I just saw a post discussing how it’s more beneficial to learn elements over full combos, so I searched for a thread that has a nice list of elements to learn and didn’t find one.
So let’s start with everyone’s first element past a sleeper:
What are your favorite elements? What lend well to building your own combos?
Next step is probably the Brother mount, which leads to my personal favorite, the Brother slack
imo the single most best yoyo tutorial series ever made apart from the Akitoshi control series (but that one isn’t relevant to this topic) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZEiZlN_m1PSOqnrhWEeOgrsTI-5Kow0S&si=tdKQqUtQLoXwv9cs
I made a post years ago. It’s just a list, no video links, but still a good jumping off point.
I didn’t really elaborate on this, but why learning elements is so good is because elements are what allow you to move the yoyo/string to enter mounts. There’s an infinite number of mounts, and trying to fixate on “common” mounts I think creates a scenario where you’re viewing yoyo through the lens of tricks mostly consisting of a couple dozen common central points. So yoyoing becomes figuring out how to get in and out of those few recurring mounts.
Viewing elements as the primary structure of yoyoing lets you view yoyoing through the lens of infinite mount creation. If you know more elements, you’ll simultaneously be able to create more mounts, and also have more ideas for what to do from your brand new mounts.
So like trapeze, brother mount, etc., those are just mounts, not elements. How you move from mount to mount, those transitional movements, those are elements.
It’s a little awkward to view yoyoing like this initially, but I think it’s fairly common, even if people don’t realize it. As people realize when learning trick tutorials on youtube, instead of learning the entire trick, you can fixate on learning specific transitions. And then messing around with those transitions from various other mounts to create original tricks.
The tech creators tutorials I linked do a good job of showing/explaining ways to manipulate the string to create new mounts, without needing the preface of having them exist within a defined “trick.”
Ohhhh, idk why but I thought “element” was like… any movement or landing, like any part of the trick including mounts. That’s a really helpful perspective!
Indeed. You taught me something here too. 
I think learning how to control slack is a great foundational skill. Here are a few of my favorite classic slack tricks.
Follow
Yuuki Slack
Revolutions
Cheese Whip
I need more slack in my life
It’s a lot of fun to experiment with! I didn’t realize how often I used slack in my trick set until I tried throwing outside on a windy day.
Yeah the wind really beefs up my hooks. Trying to play with the wind instead of against it is insane though. It’s really hard but you can do impossible stuff with wind-assisted slacks.
