Musicians practice scales to help with muscle memory and fingering. Drummers practice rudiments. Not something that you would play in front of someone to impress them. Something to make your other playing better. Is there something equivalent that throwers should practice? How do you improve your skills on yoyo?
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Closest thing I can think of is going through a trick ladder, and not only go through the process of learning them all, but dedicating time during your practice sessions to go through the list and make each trick smoother each time.
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Well to the untrained eye, every yoyo trick that’s new to them looks impressive. Just a point I thought I would start with. When piano players go through basic scales quickly and beautifully it’s very impressive to me.
It translates with almost anything, but specifically the more you learn and expand on your yoyoing while also mastering the basics and having a sort of “warm up routine” is kinda part of the process. As soon as I pick up my yoyo I do a beefhook combo just by both muscle memory and it’s that kinda warm up routine I mentioned.
As far as improving, just learn more tricks and you’ll get better, it’s the only way. The more elements you learn the easier it will be for you to see what links together smoothly and what doesn’t(or you MAKE it smooth somehow-best feeling). Just yoyo more and push yourself.
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first I like to throw a sleeper.
When that’s done, I like to throw another sleeper.
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I like this topic.
I’m going deep on this one, so hear me out if you wouldn’t mind.
Aside from yo-yo, I also play the violin. I will never be a soloist, but I have put in consistent practice over a considerable potion of my life. I have noticed over the years that yo-yo and violin have much in common.
The main thing is, they require consistent work. And improvement is a matter of months and years. But, if the practice is done, incredible results are attainable.
And if the practice is not done, it is always apparent (especially with the violin).
Granted, I do think that violin is harder than yoyoing. I’m closer to being a good yoyoer than a really good violinist, despite having put at least 5x the time into my music. But I like them for the same thing. I enjoy the process of putting in consistent practice and getting closer to great things over many weeks. In my opinion, the best things in life require work.
NOW, going to the actual question. I think that the yo-yo equivalent of scales to me is really asking myself what I’m not good at. What I don’t like to do. And really working on that, again, consistently. And you know what? After a while, I magically start to really like that material. Because I’m getting good at it.
I see a lot of yoyoers say “I have no interest in horizontal”. Or “I have no interest in practice, I like hunting on the BST more”. And that’s cool, no shade. I’m glad you’ve found what you enjoy. I’ve come to love a good BST hunt myself over the last year or two.
BUT, I will always continue to advocate for practice. For learning new tricks. For bettering yourself through hard work. Because I am firmly convinced THAT is one of the greatest and most fulfilling joys in life.
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Making an analogy more between learning a yoyo trick, whether it’s someone else’s or your own, and learning a piece of music, than an analogy of scales and arpeggios; I think just like in music, it’s important to maximize your time on the elements that are giving you the most trouble. You do this by isolating the problem area in as small a piece as possible and getting as many reps as you can, in a concentrated time period, on those elements.
In music, say while practicing a guitar piece, that might mean working on one chord change. Rather than going to the beginning of the piece every time and failing every time you get to that chord change, you should pull out the metronome and go as slow as is necessary to go back and forth from the chord before the problem chord to the problem chord; slowly speeding up until you can at least play it in time. Then you should put that small piece back into a larger piece and work on playing that larger piece in time.
It would be best if you went through the entire piece in this manner until you get all of your problem areas to the point where you can play them fairly consistently in time. Then you can go back to the beginning (could also be done section by section) and play the whole thing at the tempo of your weakest part. Once you’re playing it consistently at this slower tempo, you can start to speed up a few clicks at a time. As you do this, it might be necessary to rework those sections, isolating them again. Melodic sections might need to be re-fingered, slowed back down, and re-sped up. You might even do that, only to decide to return to the way you were doing it before! You might also discover other parts that need to be isolated as you speed up the tempo.
This isn’t to say that this is the only way you should practice while learning a piece. You will also want to spend time going through the whole piece the best you can. Also, this form of practice might be better after you’ve worked on the piece for a while and have gotten stagnant with your progress. I’ve found sometimes, after struggling with a piece for a long time, I can sit down and go through a piece in this manner, and suddenly I’m actually playing it! However, it might be too frustrating to do this too early in your practice on a piece.
The problem with always going back to the beginning is you can actually train yourself to “play it wrong really well”! Every time you get to the problem parts, you’ll miss them, or slow down, reinforcing the mistake. Playing the section over and over with a metronome gets your brain to do whatever it takes to make the next action happen in time. Making the section a small loop maximizes the number of reps you can get in a short period of time.
