How to practice effectively (how to tell what you're doing wrong)?

General Yo-Yo
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This is… probably going to be a bit whiney, but I really don’t know how else to phrase it.

I’m a newbie to yoyoing and picked up the hobby only this year. I’d like to get better and learn a few non-trivial tricks. I like yoyoing. Obviously, the number one advice is “stick to it, practice, you’ll get better in time”. And… sure, but it also feels somewhat frustrating and unproductive.

In particular, when I try a trick, it mostly fails and maybe succeeds about 10% of time or less. Let’s say something basic like landing the yoyo on the string. I typically miss. But the frustrating thing is - I’ve no idea what I’ve done wrong. I can try again and again… and sometimes I’ll succeed, but it will be just sheer dumb luck, not the result of focused effort.

Muscle memory builds over time by doing things correctly again and again, but if I just wing it every time, then there is nothing on which it can build. If anything, I’m more likely to pick up bad habits instead.

How do you practice the yoyo effectively?

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If you have a phone or a laptop you can start filming yourself practice. When I have a longer session I’ll film it and when I do something cool or wrong I can stop and re-visit what happened from a different angle. You can also pause and change speed which can be super helpful.

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im brand new too so i sympathize with early frustrations. it really does get better slowly but surely even when it seems like it’s not.

i second mooky’s advice about filming. also your level of analysis necessary depends on the trick. as you put it, just landing it on the string for a trapeze for example is easier to analyze when it goes wrong than something like kwyjibo. but you should practice trying to notice what is happening and then just think about what could have caused that given how the yoyo moved. easier said than done but also a skill to be practiced and honed

ask for help. cannot be understated how helpful everyone is around here. especially if you’re willing to film what you’re doing, ppl can often spot a mistake you lack the experience or perspective to catch. hop on a yybc zoom meeting and get live help!

just remember the brain learns even from failures. if it only learned from successes we’d only ever learn that which we could do the first time. sometimes things take hundreds of tries before it clicks. that’s ok. work on several tricks or elements at once so you can switch it up when you get frustrated.

also, and imo most importantly, don’t practice. play yoyo. even if it’s just a night of getting comfortable with one simple thing. it’s just a toy. it needs to be fun. if it stops being fun and starts feeling like a chore switch up what ur doing or stop for a while. heck stop for days, weeks, months if need be. they’ll always be there when ur rdy to have fun again.

gl hf and shout if i can help in any way myself

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A big part of learning how to yoyo is learning how to learn how to yoyo…

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What you going through is perfectly normal, at the beginning the body need to setup itself to yoyoing even something that seems easy as a trapeze is hard, in one year time you will not even think about a trapeze (for example).

When you practice just stop one second and think, when you miss the string for example try to slide the finger on the string and see how is happening, most of the time at the beginning is because your hands are not alligned properly caused by inexperience, slowly you will start to get in the right position automatically.

Do not despair and keep going, some stuff sometimes happen randomly, when I learnt the brent stole years ago, I was grinding all day before without success, the day after I woke up, just did a random one before go to school and I did it first try and from there I knew the brent stole.

Is all about time and keep practicing, it can be frustrating but it will pay off in the long run giving you freedom to perform everything you want.

About practice yoyo effectively, is to be without distraction (like your phone for example) and be in the moment, think about what you performing and while you do it stay focused, setup your mind on the fact that the yoyo is already on that string, it is weird but while I perform a combo I also think about “the next step”, I know where the yoyo have to land and I think about it just a fraction before perform it but it give me enough “safety” to actually do it.

In the case of basic tricks like the trapeze just think to put the yoyo on the string, move your body as fluid as you can, the missed trapeze is usually because arms and hands are misalligned and too stiff, when I teach some of my friends for fun I see where the mistake was and usually it was keeping the hands and arms soooo stiff cause insecurity of what they were doing.

Also take your time, do not watch at other progressions, everyone has it’s own path, so do not worry where you at, just take at least an hour outside the world and think about what you doing, you will see the results coming for sure :slight_smile:

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This is a great question! Lots of stellar advice here already. I definitely recommend not trying to skip to far ahead. Stick with the simple things and even though these are not tricks per se, try to get really comfortable transitioning from mount to mount to mount. Just put on some music and flow around.

Definitely don’t rush when you are learning a trick. Try to go slow and smoothly. When you do make a mistake try to pay attention to that. So you mentioned missing the string earlier. Think about how you missed. Did the yoyo miss to the front or to the back? Try to adjust when you go for it again the next time by over compensating in the direction you missed to. Lots of early yoyoing is very uncomfortable and you have to force yourself to make the correct move or motion, which can feel very unnatural. Feels like running down hill almost.

