so far to go but this was an accomplishment for me and I should be stoked!

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Yes!! You should be stoked!! Motor control issues create a formidable barrier for me but I have so much fun with it. I am certainly making progress, it just depends on the day. Some days you’d swear I just picked a yo-yo up last week for the first time but unless it’s one of those days where I’m fumbling so bad that I only feel frustrated, I keep having fun with it. Super glad I picked it back up again. It has brought so much satisfaction back into my life.

This is the most important thing! Whatever makes you happy with yoyo is good! I think I just really enjoy the challenge of trying stuff that is hard for me and then I know that when it’s less hard, I’ve improved.

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Oh yeah. And I’ve gotta get double or nothing first. Trapeze and brother I can get but that double or nothing…sheesh!! And this starts with triple or nothing!! I read that and knew this one would have to go behind the back burner in the secret vault behind the hidden door in the wall. :rofl:

One step at a time! Yoyo is cool because there are so so many little itsy bitsy steps to take to progress just keep tossing it!

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This has been my experience. And if the yo-yos are giving me a fit I’ve been enjoying the heck out of some spin tops too. It’s never a lack of enjoyment that frustrates me, I get frustrated at my body for not doing what I ask it to do. :rofl:
It’s because it’s fun that I can push passed that frustration and keep moving forward. Back in the early 80s I carried my Glow Imperial with me everywhere I went and I’m right back to that point today. Just not the Glow Imperial :grin::+1:

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Pfff time to see if I can fixie that I guess :sweat_smile:

Meanwhile, here’s quads on a Masamini V2:

And failing the dismount on a mighty flea:

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Nice! Such a fun trick!

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I too have revisited Black Hops recently. Really trying to be 100% with it.
On a responsive or a fixed… wow that’s just nutty. New goal set. Thanks.

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Good luck!!! I spent like a month doing this trick every morning when I was still honeymooning with Yoyo in general and then kinda forgot about it and my consistency went way down so I went on a kick to get it back. That reminded me how sick this trick is and I firmly believe all that work I did onto learn this when I was still pretty new to Yoyo absolutely helped me skip ahead to harder tricks. It’s just such a good trick!

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I also did that. It’s still my favourite trick to do on a yoyo and I’ve done it on every single bearing one I have including responsives. I tried fixed axle many times though and so far haven’t managed it yet. However that TMBR Irvine (pro?) is definitely the one that took me furthest.

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That’s awesome. I really appreciate the down facing camera angle. Helped me get a better idea of what’s going on in that trick.

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So may I ask, how would you compare both the learning process and the satisfaction of pulling it off with responsive vs unresponsive?

I’ll add that I mostly play i responsive and I went with the Deep State and Deeper State for most of my play so that it would be a greater challenge. So seriously kudos to you. You said you were gonna do it….time goes by……and :boom: there you are doing it and moving on to fixed. Awesome.

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Yeah ask away! I’m always stoked to talk about tricks. It is super satisfying to hit this trick on either and it is way way easier to do unresponsive. (Unless the yoyo is super wide like those ones are annoying bc I got short fingers and it’s more likely to hit multiple strings w a really wide yoyo).

I learned it first unresponsive and it’s just really really helpful to learn because the trick teaches so much about managing the spacing of strings on the fingers and the undercuts and hops is just good practice like landing on the strings requires good plane control and general control. I did multiple stages of practice to land it the first time like just front half, just back half, and cascade so like don and hop back and forth before I started to land it and wasn’t hitting ToN consistently when I started learning this one, like I practiced that and the hops together and somewhere along the way got the ToN consistent.

Responsive was a lot harder for me because I stopped playing responsive too long and sucked at it when I started again. I had to relearn how to not snag and figure out how to do that with those hops. I also can only do this trick responsive with the freehand one…so far… Like I tried real hard with deep state and kept getting super close like I would land the last hop but then couldn’t get the yoyo back to hand but that’s just because I’m not fast enough yet and I didn’t want to mess with deep states response because I love it how it is for more modern 0a.

I’m still working on getting it with my other responsive yoyos and trying for less contact on the trapezes bc I need that part better in order to do it with all my yoyos like grapes. I’m def not ready to do this with a fixie yet and I think I would want something better than what I have to really start trying that.

And thank you! Hah it’s a fun trick and it feels good to land!

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Yeah. That was cool seeing that done with those tiny yo-yos.

This sounds like a desperate inner cry to buy another yo-yo to me…:thinking::rofl:

Black Hops r certainly one of the rite of passage tricks in yoyoing. Looks very neat when performed well and teaches u some important concepts like string separation.

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Black hops is one of my favorite tricks, and I think it’s way harder than it looks- especially given it was in a time of responsive being the norm.

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