It’s already been said, but it bears repeating: if you’re smacking your hand hard with a yoyo and it’s causing damage…
Stop doing that!
When I’m playing my MFD Lesula, I bind back when the yoyo has lost some spin through doing tricks. You could lightly tough your yoyo to slow it down if you wanted to (or do a finger grind as suggested). If I really need to stop it “now”, I just grab it instead of binding it. If snap starts aren’t as easy as breathing for you by now, it’s time to work on them! Then having a dead yoyo ain’t no thang.
It just seems obvious to me: if something is hurting you, don’t do it. A mangled hand is going to stop you from yoyoing altogether if you don’t get this in check!
Gonna get “cold, cruel and very real” for a minute here.
I don’t care. I said get used to it. Solution: get used to it.
Bringing a yoyo back is gonna hurt. Even soft returns done all day long, it is going to collectively add up and will eventually hurt as well. You’re not breaking bones, you’re smacking skin, perhaps muscle. Yeah, you may pop a few capillaries here and there. You develop a callous there.
Guess what? You’re gonna tear up the skin where you put your yoyo string too. I have big cracks in there sometimes. Sometimes it breaks open and bleeds too. I don’t stop throwing. It stings. Even with my callous, it’s apparently not thick enough yet or too dry or who knows.
Your arm and wrist is gonna hurt too from those motions. Even worse, you do risk repetitive motion injuries.
You quitting yet?
Before I started to yoyo “for reals”, I did a show. My back had previously been injured and I was also having lower back spasms frequently. It was debilitating. Still, I unloaded 3 tons of gear from my truck(with help), stacked subs and mains, moved amps(they aren’t racked), set up a mixer(400 pounds in the case with cabling), with heavy racks of gear and ran a concert. While others were whining about a minor scrape, scratch, broken nail or “this is too heavy”, I made sure I got it done and the concert went off as intended, even though I was having a hard time just walking. Standing over the console mixing was torture, yet I still rocked it. Why? Because it’s what needed to be done. And then after the concert, tore it all down, moved it out, loaded it(load-in and strike I did have help with though, I’m not super-man!) and then was effectively laid out for 2 solid weeks of being literally unable to move. I had to walk to the doctor’s office to discover they re-scheduled me without telling me, so I had to hobble back out and go back a few days later. I got some sort of steroid injection, had to take anti-inflamatories(ibuprofen) and some sort of steroid series. It was this serious lay-out that caused me to re-think some things, and it’s part of what got me selecting yoyo as an activity.
The people, including my crew, noticed my pain and discomfort because it was impossible to hide it this time. I usually try to. My crew rallied. The others were not able to internally motivate themselves to step up.
It didn’t help that I also hurt my neck right before I started yoyo’ing. However, that was one of those “crap, I moved odd” things that came out of nowhere. That took a bit to resolve itself, but at least it wasn’t anything close to the back injury.
After I do things like CalStates and BAC, I’m sore. I’m more sore after BAC due to the drive in the truck, since it has a crappy old bench seat. 2 hours there, 2 hours back… wears you out. The pain is worth it. I won’t trade it for the world. I’ll gladly take some aches and pains to do a good event.
So, sorry if I come off heartless. I work in environments where excuses don’t exist and stuff has to get done.
Now, let’s tie this back into yoyo before Steve Brown gets his undies in a knot over the fact that I apparently missed the Revelvant Bus again and talked about my sound production company. Side note: I’ve been doing live sound since LONGER than he’s been doing yoyo. KMA.
With yoyo, it’s a SKILL. You develop skills. Physical, motor, mental. Pain is part of the journey. Spin tips with sharp tips hurt yet we still boomerang them and land that jab into our soft palm flesh. We bind yoyos back and they smack into our hands. We get sore muscles we didn’t know we had when we start throwing, and then we REPEAT this on the other hand/arm when we get into 2A and 3A. We rip up our string finger area (well, many of us do). We get hit in the face, head, arms, chest, “other areas not to be mentioned” and more. We break strings, we break stuff, we ding, nick, scrap and damage out yoyos. Yet, despite the pain, we continue.
I’m not saying pain is good. I’m not saying “live with the pain”, but I am saying “pain is part of the experience”. You WILL get used to it. You’ll also learn how and when to bind and bring it back. As for me, I’ll continue to throw hard, and if I need to bring it back and that yoyo is screaming because it’s spinning so fast, I will do so. That yoyo will come zipping back to my hand, pop me like a (you figure it out) and it will hurt, and I’m just gonna throw it back out again and again and again. If my hand is red or pink, it’s been a productive throw session. Hurts? Yes. Regrets? None.
