Mounts...the bane of my existence...I'm in trouble...

Guys:

I am having major trouble landing my yo-yo on the string, mainly with mounts, but I cannot successfully repeat said landing consecutively… Any advice out there?

I am mainly trying to get the 1.5 mount currently…I am using a Hyperwarp Heavy Wing (2nd gen Hyperwarp).

I am very new to yoyo and thus cannot vouch for the usefulness of my advice. However, the mounts I have learnt were made easy by excessive practice. I would throw, do the mount, bind, and I continue till I get it right every time.

It’s all muscle memory. Keep practicing and trust me, mounts will be like 2nd nature

1.5 mount is a tricky one. That was basically the last basic basic mount I learned. You just have to keep at it, and remember to pull your non throw hand just a little closer to your throw hand as the yoyo hits, to give it slack.

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What’s already been said is the core if it all: practice (muscle memory) and understanding the technique. Grolk has it exactly right: once you learn to let your hands move together to create the necessary slack, it will start to become second nature.

practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice

:wink:

Okay, in all seriousness, try these 2 things,

1: Alternate your mounts; so throw, do a mount you know you can do, catch yoyo , next throw, do mount you are working on , fail, catch yoyo , throw again , mount you know, catch, throw again , mount you are working on. You can do a variation where you do 2 mounts you know, then the third time try the one you are working on. If possible keep this in the same plane, meaning don’t go from doing a front mount for the mount you know, to a side mount ( well you could I guess, no rules! and all that, whatever keeps it fun )

2: You can usually go from one mount to another mount pretty easily, so try breaking down that way, throw a trapeze, pop the yoyo off , let it loop around your TH index and back around into the string.

This way you get a feel for your hand position(s) first before you go into trying to get the all in one motion down.

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1.5 is a killer for beginners. Just keep practicing, when I was at your level I used a heavy wing too :slight_smile:

Huh, seems like everyone starts out yomega. Mine was a dash. :slight_smile:

Yomega rocks. I dont care what anyone else says :smiley:

Thanks guys!! I will continue to practice. I did not know about moving my hands closer together to give the necessary slack, but I also keep landing on the wrong string. My TH seems to love getting in the way of the yo-yo. And yes, I use Yomega, but when I got these years ago I didn’t know there were other brands other than Duncan or Yomega. I’m just recently getting into the more technical aspect of this; I should have done this years ago. I still can’t get the concept of “Binding” down yet either. Again, it is most likely due to my not being able to land on the string. Are there other easier mounts that I could practice and learn to boost my confidence and give me a slightly wider range of tricks?

I’d like to suggest playing around with the first half of the trick “Black Hops”. The latter part is an absolute killer, and I still have trouble with it (given, it’s not something I really practice, but still), but the first half of the trick where you hop from a triple or nothing incrementally back into a trapeze will likely help you learn to manage string and will also get you very comfortable in various mounts (triples, brothers, double or nothing, etc). Not to mention it is a whole lot of fun! ;D I’m not saying you have to learn the trick or anything, but fooling around with it’s elements will surely help you, as I said before, to get more comfortable managing string and also controlling your yoyo.

As far as 1.5 is concerned. Just keep at it. It was the hardest mount for me when I was learning the basics, by far. There is no substitute for practice, but perhaps learning a trick that actively uses the 1.5 will help you get more consistent at it and avoid some monotonous repetition along the way. Kwijibo and Buddha’s Revenge are some good examples. I realize that these tricks are incredibly difficult without a consistent 1.5 mount, but by focusing on the 1.5 as an element of a larger more complex trick, rather than as a trick in-and-of itself, it will help you to get comfortable not only landing in the mount, but navigating string formations from the mount as well.

For example, in attempting Buddha’s Revenge, it may take you 10 tries to get into the 1.5 mount, but then once you are in the 1.5, you can switch your focus to attempting the second step of the trick which is rolling the yoyo over your non-throw hand. You may fail and have to start all over, but ultimately, you are training your muscles to be comfortable in the 1.5 mount, so that hopefully your next mount attempt will feel that much better.

This method can also curb some of your frustration by varying your focus. I find that attempting a mount repeatedly can get tiresome, so I hate to LAND the mount, only to dismount, bind, and try again. Sure it is rewarding the first few times, but beyond that, it looses some of its luster. So once your in that mount, do something with it!.. Or at least try. ;D

I hope this helps! Good luck! :wink:

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When attempting the 1.5 mount, break it into three steps.

  1. Land trapeze
  2. Dismount to the right (for righties)
  3. Swing the yoyo into the top string and (at the same time) move your throwhand inwards slightly

When you can do all three moves in fluid succession (practice!), then you can ditch step 1.
The trick for step 3 is to allow for some slack when the yoyo hits the string.

