MoonageMin's Trick-a-Week 2021 [Finished, check out TaW 2022]

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a fantastic break over Christmas, and welcome back to another year of Trick-a-Week.

For Trick-a-Week 2021, we decided to take our learnings from our first successful year in 2020 and make some changes to further leverage on things that worked well, and things that could be improved for year 2.

Change log :

  • New tricks now commence on Fridays, so that we have the weekend to learn and the rest of the week to polish rather than the other way around
  • We will be inviting 1 guest star every month to pick a trick
  • some further changes in the background on the way we manage things

@AKYOYOMIKE (joint winner with @ryanmcg of the annual TaW contest 2020) will be posting our first trick tomorrow.

Index : Trick a week 2021

22 Likes

Happy New Year.
Welcome to week #1 of Trick-a-Week on YoYoExpert. Thank you for giving me the honor and pleasure of picking the first trick to start the year.
I think same as last year we are all working on the assumption that you know the basics. What exactly the basics are is up to you and diffrent for everyone, but i think if youā€™ve masstered horizontal beef hook then youā€™re in the right place. Just kidding.

Im a big fan of getting fundamentales down. Thatā€™s going to be my theme, hope we can all get along :blush:. Letā€™s start the year right and work on some rejections.
I know we can all magic drop (probably) but i would be shocked if i hit magic drop cleanly 3 or 4 times in a row. Soā€¦ SHOCKWAVE.
This weekā€™s challenge is to land it 3X cleanly. Letā€™s see some Shockwave REPEATER videos.
And to help us out the legend himself Andre B

If this seems simple CAPITƁNšŸ˜ or anyone else letā€™s see magic drop in another mount like wrist mount! Any magic drop repeater will do.

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Great trick to start things off @AKYOYOMIKE! :smiley:

Magic Drop is a beast of an element to get down! Iā€™ve been working on it for months and Iā€™m still not super consistent with the darn thing. Iā€™m making progress, but it is slow.

But itā€™s part of one of my favorite tricks (Kamikaze)ā€¦so itā€™ll be nice to work on it more!

Hope to hear how things are going for anyone who decides to join in this week!

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lol I love this video:

And hereā€™s the follow up video:

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Iā€™ve been working on Magic Drops for months on and off, but I never tried to do the second part of shockwave (the easy part!). Just a trick I skipped over. I have other dismounts I use when practicing Magic Drop over and over.

Anyhow, just worked on Shockwave a few minutes ago real brieflyā€¦and I hit 3 reps of the trick several times already!
Itā€™s super satisfying doing Magic Drops one after the other because Iā€™ve had many practice sessions where Iā€™d be standing there working on the damn thing and only landing 1 in something like 25 attempts. Maybe even more.

No video just yet. I only just started working on it and itā€™s not real smooth. Iā€™ll continue to try and smooth it out and to get a nice clean video up at some point this week though!

6 Likes

I plan to follow along! Thanks guys for hosting this! Happy New Year.

Magic Drop and shockwave are 2 that I kind of glossed over, not paying much attention to. Fun to brush them up. Iā€™ve got them super clean now.

I found that setting up this little triangle on my Non throw hand helps with consistency a ton.

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Just gonna drop a link here:

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Do you have an example video of magic drop in a wrist mount?

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My advice to someone learning Magic Drop is to watch every video you can find that teaches it. Itā€™s really helpful to see everyoneā€™s perspective on how to do it.

But by far the most helpful one Iā€™ve seen is the following:

This video is the best at breaking down the mechanics of string rejection to complete Magic Drop. For right handed throwers, after the trapeze, the yoyo is looped under, around then over your throwing hand in a counterclockwise motion towards the left. As you are looping the trapezed yoyo counterclockwise over your throwing hand, this motion tries to spool the string counterclockwise around the axle. The yoyo spins clockwise in the opposite direction. The body of the yoyo then rubs against the string, and the opposite motions force the string to kick out and reject off the yoyo.

