So I haven’t been able to get anywhere with yo-yoing and I’ve been taking longer and longer breaks…
any advice it’s been like 4 days since I’ve gotten anywhere haha
I’ve been trying to get kwyjibo and cold fusion down but no success
When you’re starting out, try and pick a single tick and work on it over the course of a week until you get it down pretty well. No need to rush the progress. 4 days without noticeable progress isn’t too bad in the grand scheme of things. Once you start making up your own trick the “plateau” time can go one for quite a bit longer. Take your time. Enjoy yourself.
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Dude, don’t freak out! You sound like you’re pushing yourself a little too hard. If new tricks aren’t working out, that’s ok.
With Kwijibo for example, just understand the central elements of the trick. Take time to perfect those elements and understand the movements behind.
The main concept in Kwijibo is popping the yoyo STRAIGHT up. You can practise that movement by doing Eli Hops, instant Double or Nothing, Hop to Double or Nothing and cross arm Trapeze. Once you can control your yoyo well enough to consistently pop it STRAIGHT up whether or not your arms are crossed, Kwijibo will come naturally.
On the first pop of Kwyjibo, you’re not trying to “land on the string”, you’re cutting your forefinger right under the yoyo. This will force it down on the string. 
Similar on the second one: you are not uncrossing into a formation and then trying to “aim and land” the yoyo onto a string segment. As you’re uncrossing your arms, the uncrossing and pulling apart of your hands will create tension on the string that will pull the yoyo directly toward the correct string for the landing.
Once you understand these two things, it’s still a matter of practicing them. And it can sure take more than 4 days!!
I’ve had “plateaus” of several months at a time, not just days. WHen that happens, I just get a lot of fun out of improving my execution of the tricks I know. Yoyo isn’t a race to the top!
It sounds like for you, the central idea of the trick revolves around the crossing and uncrossing movement. For me, I put the focus on making the yoyo go up straight. Would you say we’ve both got the same concept in our heads but are expressing it differently? You’ve got more yoyoing experience than me and I’d love to learn more about how you analyse a trick, so I can integrate it into my own understanding.
We probably approach it the same. I definitely also aim to pop straight in the air, but you already had that base covered. 
Hard to say if I have more trick experience… I’ve only been at it for 2 years! For me, there are a few things I think of when approaching a new trick. The first step is generally just memorizing the moves, period. Whether I do them right or not, I need to know what they are. If I hit a part in the trick where I’m stuck, THEN I can start making the first part of the trick fluid so that I can get to the stuck part and practice it.
Once all the steps are memorized and choppy, it’s important for me to consider a few important factors:
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What does momentum want me to do? When you see trick breakdowns, the teacher has to interrupt momentum. Then when you learn, you learn with interrupted momentum. I place a strong emphasis on understanding where the yoyo wants to go and in what way the hands feel natural trying to get it there.
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The most “automatic” possible path for the yoyo to get to the string it needs to be on. Kwyjibo is the perfect example-- the undercut makes landing the first pop “automatic” whereas trying to aim for a landing does not. Spreading the hands on the second pop makes the landing “automatic” whereas aiming for a landing will always be inconsistent. Even more limited in scope is the Eli Hop-- once you get good at it, there is tension on the string the whole time and there’s never a sense of blindly “catching” the yoyo. You still have to aim…ish… a Weeee bit… but for the most part, spreading the hands forces the yoyo back to trapeze.
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Assuming I’m learning from a video (which I almost always am), I try to determine which parts of a player’s personal style are integral to the trick and which are not. Then I pick and choose if their style elements help me out or feel intuitive to me.
An example trick I learned recently was Branding. The tutorial by Zdeněk Hýbl and the one on another popular tutorial-filled site were my main sources, with a fairly low-quality contribution by someone on YouTube. But they all did the trick so differently… I used initial elements by one, transitions by the next, and then back to the other for the landing until I got it “landed”. Then I looked at the trick and recognized "OK, in the tutorial, Zdeněk moves his forefinger under the string AFTER this move. You don’t have to do that, you can do it DURING the movement. Also, he holds a string segment in his full hand to keep it out of the way and give a huge open loop for the whip. I realized that I don’t like doing that either, even though it makes it a touch easier.
For the whip part, the most “automatic” way to do it is to have your forefinger pointed DOWN… instead of lacerating the loop, you’re just whipping the loop up at your finger. Easy.
In the end, I don’t do it exactly like any of the players in the videos, which is sort of cool.
Any of that make sense?
