Minimalist/Micro Throwing: A Concept Of Style

General Yo-Yo
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I had a conversation with @ferrocile recently about Tyler Vienneau’s style, and what he [Tyler] calls “micro throwing”.

The concept is basically described as performing tricks with the least amount of movement possible. This is part of what gives him his buttery smooth style. If you watch his content, he performs an impressive amount of tricks and elements without moving his body a whole lot. Each movement is concentrated and deliberate. There is very little wasted energy.

I’m sure this isn’t a concept created by him, but he utilizes it very well imo.

It is a discipline that I have tried to incorporate into my style, and it is much harder than it looks! It trains you to have absolute control over your yoyo and string. Your equipment conforms to YOU, NOT the other way around.

Here is a video showing this concept in action [It’s not the original, but at least it isn’t NSFW lol]:

Things That Feel Good (slow motion classical music version)

This concept unfortunately doesn’t lend itself well to [winning] competitions (just look at Negao’s 2018 winning routine lol).

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that micro throwing is superior to other styles, but if you’ve ever wondered how people like Tyler look like wizards when throwing, this is a part of the equation.

Anyway, I thought it might be a decent point of discussion. At the very least, I thought it might give people something to consider about style.

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its probably what i want to reach in my style. its like hes almost doing nothing while everything flies around. but again, i want to compete as well, so that obviously wont work, as he almost keeps a straightforward emotion most of the time.

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Yeah, you get points for utilization of space. You can have a mind-blowing smooth and immaculate freestyle, but if you stay in one place the whole time, you’ll get dings on your overall score.

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Yes, and any more experienced throwers, I would love to hear your take on this. I assume that you essentially achieve this through countless hours of practice.

My take is that Tyler is harnessing the momentum of the yoyo to it’s fullest while making only the necessary movements with his hands and making sure there is no extra slack. There are a few other players out there that I can see this in their play – some of Paul Harness’ latest tricks also show some of this for example. It’s cool to see because his style of throwing is completely different, but still beautiful to watch.

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Tyler’s style is beautiful to watch, but it’s true that it isn’t “flashy” and so won’t be winning any major competitions. I find his videos mesmerizing, and I’d love to some day have that kind of control over the yoyo.

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I think that’s my biggest goal rn. Learning how to have control over my equipment instead of merely “getting through” tricks.

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Yes, absolutely! I spent a year plodding through tricks last year and realized that while I improved some of my overall control, I wasn’t mastering anything before moving to the next element/combo. I’m trying to build on elements through the month this year. it forces me to use elements over and over and really nail them, and it also forces me to use them in context of other tricks. So far, it’s working pretty well and I’m pretty happy with it.

Overall though, I’m just chasing that Zen Flow that Tyler has.

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This is an interesting style and I have tried a little bit of this when I’m messing around with a yoyo. I tend to think it looks like the player has absolute control over the yoyo. I have also wondered if anyone has tried an opposite style:

Jackie Chan uses a style of martial arts that is known as “drunken kung fu.” The style uses large movements that make the fighter look as though he’s barely in control of the situation and is constantly off balance. I wonder if anyone has tried a similar yoyoing style? It would require a great deal of concentration and control over yourself and your yoyo to do a fast paced freestyle and yet look like you’re a hare’s breath away from losing control of it. It would probably be fun to watch too, haha!

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Great thread, @smileypants707!

I’m going to think about this when I throw.

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I want to add something to this, you can’t get flow instantly by doing this, you need to have been practicing a trick a LOT and need to understand where and when in the trick to do elements, using the Minimalist technique only makes tricks smoother after you have it smooth in your own style, your flow can get messed up by losing speed, snagging, or hitting the wrong string, and the trick ends up looking worse off than it would’ve if you hadn’t done the Micro thing.

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if you were truly having full control then none of this would happen

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What I was saying was that you need to practice to get to that point, some people might try Micro and fail because they haven’t messed with the trick extensively enough.
TLDR: I agree.

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Which is why I made a point to choose my words carefully in the original post:

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This is truly artistic. One thing I took from it is to consider redirection in my play, and maybe overuse the concept a bit. I once read a famous musician say he overused a technique for a while to fully ingrain it.

This play is so far beyond my skills, I almost hesitated on commenting at all.

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I’m going to paste my response here lol.

I do have an opinion about this. I think “micro” or “minimalist” aren’t very accurate to describe Tyler’s style. When watching this, i don’t think he uses minimal movements to do everything, in fact, in that particular video he actually does overemphasize some elements for the sake of them looking the best possible, because you can totally change the way an element works by modifying how motion emphasis you use on it. He also uses some dense mounts and transitions that i wouldn’t classify as “micro” or “minimalist”.

I guess you could say that Tyler’s style is very “compact” in nature, that referring to the fact that he uses very tight motions and stays pretty much fixed on the same plane everytime.

I think what makes Tyler’s style so appealing to watch is the fact that he transmits you a sense of masterfulness and confidence when he throws, achieved by never stuttering, having a constant speed in his tricks and accelerating through them very smoothly. You get this illussion that he knows every trick that has ever been invented, same with Charles, same with Jensen.

The real way you get to this level (imo) is by literally never stop yoyoing.

Imagine you are a kid in a playground. You can’t run freely in this playground, you can’t make this playground your own if you don’t know every nook and cranny of said playground. What do you do then? You play over and over again in that place until you’ve muscle memorized everything about that playground. Then, you can run freely around that playground, without stopping, using everything there to have fun. That’s what i think is very similar to Tyler’s style. That’s why Charles and Jensen are so amazing too, because by repetition, they have been able to refine every variation of their tricks for them to looks the best they can be.

Also, the reason this style doesn’t do well in competitions is because it relies on the use of very similar and repetitive elements to look good. It’s very beautiful to watch, but it isn’t very varied in style when you think about all the other types of tricks that exist, like arm or body combos or horizontal play. Competitions value variation very highly, because its pretty fair to say that a competitor must make an effort to have a diverse trick catalog in order to be the best at a competition.

Edit: Tyler influences many people. Actually, 2:04 to 2:15 is something thats very meta right now. Thats a combo that would score very high in a competition.

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I agree with this 100%. Your time stamp doesn’t work with this link though. Someone here wasn’t pleased with the NSFW language of the original, so I had to link the slow version on top of classical music, lol. To be fair, the colorful language was a violation of the community guidelines.

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I love all the stuff he does with a kink mount at the end. It makes me realize how much I missed when I played around with it, and will revisit.

There is a lot going on in different parts of this video, almost like “movements” in classical music.

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