So I saw the Hidemasa Hook video today, and I knew about the Brent Stole trick for awhile, which then got me to think “how in the living heck would somebody think about landing that?”. Obviously the trick creators don’t have tutorials to learn from. How do they know that what they are trying to do WILL get into some kind of thing eventually? They most likely didn’t land it their first time they tried it either, lol. I’ve always thought the same thing about things like rejections at certain times, but that’s because I’m really bad at rejections ;). So how do they know that they will EVENTUALLY get into something? These tricks may seem easy now that we have instructions at our finger tips, but think that the trick creators have nothing to start out with, because their, well, trick creators. I understand that they keep trying over and over again, but how do they know that they will get into something before they start trying to get it down?
for crazy whips they probably accidentally land it and then spend a while trying to figure out how they did it
This is a quote from my boy Stephen Fuentes " just get good"
Yep
First, blindfold yourself
Second, swing yoyo around frantically
Third, IMAGINATION!
First of all with the crazy hard tricks there could be multiple ways
- They might build off a previous trick
- They try to figure out an “nonmistake” they made
- They’re really smart and they figure it out easily.
My $0.02:
I can’t speak for other people labeled “pro”, but it’s exactly like any other art. If you’re taking it upon yourself to CREATE a trick, you operate from the vocabulary you have. The tricks you know are like words your brain uses to communicate. We can dissect them and rearrange them and make new sounds. We can parse the sounds that seem like nonsense or that seem meaningful. A trick like Brent Stole or Hook would have been incomprehensible to a player in the 30’s or 50’s, but all it takes is Spencer Berry with his trapeze Lacerations and suddenly it’s not a distant leap at all. It could be discovered by a shocking accident. It could be found by holding a dead yoyo and wondering what would happen if the trapeze loop passed the yoyo on one side. Once you sense that there’s somewhere to go, a door that opens toward something significant, and all that’s left is for a guy like Alex or Senba to have the faith and experience to know that those tricks can be hit.
When you start yoyoing, you take enormous joy from hitting other peoples’ awesome tricks. It might not even occur to you where they came from. They are just yoyo tricks and you try them until you’ve got them. Some people are totally content with that and that’s great. Sometime later though, maybe you find you take even greater joy in exploring strange new trick landscapes. You start in safe places, but then you seek out places that have never been seen before; in wondering things that have never been wondered, and you delight in watching your friends do the same. Like anything great, it’s maddeningly hard, but again and again you find your faith, doubt and effort vindicated and it becomes something more than a hobby. You NEED to go back to those feelings and it becomes something like an addiction or a religion. At that point it’s not so much ‘how do they do that’ as ‘how could they yoyo WITHOUT doing it’.
Those tricks HAVE to happen because there are people out there who take the most joy in their day wondering whether a small change here or there will open up a whole new cavern of possibility.
Ed,
You truly are the Qui-Gon Jin of yo-yoing. Everything you say regarding the topic is always wildly prophetic and confucianistic: I love it! Teach me more wise one 
Speaking of impossible tricks…
Ed, a fascinating read, as always. If you started a Jonestown-esc cult, I would probably join it.
the moment you realize those were made up on tug responsive yoyos.
i really can’t explain how i do it.
Post #10: INCREDIBLE!!!