Best advice I can give you for the snapstart, just snap your fingers for a few seconds like you would to the tune of a song, now put the yoyo in your hand and do the same thing because that’s really all it is. I think the mistake a lot make is that they think you have to physically like push the yoyo down to make it spin and really it’s not that it’s just literally snapping your fingers. And obviously the harder you snap the better it will be but just be careful not to slip off the yoyo when you snap because that’s an ouchie
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Yeah it’s decent it just needs practice like I get enough spin usually to bind but it’s not at stable as I would like it to be consistently… my prob is that I always default to the other one I got down and forget about it until after I get it bound up in my hand like it hits my hand and then I’ll be like dang I should’ve tried snapping
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Was on the first festival on the weekend. Finally good spring weather yeah! Need a couple of days to sober out and get back to practice. Zach’s tricks are always super nice.
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Okay, I’ve decided I’m starting with sidestyle 3a lol. Got the 1.5 kink mount down, but I think I’ve actually learned this mount before when we had the trick a day with every throw thread going. Either way this seemed like night and day from frontstyle which makes sense though because I literally don’t throw frontstyle at all
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I got a Kasm a little bit ago and I’m using it as an excuse to go back and do the two 0A weeks I skipped before. It actually took me longer to film one mystic dump LOL. That’s a deceptively hard trick.
Week #7 Sweater Combo
Week #6 Mystic Dump
I think I’m only missing two weeks now. The Angel combo and Serpentine, need to go back and do those at some point.
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Nice those looked sick even though the stall things feel like nails on a chalkboard to me (I don’t know why 
I’m sorry hah! I want to still do these tricks too). I like the completionism (?) I learned the first weeks picture tricks when I was still lurking before I made an account and maybe it’s time to go back and try to remember what that was. I do wanna go back and check off all the weeks but I’m making up my own order. Tight tricks!
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To hopefully make this thread easier to navigate, especially for people who’d like to revisit previous weeks, I added a discussion link to each week in the original post. That discussion link will take you to the specific spot in the thread for each week, so you can see the discussion surrounding each trick.
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Wow that’s a five star mod move right there thank you!
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Almost the Keisuke Shibata picture trick from week 1. I can’t figure out how to get the stop and go thing to work right it seems like a 50/50 chance that it binds and I don’t know why.
This take I was surprised it worked and missed the catch lol but I’m out of filming time and it’s cool w/ me I didn’t crush this one. This isn’t the trick for me anyway but I’m glad to learn it.
Edit: Here’s the trick good because it was bothering me. Slack needs to hit w some force so it swings towards the nth to get the bind to activate.
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It’s almost May and that means it’s time to get that string off your finger and onto a counterweight. This month we’re going to try something a little different to hopefully encourage more people to pick up 5A, as well as exposing people to some new 5A tricks to learn. So there should be something here for all skill levels.
If you need some basic information to start:
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Shorten your string! The average 5A string length is between 90-100cm! Shortening your string will make everything easier to keep in line, 5A becomes much easier to control with shorter string. If you want maximum control, keep that string on the shorter end of the spectrum. If you want to slow things down just a bit, keep that string on the upper end of the spectrum. Both are valid, but I’d advise newer players to stay short.
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Every yoyo is a 5A yoyo! You don’t need any specific yoyo to play 5A. In my opinion the best 5A yoyo is the yoyo you’re most comfortable with for 1A. Whatever your 1A preferences are, you’re probably going to find yourself being comfortable with those same yoyos for 5A. I like big diameter yoyos that are narrow and heavy! But other people like small diameter yoyos that are wide and light. There’s no right or wrong yoyo to use for 5A, so just use whatever you like.
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Don’t be afraid to let go! Drops are an inevitable part of 5A. But yoyos are far more durable than you might think. Fear of letting go will make learning tricks and obtaining better control of the yoyo much harder. You might put a few scrapes or a ding on your yoyo, but you’re not going to break them. Yoyos are built to be played, I promise you they can take any 5A abuse you’ll throw at them. If you’re really worried about damage you can go outside and play over grass, and you should be safe from dings.
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Counterweights don’t really matter much! (but at the same time, they do matter). There’s no universally agreed upon “best” weight for a counterweight, or ideal ratio of counterweight weight vs. yoyo weight. The ratio has changed over the years, people used to say the counterweight should be 1/7th the weight of the yoyo, but in the past decade people have leaned more into saying 1/6th the weight of the yoyo is ideal for modern tricks. But the weight of the counterweight just depends on what kinds of 5A tricks you want to do, how long your string is, and your general speed of play. Anything in the 8-12 gram range is going to be universally good, and you should be able to learn anything you want to with any weight/yoyo combination. Just avoid counterweights that have sharp/pointy edges that might hurt you or things around you, or counterweights that have any kind of lip/ridge that could get caught on either the string or your clothing. Dice/cylinders/spheres/polyhedrons are the shapes of 99% of counterweights available for a reason, some people make novelty stuff work, but as a beginner sticking with the basics is preferrable.
If you need a counterweight, you can pick one up from YoyoExpert. All of these will be great options to start with. My personal favorites here are the Candy Dice Pro Original and Candy Dice Pro DK. I like counterweights with grooves because they make changing strings/swapping yoyos more convenient. I find bead counterweights to be a bit of a hassle to string up, but really you
should just buy whichever you think looks the coolest! Products – tagged "counterweight" – YoYoExpert
Now onto the tricks for this week!
For newer players: 360 → 720
This should help you start to understand momentum on the counterweight and how to just catch and release.
For advanced players: Tower to tower
Something a little short but techy to start it off with
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Did this one a while back. May make an improvement video but here it is for now:
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Nice, I avoided posting the first Bever tutorial since that had been posted previously in this thread. I just ordered a camera head mount so one of the weeks this month should be an original 5A combo from me.
Except some fun variety coming up, I’d like to think I have some good picks.
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Yesss stoked for this, I haven’t been a part of a 5a May in over 10 years lol
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Towers like this are always tricky because you either go slow and get better proportions, or you just do the trick quicker without caring as much about how specific formations look. Some fun movements in this though.
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I was having trouble figuring out the second tower until I started turning my pointer finger on my throw hand inward. That made it much easier. This way, it’s both easier to throw the counterweight and hold the shape of the tower
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Finally got my 0A weeks done.
TAW23-6. Mystic Dump. This one I did both the standard Mystic Dump and a Varial into Mystic Varial combo.
TAW23-7. Sweater Combo. This one was much harder than I anticipated, keeping things in plane with all those pull-overs is tough.
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Dang we had totally opposite experiences, sweater combo was pretty much an instant land for me, but it took me like 15 minutes to land a single mystic dump LOL.
That takes such a high level of control to get the yoyo to flip just the right amount and actually hit the string.
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tbh flips and varials are some of my most consistent tricks with 0A play outside of shoot the moon, i practice them so much lol… really close to hitting lunar varials finally
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This is a really good tip, keeping my TH index curled in the entire time instantly made my proportions consistently good.
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Been pretty rough on the barracuda and had this happen this morning…I was like dang mable idk about that line cuz I just busted the cuda in half…nope! It untwisted itself open? Kinda wild and it’s super scratched and dinged up now because I’m dumb and was playing over concrete…but still dead smooth! Lol just stoked for May!
Also would like to usher a warning the others just starting 5a—consider playing w closed toed shoes because I was doing the flip flops outside and the cuda swam down and bit my foot real hard
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