Trying to get started in 5a and curious what are the things I need to know? Very proficient in 1a but I know this is a whole different beast!!!
Are there any tricks I should start with?
Do I just use any counterweight or should there be a specific ratio to yo-yo weight?
Is there anything you wish you had known when you started?
In my opinion not really. Some people will tell you red windmill is one of the best tricks to really understand the feel of moving both the yoyo and the counterweight by feel of maintaining tension on the string. Here’s a long tutorial list.
Doesn’t matter. Anything in the 8-13g range is fine. Ideal ratio used to be 1/7th the weight, now it’s 1/6th, these ratios really don’t mean anything. Counterweight weight changes how they play, and with different string lengths, trick pacing, and level of dependency of the yoyo vs counterweight for tricks you do, you’ll find yourself liking different things.
Learn as much as possible and don’t wall yourself by only grinding beestings/efans/other basic elements. This is like the primary place people stop progressing with 5A, because they never learn anything advanced and stay just grinding the basics forever. Keep learning more and more tricks while constantly keeping your fundamentals in practice, but not devoting all of your time to them. Push yourself and you’ll improve, if you stay stuck on the basics people tend to stagnate forever.
As always, thanks @mable !!!
Heck yeah, good luck with learning. I love to see more people on the 5A journey. People definitely understate how hard it is to progress past the basic 5A level, but if you just stick with it you’ll get there. 5A is the most fun style 
Oh yeah i got stuck in a bunch of stuff right at the beginning. Mainly because i just…can not do that Efan combo.
Then i learned a more advanced trick as a challenge and now I’m hooked. Once your get past the first few tricks it becomes a lot more fun.
I’m still very much a beginner but have been working on it more and more lately. I learned tricks like 5A Pinwheels, 360 and 720, bee stings, stalls, cw redirects… the main thing is to get comfortable letting go of the counterweight, switching hands, using both hands, etc.
String should be on the shorter side. I use a about the same length I would use for responsive play (few inches above belly button).
Weight of the cw doesn’t seem to matter too much but if you use heavier yoyos you might want something heavier or vice versa if you play with lighter feeling yoyos.
As always, whatever @mable said is probably some good advice.
Counterweights hurt.
I wish i had learned from Miggy’s tuts. Hes really conscious of counterweight movements in a way that, for me to commit to muscle memory, i have to “unlearn” things ive programmed i to my brain.
Honestly I’m just looking to hit myself more when learning tricks. I figure this doubles that opportunity
That’s a good call out - I play with rather long string at this point. Never would have caught that
Thanks!
It definitely helps with control and you can get more momentum with less force.
If you’re a tall person, I guess this might be worth specifying but 100cm is insanely long for 5A, which would probably be short for you for 1A.
5A string length tends to hover in the low 90cm range. I use 95cm and feel like my string is on the long end still. Go longer if you want to slow down tricks at the expense of harder control of both plane and momentum keeping with the cw. Go shorter if you want cw plane keeping to be easier and for it to be easier to get enough momentum for the cw to complete certain tricks.
Taking 5A string length relative to your height is a bit of a trap I think. Obviously you can do whatever, but there’s a reason why the vast vast majority of good 5A players are in the high 80/low 90cm range. I’ve seen some tall people complaining about this since they wish they were shorter/smaller so it’d be easier for 5A zoning with shorter string.
Just hooked a counterweight on and tried a trick. This was my first thought
5a inspo
That was awesome. For now I’m icing my knuckles
Fun fact: if you get in a trapeze and feed the counterweight through the loop of the trapeze you end up in a GT. When i figured that out i felt probably how the caveman that discovered fire felt
Some ppl don’t like them but my enjoyment of 5a went up dramatically when I switched from a hard dice CW to soft rubber ball CW. The harder CWs don’t bother me now really but trying to learn the basics was super rough at first, especially bc it was cold outside.
Yea my hands are not doing well. I bought a softer counterweight just waiting for it to arrive. But having a blast
Cold + 5a = pain
