I was taking a look back through my past history with yoyoing and was analyzing the throws that I found to be my favorites during certain times, and I found that over the years, they seemed to change on a year to year basis, and I wondered how they correlated to players I followed and enjoyed watching at the time, as well as my own trick development.
I’m wondering how this works for the rest of you?
For myself, when I first started out around the beginning of 07, I followed Hiroyuki Suzuki with a passion. I loved the way he did his tricks and I wanted to make my tricks look the same. I used a speeder quite a bit during that time, and even though my coordination was nowhere near anything like Mickey at the time, I tried to do lots of quicker paced combo’s that were heavily build off the 1.5 mount.
In 2008. I got out of my “Mickey” phase and had built quite the collection. One of my big inspirations of the time was John Ando, but also Adam Brewster. Both of them had started using bigger tricks that involved more of their arms, and I loved the idea of breaking yoyoing beyond the confines of just the hands and fingers. My love of the time was the Bear vs. Man. Its stability allowed me to keep the yoyo moving about me without worry of tilting off plane, and truly, this yoyo became my all time favorites that I would talk about daily online as if everyone needed to experience this yoyo immediately.
2009 I very much got into John Chow’s style of 1A, and watching him made me want to make my tricks more technical, but keeping a flowing style that I had in the previous year. While the Bear vs. Man remained a favorite of mine, I ended up falling for the YoyoFactory Superstar, and used mine quite a bit throughout that year. My tricks got a bit more technical, but I very much had a focus of keeping things flowing.
2010 was the last of my active earlier years and I ended up fading away a bit. I still used mainly my BVM and Superstar, but I started to get busy with other things in life and I didn’t follow many playrs at that point. Things remained like this through the next few years. Not following up on contest, not watching videos, not visiting the forums like I once had etc. But from time to time, I would pick up a yoyo and do an old trick for old times sake.
This year, 2014, I became curious of what was going on, and after a childhood friend of mine showed that he had gotten a C3 speedaholic, I watched some videos of that year’s contest, picked up my yoyo’s again, and was hooked. As of now, I’m sort of overwhelmed with how many good yoyoers there are! And trying to find my way and place back in the community has been interesting, but through the transition, I have found players that I very much enjoy watching. Ricardo Fraolini is a truly incredible person to watch, Charles Haycock is a player I follow now with a passion for his flow and smooth style and Peter Pong is another who truly floors me every time I see him yoyo. I would say that I take great influence from many of these players now and watching them always gives me inspiration for new sorts of tricks. My main yoyo as of now is a switch back and forth between my BVM and the YoyoFactory 888 07 version. Undersized, yet quick and stable, perfect for what I like to do with my yoyoing now. A lot has changed through the years, and yoyo’s are no exception!