I’m having a blast with the kids and spin tops!
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That’s great! When I was trying to learn to throw a spinner, I found the spin top forum and Cowgirl Sam (forum name Spinqueen) was posting videos like this of the kids she taught to throw tops.
It was encouraging and a little embarrassing to see children throwing so well when I was struggling to get boomerang down, but it’s amazing how quickly kids can pick up the skills.
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That was a great video. It is great to see kids having so much fun with those tops. You could see the joy on their faces through the whole video. Like this… 
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Speaking of hitting a brick wall…. I’ve done wire walker 2 before. I even have it on video. Now I can hit it maybe 1 out of 10 times but it’s not something I would want to showcase. Why am I having so much trouble with this!?!?!
I took a break and hit this combo. Boomerang to trapeze, whip, barrel rolls.
… turn the sound up for that whip 
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Any trick with a wire walker element is going to feel different depending on a bunch of variables. Of course the amount of the spin, but also the string you use, how well you control the tension on the string, and between tops, the tip design .
The diameter and shape of the tip is a huge difference, the diabolo shaped tips are slower but seem very steady, wider plastics like the YYF and Duncans zip right along but are a little less stable, the Mexican tops like the Star, Viper and Jumbo Cobra fall right in between. A thicker string scrubs off speed, thiner, tighter wound string works best for wire walking and whips.
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Having fun working on Joker Choker. I feel like I can keep it going for a long time. I just wanted to see if I could get it back to my hand. Not great there lol.
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I don’t know how many people are into yoyos first, and tops second, or how many younger people in general get into tops, but is it normal to find boomerangs infinitely easier than a regular throw? Maybe it’s a carry over from me having a decent amount of offstring yoyo experience, so the act of a boomerang throw is way more familiar than a normal top throw to the floor.
With a regular throw onto the floor it feels like you actually need to have a good initial throw that’s fairly upright. But with a boomerang it feels like you can salvage almost any bad throw by just doing tilt correction with your hand immediately after catching it.
Having a good throw I assume is very important so I’ll keep working on it though.
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It’s cold(ish) and breezy here so I just stopped for 5 minutes at the park to throw, but I figured out a fix for one of the things I have been struggling with for months!! I wish I knew how to post vids and stuff, or had some folks to throw tops with that could give me some feedback, because it takes a long time to analyze your own mistakes, but I finally realized one of my string handling issues that’s been frustrating me a whole bunch.
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In North America, young folks don’t know what tops are😀.
Most people yo-yo first, then find tops, and YES! Boomerangs are easier, and yes tons of 4A skills are directly transferable to spin tops. You will probably find it way easier and progress much faster as a 4A thrower.
Hope you keep it up, the koma tops are good fun too. There are some outstanding koma players in Japan and Europe posting amazing stuff.
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For me it has been the opposite. While it took me quite a while to figure out what I needed to do to get a good throw to the floor, I’ve still not gotten a Boomerang right yet. Mind you, I have brain damage and I can’t manage to practice for more than about 5 minutes at a time and for some reason I find Spin Top play to be very exhausting so I don’t practice much. I will say that after purchasing a S8 Augusta I was actually able to get it to hop up onto my hand unlike any other I’ve used so far… had it been upright instead of sideways I likely would have caught it. That gave me hope to keep trying.
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OK here’s a correct joker choker with a half roll entry.
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I got you fam.
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When taught properly, a normal throw on to the floor is basically automatic with almost no effort. One big thing is fixed tip tops correct themselves, so if it’s not perfect, it’ll fix itself anyway. The bearing tip tops can still be just as easy to throw on the floor, but I’d prefer telling people to start with a fixie to learn technique.
However, I learned how to boomerang as a kid like the same day I started. I learned recently, I learned wrong. lol.
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But have you consulted the sacred archives?
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this almost made me buy my first top
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This has not been my experience over the years with people trying to throw tops.
It’s awesome you are a fast learner, I only bring this up in the event some one reads that and thinks if they cannot get the hang of throwing a top right away that they are somehow just not up to it.
Ohhh thank you, this actually explains a lot. I only have a bearing spin top at the moment, and didn’t realize that’s what was causing my issues. It’s not that I’m unable to get a spinner on the floor at all, it’s that I really struggle to get them to be perfectly vertical and not at a 45 degree angle. But since they’re bearing tops I guess(?) they just keep spinning at that steep angle that makes it really hard to actually pop the top onto my hand to correct the tilt. But with a boomerang the top is already in my hand which skips the hardest part of trying to save a sloppily thrown spinner to the floor to me.
Yeah I’ve heard a lot of people say that you should learn on fixed tips, but I’m just using what I have. This alone I think would be a great example of why you should start on fixed tips.
I’m only a few days in so far so it’ll get better with more practice I’m sure.
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I don’t mean one is better than the other. I just prefer fixed tips. I learned how to throw from Dale Oliver videos. After that I gave up for 25 years lol. But back in high school I learned how to throw, target shooting and a boomerang.
Edit, also I don’t expect anyone to listen to my advice lol. I just get by
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Haha. That video is because Ed made that top for me. It’s in the mail now!
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