Hi everyone, I’m excited to present Abby Brodsky with Knotcreators
What got you into throwing, how did you find the hobby?
I got into yoyo in the beginning of 2012, when I was really bored one day after school as a middle schooler, and I find this old yoyo in a drawer in my house and it was a Duncan Proyo. Then I made the yoyo go up and down, and I thought it was super fun to do, and then the rest is history!
What is your goal in 2025 for yourself? Yo-yo or not!
My goal is to attend the International Jugglers Association (IJA) Festival in July, to teach at least 3 yoyo workshops, to be able to do 10 full push ups, and to get my Blue Belt in Karate!
If you could only have one yo-yo for the rest of your life what would it be?
Easy KnotCreators X OPYOYOs Typo, it’s my signature yoyo I had made 2 years ago (I think it’s really sold out now so don’t try and buy it because there’s literally none left), but, with it being a signature it’s everything I like in a yoyo in terms of size weight distribution, and weight.
What trick are you working on currently?
I’ve been developing some yoyo Ciclico (yoyo and juggling ring tricks) for some gigs I have coming up for we’ll see if they turn out!
What’s the trick that gives you the hardest time?
Leg tricks look so cool and I’m trying to make some SO BAD, but also in the same vein I am consistently learning that my balance is also very bad when I have to hunch over my leg to see what I’m doing with a yoyo.
What’s your favorite trick?
I’m going to get so much flak for this answer but whatever you want to call it but, it’s the DNA. This is purely because when I do yoyo gigs and perform for a general audience, it’s an easy and iconic trick that immediately displays mastery and shows to an audience that I’m a yoyo master.
Other tricks like some dense tech tricks that impress yoyoers just don’t impress a general audience because they aren’t easy to follow and understand and just look like a giant knot. Plus I get to hear my audience just gasp in awe every time I do the trick.
What’s your favorite yo-yo of all time?
Knotcreators X OPYOYOS typo.
What’s the most meaningful throw you have?
I have a YYJ Inspire that AJ Kirk gave me at my first every yoyo contest, VA states 2013, and I had him sign it as a dorky kid. When AJ gave it to me he told me to keep practicing and that “I promise that you’re not the only girl in yoyo there are others out there” (I was the only girl yoyoing at that contest and competing so needless to say on so many different levels there was a lot of culture shock that day)
What’s your worst habit with yo-yos?
I’m really lazy about changing strings on my yoyos, they’re not grimey or like disgusting looking, but like they definitely get a case of the twisties.
What’s kind of things are you into outside of yo-yos?
Lots of things! I juggle, I fidget a lot because of my ADHD so I definitely have a bit of a begleri and Knuckleroller obsession, I practice Tang Soo Do karate, I go to the gym and just generally do strength training, I like being outside so anything hiking, or outdoors related is welcome, I like to crochet, I like folding origami (square sticky notes are the bane of my existence), and I really really like rocks in general (I work as a geologist as my day job).
What song best fits your personality?
Stella the Begonia- Rubble Bucket
Favorite restaurant and order?
No really any favorite restaurants tbh, I honestly don’t eat out all that often and I’m much more prone to cook at home but, but any place with Shawarma with Laffa has my heart.
Favorite movie and or Book?
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
What does yo-yo’ing mean to you?
Yoyos meaning for me has really changed a lot over the years for me because it absolutely has served different purposed over different stages of life but, the general consistent theme for me is that yoyo is always a convenient option for me to blow off steam and extra energy.
What’s your favorite memory from your time in the hobby?
2018 Chicago Nationals, when I used to be on Smashing yoyos, Jordan Bloefeld, and Roland Thomas-Biason came over from the UK, and they rented an AirBNB for the whole team, and every yoyoer on Smashing that lived in the USA was there, and we all hung out yoyoing til like 2am every night yoyoing, eating snacks and essentially just having a basement party every night with whoever else we wanted to invite. It was such a fun time. I hope I can do something like that again at another yoyo contest.
What’s your best advice for people to get better at yo-yoing?
Learn to be a performer! And when I mean performer I don’t mean how yoyoers perform in a contest, the performance aspects you see in contests, flat out sucks, it’s not traditional performance at all, and it’s blasphemous seeing some of the stuff positively scored as performance in yoyo competition.
Learn traditional performance techniques and really study the craft. Watch juggling, magician, or circus acts and watch how they have stage presence by giving eye contact to the audience, by smiling onstage and enjoying themselves, and how they selectively use applause points when they do something cool or hard, and notice how with their applause point they hold their applause point until the audience stops clapping, and not when the performer decides to.(Traditionally this is at least 3 seconds long, which in a yoyo freestyle is considered too much downtime and even though it isn’t outright scored negatively on the sheets, it’s still a negative in modern competition to have downtime in a freestyle.
