Yeah, it sounds like a stupid question at first, but I really need a bit of help and advice.
I’m the kind of player who can’t stand playing for more than 5 minutes at once. I need to have some sort of break in between. Or that I’m jamming with music.
But since I’m going to take 2A [and 1A too] a bit more serious, I need a practice habit.
Even if it’s just taking 1-2 hours of my day.
Anyway, how do you practice? I’m not asking how much you play in one day, I’m asking how you practice.
Do you learn a new trick every day? Or do you keep doing the same trick over and over again until it feels natural to you?
I need a few pointers on how you practice, help me out! I also want to get better because I’m almost at my 2 years and yet I still feel like I suck. I mean, there are a lot more people who are better than me who started yoyoing around the same time as me. Sooo…
I was just about to post a thread along the same lines
Typically, I throw all day, every day, 60% of it being casual tricks. When I feel I am in my “zone” I start practicing my newest tricks until they feel fluid. When I get bored of that, I start screwing around with tricks until I find something else to practice.
I’ve been doing this since I’ve started yoyoing and I have felt that plateau feeling you seem to get. That feeling only served as motivation to get better.
Some time this week, I really want to start putting together a real competition freestyle. To facilitate that, I want to change up my practice style to specifically hone my best tricks.
I have another question for anyone willing to listen… What do you do to “get in your zone”? By this, I mean that state of mind that makes for EXCELLENT practicing?
For me, long sessions always involve headphones. Makes it a little more interesting but I think it also improves my play when I try and keep up with the beat.
But anyway, where I seem to spend most of my time is after I’ve learned say…2 new mounts. For the next week or so, I’ll do almost nothing but see how many different ways I can go between those mounts in a single throw. I’ll look up any tricks based off those mounts and see if there’s a way, or I’ll just use tricks I already know, or I’ll think of something interesting I can put in along the way. Even if you didn’t learn two new mounts recently, just pick two you do know and start the process of exhausting combos that include them. See how long you can make a combo go using only those 2 mounts. Stuff like that.
The reason I think this is so much more fun than just learning a whole new trick from scratch is that the success rate is so much higher. All you’re doing is trying to combine things you already know in new and interesting ways. I’ll actually think about it when I’m not yoyoing and sometimes I can’t wait to try a new idea out before I get home. Learning only new tricks can just be really frustrating. Doing it my way also means that you’re also rarely doing the same thing for more than a few minutes. As soon as you get something that works, you change it again.
But, that’s just me. I’ve always found it much more compelling to really perfect a trick I already know than to just learn new tricks constantly. I also hope that doing it this way will mean that even if I learn a huge amount of tricks over time, I’ll already be comfortable working them into a routine or combo.
For me, it’s all depends on my mood. In a good day I could spend hours for a couple new tricks to smooth them out, adding/removing few elements, polish it, kinda thing. But I don’t strict myself to keep doing it, I did some of my old tricks in between. As for 2A, I don’t learn only one aspect at a time, like wraps + vertical punch + tangler + shoot the moon + smoothing out loops and cows variation in a session. This way I won’t get bored and it’s really effective because I could learn many things at once, instead of one by one which will probably stress you out. Notice not to go too far though, some tricks required you to be good at it’s basic (punching bag needs you to be able to do cows etc), so it’s not wise to learn punching bags along with milk the cow when you can’t do cows lol.
I usually just put music on since I throw inside my room. I just listen to the beat and just throw. Even if I end up using the same trick over and over again, I try to be on beat :]
When I’m lucky, I’ll have the songs running for 30 or so minutes and it will pass just like that.
Stookie, I’m that kind of player too… I usually mess within the White Buddha mount and sidestyle Mach 5 mounts [as my tricks are influenced by Mickey…a lot] I just like messing with a few things and that I even learned how to do a few tricks without looking them up.
But since I’m in that plateau, I want to do something with it, be it actually mastering the YYE trick list and learning the other tutorials out there.
I have almost all the videos downloaded to my computer for personal use. Videos from YYE, the other site, High Speed Yoyo, Rethinkyoyo and the such. I want to at least know how to land all those tricks for now before I get into making my own stuff. Since it’s a lot easier for me to make stuff once I know how each trick works.
I’ll try my best on that one, Rizki. But I seem not to have a problem with doing only inside loops all the time. After all, I want to get loops natural to me at least :]. I’ve improved one bit on looping with my left hand, which I’m surprised about. Yeaaah!
I find I have to warm up and kinda get stuff moving. Depending on what’s going on, I may never get out of this phase. For example, one day, the kids are constantly in and out of the back door, leaving it open. With 4 kids, it was “close door, get in position(room doesn’t allow for me to be very many places), then kid comes through door leaving it open”. This went on for about 4 hours. After an hour, I quit.
But, let’s assuming all goes well, 5-10 minutes to kinda get warmed up. Then once I’m there, time to get into it. I’ll work on what needs to be worked on for 5 minutes, then do stuff I know for a minute or two, the back to what I need to work on for another 5 minutes and repeat that pattern. Sometimes I’ll change yoyos, sometimes not.
Between phone calls, kids, dogs, it can be difficult to get the time to do anything, which is why I’m often up late at night trying to work on this stuff.
I Mostly practice combos. I break them into separate parts and practice each one until I’m smooth with them. Then I combine them into the full combo. When i want to create something new I just start from a random mount and mess around until something cool happens. Or I will learn the first step of a trick on youtube and mess with it from there.
Most of the time I don’t listen to music just because I don’t carry a music player with me, but I see where it could help make me better.
I never consider this practicing… I consider this yoyoing.
JeiCheetah
(J̵̡̥̦̳̗͎̤̯̟͓̞͔͔̻́͛͐̒͋̔̈́͂̃͝ͅͅ E I H W Δ N̸̢̢̡͙͖̝̩̟͎̹̻͔̳͕̙̗̈̆̆͋̈́͛̀̑̒̂̀̈́̇̚͘͠ͅ)
12
During serious practice sessions when Im getting contest ready and trying to find tricks that flow well and feel right, I put on my favorite playlist of songs of my selected genre of choice, and I just start. I let myself get lost in the natrul flow of the music and zone out with the yoyo as an extension of my being.
I don’t allow the yoyo to be a separate entity, but a part of me, a motion instrument that extends from my soul and feels the passion and heart of the music.
The yoyo is more than just a toy, its an extension of life, and it allows for creative expression of your inner spirit. When you tap into the natural flow and the synergy of forces combine with the music that fits who you are, there is no stopping the creation of new ideas and natural flow of energy channeling through the string.
In time, this becomes very natural, and you find that you spend hours in this state of being without even noticing, but within it, you find that you gain a greater understanding of your yoyo, and a greater understanding of your own emotions and movements, and it is here when your mind opens up and you find yourself with a new set of concepts and ideas to use and master.
Its all about flow, and discovering yourself with the paintbrush of your spirit, and the string that contains it.
To music practicing combos till it’s muscle memory. Then new tricks I usually come up with two at a time and only one stays. All practice to music which varies on my mood, except country I cannot yoyo to country!!
It’s really an honor to have you respond to my threads when I’m going through a horrible plateau. I know I won’t be able to improve unless I force myself to get back on my feet and throw…while still enjoying, of course :]
I will try my best. I’m not the most creative person in the world so coming up with new tricks and even chaining tricks together into a whole new combo is tough already. But I will try my best.
Thank you very much, J.