I ain’t letting pain stop me from doing events. I ain’t letting pain stop me from yoyo’ing.
I’mma disagree in briefer terms. There’s a difference between catching, say, a nice comfy Code 2 full-on and catching something with sharp rims full-on.
I don’t think “get used to injuries” is good advice. There’s actual BRUISING going on here. I have NEVER gotten bruises from catching a throw, and I am always yoyoing when my hands aren’t busy wrangling kids or jockeying a keyboard. Bruising is your body’s way of saying, “Yeah, that caused damage”. It’s not pain, it’s damage. It’s definitely burst blood vessels (hence bruising), probably injured muscle tissue (that’s the pain part), and possibly weakened tendons (less likely… on the palm side they’re not really exposed).
Learn to play in a way that doesn’t injure you. Do NOT simply keep going, or you will have long-term damage that you might have to rehabilitate. And that ain’t no fun. If you can’t learn to live with adjusting your catches, then get a different main… you might love your Tre, but it’s not worth it if it hurts. There are plenty of great yoyos that won’t bruise you.
Throw efficiently. That way you will save more power to play longer, less strain to your response system minimizing wear, and prevent hurting your own hand. I found that the best way to throw is only throw hard when it’s absolutely necessary. I think normally I only used like 50-60% or less of my full power, more if needed. Try this, throw with enough power depending on the trick so when binding it spins slow enough but it winds cleanly for the next throw. Not too slow that it ruins the bind though.
If you can do the same trick with less power, why throwing too hard? also try playing with low rpm and bind as smooth as possible.
If its spinning too fast, just touch one of the sides of the yoyo. If you have side effects, you can even hold the yoyo by the side effects and feel the weird gyroscopic sensations as it slows down.
I’m not gonna quit i know that, i wouldn’t give it up for the world and i hope even become a well known thrower one day , i get what your saying 100%. This brought a concern to me because I’ve had the bruising before, i let it go away and this repeated for 2 more weeks of the same thing , bruise , stop , repeat, I’ve had other throws and this hasn’t happen to me with this, your right i should suck it up , i was just curious to what everyone had to contribute and I’ve heard every side of the thoughts now.
thank you for understanding, i have had a past of a higher pain tolerance that has lead to “bigger than it appears” problems , so this raised a major red flag after repeating the process of laying off it ( which i hate taking a break from yoyoing ) until it went away and continuing to play , the same thing occurred afterwards. I have a genesis and ive played with it for countless hours with no bruising this is why this question appeared, thanks again for understanding i agree with what you say
In addition dude, my gf bruises really easy and she got a bruise from a fh zero and she doesn’t throw it very hard either. So you might just be more suspectible to getting bruises. You could wear bike gloves that have d30 material in the palms (mountain bike gloves) and cut the fingers off. The d30 material stiffens under impact. It works and saves my *** (palms and knees) when I go over the bars.
yea true , its weird cuz i have never experienced the bruising with other yoyo and i have been yoyoing for a while idk i might just get a new throw with rounded corners and a less v profile
Honestly, what you’re trying to say is a few things.
Way too many words. This is a forum post, not a short story. Not that thorough posts are BAD, but you repeated yourself several times.
I’m sorry, but it’s the wrong advice. I’ve been yoyoing for a long time, long enough to learn my way through the game. “Getting used to the pain” will do no good, it will make you dislike yoyoing, may injure you and cause you to spend lots of useless doctor money. Aside from that, you will develop bad technique. Really a proper catch is simple physics. Catch a yoyo like you would catch a falling egg. If you absorb the impact, it won’t hurt.
Rockerkid13,
Here’s the basics of what you want to do. They’ve pretty much been said already but I’ll combine them into one post.
Don’t bind on an extremely fast spin. If you’re yoyoing normally this shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re doing sleepers, then just do a finger grind to slow it down first.
Absorb the impact. You say you can’t do it… You can. Trust me. If you need to figure out the motion, throw an egg and catch it. Notice how you ‘bob’ your hand? That’s the motion you need.
Hopefully this is helpful information. Let me know if there are further issues.
I just want to put it out there, I’m not a noob a yoyo I’ve been doing it for a while and i consider myself pretty good for the time i have been doing it , i don’t want you guys to get the wrong image
Everyone is a noob ;). Everyone. Me. You. Steve Brown. Zach Gormley. Etc. Until somebody finishes learning the infinite number of possibilities with a yoyo they are still a noob.
true , i was just putting it out there because some of the comments seemed like they were taking me as i didn’t know what i was saying and I’m a starter
