So I have been throwing for almost two years now and I have been learning tutorials from youtube (matio, cabin tutorials, yoyojoe, mk1 tutorials, etc). It is my goal to compete someday but when I watch competitions, I feel like the competitors are on like a whole other level. So, how do people get to this level? Do you have any tips for progression? Any advice would be very much appreciated. And sorry for all the reading lol
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music. put in some headphones with good music and just practice flow and working your way through tricks and letting yourself be influenced by the natural progression from trick to trick. do this for a few hours a day and you’ll be just as good as anyone else.
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its one thing to know every trick but another to be able to craft things together with rhythm, some people can know like 4 basic tricks and make them look so smooth and clean just by having a good flow
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Thank you!! Those are both very good points that I can definitely work on.
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I think it’s awesome that you’re wanting to compete. Choreographing tricks to music and putting on a good performance is when I enjoy yo-yoing the most.
I am not a top level competitor, several years ago I made the conscious choice to persue the violin seriously instead of spending 100% of my available time on yoyo. But, I have won my local state competition, and have placed into finals in California state twice. I can give you some advice on how to get at least that far.
1.) Yoyo as much as possible. Your yoyo is your constant companion. Just run through the tricks you have again and again, whenever you have the chance. This will build consistency. Make it so your tricks are not just consistent, but EASY for you.
2.) Stay inspired. There will be many times that you question whether all the practice you are putting in is worth it. When this happens, re watch you favorite contest videos, and think that you can do tricks on stage like that, if you want it bad enough.
3.) Learn the scoring system. Gentry Stein has some good videos on this with Yotricks. Make sure the tricks that you are doing and making will allow you to progress into further rounds of competition.
4.) Practice with music. Once you have enough good tricks to make a routine, practice them with music. It is a different skill to stay with the music and be consistent, a skill that you need.
5.) Stick with it. This is going to take years and many many hours of work. Like I mentioned, you really have to want it. But keep this is mind: your yoyo idols were once at the exact same skill level as you, hoping to one day compete at the top levels. They just worked really hard over a period of years. Just like you can.,
It is entirely possible for you to make it to US national finals three or four years from now. Just practice every day, make tricks that score, and always have the goal in the back of your mind.
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Whoa. Thank you sm for taking the time to make this reply. This is a HUGE help as it is both imformative and inspirational!!
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You’ll get there!!
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I am in a very similar position myself. The best way to learn is practice, practice, and more practice. I mean practice until you stop having fun, then stop, take a break, do something else, and practice when you are ready. If you push yourself too hard, you will push yourself away from yoyoing. If you can, dedicate time to yoyoing, and yoyoing only. This could be watching yoyo videos, practicing, doing maintenance, or other yoyo related tasks. I personally love watching professionals then watching their performance at .25 speed (and sometimes even slower). I’ll watch their hands, their precise movements, the efficiency, and other ways they throw.
Do not compare yourself to the pros. These people train non-stop, you will get there, but making yourself angry or sad by not being able to land a trick is bad. Think back to the hardest trick you know (or something you had trouble landing consistently). For me, this was brent stole. I stood in place and threw brent stoles for almost 3 hours, and now I have it consistent.
Another thing, when you are learning a trick, get to a goal before you call yourself done. I set a goal to land the whole trick perfectly 5 to 10 times in a row before I say I “know” the trick. This will help with consistency so much (this was how I learned superflow a while ago, and I almost pulled my hair out of my head, so I know it will suck).
Make the yoyo and you inseparable friends. I carry some sort of yoyo everywhere. This does not mean your nicest, competition level yoyo (believe me, I made that mistake walking around high school), rather it just needs to be a yoyo. Currently, I walk around with a velocity, because I know if I can do a trick on that yoyo, I can do it on any yoyo (plus I can dial it in and hand it to a friend who has never thrown before and not worry about the infamous “ding” sound). This brings me to my next point
Practice other styles than you intend to compete in. I am totally serious, all styles help build skills to each other. 1a is the building blocks of all other styles (excluding 2a). 2a will help you with regens. 3a will help you with the complex mounts. 4a will help you with imagination (and eli hops). 5a will help you with the bangers and scary tricks.
I would also follow @nightshadow’s advice, cause he’s got it down there.
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Thank you! Very true, I think it would help me out greatly to practice more. I gotta say that I am honestly blown away with the quality of responses I have gotten so far 
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For me, I began learning tricks in its entirety…was a long grind but learned a lot of the needed fundamentals. I’m currently at the point in the hobby that I’ll see a trick but only be interested in just a certain part of it and will try and learn up to that spot…from there I like to branch off and see if I can do anything else with it as I’m one of those who likes to figure things out.
Tricks that seemed really long/hard would be broken down to steps and would just focus on a section at a time. Once I was comfortable with that, I’d move to the next step. Ladder Escape was a good one for that as there is kind of a lot going on with it.
I don’t compete, nor do I plan on doing such so I’m pretty content on my current repertoire of tricks that I’ve learned over the years.
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Practice.
A lot.
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