I have a little brother who is now 9. He wants to start yoyoing but I’m getting rather frustrated teaching him to bind. He’s using my YYF One Star. He is only able to hit the string 1 /10 to start the bind process. He is throwing it in front style then turning his body to be able to make it look like a trapeze. The thing is… his throws aren’t hard enough and aren’t straight enough for him to bring it back to his hand.
Any tips?
If someone could upload a video of the first bind someone should learn when starting to yoyo, I would be really grateful!
Andre teaches you how to bind in the learning section of this site. I would recommend you and your little brother to watch the video multiple times until he feels comfortable knowing how its done. It just takes a little time and practice and he will get it in no time. Just keep encouraging him to do it the right way and just correct him when he doesn’t do it right.
This sounds like a joke, but try watching tutorials in Korean. It worked for me. Or any language you don’t know. I think it helps you focus on the movement more than the step by step explanation, which is more confusing to some people. Here’s a good one on binds: http://youtu.be/wQQgTGhuDi4
This website has more than enough information on how to get started. Between Andre’s videos and the forum, I don’t know what more you could ask for. Yoyoexpert is hands down the best recourse, and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I hope this helps on the bind. If he can pick-up this one there are different variations on the YouTube Channel. If he is having a difficult time with throwing you may need to shorten the string if it is too long. I would try working on just building speed on a gravity pull type throw and get an idea of how the bind works and then move on to working on the breakaway throw. The breakaway video below is using a responsive yo-yo so he will need to practice either a pinwheel or hitting a trapeze with the YYF OneStar. The pinwheel may help with developing a throw without slowing down trying to figure out how to hit the string for a trapeze.
I started throwing last September. Look, I’m 50 years old and have been drawing and painting my whole life and teach art classes but I am not coordinated at all so picking up a yo-yo was something I really wanted to do even though I am very uncoordinated. I just wanted to learn some basic throws to pass the time here and there at home or walking around. It took me like 3 weeks to nail down forward pass and around the world. By December I had totally given up on trapeze and front mounts because after 2 months of a 80% failure rate I realized it just wasn’t going to happen because the coordination is just not there. And LOOPING? Gawd, never! I still carried my YoYo Factory One around on my belt clip but never did much with it. A month ago I met a 13 year old at work who had 6 yo-yos in his pocket. He did some picture tricks and one loop. I never saw anyone do a loop in person. This got me interested in trying it out again. For 3 weeks I have been practicing looping on a YoYo Factory Loop360 and Duncan Speed Beetle and am up to 3 almost 80% perfect loops. I still try to do some front mounts and trapeze here and there but kind of lost interest in perfecting them because I am not really that interested in the advanced tricks right now and just want to be able to do looping as perfect as possible. Next will be quick string wind tricks. Hey, if you’re having trouble with certain tricks, and you hit a wall of frustration and figure you will NEVER be able to do it - push past that and you WILL see success. Basic throws and looping are all I really wanted to do when I bought a Duncan Imperial over a year ago. I never even knew of trapeze and the advanced stuff back then so I am focusing on what I originally wanted to do and once I get really good at those things I think I’ll try the more advanced stuff. Like I said, I am very uncoordinated and have butter fingers and am finding some success at looping. With practice…YOU can succeed at whatever trick you are trying to do but have a high failure rate at. Sorry this is so long. Please don’t hate…
I think starting responsive is the way to go. You learn to throw, catch and the feel of the yoyo. A ton of tricks work and you can practice your throw one handed and more casually, while just walking around.
Once you have good control of the responsive, and trapeze comes natural, the switch to unresponsive is pretty smooth in my opinion.
I definitely think beginners should start responsive, or get a velocity and go inbetween. But I know for some people, including myself, I had a great grip on responsive yoyos get but I just couldn’t smoothly transition from responsive to unresponsive. I guess the transition can be different for other people.
A big part of the transition for me was finding a super simple bind. From a forward throw, I just brought the string down the back (like elevator trick, but on the far side of the yoyo) and bound that way. Very easy and you don’t have to be good at mounts. Similar easy bind works on a breakaway throw. There is a video somewhere called something like ‘worlds easiest bind’.
Ha, ive been trying to teach my brother the same thing but he has adhd and a very short attention span so its really hard, especially when i let him use some of my budget metals and all he wants to use are my Chief and Scout. Hes been tossing around my kendama a while now though so maybe thants more his thing i dont know lol.