And when you’ve got it down, practice with McBride’s Roller Coaster. It’s a great 1.5 mount based trick which i think every beginner (or everyone!) should learn, and you can try incrementally increasing the speed as you get comfortable.

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The only thing about this, is that I cannot land the trapeze hardly ever. The 1.5 is easier to me than the Trapeze. I am assuming to perform Trapeze, I need to learn how to side mount? These basics are all new to me so I was just trying to keep it in front of me to start with until I became much more comfortable with things other than the Brain Twister, Keychain, etc.

Also, having a yo-yo suffering from worn parts doesn’t help. XD That is in process of being fixed though courtesy of Yomega, though, so she will be good to go in a few days. My Raider will be taking the blunt of these mounts and tricks until then. Any recommendations for other yo-yos for my level and getting the hang of these mounts and the such? I’m sure the 2nd gen HWHW is far from up to date as it is from early 2000’s and before Yomega redesigned it, but it is the best I have so far and I do thoroughly enjoy its long sleep time and responsiveness.

It’s certainly more of a challenge to land even a trapeze on something like a Raider when compared to the cavernous catch zones of the unresponsive yoyos many of us immediately think of when giving advice here. :wink:

Trapeze IS “side mount”, sort of. There’s no mount that I know of called “side mount”, however Man on the Flying Trapeze is considered the most prevalent (and the first you should learn) sidestyle mount. The trick with Trapeze is that you don’t have your forefinger as a stationary pivot point and try to aim the yoyo to land on the string. I mean, that helps… if you can do it consistently you’ll actually be doing a service to yourself!

But in practice, what’s done is that as the yoyo swings around the non throwhand, you slide the NTH forefinger closer to the yoyo. This causes a “pulling” force on the string segment leading to the yoyo and guides it to the string. You don’t want to do it too fast and hard due to string burn, but if you DID do it fast and hard, it would be almost impossible to miss the string. Since you don’t want string burn and you DO want more accuracy in your throw (it’s helpful all around), you split the difference. You try to be as accurate as you can, and you do just enough of this “slide” that the yoyo comes true to the string. As time moves on you won’t even realize you’re doing this (it’ll all be muscle memory).

Eli Hops relies on this motion. If you learn Eli Hops with some degree of accuracy, you won’t need to do the “pull” as much and you can save your finger from getting burnt. But to make it look really sharp and to ensure a clean landing, you do quite the pull-apart.

In summary, it’s the “pulling apart” that helps create consistency… just “aiming” isn’t the core technique of landing the Trapeze mount.

@HyperwarpedBB6,
Trapeze is a sideways form of the first step of Brain Twister.

As far as the basics are concerned, (first) i highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of the Yomega Mania DVD. Also, your local yoyo club/meet is THE MOST IMPORTANT place for you to learn tricks. Having someone actually guide you around a trick is the best thing you could have when yoyoing.

Learning basic tricks are so much easier today than it was 15+ years ago, where you relied on tv commercials (with Yo-Hans or some guy in it), or picture-based sites.

As far as your yoyo is concerned, start from the bottom and work your way to the top. Start with fixed axle imperial yoyos like the Duncan Proyo, then as you get comfortable, move up a notch to ball bearing imperial (Duncan Bumblebee), then move on to ball bearing butterfly plastics like Yoyofactory’s WHiP. And then when you get absolutely comfortable with plastics, move on to metals.

Hard work and practice is always the key. Never give up.

I will start working on that “pull.” It really seemed to help. I landed it successfully a few times in a row, but it will definitely need lots more practice, which is basically the name of the game I have found. Hitting 1.5 is becoming easier too and i have actually performed a few dozen binds now. I am still missing the string quite a bit. I suppose it could be my throw that is making it off course, but I throw pretty straight. Once I get the 1.5 down a little better I will start attempting barrel rolls as it seems to be helpful with landing on the string. I greatly appreciate all this help. At this rate, I’ll be hitting tricks and mounts like nothing in no time…provided I keep up the practice (thank you 3rd shift job). :smiley:

Regarding the clubs, this is probably great advice… if you have a local club, look it up and start going! I don’t have such a thing, and many of us get along relatively well without; however, I think I’d be even further along if I had some other yoyo peeps to help me out in-person.

I definitely agree, but sadly I cannot seem to locate any near me either. South Carolina lacks many things… lol I will manage I’m sure. I can land the 1.5 about every 3rd try now, sometimes consecutively too, so I am getting there. Binding is getting easier and I can land Trapeze more often too. The “pull” helped soooo much. Yo-yo still likes to swing to the side of the string sometimes, but that it most likely poor aim… XD