speed and flow are not mutually exclusive.
sometimes i rhyme slow, sometimes i rhyme quick.
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Just because you’re fast doesn’t mean you’re better and just because you have a lot of flow doesn’t mean you’re any better. Its not like that at all.
Jensen knew not just how to flow, but to make it dynamic and interesting. Small moves, big moves, slacks, hops… both smooth and ping-pong. Not all one type of flow. Look at Yuuki: not smooth, but still a control of “flow” in the sense that some tricks are super-fast but others are slowed down for maximum impact.
I don’t like where every trick is done as fast as possible or where the same tempo and super-smoothness is used all the time. Dynamic flows with a big trick vocabulary and strong sense of rhythm (both on and off beat, syncopation, etc) is the best. Both Jensen and Yuuki are my favorite examples of this:
Yuuki Spencer 2009 National Yoyo Contest
Jensen Kimmitt 2011 World Yoyo Contest
A clarification needs to be made, I think. This is not a discussion on what is the more effective style of play to win contests. Obviously the answer in that regard is speed. But even more obviously, yoyoing is not about winning contests. If someone disagrees on that front, then you have much more to worry about than the difference between speed and flow.
You’re right, by the way. I can’t play very fast. I also have no desire to play very fast. I’ve practiced playing yoyo for five years now, and if I wanted to do it faster, I would have tried by this point. I’d play each of my tricks at a comfortable rate and keep playing them at a gradually faster speed until it was satisfactorily quick. But again, I have no such desire.
This is because I am a firm believer that yoyoing is art and that art is not to be rushed. One does not go to a museum and try to see how many paintings they can see in a day. One goes to a museum and stops at the paintings that one finds interesting and examines them. Watching a very fast freestyle (especially in person) does not allow you to consider certain elements that you would consider at another speed. In the end, it all gets lost in a blur of string.
Of course, this is not to belittle those who choose to practice to play with speed. That is something that requires an impressively high degree of technical skill that most certainly deserves to be applauded. But if you are asking me personally, which is what I believe the purpose of this thread is, then I prefer to watch a “flowy” freestyle because it better caters to my taste in and definition of yoyoing.
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