Also if there are specific things giving you problems, please don’t hesitate to make a post about it and see if other people might have some insights on what you can improve. Yoyo is cool because lots of players all learn the same tricks at first. We all struggled with magic drop at first and most of us are enthusiastic about trying to share whatever advice we can. There are a ton of subtle things that might not be mentioned in a specific tutorial, but members of the community can highlight when prompted.

Really try not to focus on how difficult it may seem at times because that really does go away. I am almost at two years now and can still remember struggling to figure out how to transition to brother mount at one point.

There is also a ton of value in focusing on some mechanical tricks to help you just get more comfortable with playing yoyo and figuring out things like how to separate the string segments on the hands so that you can comfortably land the yoyo. Lots of these kinds of mechanical skills will tranfer over from trick to trick. It’s like a snowballing effect where things become familiar and everything isn’t always completely new. The skills build upon each other. By mechanical tricks, i mean things like black hops or skin the gerbil. these kinda of tricks are less about thinking about the complexities of string formations, and more about executing the mechanics. I highly recommend black hops because it is very simple in concept. You simply hop from triple or nothing to trapeze, and then undercut your way back to triple or nothing. That trick teaches so so much about how to play yoyo just by trying and practicing the trick. It teaches you that it’s easier to land the yoyo onto the string if your finger is closer to the yoyo. Youll learn about what distance to keep the fingers from the yoyo. Also how to space out the string on the hands so that you have the space to land when your wrapped up in a denser mount. Helps teach about pulling the yoyo down onto the string vs trying to catch the yoyo with the string.

I’m not exactly sure where you’re at in your yoyo journey, and that trick might be a bit too advanced right now. You can instead try cascade, where you go from double or nothing to trapeze and back. You definitely don’t want to always push harder things and risk getting frustrated and burned out. Sometimes it is important to push to learn harder things and move out of your comfort zone, but absolutely balance that against how you’re feeling so that yeah you don’t get too frustrated and burned out.

Try to keep yoyo fun and figure out what makes you enjoy playing so that you play a lot and you will improve. If you do feel frustrated, try to walk back and learn a trick that might be easier for you. This can be a great way to pick up some new yocabulary, and help keep you optimistic about your progress and playing.

There is probably more I could write about this topic because learning tricks is something I’m passionate about, but soak this in and see how things go! Good luck and have fun!

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i love this section. it’s been an interesting journey for me already because not that long ago i feel like i made a breakthrough going from that beginning phase of flailing wildly and hoping it turned out well to closer misses and going “oooohhh i see what i did there” or “wait, in that tutorial their th pointer finger curled in and did this and mine isnt”. its like a level of comfort is reached where you stop expecting tricks to just happen and more actively try to analyze and shape your movements. it feels like so many beginner yoyo tricks are automatic in a sense with how they resolve. but more advanced tricks def require more…for lack of a better way to say it, more active participation in whats happening. yoyo is so fascinating!

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Other than amen to this, I can say that still nowadays while making combos I have to “deal” with space, this is so important, how much hands are closer or distant, one it will make the yoyo “sink” the other it will make it pop, when I create busy string combos this is so important to take care how much my string is tense and how position the hands, still this is something that comes out with times and experimenting.

Most of the time I see the trapeze wrong because the hand were too far apart and so there was no string properly left to land or too close that there was too much string to catch the trapeze properly, all distances comes learning the basics and with time, this is why so many people have issues with boingy boing and eli hops at the beginning, the eyes and the hands are not used to take the correct distances, repetition help.

As other said do not become mad and do not burn yourself, sometimes fail bring to be conscious (to your body) on what is going wrong.

As Henry said, good luck when you will learn the magic knot, that was an annoying trick lmao reject that string was so damn weird and now it is the most natural thing ever because the body learnt it and memorise it!

If you need help we are all here for that, if you follow tutorial stop them in the middle of the passage you find hard and watch the hands of the player usually this give a proper advice on how to position yourself

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Thank you everyone for your advice and encouragement! :slight_smile: I guess I’ll post a video later then with a specific “what did I do wrong here?” question. :slight_smile:

On a side note, it feels kinda weird to do it, because that’s probably a question you get 100 times a day and the answer depends on each asker – but that’s StackOverflow mentality, where duplicate/hyper-specific questions are frowned upon. It doesn’t help that this forum software was also created by one of the original StackOverflow authors, so both things are kinda linked in my mind :sweat_smile:

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CodingHorror is also a yoyoer! He posts on here from time to time and is responsible for the TiVayder.

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I know, I’ve noticed him. :slight_smile:

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You’re fine like no one here cares really it’s fine to ask questions that have been asked before. Ppl bumps bst threads every day like an extra thread about learning a trick really isn’t a big deal. :call_me_hand:

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