the thing is i always got freak out when perform in front of a lot people (i mean 5). when i practice alone everything is fine. i always get distracted when performing
My suggestion is to go out in public and throw in front of everyone every chance you get. It will help your brain deal with those people and get you comfortable throwing in a crowd.
Usually when I perform, I don’t pay a lot of attention to the people watching. Instead I look down at my yoyo to make sure the tricks are right. So don’t pay attention to the crowd, pay attention to the yoyo, look up every 30 seconds, and think of your yoyo, not the crowd’s opinion, and you’re set!
My middle son Tanner gets nervous too but for him, l ooking up and seeing the people calms him. The more you throw in public the better off you will be. It’s psychology at its finest.
Stage fright. Ah, the power of performing in public. I don’t get stage fright. I also don’t like to be the object of focus either, and mixing the band means the focus is n the band, not me. But, if something were to go take a dump, I’m often the first guy diving into the stage to fix things.
Issue 1: Get over it. Seriously. If you’re planning to perform, you’ve got to over-come this. I would suggest perhaps meditation, or maybe even deep breaths. You must calm your body, which means to calm your mind.
Issue 2: Now that your mind appears to be calmer, you must concentrate and focus on the task at hand, which is performing. Trust me when I say this: performing for large numbers is easier than for small numbers. Why? Chances are if you’re performing with smaller numbers, it’s an audition and you’re being judged. With larger crowds, you can not focus on any individuals, even if you are being judged.
Issue 3: Any sort of shyness must be gone when you hit the stage. There are thousands of people who have a “stage persona” and a “regular persona”. You can go as far as to make yourself into a “character” based on yourself for the stage. This is the “exhibitionist” you, while off stage can be the regular quiet you.
Issue 4: Practice. Granted, you are practicing your performance, but you have to also practice performing in front of people. Anything helps, but the best practice is in an environment with a stage. In public, people are just gonna brush you off or walk on by. Actually, I would have appreciated this being ignored in Vietnam, as I was constantly being hit upon by anyone trying to sell anything. I guess white people kind of stand out in Saigon… But anyhow, stage means attention focused on you, which is very different than street or park performing, where you’re not putting yourself in a position where attention is supposed to be directed at you. Either way, any sort of performing where you can be seen by others helps.
Issue 5: You got a job to do. Granted, you’re not on stage and are the headliner at a rock concert trying to ensure you do what you can to get that $165K+ take for your band and crew to get paid with each and every single night, but still, your job is to be up there performing. You chose to do this, now get it done.
The stage is a necessary evil for the competitive yoyo’er as well as performing yoyo’ers. Focus on the task at hand. The more you do it, the easier it will get. However, the first time will be tough, so don’t get hard on yourself in case you don’t do so well or just fail. If you mess up majorly, it depends how you handle it. If you take away something learned, then the fail is not a fail, it’s learning experience. Some take a long time to get over stage fright, others don’t. If you start taking every opportunity to perform in public, it helps.
I’ve helped many people get over their stage fright. Focus and discipline are the two major items to deal with. Once they can get those two elements, they relax and can open up and feel comfortable up there. Anyone can do this if they put their mind to it. If you’re asking for help, then you’re already on the right path.
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I throw a lot in school to help me out with my stage fright.
I find making eye contact with the audience helps me too. I guess on some level it helps you acknowledge their presence and face your demons.
I’m at my most nervous just before I step onto the stage. Once on the stage, I’m fine. I always try to look for one or two friendly faces in the crowd early on - if ever the heart starts beating a little too quickly or the hands get sweaty, I can make eye contact ith the “friendly people” and instantly feel much calmer.
Also I just think that no matter if you mess up or not they can’t tell what is happening they just think you are amazing. Also it does take some getting used to but I have performed with a yoyo like 10 times now so the comfortable feeling will come with time.
trust me everyone is gonna be amazed at your yoyo skills, so be into the performance, acting scared and shy makes it worse…
Alright, I’ve been performing on stage since I was 12 (that’s 21 years!) but I did my 1st yoyo competition last november.
it felt like I never been on stage before.
but I did alright (2nd in Xdiv) and as I’ve seen some of the issues coming I was more or less able to deal with them.
So here are a few pointers
the key to confidence is to come prepared. if you’re well prepared and you know everything that you will have to do on the stage, you will have more confidence.
So you have to get prepared, take at least a month, build a freestyle with the music, build all the elements one by one using moves that you are used to (not the hardest/latest tricks you’ve learned, leave those out), give it some coherence and some meaning (like if there’s a pause in the music, try and make a pause in your FS)
Break down your FS in several distinct parts and leave yourself some room in between the parts. if you don’t mess up, use it for scenic purposes, smile, wave, dance, whatever. if you mess up, these pauses will give you the time to regather yourself and make up lost time.
Once on stage, it WILL happen, there will be some moments where you feel you’re about to lose it. Now this is a mental exercise that might need some practice, I really don’t know but try that. Talk to yourself (in your head) and tell yourself (just like if you were another person) that you need to calm down, focus on what’s right in front of you, the next trick, the next move, focus on where you are in the FS and how do you keep going.
Talk yourself into going on with the FS.
If you miss, realize that a miss is a miss, once you missed the trick, there’s NOTHING you can do to get it back, so you might as well move on.
Don’t forget a couple spare throws, just in case
Don’t plan something too long, if it’s a competition, it’s 2 or 3 minutes, this is more than enough, it’s better to have two well prepared minutes than to do random stuff for 5.
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They are going to be amazed so like YOYOJAMizm said don’t be shy. And if you try not to like make your legs ALL tight and not move it will look better. What I mean is that the audience might feel a little bit of awkwardness if you are very tight not moving so once you bind just take a step and keep slightly moving about because if you do it the right amount it flows and isn’t really noticable.
Sometimes I get nervous. A thing that helps me is that pretend the crowd is not there. Sometimes if you do an awesome trick in your freestyle, the crowd will start to make noises. When people do that to me I start to mess up a little bit, but try and tune them out, it helps.
Throw in front of your friends, they’ll support you no matter what.
Also, always remember, that yoyoing is awesome. And nobody you know (or your audience knows) is as good as you are. So you know you’re impressive anyway, nothing to be afraid of.
whatever you do, dont stop if u mess up, just like go right into another combo