Grinding harder tricks and really trying to push to learn difficult things is when i start to feel burned out and frustrated for sure. It really has helped me personally to step away from tricks where i have to push myself to learn and just step way back for a sec with the difficulty from time to time. It can be really fun and rejuvenating to work on cleaning up simpler tricks or just not working on anything in particular, just moving around from mount to mount and seeing what happens.
I definitely understand wanting to learn harder stuff and trying to grind for it. That can be an amazing way to improve, but imo it can be a double edged sword bc it can also steal the passion and leave yoyo feeling icky. IMO being eager and excited to play yoyo is going to be the best thing for improving. I like to double back to tricks like skin the gerbil or the matrix and just see how they feel. Ask myself if I can make them prettier than i use to be able to.
Also yo—you should be proud of where you’re at also! It is good you have a hobby that is like mentally stimulating and fun. Try not to focus on where you wanna be but how far you’ve come. Feel free to vent whenever you want like yoyo can def be frustrating. Sorry if Im playing coach too much like being preachy or anything, i just dont like seeing signs of burn out and wanted to share my thoughts and experience. Have fun yo
Unless you’re entering a competition, yoyo is not a competition. There’s no need to race to the end, you’ve got the rest of your life to still just keep chipping away at yoyo, just as much gives you personal enjoyment and satisfaction.
Mostly echoing what’s been said in this thread already, but especially on the internet in modern society, it’s very difficult to internalize this. If anything maybe consider taking a step back from yoyo social media and viewing content that puts you in a self-judgmental mindset to begin with.
Yes. The destination is great and all but the journey is awesome too. Take some time to stop and enjoy the scenery for a while. As Henry said… just mess around and try to find new ways to connect and manipulate what you already know.
Lots of really good thoughts in response to your post. I would just add, or agree, that it’s not a competition, unless it is, of course. I only practice tricks that seem fun to learn or that click with my abilities, so yeah, I will work on tricks for ridiculously long periods if I think it’s a cool trick. Beef hook, spent about 5 minutes on it and passed
For me yo-yoing is a build up and break down skill. I believe the more you try different things big or small, it improves on its self no matter if you fail or succeeded at a single trick.
When I feel stuck I try a completely different trick with different elements to the previous trick. Then after a while a day or 2, I go back to the previous trick and usually I can make progress.
Well said by many people here, it’s all about having fun, I do know what you feel by not being able to make progress, ATM I’m kinda just learn stuff I’ve seen in videos with no tutorials, and take it a bit slower, this is hard for me because sometimes I feel I NEEDED a tutorial but trying this out has opened up some doors in the learning sense. But that’s just me and my two cents as they say, good luck to you!
I am very much a beginner myself and I’m okay with that. In fairness, I didn’t get (back) into throwing because I wanted to be a world champion or to throw sick tricks 25/8/366, I just wanted something to do with my hands (and also to finally be able to do split the atom after all these years).
I have accomplished Split the Atom (modern throws made the trick trivial, so now I’m going to try to find a period appropriate throw).
Now, I just do simple tricks and make games and competitions with myself with a responsive while I walk the dogs or have some downtime and enough space. Cold fusion? Bah. Around the World 20 times?! We’ll see. Lately I’ve really only touched an unresponsive for protos.
Do not measure yourself against others. You don’t know what kind of time they’ve dedicated to making their 20-point trick looks flawless and simple. Just have fun
Edit: I just want to clarify, specifically since I was just talking about simple tricks in the same sentence, when I say walk the dogs, I mean, my actual dogs, not the trick, Walk the Dog. I may have a special name for banging up my throws, but I would never senselessly destroy a throw that is not designated to be destroyed, which none of my Workhorses or RBCs are (which are the throws I EDC)
Anything skills based can create these kind of feelings as progression is never linear and everyone’s experience is personal. I know I’ve been there before.
Don’t be afraid to just noodle around and play about with ideas with no real goal. I have found that when doing this you pick up new skills that comes organically with your own style.
10+ years of throwing and I’ve definitely plateau’d. Lately I’ve been laser focused on fixie/0a, something different and chill.
I reached a point with 1a that learning tricks in its entirety was just hitting a check mark and went to just learning portions, which gave me things to noodle around with.
