a while ago, roughly 1.5 months, there was an idea that evolved from no shave november to no bearing november, for those of us who yoyo… any way, the bigger picture involved focusing given efforts for a month, and seeing how January is likely less minutes away than the miles on your car, then its time for a heads up
… so here is my challange to you… make an honest attempt to get one or more, friends, family, neighbor kids, school mates, co workers, or who ever is interested started and at least trying yoyoing… after all, its a hobby that many of us reap much benefit from, so why not share it? that is all… and dont forget to make it enjoyable, and dont start someone off over their head… thats a fast way to make them lose interest
so thats my challange, and great idea studio, i think this set up will turn out very valuable to the yoyo communtiy. ;D
your right about starting someone in over their head. I’ve realized that you can’t just start someone with an unresponsive yoyo and try to teach them to bind. they get frustrated that they can’t do it really fast. For example, i started trying to teach my girlfriend this week, she’s almost got the bind down but she is getting frustrated. So i slapped a half spec in my DM2 and started teaching her how to just get basic fundamentals. She progressed faster and actually had more fun. Nobody can pick a yoyo up and just be able to bind right away. Start people with the basics and then move on from there.
I’ve been teaching my kid for a few months now. They are about ready to Rock The Baby(They like to fight stuff). One of my kids has ALMOST got it down, so what does she do? Reaches for her Shinwoo LOOP and decides to change gears and do Forward Pass.
(My family has a strange knack for ensuring incompletion of tasks. It’s frustrating)
I’m afraid I can’t take on anyone this January, but who knows, that may change rapidly
I’m teaching my girlfriend how to yo-yo at the moment, but I think that she’s only doing it because I asked her to, but I tried my best
Anyways, a few friends, their parents and I are organizing a small local yo-yo contest. This will surely draw attention to kids and they will start to learn
I’m a middle school teacher and have been hosting an unofficial yoyo club in my classroom for the last couple of months. Next semester it becomes an official club of the school (and I get paid too). ;D
Abilities range from beginner to intermediate so I bought a few yoyos for the kids to try (Pulse, Raider, Lyn-Fury, Hot Shot, Maverick and Dash). And in preparation for those kids who want to try unresponsive yoyos, I got a Legacy 2 and a Grind Machine. My hope is that the kids will then buy their OWN yoyos and we’ll work on tricks together. As many as 10 kids have shown up at a time, so I’m optimistic that the club will be a success. I’m going to call it BYOYOYO (bring your own yoyo).
I’m working on teaching one of my neighbors right now as we speak (ok, were typing but eh). He already has a yoyofactory one with the narrow bearing and he’s gotten down eiffle tower, sleeper and rock the baby! his throw isn’t the best but i’m making sure he practices everytime i come over to hang out so he won’t forget how to do the tricks.
I started yoyoing in July. Got my son into it who is 6. His last trick was gyroscopic flop. Got a friend into it as well he’s doing pretty good too just taught him bear attack the other day. Trying to get some other friends to start throwing to maybe form a club here.
me and both my sons started unresponsive. Tanner is now sponsored by String Theory and Brad was sponsored by Big Brother. It’s not whether you “need” to start them out on an unresponsive or not. It’s about whether the new person has the nack to start out unresponsive. Some people just pick it up easily. If the person can’t get a bind in a few minutes, then switch them to responsive.
[quote=“Icthus,post:17,topic:33237”]
I find it also helps if you can help them understand exactly what’s going on when you try to bind, what’s happening in the yoyo that makes it come up the string, what’s going wrong when a bind attempt doesn’t work. Our neighbor boy got a new yoyo for Christmas, a DV888. He had no idea how to bind. He and his dad were trying to figure it out from the instruction sheet. They came over last night and we were able to teach them both to bind in about 15 minutes. They just needed to understand what was going on.
I think it helps a lot when there is someone around who can show them what’s going on. Nobody around me, or at least conveniently close, best I can tell. There’s a club meet in San Jose on January 1st, 2012, based on postings here at YYE. My wife has this prayer thing in San Jose, but the timing of that vs. the timing of the meet don’t work out in my favor. With a lack of spare time and lack of funds for fuel, this won’t be something I could attend regularly.
For me, I started responsive. It seems the logical way to go in my opinion. The bind was a bit of a hassle to learn at first. Part of it was that I have this NEED to know exactly why it works. Thank goodness for High Speed YoYo’s videos for those videos!
Sometimes all it takes is a couple of pointers and some patience and people are off in the right direction. Right now my kids are trying to stage a protest and don’t want to learn Rock The Baby. If they are already doing Jamaican Flag, they can handle this one!
The YoyoUniversity guys by where I live have a really fun system for getting kids to practice their tricks in order. They have the kids ‘level-up’ by going through the tricks on the trick ladder. When a kid gets to the next level, they get a new color string, kind of like belts in karate or something. I just had a kid come up to me the other day all excited because all he had to learn was pop n fresh and then he’d be able to test for his blue string.
I think the breakdown is something like this:
Start at White string
Do tricks 1-3 for yellow string
Do tricks 4-6 for green string
Do tricks 7-9 for red string (note: I think they make you test up through red string only on all plastic yoyo’s. No metal yoyo’s, bi-metal, or metal weight rings)
Do tricks 10-12 for blue string
Do tricks 13-15 for pink string
Do tricks 16-20 for black string
Do tricks 21-25 for green/black string
They also have some optional strings that you can earn by doing certain shape tricks.
Maybe a system like that might help your motivate your kids to learn the tricks (although I know it’s harder when Dad is the teacher and not some sort of ‘official’ teacher).
Another option would be to see what trick they’d like to learn. If it’s a more advanced one, then say ‘You can learn that, but in order to do it right, you need to learn this and this and this beforehand.’ Then they’d have a goal that they’re working towards which might make it more fun for them.
