So I picked up the yoyo again almost half a year ago after a 20 or so year hiatus.
I’ve really had fun learning new stuff. The way I’ve tackled that currently is by either learning or working on something new every day.
And now I’ve added to my goal since I keep throwing my yoyos in to the ground. I’ve started tracking days without dings. With the promise to myself that when I get to ten I get to buy a new yoyo. (Sadly I absolutely smashed my yoyo about an hour ago…so back to 0 it is)
As a genuine question why don’t you just use a shorter string if dinging your yoyo is that common of an occurrence? In almost a year of playing every day I’ve only gotten one ding while playing 1A.
To be on topic though I just play all styles and it’s just fun to learn new stuff. I don’t really have a goal in mind. Just have fun playing every day and learning new tricks is a part of that. I think playing all styles definitely gives me a lot of inspiration as far as coming up with my own tricks goes.
I have to agree with @mable just shorten your string until you get better at controlling the yoyo. I took a20 year hiatus as well and came back a bit over 2 years ago. When i first got back into it i was hitting the floor pretty frequently, until i got that same advice. In the last year I’ve added a little length to the string since the tricks im doing are a bit easier with longer string. As i get more more tricks under my belt that require more string I’ll add the length. But since managing my string length i rarely ever ding a yoyo now.
As to what i do to improve I’ve been part of Trick-a-Week on this forum for the last 2 years, it’s a great way to discover new tutorials and throw with a group of people. I highly recommend you check it out. I rarely get the whole tutorial figured out in the week but i almost always pick up one or 2 new elements that i can use and practice.
It’s about building habits more than avoiding dings. Plus I live in a house with tile floors. Anything hits the ground even soft…It’s a nasty ding.
Also I’ve found that especially whip tricks are a lot easier to learn when there’s a little more string. So I’d rather learn to play with a bit of a longer string than to avoid the issue all together.
Besides…first few months I played a shorter string…here’s what my first modern yoyo looks like.
I think it’s really cool that you’re working to improve your throwing. While I certainly think that yo-yoing can be enjoyed without any specific goal, I too find a great deal of worth to be gained from setting one or more. I personally have set a number of goals involving throwing, some involving competing that I’d like to do soon, whether that be online or in person. Another is simply to have a great positive impact on the yo-yo community. Both of these goals can be achieved, but much like yourself I’m starting small. To answer your primary question though, I am a writer so I tend to turn to writing in all sorts of ways. When it comes to keeping myself on my toes, I like to keep some written logs in a notebook. I personally believe that it is important to challenge myself but I also value being reasonable and kind to myself when my throwing isn’t necessarily going the way I’d like it to. Keep it up!
With the few dingless throws that I have left I do just something like that. But like I said it’s more about building habits. So for my purpose dropping a yoyo on the mat still counts as a ding.
Yeah yoga mat or even a small rug is a lot better than nothing. I usually throw over a foam mat these days, I don’t think I’ve dinged a yoyo since. But if you don’t mind getting some dings then ply how you want to, it’s just a lot of us are collectors who like to keep our yoyos in good shape.
As for the improvement question, have you seen YoTricks’ Level Up program? It’s pretty cool, basically you make an account on their site and you track what tricks you’ve learned, and it recommends other tricks and tutorials in a kind of progression. I honestly don’t use it much anymore because I’m pretty happy with where I’m at, not really learning a ton of new stuff, but it was really helpful when I was first starting out and trying to learn lots of tricks.
i go where the yoyo takes me. i like to watch @AKYOYOMIKE a lot - besides being a good friend, his attitude and progression of throwing are a great inspiration for me.
finding inspiration is a powerful motivator, and i think there’s a lot of players and such you can be inspired by that can help - without trying to mimic them.
i play over a rug or laminate. laminate is more forgiving than tile, but it’s not a panacea.
I still make index cards on occassion. Write down a trick, pull it at random, look it up iif I forgot. Having a stack of cards reminds me I know quite a few when i blank out.
I usually learn one short trick / element while I work on a longer combo. I tend to work on a trick every week. I also like to watch pov yo-yo videos and slow them down and steal a bunch of elements . I’m not a seasoned player by any means but I think so far my progress has been good since i started about 2.5 years ago.
