So I’m about 1.5 years into throwing now and I’d solidly put myself in intermediate. I have a decent repertoire of tricks but I feel like just spamming more tricks may not be the best way to advance and I’m kind of at a loss as to how to move forward. Before it was simple, learn a harder and harder trick. Now the path is less clear, I’m not sure how to refine my tricks. Is it just really laser in on them and repeat? Is a specific style a conscious thing you aimed for or did it come out with your trick selection? I’m curious as to the better players did you have this issue or did all of this solve itself as you kept going?
Only learn tricks that you like the look of. Maybe you like super dense tricks. Maybe you like flowy tricks. Maybe you like ones that have multiple elements moving in different directions.
Once you get what you like your own throwing follows that I think
I am still an intermediate thrower, hopefully better folks can chime in as well.
I think if you really want to find a style or identity within yoyoing it helps to make as many tricks on your own as tricks you learn. It’s easy to learn a bunch of tricks within a certain genre and get very good at them, but at a certain point if you’ve never put time into making tricks, it’s hard to actually translate what you’ve learned into actual new tricks that you feel are your own.
Simultaneously if you never learn other people’s tricks or watch other players it can be hard to find inspiration and direction within yoyoing.
I think a good route would be to find a player you like a lot and want to imitate, then learn as many of their tricks as possible and watch them play. Maybe even reach out to them and ask how they approach yoyoing. Then use that knowledge and what you’ve learned to try and start making more tricks than what you copy.
I’m still in this intermediate spot myself, but that’s at least the method I use. I feel like it’s served me very well. I don’t progress as quickly or have as “impressive” of yoyoing as some people. But I find my yoyoing to be very fulfilling and enjoyable, in a way that just spamming learning every random trick I saw wasn’t. Learning every random trick I saw certainly made me “better” at yoyoing a lot faster, but it didn’t really bring me closer to finding a style.
I think a big part of what makes a style is not necessarily the content of the tricks but rather how you execute them. Since you already know a decent amount of tricks, work on the dynamics when you’re doing them. So, instead of just “doing” a trick, express it.
I approach yoyo the same way I approach music. When you learn an instrument, you will learn scales, chord progressions, etc. and when you’re practicing a scale, for example, you’ll play it straight 4/4 time, beat by beat… very static. What you want to do once you have everything down is make it dynamic, play the notes in different orders, experiment with melodies and rhythms. Yo-yoing is no different.
Some examples: do an element a little quicker, then slow down the next one ,take a trick and rearrange the elements in different patterns, use more or less expressive movments. Make it your own. Eventually, you’ll start to see your own style emerge.