In recent years I have never seen a yoyoer properly execute applause points). Any circus artist, or magician, utilizes traditional performance techniques all the time. Try to emulate those performance techniques things with yoyo. The rule of 10 that is constantly toted in yoyo also applies to traditional performance (The rule of 10 is that if you can’t land your trick 9 out of 10 times you execute it then it’s not ready to be put on stage).
Yes technical yoyoing is important and evals are a thing but, the big difference typically in a lot of contests comes down to performance evals and learning to be a general performer, and not a performer just for yoyo will make you a significantly better competitor and make your routines more enjoyable and memorable routine to your audience. Also with these new performance skills, you can also fund your way to go to contests if you don’t happen to have a trust fund like myself! I have done so many strolling gigs with yoyo where in about 3ish hours worth of work I can make an easy $500, and that means I only need to do 4ish gigs a year like that in order to be able to afford to go some bigger yoyo contests or juggling festivals!
How has the community changed since you started? Where do you want it to go?
I’ve been yoyoing for over 12 years now and like I have definitely seen a lot of change in the yoyo community supposedly. Like, I’ve seen the yoyoers that I used to idolized when I was learning how to yoyo fall out of style, like John Ando, and Yuuki Spencer are all ancient in terms of now, and like the Expert Village tutorials I learned from are now no longer the go to tutorials for learning how to yoyo.
I really don’t know if the community culture has changed though, or if I just no longer have Rose-colored glasses and have became far more of a critic when it comes to yoyo culture in particular. Also if you care about your community it’s not a bad thing to be a critic of said community if it’s with the mindset of improving your chosen community. Anywho, I’ve now gotten older and can recognize how some yoyo culture aspects are problematic for long term sustainability. Like a prime example of this is especially in regards to how members in the community tend to interact with each other, like in my personal experience yoyo is extremely cliquey, especially at yoyo contests (and I say this as a girl who went through middle school and had all kinds of lunch table drama, and like yoyo at times is absolutely worse than a middle school girl’s lunch table), and like when I was younger I didn’t recognize this as problematic and it didn’t bother me, but I also didn’t tecognize the social aspects at play when I was 13.
But like yoyoers love to be in their cliques with their 3 friends and when they do this they don’t typically interact or talk with people not in their circle. And if you’re someone brand new to yoyo and you go to your first yoyo contest and don’t know anybody, and see this cliquey culture like that’s really intimidating. At a yoyo contest, the onus is on you to make a friend because it isn’t a guarantee that someone is going to introduce themselves to you and initiate a conversation with you with the current yoyo culture, like you have to initiate that. This is a lot of extra social pressure on a new yoyoer for what’s supposed to be a fun event. So I look at this stuff and think has yoyo culture changed? or have I just changed as a human and have gotten more astute and critical of the yoyo culture?
Ideally I would love to see community to start putting in efforts into making yoyo a more welcoming environment for all, and a lot of the stuff to do so is cheap and easy to do, like having a chosen yoyo instructor at a club so newbies feel welcomed and can learn a trick, providing name tags and pronoun pins, and running workshops which provide a more niche and smaller environment for people to get to know each other.
If you never picked up a yo-yo - what would things look like now?
My friend circle would be pretty different I have definitely made a lot of cherished friends through yoyo that I actually hang out with in non yoyo settings. I also think with me being in yoyo for so long that it really taught me tenacity and persistence that I don’t think I would have developed in other settings in my life at the time the hobby took off for me. It really takes a particular person to want to obsessively practice the same trick 20 million times over again just to get it right 1 time.
Advice/ words of wisdom to new players?
Really don’t take yoyo super seriously, at the end of the day your playing with a toy, and like it’s not the end of the world if you don’t land the trick perfectly, or if you get a knot in the string, like it happens. Also change your string! I know I definitely didn’t change my string often enough when learning to yoyo.
Whats you want to tell the world?
If your wondering why the yoyo community doesn’t do X, Y, or Z regarding the yoyo community then do it! Go be the change you want to see in your community! People always think that it takes someone higher up to grow the community to implement the change you want to see, but in reality, its on the community individuals to do so, it’s not top down, it’s moves from the bottom up.
If like you want the yoyo community to be welcoming, then you can introduce yourself to people you don’t know, or you can invite someone you don’t know to lunch at a yoyo contest or after yoyo club! You already have something in common with this person, like you both yoyo I’m sure there are plenty of conversation starters you can think to talk about.