I’m a relative beginner yoyoer and have been going through yoyo experts trick tutorials. But I have an issue…
I have the sleeper and breakaway under control and can do them multiple times accurately. But now I am trying to get into mounts for more advanced tricks and my accuracy and consistency goes out the door.
After weeks of practice I have been able to get my trapeze mount to a 50ish mount success but my front mount and my split bottom mount (split the atom trick) is rare for me to mount well enough to continue the rest of the trick.
I’m starting to think that my stance/throwing technique might be to fault for the inconsistencies in my throws. While the yoyoexpert tutorials are great for learning the tricks, does anyone know of some great tutorials for how to stand/ begin your throws to help with consistency?
Also, does the quality oh your yoyo affect how well you learn tricks?. I’m currently practicing on a cheap Duncan pro z, but I have a c3 speedaholic coming in soon. Will that improve things having a better throw to learn on?
I understand I need to practice, but what I am getting at is that if my technique is wrong, then I am practicing the wrong way and learning how to do it incorrectly…
As with most performance/skilled hobbies, there is usually a correct way (or technique) of how to do it properly. Thats why I am asking if anyone knows of tutorials that tell you the proper way to stand/throw for consistent correct throws.
Maybe a trick book, instead of online videos might be the way to go since they would have to explain everything in words that online videos dont have to worry about like stance, etc.
No special way to stand when you’re yoyoing. But for a normal forward throw, flex your bicep, curl your wrist towards your bicep, and raise your elbow so that it’s level with the ground. To release, snap your wrist and uncurl your bicep (letting your elbow drop). If your throws are still coming out crooked, then change something in your throwing position drastically (raise your elbow a couple more inches or something like that) and see if it helps or makes it worse. For example, if my throws aren’t as straight as I’d like them to be, I’ll usually move my elbow so that’s in front of the center of my chest. As for breakaways, it’s the same thing, but a tip that was told to me a couple of months ago has really helped improve my breakaways. Position your arm the same way as a front mount but pointing out straight to your right side (if you’re right-handed of course). Then move your arm about 10-20 degrees forward, I don’t know why, but that simple tip has helped my breakaways IMMENSELY. But in the end, there’s no real “trick” to throwing. Just practice, practice, practice and sooner or later you’ll notice that, as you change something in your arm’s position, your throws get better. That’s all I’ve got on that.
So it sounds like my stance is a bit off. Here is a quick diagram to show you what I mean. It sounds like you throw your sleepers across your chest whereas I have been trying to keep my throws in a 90 degree angle from my body.
Align your hands. When I was 10, I never hit a trapeze after 5 months of trying. When I started again, I realised that the trick was to align your hands. Make sure your hands are parallel and sticking out the same length, so if you throw straight, it should just fall into place. Of course, you have to adjust on the fly since it’s not an ideal world and things don’t just happen, unless you make them happen.
With trapeze one of the key elements is to make sure your non throw hand finger is near the yoyo when you try to land it. When the yoyo begins its arc around your finger try to have the string length just be a few inches. You can then let the yoyo slide down the string to the center.
I agree with vega, whenever you’re trying to land the yo-yo on a string, your finger should be as close as possible to it. This gives it much less space to move and is going to be much more consistent than if the yo-yo were swinging a foot away from your NTH. (Picture illustrates it better
I think the “correct” way of yoyoing is what makes you more comfortable in 90% of the cases. The other 10% is for tricks that require some non-intuitive actions/postures like the Magic Drop or Boingy-boing. The sleeper and breakaway are all about comfort and what let’s you use the most strenght possible without losing control.
Trapezes and mounts in general will land more frequently if the distance from the yoyo to the hand is shorter, just because there’s less room for error. Some may say that the closest you can play to the yoyo without actually touching it, the more advanced you are. If you can control the yoyo landing with your hand far away from the yoyo, that’s also an indicative of experience level.
It’s a matter of style if you want your hand close or far away from the yoyo, both will take practice and have tradeoffs. Playing near the yoyo augments the chance to touch it by mistake, playing far reduces the control on landing. Find a healthy equilibrium.
My personal preference is to play real close to the yoyo. For breakaways I flex my elbow in almost 90º to the front so my hand is totally perpendicular to my body. Then I flex my shoulder also to 90º to the side and rapidly pull it down when throwing the yoyo. After months of doing this I also became able to throw breakaways without moving my arm at all, just by flicking the wrist. If you practice consistently you’ll get that perk eventually. A lot in yoyoing requires strengthening of specific muscles of your arm that will only develop after consistent practice (this is one of the reasons to consider it a sport), STRENGHT gives you SPIN power but more importantly CONTROL over the yoyo.
