To be honest with a notable percentage of the tricks I know, particularly more advanced ones, I have come to the realization I have no idea what my string is actually doing when I’m yoyoing. For instance with the Hook, here is a step-by-step tutorial of what I observe the string doing:
Toss yoyo up, get small amount of slack to wrap around index finger
?
Hook landed
I understand in theory that little slack loop is forming a little string gap for the yoyo to land in but even when I’m performing the trick it’s hard to actually observe what is happening. Which i guess is the point of yoyoing- to look complex until you get an understanding of the physics behind it.
I figure it out eventually usually but knowing what’s going on isn’t a requirement to landing a trick I don’t think. Just do what you gotta do then figure out what’s happening later is my philosophy. I think some ppl try to figure out what’s happening too much first instead of just doing it. Maybe a hot take I don’t know.
Honestly i just move in a certain series of motions and hope for the best. The only time i really understand what’s going on is super simple stuff like eli hops or other one- or two-step tricks
It’s definitely a thing I’ve been getting better at like I understand regular hooks and tension hooks, gts, the different kinds of dgts. Just barely starting to figure out how towers work like had a brake through recently when I realized you need tension on the strings to make them pretty which is why mine always looked like collapsed and icky. Prolly just something that happens to players. Hella stuff I don’t understand still but I’ve been trying to pay more attention to it with the tricks I do know bc it’ll prolly make me better at Yoyo to know this stuff. I still stand by learn the trick first figure out what’s happening after. This was a good question to ponder…
I feel like where having the understanding would be of great benefit is when trying to imagine something new. Maybe a new trick or a new combo. I’ve been a troubleshooter/ fault locator my whole life. Understanding “why” things do what they do has always made it easier for me to figure out why it isn’t working as well as narrowing in on what the problem actually is.
Just move your hands and fingers and the Yoyo right. If it’s not working, it’s because you’re not moving the stuff right. But learning a trick doesn’t require you to know what’s happening really, just what you need to do. I don’t know take the jckpth tower trick, you don’t need to know why that sequence makes a tower, You just need to throw the loop under and catch the other string and it’s a tower. Or hmm ripcord you don’t need to know why it switches from front spin to back, you just do what you’re supposed to do and it does that. Later you can figure out the mechanics of why it works .
Yes I do understand what is happening and I always break tricks and also my own combos when i create them, same for hooks, slacks and similar harder elements is part of the hand/eye coordination practicing.
Some elements that you do from long time or simple ones are fine with eyes closed but the most hard needs to be breaken down to fully make them happening 100\100 of the times, same for tricks where you rotate your body, my eyes always go on the string that i have to hit next this help to have a “goal” in my mind and then the string after, also it keeps me concentrated on the combo without let my mind slip anywhere else or get “worried” i not gonna get it.
Try to look at what you doing, do it slow if its a hook instead of try 100 times, stop the yoyo understand where the string needs to go then your eyes on that spot also visualize the tricks before you do them even if quickly, is weird but for me all this really work and thats how i practice.
For example if i do mindless tricks and something accidentally nice happen, i break immediately that part to put it in my muscle memory and mind.
I used the same method when study classical guitar and it works also on that, my old guitar teacher taught me that and i just transported it also on the yoyo
I personally have to know what’s going on or it will never click. Really small and subtle elements/movements always slip past me and I get stuck if I don’t break down every single thing that’s happening. Some people can just watch a tutorial or something once and have it down and that’s just super unfair lol
This.
Learning the ins and outs of what makes certain motions/elements work gives you the ability to alter the motion into something new. In skateboarding many people can tre flip but few understand how to control that motion so as to better control your landing. I see a lot of kids now just huck and land which is fine but when you want to tre into a grind or manual you’ll have to re-learn the motions and ultimately waste time that could be used to learn other tricks.
I used to lay the string out on a table and move it around so I could see what needed to happen to get the mount/shape/whatever I was looking for. I find that it helps my hand movements a ton to understand which part of the string needs to move where.
I do this a lot. If I randomly end up in a mount I like, and I’m not sure what happened to get me there, I’ll kill the yoyo and lay everything out on a table to figure out how that mount is formed. Then once I see how all the strings are wrapped it’s easy to recreate that same mount. Even if i don’t use the same setup that originally got me there.
If you only know how to do a trick in one way and not how the trick actually functions, it’s also harder to come up with variations or new uses for that trick.