All of the action is done by the spinning yoyo body against the string.

Had I known this, at the beginning, it would have saved me weeks of frustration.

When starting out, I thought I was wasnā€™t getting the right string placement because my fingers are fairly short and was unable the extend the L shape with my thumb and index finger on my throwing hand far enough. That wasnā€™t the critical part I was missingā€“swinging the trapezed yoyo in a smooth motion around your throwing hand. Again the key is the string rubbing against the body of the yoyo. This still can be done with small hands.

Use fresh new fat strings and a competition style yoyo with a low wall, great spin time. Throw hard on your breakaway when setting up the trapezeā€“the more spin you have, the easier it is to reject the string.

For me personally, I was able to land the drop on the front string first, the string farthest from the body. If thatā€™s the case with you as well, Iā€™d advise first practicing landing the drop on the front string consistently to get the rejection downā€“the actual goal is to learn rejections. Then adjust your hand placement later to land the drop on the back string consistantly (the string closest to the body) to set up shockwave.

Brandon Vuā€™s video states he spent ā€œabout 2 yearsā€ learning this. Iā€™m suspect thereā€™s some hyperbole there but it is comforting to know that a pro with a couple of national titles under his belt struggled with this at the beginning.

Good luck!

Edited to say body of the yoyo does the rejection not the pads. Thanks @ryanmcg!

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No i canā€™t find oneā€¦ itā€™s in a lot of tricks i find onlineā€¦ Iā€™ll work on onešŸ™ƒ

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Eh? Itā€™s the body of the yo-yo that does the rejecting.

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Looking at it closely, I think you are right. I stand corrected.

Edit: I even says so in BOLD TYPE in the video I linked. Apparently I canā€™t read! :grimacing:

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Donā€™t feel bad, Iā€™m wrong all the time :upside_down_face:

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I can confirm this.

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Have yā€™all noticed this tightens the string? Or is it just me. This is a fun one @AKYOYOMIKE. Working on getting it smooth and consistent.

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Amazingly, I just started working on Magic Drop this morning - and now it pops up on the forum. Equally amazingly, I hit it on the very first try. Then, feeling pretty good about myself, I failed miserably on about 30 consecutive attempts. Humbling. I have started opening the triangle a bit with my thumb, similar to what Shwa describes above. For me, itā€™s hard to imagine one finger ever separating those strings enough to hit just one of them - but I never imagined I could do a lot of things Iā€™ve somehow learned to do. Retirement is a wonderful thing ā€¦

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Andā€¦

Iā€™m back to struggling again tonight!

haha >.<ā€™

I am WAY more consistent with Magic Drop then I have been in the past which is VERY satisfying for me.

Yet Iā€™m struggling to land 3 Shockwaves in a row.
Plus theyā€™re really not smooth yet.

Another struggle I have, is that after landing a shockwave, the string around my throw hand drops (instead of staying around my pointer finger) which is no big dealā€¦but it doesnā€™t look as clean as when it stays wrapped around your index finger (lol sorry for not knowing how to make this make sense here!).

3 Likes

Oh and yet another struggle Iā€™m havingā€¦is after the magic drop when you point you pointer finger in towards yourself to complete the second part of the trickā€¦the string here sometimes drops on me as well. I find that when Iā€™m really quick about pointing my finger in, itā€™s less of an issue.
I think itā€™s just one of those things that is awkward cause itā€™s new, but itā€™s just something I got to get use to.

How are you guys coming along?

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Definitely experiencing this as well!

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I was having the same issue. See if this helps:

When I point my index finger towards me, you can see how the string is in position to fall off of it once I go over the non throw hand and let go.

Try this. Donā€™t point your index finger towards you so much. See how the finger is still in front of the string blocking it so that when I let go of the loop it will still be on the correct side. So just barely curve your finger. Might help.

11 Likes