Obviously, this kind of practicing isn’t so interesting for others to watch, or at the very least is not close to being what you would perform.
I think effective yoyo practice can be very similar. Let’s say the trick you’re working on has elements that you keep missing a high percentage of the time, but you’re still able to get the yoyo back where it needs to be and finish the trick. Well, you’re doing the same thing as with the musical piece, if you keep doing the trick from the beginning each time.
Instead, you should find a way to isolate that element and/or the transitions in and out of it, and maximize your reps on that one thing until it’s consistent. Then you can put it into a larger piece of the trick; practicing a bit before it to a bit after it.
I haven’t competed, but I’m sure this kind of practice would be even more valuable and similar if you were a competitor working on a routine with music. Gentry even talks about working with a metronome. You could also make use of a program like Amazing Slow Downer to slow the tempo of the piece you’ll be performing to.
Not that I’m so disciplined all the time. Do as I say, not as I do! 
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same. I usually quit trying to learn a trick if I can’t land it within 5 tries.
If I did that, I’d never learn a single trick!
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I dunno - most musicians don’t really practice scales regularly/forever. Some do. Many prefer to practice riffs, arpeggios or or little figures from songs (or entire songs) - content in context. You learn your scales and modes when you’re starting in the same way that yo-yoers learn their basic tricks/ladders. After you “know” the content, you might come back to it but probably don’t obsess over it any more than a musician would an Eb phyrgian. It becomes a tool in your kit.
Yo-yoing as we know it is a lot more like jazz than classical. Which is to say there’s a greater emphasis on being able to synthesize familiar bits of form with improvised connective tissue. No one hails the “best players” on how well they execute older established tricks, so that’s not the way players practice. Instead they practice being inventive/creative and “riffing” on established form.
In martial arts we’ve got kata, which provide the “form” or skeleton for a lot of arts’ fundamentals. It’s funny because of the two main arts I practice, iaido is literally ALL about practicing kata and aikido has essentially zero empty-hand kata. One is JUST about execution of technique and the other is JUST about flow and spontaneity. And yo-yo players sometimes fall into those boxes - those who gravitate to the execution of tricks they can check off, and those who just use tricks to learn the “language” so they can flow and say whatever they want.
You definitely BECOME what you practice, but fortunately there’s no wrong way, and most players don’t need to be told what kind of practice is best. Otherwise you’d have a bunch of parents dragging unwilling kids to the yo-yo pro’s house for more “stupid sport ladder lessons”. 
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Excellent topic!!!
Many years ago the musical scales ideology was applied to poi(fire spinning). The thought of the scales being the language you learn to better emote your “conversation” through the use of props has always remained in my mind while exploring new objects and paths.
This was the best link I could find for “The Scales of Poi”
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My band director used to say-
“Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect Practice makes perfect.”
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I would find a player that you like and try to learn their tricks or elements and that applies to learning instruments as well since its easier to learn something new when you are inspired by something or someone.
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Also what helps a lot is to learn how to understand people’s tricks or elements when you slow down a video to break down a trick and that takes time but it helps a lot and I would compare that to music theory since those two things help out a lot when learning something new
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I’m not sure about the “most” in the first sentence, especially if you include classical musicians, but I agree with this paragraph and your post in general. It is all about context, and the problem with practicing pure scales and arpeggios is that they’re not necessarily in context with playing actual music. Still, just like pro athletes continue to practice drills, so do many musicians, continue to practice scales and arpeggios.
I know a music teacher who doesn’t believe in practicing scales at all. He believes all practice should be done in relation to a song or musical idea. I think there can be a balance. Especially in the beginning, or even periodically, practicing scales and arpeggios can be very helpful.
With yoyoing, I think isolating elements that are keeping you from hitting a trick consistently and getting in many reps in a concentrated time period, can get you there faster than always going from start to finish.
When you’re just riffing in music and yo-yoing, you tend to do what you’re good at, but if you are pushing things or working on a new idea, taking the time to break things down, and iron out the kinks, is still very important. In music, that might mean taking a little time to run a scale, then doing some sequencing, then playing some melodies, then going from a riff with that scale to one with another scale, etc… With yo-yoing, maybe there’s a tricky bind that you want to regen from. First, you might practice the bind all by itself, then try to get it from different elements, then try to get it and regen into different elements. To the OPs point, it’s not the kind of thing that you would usually “perform” for someone, but something that could make you better.
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