Starting 5A, can anyone help?

I’ve just started 5A and can land 360, double on, double or nothing release. but im have trouble catching the counter-weight(I’m using the Duncan skull as die), is there any advice i can get? like is it the counter-weight, something I’m not doing, is it a normal thing(if so what did you do to fix it)? stuff like that.

I just started 5a too with a YYJ Destiny, I’m having some problems catching it consistently. It is just going to take practice. I was watching some 5a at Nationals on youtube and they are amazing and still have issues catching the CW all the time. Just going to take practice and getting a feel for how hard you throw the CW when you release it, if you let momentum and so forth. I’m sure an expert 5a can tell you more, but that is what I’m finding out right now.

the trick im having trouble with is pin wheel

Just practice over and over until it becomes second nature. Try using your die had to slow the momentum of the CW down.

Ok, watch Andre’s video again at the end when the camera goes to almost full body shot as he does the trick, watch that not once in the 9 or 10 times he does it at the end did he make a clean catch on the die. If anything he caught the string right under it and then guided the string into his hand. Maybe try not to worry to much about catching the cw spot on. That might help you in the mean time. I’ve been working on trying to catch it clean, but maybe you don’t want to do that for reasons that I don’t know yet seeming I don’t know much about 5A.

It helpes me to put my throw hand out palm up and my fingers spread apart slightly to help guide the CW to my hand. Some people catch the CW between their fingers to help guide it back to their hand. Me personally I like using the bouncy ball CW when learning, because when I was just starting out there was some fear involved with catching a dice flying around and hitting my hand sometimes. So when learning a new trick: Bouncy ball, when I want to play fast and I’m comfortable with the tricks: Dice. Also it will take some time to get the hand/eye cordination down because you are not used to paying attention to the location of both your hands, so learn the trick and catch the string if you have to and when you get it down you can take your eyes off you non-throwhand and watch the CW to catch it smoothly.

the only reason im trying to catch the cw is because when i dont it ends up wrapping around my wrist or the string n messing up the trick, n im not sure how to prevent that

Honestly it just takes alot and alot of practice to get anything consistant. You just have to keep trying. I had that problem with the counterweight getting tangled with my string and messing up some tricks but it just takes time. One good piece of advice that I can give is don’t switch yoyos alot when you are learning 5a because the diffrent weight and feel of the diffrent yoyos will make the die (or ball) respond diffrently and the feel will be diffrent.

I sometimes catch the string and then slide the counter weight into my hand.

im using the 2009 G5 Pre-Pro(which is what i used to learn all my 1A tricks) so im already used to the weight and feel of the yo-yo which i do think helps alot when i’m doin my tricks, im kinda getting it. now with that said, im only doing like 3 or 4 tricks and throwing the cw around so it helps transition into other tricks smoothly, and looks effectively awesome lol

yeah a 5A thread !

5A is awesome but can be very frustrating at first, specially with a “hard” counterweight, you might hit your hand a lot when you start. getting the distances right takes some time and some tricks are plain harder in 5A version (the true double or nothing, like the miggy tutorial on here)

if you can do that chopsticks mount from trapeze, you can work on a jon-rob-esque trick I did a tutorial on

Duncan CWs usually have a correct weight, but if you can find something slightly heavier it’ll slow things down and possibly make it easier for you, at least on some tricks.

the thing is, with 5A, you won’t find as many tutorials as you would for 1A, and depending on how advanced you are in 1A, some stuff will get really hard and will take time to get right.

first and foremost, you’ll have to be comfortable, but basically you’re starting all over.

having a 5A specific throw does help as they don’t have the same weight balance as your typical 1A throw (or so it seems), the YYJ Destiny setup WILL help you out for some 5A specific moves such as beesting.

for catching the CW, I don’t know, once I really hurt my hand hitting it with the yoyo and it did hurt for a week or so, so I want all out, used a hard CW to force me to catch it right, and it worked, after a couple of days I didn’t have catching issues anymore.

you really have to “educate” your right hand, then your whole right arm to perform in 5A, as always practice is the key, and just similar to 1A, things will just “click” sometimes.

at your point, I’ll start working on E-fan routines, control the CW rotation direction and become familiar with CW and yoyo moving at the same time.

it’s nothing but practice in the end.

also check out “rannosteachs” channel on youtube, he got great and extensive tutorials for intermediate/advanced 5A

I also did slo mo vids of jon rob, I could ask him if he’s ok for me to put them online.

1 Like

I am also just starting 5a, takes a bit of practice on each trick so you know where to expect the cw hit.

here are some high speed breakdowns I have been doing, if you want specific tricks be sure to post what you want in here http://yoyoexpert.com/forums/index.php/topic,33808.0.html

I have that topic set to notify me and will see what tricks you want filmed!
good luck!

1 Like