final contest advice?

General Yo-Yo
1

Just wondering if anyone has any advice for competing in your second contest. Thanks🙂

2

Are you referring to making him a freestyle? Or are you worried about being nervous? Basically can you give s some specifics on exactly what you are asking.

3

Some tips I have in my head:

  1. Practice in front of other people, or in public where strangers can see.
  2. Don’t worry about speed. Adrenaline rush on stage will take care of that. In fact, some of my friends actually play too fast on stage.
  3. Do not change your response in the same day as the competition. If you must change the response, do it a few days earlier to get used to the amount of responsiveness.
  4. Move around the stage.
  5. Wash your hands 15 minutes before going on stage.
  6. Carry some spare bearings.
  7. Don’t test out yoyos on stage even though other people seem to do it. It shows that you’re not ready.
  8. Avoid tricks that you cannot do clean most of the time, or the ones that ends up in a terrible knot, unless you are sure you can do it on stage.
  9. Read every single word on the rules.

The following depends on your level, but if you’re high level enough that you start worrying about getting the maximum score possible instead of simply ‘having fun’.

  1. Once the routine is done, do it with the music. Check if there is any spot where you just stop not doing anything, fill up a trick or two in there. Keep doing it until your routine is completely full. Use the whole 3 minute time limit.
  2. Consider arranging your tricks in a way that the string stays relatively neutral. Some tricks tend to tighten the string, some loosen. Arrange them in a way that you don’t need to check the tension or at least minimize it.
  3. Look up for the judge’s history, some judges tend to click a lot, some others click less. The thing is, every judges click positive points differently, though this is not a problem because the score will be normalized, however, most have similar negative clicks. A miss is a miss, but what is ‘a trick’ or ‘an element’ will be different for each judges. In case it’s not obvious yet, the judges who click a lot tend to have less negative points after normalization (say, he click 100 positive and 10 negative), and the judges who tend to click less tend to have more impact on negative points (say, for the same combo as before he click 50 positive and 8 negative), which in the end the percentage of the positive vs negative will be different. Take advantage of this.
  4. Choose your music wisely, a suitable music for your freestyle will make everything better.
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