Guide: Making your play smoother

General Yo-Yo
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Disclaimer: I am, by no means, a super smooth player but after yoyoing for close to 3 years, I have noticed some things that make the difference between a trick that looks smooth and one that is choppy.

  1. Keep involuntary movements of your body to a minimum.  A lot of the time when practicing a new trick, people have the tendency to move their whole body back and forth with the motion of the yoyo.  Usually this means moving your upper body to the right when the yoyo is traveling to the right and moving to the left when the yoyo is traveling to the left.  Notice how most professional yoyoers keep their bodies still unless they want to emphasize a certain concept in their trick.  A great example can be seen in gentry’s 2014 worlds from 1:05 to 1:13.  Notice how it’s obvious he is purposely moving his body with the yoyo to emphasize that specific concept. 
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMd2oKx0PTo

Now for a very bad example of this… My first contest routine ever.  Watch how my body just kind of randomly moves around lol.

This doesn’t just pertain to contests, but it’s something you should watch out for when trying to make your throwing look smoother.  You’ll notice a world of difference if you keep involuntary motions to a minimum.

  1. Practice

Yeah, this one is pretty obvious, but if you just learn a trick sloppily and then move on to other stuff, then you still won’t have it clean.  I suggest practicing tricks until you have them down completely clean, which will obviously make it look much more smooth.

  1. Play responsive

While I have never personally tried this one, I see it mentioned quite often and it seems to work for a lot of people.  If you’re having trouble making your tricks look smooth, try practicing it on a responsive yoyo.  Due to responsive being more difficult for a lot of tricks, this will force you to get more consistent and to not make small errors.

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  1. I agree. Actually one of my friend jokingly told me about this when we play around pretending to be newbies. Minimizing excessive movements doesn’t mean you should just stand there barely moving at all, but moving your body to accentuate certain element can make the trick feels more expressive.

  2. I rather disagree. Actually you can, learn new tricks after tricks and leaving it sloppy, because yoyo skill is somewhat “universal”. You can see it’s easy for an experienced player to learn new tricks, why? because when learning a new trick, they don’t start from zero. They already have the basic skill, so even though the trick is different, they can transfer that skill into the new trick.
    I don’t think learning many tricks at once is worse than learning only one trick and perfect it before moving on. I rather suggest anyone to learn as many tricks as possible instead, to grab as many basics as possible.

  3. I agree. Learning on responsive teaches you how to maintain spin time because they always sleeps less longer, also forces you to avoid unnecessary slacks.

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1.  I totally understand your point.  And for the most part I agree.  But as I say with my music students “When I say ‘Always’, I mean ‘Usually’.  And when I say ‘Never’, I mean ‘Sometimes’.”

I totally “get” your point about unnecessary movements when you’re trying to catch a trick or throw the yoyo in a certain direction.  But on the other hand I absolutely LOVE Ann Connolly’s style.  To me, she’s dancing with the yoyo.  It doesn’t seem like a planned out routine, she just moves with the yoyo as if she’s part of the trick (which, of course, she is).