I wouldn’t say I ever really make an effort to improve, I just yoyo for fun really. But when I look at new tricks I only try to learn the ones with specific elements i’ve never done before, maybe never even seen before. Once you can learn that specific element in the trick/combo you can use it to build others. Try to exit/enter the mount a different way, drop a loop, land on a different string, or just find how you can incorporate it into an old trick for something entirely new. That’s how I normally go about learning new stuff.
I often see someone doing a particular trick, or style of trick, and decide that I’m going to be able to do that. I figure out what the first step to learning this particular thing is, and then practice it however much is needed.
This is kind of a “brute force” way to get good at yo-yoing, and it often resulted in me trying to learn tricks that were harder than my skill level warranted. (Ex. starting a Gentry trick that involved a gyro flop to a horizontal combo as after only 3 months of throwing).
But I think there is a lot to be said for jumping in with both feet.
I don’t want to give people flashbacks to controversial threads ( ), but in my experience, the key really is consistency. I was able to learn that Gentry trick, when I didn’t even know what a slack was when I started. lt took around a month, but didn’t put it down. I worked on it every day. I tried to practice in productive way. I broke it up into small elements, and targeted each one.
Few tricks will elude you long when given this treatment over the course of weeks.
I think its very easy to try a trick, fail twenty times in a row, and give it up as something for throwers younger than you, You know, the one’s who have 8 hours a day to practice, and only like horizontal (haha). But I think its very easy to underestimate what can be accomplished in days or weeks of practice. I run up against this tendency in my mind all the time, in yoyo, coursework, and music. Things seem impossible after failing for ten minutes. Learning when to ignore this feeling is key to improving in my opinion.
I think this is really good advice. Especially in regard to learning other styles, or even stuff like horizontal, a common phrase I see is “I’m not ready/I need to learn more” before people even attempt them. It’s easy to get intimidated by hard stuff in a way that makes you not want to attempt it. But once you just finally do it, it’s never as impossible as you thought, regardless of your skill level.
A mindset I got into from a previous hobby is to set your expectation to be failure 95% of the time, and to just stop caring about it. Failing doesn’t have to be frustrating or unfun. Like you said it’s a mindset you can overcome. Failing is just part of the learning process, and the act of yoyoing is fun regardless of whether you succeed or fail.
It’s not just time, it’s the persistance. I’d rather learn 3 or 4 easier moves to toss in the mix than 1 really difficult. I tend to gravitate towards moves I see a potential for helping with “flow,” which is something more of an instinct than something I can define. Maybe a new move that will keep a trick going in the same direction longer.
Interesting you should mention this. At least for me, flow (like Charles, Tyler, Anthony Rojas, etc) have is one of the exceptions to trying hard tricks early.
For me, flow comes once I’ve been doing a trick for YEARS. Once it’s been in my fingers and blood for as long as I can remember. Then, that particular style can START to happen. Flow is like the final step. It boggles my mind how much time the A/rt guys must have put into throwing to have the style they do.
And it’s hard, because this flow is an attractive style for new throwers. It’s very graceful. Not saying this is you at all, but I always think it’s a little odd when I see relative beginners buying Grails and doorknobs because they’re going to have flow. Or saying they don’t yo-yo fast because they’re focusing on flow.
When in my experience, that graceful execution is far harder than behind the back horizontal.
But who knows? You may pick it up faster than I can. I may just be “flow handicapped” haha. It often eludes me.
We are looking at it differently. Skin the Gerbil has flow imo, ladder escape does not, which is why I’m not a fan… a sudden stop in a trick where things get adjusted. A flowy trick might be very easy, and inherent to the trick itself.
Doc Pop still uses “Alpha Style” no longer seems to be a term.
Flow is also pputting your combos together logically, with good transitional moves, or elements that fit together well. Also timing.
I guess Flow can be learned from tutorials but it is something I think we stumble into. I watch tutorials mainly for elements and it might be months until, through messing around, I just try certain elements at different times and am amazed that certain elements just floooowwww together so nicely. I enjoy the hunt and the discovery and the mental rush of the discovery and the happiness that comes from the discovery.
), but in my experience, the key really is consistency. I was able to learn that Gentry trick, when I didn’t even know what a slack was when I started. lt took around a month, but didn’t put it down. I worked on it every day. I tried to practice in productive way. I broke it up into small elements, and targeted each one.
haha. It often eludes me.