In these days I am going through yoyo trick tutorials on youtube and, slowly, trying to master the basics.
During my practice sections, I could not avoid to notice how learning yoyo tricks represents a very good example of learning experience that works in any kind of discipline.
Learning a yoyo trick from scratch, in my opinion, consists of going through different steps (not necessarily in this number and order):
- understanding the movement of the yoyo and the string during the trick;
- splitting the trick in different, smaller, easier, tricks to practice them separately;
- mastering separately each part of the trick and adding one by one the other parts;
- being positive and patient (because the trick will always come, it is just a matter of practice and time);
- talk to other people practicing the same trick to have a different perspective;
- practicing the all thing in different situations and with different yoyos to make the trick more consistent.
For sure there is more to add on the list, and maybe your skills are such that you can skip some steps, but my point is that these steps are common to every learning experience.
In piano playing, for example, to technically master a piece, you need to divide it in smaller parts, practicing on each on them, left and right hand, be patient (because you improve in BETWEEN one day of practice and another), practice larger sections, and so on.
The same steps are applicable in finding a strategy to solve any kind of scientific problem. In yoyoing the reward (playing the trick properly from the beginning to the end) comes relatively faster than music or science, but this mini-learning experience can already teach, consciously or not, a very good lesson about how to learn something that, at first, looks scary and very hard, almost impossible.
I just wanted to share these thoughts. In short, throw and make to throw
