It seems that most old yoyoers do simple kind of tricks. I mean, no offense to them or anything. Lol.
Does anybody know anyone in particular?
depends what you mean by “technical”. find me a young player who can do 2-handed moons, chinese cradle, and trapeze regeneration on the same yo-yo.
simple ≠easy and the word “technical” just means “reliant on technique”.
i appreciate that you weren’t trying to offend, but i think you need to consider your question more deeply. older players generally learned to yo-yo when yo-yo’s were made of wood and spun for around 30s max. no one focused exclusively on what we call 1a, and sleeping tricks and looping tricks were both integral elements to EVERY players repertoire. the equipment was much more standardized and fickle, and getting it to play well was as tough as the tricks themselves.
the tricks we do today are mostly about amazing people; about stunning them into the belief that they could never, in a million years, do what we do. 50 years ago, the tricks were about performance and, while still meant to amaze, were imbued with the sense that you COULD do this stuff if you practiced. the tricks weren’t alienating, weren’t a minute long, and weren’t bewilderingly kinked and knotted. the complicated, difficult part was making it LOOK GOOD. that’s just as true of tricks today, but i think most players feel like if they can hit “trick x” and get it back to the hand, it’s time to move on to “trick y”.
never be conned into the assumption that the tricks we’re doing now are somehow more meaningful or even more difficult than what guys like gus somera, harvey lowe, barney akers, and bob rule were throwing down back when yo-yoing HAD YET to be woven into the tapestry of americana. appreciate that while what was called technical then and what’s called technical now are different, that one is not really harder than the other. go to nats, worlds, or one of our grandmasters’ performances. meet those guys and shake their hands, and say thanks for the fact that EVERYTHING we do now stands on the shoulders of what they did then. they paid for our passage and built what we take for granted. ask them to teach you a trick and see if you can hit it like they do. you might be surprised by just how difficult it can be to make something look “simple”.
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Glenn Godsey on team General Yo. He’s around 75 I believe.
If the OP means “modern unresponsive”, then Glenn is the man.
A few months ago I met a player in his 50s you showed me a few 1A tricks I couldn’t do before.
I’m about to turn 42, and I’ve only been at this for 6 months. While I’ve heard the description “technical” before, I don’t know exactly what it means. As I’ve come to understand, it is usually used as the opposite of “flowy”. As an example, at what point on the YYE trick list do the tricks become “techy”?
By technical, I mean like slacky and complicated type of tricks.
You know, Yuuki Spencer type of tricks. Horizontals.
Hey ed, really appreciate your response.
Really learned a lot. One can argue that tricks today are more entertaining than ones they did before, since tricks before did get repetitive. But those tricks evolved and became more entertaining.
There isn’t a really set definition for technical, imo, or a place where techical starts. I think you’re closer to the reality of it with your comparison to flow tricks.
Tech tricks are tricks that seem incredibly technical with regard to their components. Ladder Escape is probably the best example from my perspective. Not the techiest trick or the hardest tech trick, but it’s a common one that really shows the difference between a very flowy trick like Skin the Gerbil and a tech trick which involves a bunch of very small and finite movements in a complex order.
Ehhh, define old.
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I don’t know how any yoyoer can see this and not be amazed.
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Xela comes into mind.
Wow. That’s cool. I was surprised with the Japanese lady.
It’s like the oldschool version of Sector Y and Glasseye’s videos back in the early 2000s!
Simply amazing.
Now I think of it…did Pedro Flores ever play with the yoyo as well as the Duncan demonstrators at his time? And has any of the grandmasters seen Flores or anyone back in those times? real curious.
I know Duncan hired Flores when he bought his idea.
D!ck Moffat (sorry guys, the censor changes his name to “jerk”) is still alive and lives in Canada. He’s probably the oldest “old pro” still around. He worked for Cheerio - which in the 1930s & 1940s was Duncan’s biggest competition.
Not sure if he ever saw Flores though, Moffat must have been born in the mid 1920s, he was 85 at Canada Nats 2011. He went on to join Jack Russell when he split with Duncan in the late 1940s, and ran a training school for Russell in Australia and South Africa (and probably many other places) in the 1960s.
Here’s a more modern picture of him, and a small write-up of Canada Nats 2011, courtesy of CLYW. Scroll down to the 3rd pic, and read the paragraph above it:
http://www.cariboublog.com/2011-canadian-nationals/