“Japanese bi-metals are narrow.” This seems to be a consistent statement, but is there more to it then “more rim weight”? The trend of wider yoyos seems to be a consistent force on design, but could the outliers (the Japanese manufacturers) have a more interesting reason for not hopping onboard the trend?
Much like the irony of the perception of bi-metal superiority given how very few winning players in the WYYC 1a division (over the past 4-5 years) have seen the need to use bi-metals, could the increasing popularity of wide yoyos as a “learning aid” simply be leading down to a pathway of worsened technique for those just starting out with unresponsive?
Bi-metals may not give the best competitors an advantage worth investing in, but I like them. I’m glad they exist. But if they disappeared from existence tomorrow, I would still have plenty of monometals I’d be perfectly content to play instead.
Wide yoyos, on the other hand, I have no particular use for. They are ungainly in my hand, which is small-ish, and they force me to create more string separation than my short-ish fingers can comfortably manage. So while ever-wider yoyos may be popular with a lot of players, I don’t think they’ll ever be popular with me.
It’s no fun to compare yourself to worlds winners, man. Those guys are so good and can land their tricks on anything. @SirDarverok is right, it’s all about preference. I can also land all my tricks on a slim yoyo (I use the pip a lot) but I like playing with wide yoyos too. Use what you like, there are no wrong answers. The best yoyos are the ones that get you most excited to yoyo.
The second analogy is not accurate at all. It is absolutely true that very few 1A world champions have used bimetal yoyos in the past, but in the last two years winners have been using wide yoyos to perform at worlds. We’ve gone from Shion using a very standard 43mm yoyo (c3 Radius) to win two times in a row, to Evan winning with a 47 mm yoyo (Edge Beyond), to finally Gentry winning with a 48mm yoyo (Shutter Wide Angle).
So i guess looking at it from a competitive standpoint, wide is indeed good, since it has been proven for two consecutive years that that’s the direction yoyo design is moving from the input of high-level competitors.
To emphasize this point further, if you look at this years most popular competition yoyos, all of them have the shared characteristic of being wide. Let’s take a look:
Player
Yoyo used
Width (mm)
Keiran Cooper
Cadence/Cadence ES
46.57
Nate Dailey
ND/BiND
45.51
Colin Beckford
Recognition
45.79
Of course this is just a trend, and with any trend, there’s bound to be anomalies, like Yuki Nishisako’s Flashback, which is a surprisingly narrow 42 mm wide, or Ryota Ogi’s Overdrive Draupnir, landing at a very standard 44mm wide.
the fact that there’s players that win with wide yoyos, and players that win with narrower yoyos tells me that it might be pretty much about preference (understanding “preference” as “the yoyo you feel the most comfortable with”).
Even the narrower yo-yos for competition are almost entirely catch zone.
And I think people miss the point when they say they have no trouble landing all their tricks on narrower stuff, as if wider yo-yos are crutches for less skilled players when it’s really the opposite. All the top competitors obviously can hit their tricks consistently too. But there’s a difference between hitting your tricks consistently and hitting your tricks every single time, especially in a competitive context. Having that larger catch zone means the tricks that you do occasionally miss are less likely to be missed.
Not only that, but if you’re developing harder to land tricks and trying to establish consistency with them, the larger catch zone is beneficial there as well.
This is definitely something to consider. This is one of those things that is virtually impossible to pull metrics on.
To answer the question of the title, I personally do not like the trend of wide yo-yos. But I do not have a good reason to claim whether it is a good thing or a bad thing.
The need for a wide catch zone is completely overrated.
When I originally sort of landed in yoyo world; guys were using; Renegades; Duncan Wheels and Raiders.
I watched guys doing 1A freestyles with Raiders for miles…
Committed yoyo players are basically machines. They learn, make adjustments and lock in on the yoyo gap.
The center of the gap is always exactly in the middle of the yoyo. It doesn’t hide from you or change positions. It stays right there in the same place.
Wider yoyos; to me; are as fun as any other yoyo. But thinking you need a wider yoyo to advance your skills; is pure toilet water.
Once you have practiced enough to an excellent level of string/gap alignment; only sloppy play will make you miss a gap; any gap.
An old Superyo Renegade actually has a pretty narrow gap. As does the Freehand yoyo. But if you ever watch old Spin Doctor videos; you will see that: Paul Escolar; Gabe Lozano, the Longoria brothers, JD, Nathan Chrissy, and Big Wave Dave; hit Everything known as a trick over 20 years ago.
As already mentioned above; wide angles ‘do’ work well for horizontal tricks. But that does not dictate having to ‘have’ a wide angle. Because there are literally hundreds of tricks to learn before you dive into horizontal. I would guess that at least 85 percent of people that ever even pick up a yoyo on the entire planet Earth; never even try horizontal tricks.
Many wider than average width yoyos are specific strong points. And most come with some kinda performance trade off.
Practice will hone your string/gap alignment.
There seems to be a preoccupation with the, ‘I cant hit my tricks on narrower yoyo’.
Can’t just means you are not trying enough. Not practicing enough. Or not confident with narrow yoyos because of a mental block.
Wide does help in 5a, though not something I look for. Increases stability but only until you lose speed, then it has increased chances of just toppling. Kind of a 50/50 crutch.
I remember Jake Elliot won using an atlas which is super wide way back in 2015 but he got second the next year using the Canon which is standard width for today so there’s that. That being said I’m not a 5a player so I defer to you on the actual technical aspect.
Then a wide yoyo is no more a needless feature but the feature that would define if land a trick or not, and sometimes results in competitions boil down to if you landed a trick or not (E.G. see This years Worlds 1A Finals).
Again. This is absolutely true for 95% of the existing trick library in the world, but you’re doing tricks like the ones showcased above, then the quoted statements don’t always apply 100%. Keiran is a monstrously skilled player, and can perform exceptionally even on narrow yoyos. Here’s a video of him doing an equally impressive combo on a DK, which is a yoyo with a narrow catchzone:
The fact that he can do it proves that narrow yoyos are not a hinder to anyones skill, but the fact that he also decides to use a wider yoyo for competitions proves the point that wide yoyos are not unnecesary, but something that help players get a bit of a consistency boost for their performances.
I’m of the thinking that wider yoyos give more of the competition advantage everyone is looking for: spin time and stability, not necessarily to increase the size of the catch zone.
The examples with Keiran are funny because the Cadence and DK are nearly the same width but yeah, to be clear, the convo changed from the OP about width in general, and now it’s about catch zone width.
Like yoyodoc, I think catch zone width is overrated. * shrug emoji *
But on the other hand, really wide yoyos seem cool to me, for different feels. Always wanted to try a Superwide, clashcube, or steamroller…
As many others have said, it is all about personal preference. I don’t have any monstrously wide yoyos (my widest is the Too HOT which comes in at about 44mm). It is a fun yoyo, I enjoy it, along with all the other yoyos in my collection. However, I’m also the kind of knucklehead that will try to land 1A tricks on slimline yoyos, fixed axle yoyos, whatever.
That said, I am not a competitor. I may enter the Sport division at local contests, but, I’m just doing it for the applause (seriously, in New England, everyone is cheered, which is awesome). However, if I were doing the types of tricks that the guys who win contests do, I would want to do everything I legally could to maximize my chances of winning, so, if that means a wide yoyo…so be it. Luckily, since all my yoyos seem to maximize my chances of fun, I’m Ok with any width.
I thought it was pretty clear in the OP that he was referring to the trend of wide yo-yos where the width is all usable catch zone, like the Cadence, Edge, BiND, Wangle, etc.
