Pro yoyoer advice

Forum Chat W/ The Pros! Evan Nagao
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Hi Evan,

I’m pretty late to the part to ask you questions, but there is still got time to ask. Before we get into question I would like to say you’re one of my idols in the yoyo community. Your tricks are insane and the fact that your a lefty makes me feel like I can get as good as you one day (I’m a lefty as well).

My first question is more towards the mentally of a “pro yoyoer”. I get called a pro yoyoer around my campus and community, but I personally don’t feel like I should be given the title a pro yoyoer. I feel like a pro yoyoer is someone who is acknowledged across the yoyo community. I don’t quite know what responsibility of a “pro yoyoer”, so I would like to ask what is the definition of a “pro yoyoer” to you?

My second question is where do you get your inspiration for your mind-blowing tricks? Your style is just so insane and I hope to be able to create a style of my own someday.

The next question I have is do you believe the yoyo boom will happen again? When I yoyo in public and for my community, I always get comments like, " Oh I haven’t seen a yoyo in years, I use to play with a yoyo way back in the day, etc". Most people believe that playing with a yoyo is something from the past, but when trying to explain to them that yoyos are still being played with and developed, the public seems to not care about it anymore. Which kind of bugs me because the yoyo community has been nothing but really amazing people.

I still have more question, but I’ll leave it with this question. What is your favorite part of the yoyo community? Like what keeps you going and pumping out new tricks.

I hope I didn’t ask too many questions to make it a hassle for you to answer them all.

Best,

Dylan Vang

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To me, being a “professional” in any field means that you do that thing as a profession. As in, you make a living doing that thing. So by that definition, “pro yoyoer” to me means that you make a living yoyoing.

Inspiration to me comes mainly from other people’s tricks. The idea is that as you progress and learn tens or hundreds or thousands of tricks, you eventually will have this subconscious memory of all the tricks you’ve learned and can start to naturally call upon tricks you’ve previously learned and combine them to combos you are working on to make more complete and interesting tricks. The best way to be creative in this sense is actually to not be creative at all, and just learn as many elements as you possibly can from many different people. From there you’ll have a solid trick bank from which to draw, and create new combos.

I do think yoyoing will boom again. I hope to do my best to allow this to happen.

My favorite part of the yoyo community by far is the people. I always kind of felt like an outsider; someone a little strange and different from my peers. I wouldn’t say I was an outcast, but I definitely didn’t feel like I totally belonged all through elementary, and high school. The yoyo community was the only place that I felt completely safe to be myself. I think this is mainly because everyone in the community is a little weird in their own ways, so we all kind of accept each other for who we are. It’s actually such a cool thing, and even if I got tired of the actual hobby/sport of yoyo, I know I could never leave or forget the awesome group of people I’ve befriended over the years in this community.

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