Ten things I learned in the first 15 seconds of owning a "real" throw.

Oh sorry man, I thought you where talking about holding a loop while snap starting.

I would argue that starting a dead yoyo is the most important technique to learn. It makes it so that the only thing that can slow down a practice session is a knot. This is particularly nice when you’re working on a trick in which you make errors soon after the throw.

I’ve found that a push/hand start is MUCH easier to do than snap starts, but that might just be because I got the push start down first and have since neglected my snap starts :stuck_out_tongue:

I agree. That’s one reason I’m trying to go ahead and get them down.
It’s starting to work ok (maybe 10% of the time) but I just can’t get enough spin yet to really bind it back well.

Gotta make that loop super long when the spin is super low.

Also remember that with hand starts, the spin direction is reversed so the bind direction is also reversed. Can’t easily do a normal front bind on hand starts.

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Oh and when you learn to bind, also learn to do a “safety throw” :))

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So important!

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When I first read this thread, it actually made me think of when I got my first “real” yoyo back in 1995…being a Duncan Imperial. I always thought of yoyoing as “dribbling” or “mom & dad yoyoing” (You all know exactly what this is lol). When I got my string cut to size and did my first drop, I noticed it just stayed down there and spun for a couple seconds. I then realized the following:
-Dribbling no longer works as the string is just looped around the axle, causing the yoyo to just spin
-Realizing the spin, I realized I needed to find a way to get it to unwind faster so it will spin more and have enough momentum to pull it back up.
-Attempting a faster “drop” I tried a fast downward thrust/dribble…realizing this will not work, the yoyo is just going to spin out
-Not sure how it happened but I somehow on my own discovered the ‘overhand throw’ where it rolled off the hand nicely and got it back up.

From this point I did my first ‘trick’ being the sleeper. Walking in the mall while my parents dragged me into the ‘boring’ stores, I waited outside continuing to practice and eventually learned how to walk the dog.

So in the end…I learned that there was more to yoyoing than the basic “mom & dad style” yoyoing that I initially thought it was all about…and seeing how long we can keep it going.

Oh how I wish someone gave me this advice when I started. Would have saved me a fat lip or two. :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah, snags from a breakaway are the worst.

I’ve certainly smashed myself in the elbow and once on the chin. The problem is… you have to bind after your safety throw!

Yeah! What’s up with that?!

It’s true that it doesn’t solve the problem in this thread, which is about getting a good normal front-style bind.

The safety throw is more useful when you’ve done OTHER binds (trick binds in particular, but even sidestyle binds) and you want to reset your yoyo back to “safe for a hard throw!” status. And a good front bind is key. Once you have your normal front bind “mastered”, it’s virtually impossible to mess up in terms of getting a snaggy knotty bind. Then it becomes your “safety throw” bind.

Oh, good, that’s what I’ve been doing. And I rarely get a snaggy bind that way, like you say.