My spirit bomb is fine up until the first pop. When I try to do the pop, I end up with some crazy-ass thing that almost always ends in a knot in my string. What can I do to get it right?
what happens in a correctly done spirit bomb’s first pop, is that the yoyo pops up into the string coming from my nth, then arms cross, then yoyo comes down. so basicaly, the yoyo is bouncing off the top string. I hope i explained correctly.
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Thanks, I’ll try to do it that way
This tut helped me get it down. As mentioned, hit the top string with that 1st pop. It’s a tiny pop for me and quick, but straight, hand cross.
Miguel Correa’s paused explanations with diagrams are pretty helpful:
Like any trouble-shooting, you have to go step by step and confirm everything. The double-on trapeze thing from the wrist mount is easy to mess up, so make absolutely sure you’re in the right formation before the pop. You should have a single string above the yoyo. Then pop INTO that string before crossing the arms. If you pop in front of or behind, you are DOOMED, I tell you!
I work every day on making my Spirit Bomb more consistent. A week or more after landing it for the first time, and I’m still excited when I do it flawlessly, because that’s a mighty rare occurrence.
When doing the first pop, make your throw hand flat (palm up), and do a karate chop motion when you cross. This tip is what made my Spirit Bombs consistent(ish 
Uuuuugggghhh…
But also… “aha!!!”…
So, I’ve been doing things a little funny ever since I first landed the trick. On the first pop, my throwhand thumb would still be pretty stickie-outtie, and it would be on the OUTSIDE of the string formation as I did the hand cross. The formation is still… “correct”, but there’s an extra length of string around your thumb now. So, it’s a bit trickier to land the yoyo.
I suspected something was off because every tutorial video showed a fairly loosey-goosey formation after the cross, and mine was fairly compact. But I couldn’t “see” what the problem was.
Then, the problem was compounded during the second pop. As I uncrossed to create the “triangle” for the yoyo to pass through, I could only ever get small triangles. Again, watching a few videos I would see the trangle go practically all the way from the NTH forefinger to the TH wrist and middle finger.
I could land the trick, but it was much more compact and the landing after the second pop was excruciating. I was getting consistent-ish, but still annoyed that something seemed “off”. So tonight I reviewed 3 different videos and finally saw my problem. Easiest fix was to bring my thumb in. Impossible for the thumb to go on the outside of the formation that way. 
However, I’m sometimes losing the string crossing over the thumb, which ruins the ability to open up for the triangle after the second pop.
Palm up is an alternative or supplemental fix. With the TH palm up, the thumb also can’t go to the outside of the formation, or at least not very easily.
I’m going to work on a combination of those two things to fix my first pop. As it turns out, all the practice with the teeny triangle is making the second pop the easy part now. But I have some muscle memory to unlearn after 2 weeks (?) of doing it slightly incorrectly. That’s the challenging part… unlearning what I’ve taught my hands to do.
It looks like a wrist mount that just flew over my TH. That’s not right, is it?
Thanks guys, now I can land that pop. Now my problem is after I land it, all the string gets sucked into the bearing and it snaps up or I have to pull out one hand. So what’s going on?
Use a delicate touch. Maybe pop the yoyo up from your knees not your hands/ arms.
Spirit Bomb and Magic Drop…The bane of my yoyoing existence
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I’d never seen this before. This has got to be, hands down, the best spirit bomb tutorial ever. Good find.
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Glad I’m not the only one. I don’t find myself practicing it very often, but a flawless execution is very exciting indeed.