I been working on finger spins/DNA with an iYoYo shooting star for the past 4 days or so. I’m finally able to land the yoyo on my finger with it spinning more often than not. The problem is a lot of the time it doesn’t lock in the finger dimple and instead lands somewhere else and goes off into the edges causing it to spin around the inside rim. I believe the issue is my finger is too stiff and tense or maybe my throw isn’t hard enough. I can’t for the life of me seem to figure out how to land on my finger less stiff. If anyone has any advice on how to fix this id greatly appreciate it. Thanks 
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try landing it keeping your fingertip towards you and your nail pointing away from you. This will help a lot to keep the finger soft…
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Thanks. I tried that some just seems kinda awkward for me. I’ll try it more and switch to that way if it’s the only way I’ll figure this thing out. I’m wondering if I need to get it more flat. I’m throwing it and catching the string as I throw currently. I noticed sometimes when I miss ill pop it up from the ground and it seems like it locks in that way more often. Been debating if I should ditch catching the string and go that route but think it might be more difficult to land consistently doing that. It’s frustrating to work so long and get so far and then get to a point where I almost have it but seem stuck. I’m determined.
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I had that same problem, and after a lot more practice I’m getting much better at hitting the dimple in the middle of the cup which solves the problem. However, I still mess up and in those cases, I can usually fix it by doing one or both of these:
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I kind of crook my finger, which causes the first knuckle after the fingernail to hit the edge of the yoyo’s cup. Since the yoyo is spinning around, having the edge of the cup hit the knuckle forces the yoyo to center itself on my finger, and the tip of my finger ends up in the dimple. After that happens, I straighten out my finger so that there’s less friction and it spins longer.
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If the above didn’t help, then I’ll lightly hop the yoyo up and land it either on the same finger or a different one. For example, if I landed it originally on my index finger, I’d hop it up a couple of inches and then land it on my middle finger. This basically gives me another opportunity to land my finger in the dimple, and since the yoyo was only a couple of inches away it’s a lot easier to land it correctly compared to the initial landing. As a bonus, if a non-yoyoer is watching, you can pass the initial landing attempt off as a success and the hop to another finger looks like you’re even more skilled than they thought
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Thanks for the help. I didn’t search this out before I made this post. Was digging around today and I guess this a common struggle to get through. I was trying to do the knuckle thing but I must be doing it wrong because it seems to just knock it off tilt for me. After I read your post while I was searching for posts I found a video with someone also mentioning that tip so it gotta be me. I did land a few in a row just now but also had a lot of fails. I’m going to stare at my finger bent and relaxed even when not yoyoing until I get it. 
Edit: That knuckle idea did actually start to help out after I did it more after my initial post. I just gotta get better with it. A few times today it did help me lock in. Thanks!
I’m glad it helped! I found the tip the same way that you did - searching through a bunch of old posts. When I first read it, I thought that it made sense and I wondered how I didn’t think of that before. But I tend to watch a tutorial and then try to do the exact same thing, so I don’t experiment enough on my own.
The first part of my post - the part where I’m much better at hitting the center - wasn’t a brag, it was meant to let you know that with more practice your accuracy will improve. Even when I was pretty good at fingerspinning with the Speedaholic XX and Shooting Star (because they both had angled cups that ended up in a fingerspin dimple), I wasn’t able to do it on most of my other yoyos. But now that I’ve been doing it for about 6 months, I can fingerspin on just about every yoyo that I have. But the fingerspin itself might be a little different depending on the yoyo’s cup. For some of them, I have to have it spinning at a 30-45º angle since there’s no dimple or the hub sticks out in the middle. I can still pull off a good DNA, but it’s not quite as satisfying as that feeling when my fingertip locks into the dimple and the yoyo can spin like that forever.
I know what you mean. That’s kinda one thing that is tough about yoyoing on your own without someone to ask. I’ve found that I’ll keep doing the same wrong thing sometimes over and over until eventually I read on here or find a different video.
I’m didn’t take it as a brag at all. It motivated me to land it more often in the dimple. I was curious how fingerspins would translate to other yoyos. I currently only got a shooting star and a passion unresponsive. I don’t even want to try the passion haha.
I have been making more progress. I’m definitely locking in more especially with your tip and landing on the dimple a little more. My new issue I have run into is now that I got my finger more relaxed I think the tip of my finger may be slowing it down some as sometimes now when I go to thread the DNA it doesn’t have enough speed to engage fully through. I also experimented with using my hand with my fingers away from me and I noticed it seemed to lock in easier which tempts me to get over the awkwardness and learn that way but it’s so uncomfortable. I feel like I just need to keep practicing and it’s going to come together now. This has been a heck of a journey!
It sounds like you’re in the exact same spot that I was in a few months ago It’s hard for me to force myself to learn new tricks, and there isn’t a local club or anything like that where I could get some in-person help for correcting all the little mistakes that I’m sure I’m making.
The Passion was one of my first good ‘modern’ yoyos when I started during the pandemic, and I spent a lot of time with that little thing. I enjoy it today, mostly for sentimental reasons, but that’s a perfect example of fingerspinning on any yoyo. Its cup is totally flat, and if I try to fingerspin with it perfectly level, it will do it but kind of bounces around from side to side and ends up losing spin really quickly. But if I keep it at a 45º angle, then my fingertip can stay in the outer edge of the cup just by the rim and the yoyo will slowly circle around my finger. It looks much better and spins a lot longer that way, and it’s enough to pull off a good DNA. But even though I can do that now, I tried and failed miserably with it when I was first learning fingerspinning. It’s not that the yoyo can’t do it, it’s that I wasn’t a good enough player to do the DNA with that particular yoyo. But after my skills increased, I can do it successfully.
My working theory so far is that if you get a really “good” yoyo, it will make it easier to learn a particular trick or bind. Then after you’ve got a lot more experience, you can do it with a lot of other yoyos that would have been impossible previously. In this case, “good” equates to any yoyo that makes the trick/bind easiest for you and it’s more a function of the yoyo’s design than cost. Originally I thought that I’d challenge myself by learning the DNA on a harder yoyo, thinking that if I could learn it that way then I’d really master it. That might be true, but my progress was so slow that I gave up. So for me, at least, I’ve found it’s better to learn on a good/easy yoyo until you’re pretty good at the trick/bind, and only then branch out to try it on harder yoyos.
Right! We used to have a club here but I don’t think it exists anymore. There is a contest coming up next week though that I think Im going to go to. I don’t know any yoyoers at all! Would be cool to meet some other people into it as much as I am.
I love the passion! I mostly just use it responsive for now but I’ll probably pop in the unresponsive soon. That thing can spin so long. I timed some throws with the responsive that lasted 50 seconds. Been working on the truck rewind with it lately. The last triple or nothing been tough but it’s a good trick for me to get my string skills down.
It’s funny you mention that. For the first couple months here I just only had a yoyofactory whip. I love that thing. To this day for some reason when I’m learning new tricks I’ll go back to that to try it and sometimes for some crazy reason I’ll have better luck with landing tricks than with my better yoyos. I think I’m going to take your advice and just stick with the shooting star for DNA. I was tempted to get a skyva since they are only 14.99 currently. I’m curious just how easy it makes finger spins.