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Wow, thanks for that incredibly detailed answer! 2 years is still quite a bit of time compared to my 1 month, even if you don’t think it’s that long… which means lots of insight I can benefit from
Yup, you made sense. The momentum tip was really helpful, and I’m definitely going to pay more attention to noticing which actions are merely part of the player’s style too. That’s one thing I hadn’t considered as much when I watched tutorials.
Expanding on the keeping the yoyo straight concept…
For kwyjibo, I noticed that my crossing (throw) hand pointer finger, which intercepts the string during the arm cross, was pointed at a 45 degree angle. I squared up my fingers with the string and was much more successful.
Fingers square with the string keeps the yoyo straight.
Watch dragon ball Z, be inspired to go to the next level
For Kwyjibo I find that forcing my fingers against the string will just immediately bring the yoyo down to one , the other, or both strings so it’s just a practice of getting it on the right string for me. Also I try to slightly pop it to the right so that it meets my crossing finger as quickly as possible.
For both tricks it’s just landing that last trapeze and I’m not really pushing myself too hard I just like setting some goals so to speak.
As far as experience goes, Orca you and I have just about the same amount which is weird that you have some really great insight on some tricks.
How’re you doing and what’re you working on right now?
if it helps i just didn’t learn the tricks i didn’t care about and just kinda hopped from one trick to another then i just started making my own tricks out of the ones i learned and it kinda all just made my style.
^^ A great thing to do; I’ve never stuck to a trick that I simply didn’t like. But some of them are difficult yet I still like them. Like Spirit Bomb or once upon a time Kwyjibo. “I really want to learn this trick, even if I’m sucking at it” is a great way to increase skill when you rise to the challenge!
Honestly the feeling of landing a kwyjibo is one of the best I’ve ever felt since landing a trapeze LOL
I’ve been getting better at them today. I might work on Magic Drop and Spirit bomb the next week or two and then I’ll see where I’ll go from there. All the while I run around the tricks I do know and make them perfect :D. Thanks for the encouragement eryone’ <3
First with your Kwijibo thing: I tend to exaggerate and pop it straight up as high as I reasonably can so I have time to work on how my hands interact with the string arrangement below. Once I get better, then I’ll move on to only popping it as high as it needs to go. That’s what works for me in terms of practise strategy.
I’m doing an essay if that’s what you wanna know hahaha. Jk. With yoyoing, not too much. I can’t work on tricks for longer periods of time since I’ve got my essay to do, but when I take a throwing break once in a while, I randomly run through all the tricks that I’ve got the hang of, to improve on them. If you’re interested to know for comparative purposes, those tricks are (in no particular order):
Boingy Boing, Split the Atom, Eli Hops, Plastic Whip, Wrist Whip (only 30% hit), Hop to Double or Nothing (10%), Instant Double or Nothing (10%), Wormhole, Trapeze, Trapeze Bro, Green Triangle, Chopsticks (40%), Pop’n’Fresh
In addition, I’ve been experimenting with the movements for Seasick and second half of Black Hops where you go from Trapeze to Triple or Nothing. Second half only because I can’t even do Double or Nothing, much less Triple or Nothing hahahha. No progress with 1.5 mount even, which I have yet to work on properly.
I think you can see a pattern with my current tricks that I’m practising: they’re all hoppy, bouncy tricks or they’re whipping tricks.
Final note: goals are great, but be careful that you don’t get burnt out if you don’t progress as fast as you like! I say this because I’ve found that I function better with a more random learning process than with a well defined goal. Whatever rocks your boat though! I just don’t want my yoyoing buddy to start feeling discouraged if goals aren’t reached. 
Cold Fusion: The first parts are straight forward. Double or Nothing -> two passing motions becomes a 1.5 mount -> flip over and back but with an extra mini flip. The hard part is making the final trapeze. This will become easier once to you’re used to doing eli hops. If you insist on mastering this before eli hops, then just practice it. The key for me was to keep the yoyo and the strings on more or less the same plane.
Kwijibo: The key here is to try and catch the yoyo on the crossing parts. First, you can try eli hops again. If you insist on not doing so, then keep practicing with the crossing and catching. What worked for me was: 1) catch the yoyo myself while doing the first turn over during the first toss and 2) try to keep the crossing arm the only moving one during the second toss. After that, it’s all natural for me. On the flip side, I still couldn’t do variations of kwijibo.
Don’t worry about it I usually get plateaus for weeks at a time. Usually I just try combining 2 different elements to make combos or start looking at Yoyo videos.