I have been throwing for about 9 months and only know one other person IRL who yoyos (i think he is about the same skill level as myself). Aside from videos posted by pros and legends, i have nothing to compare myself to. Ill try to describe where i am at right now:
There is a playlist on a youtube channel (www.youtube.com/BillyBobs) called “Yoyo String Tricks 1A - Easy to Difficult”. With the exception of Brent Stole and boingy boing, i can do everything up to Green Revolution which is 49th out of the 66 videos. I can do all of these pretty consistently and know a couple other tricks not on the playlist with similar difficulty to kwijibo or green revolution.
If 1 is someone trying to learn a bind and 10 is Gentry stein, about where would you place me?
just my take at such a scale:
1: learning a bind…
2: intermediate-advanced 1
3: advanced 2-master
4: starting to learn from pros and make own tricks. feeling able to learn most tricks due to sufficient understanding of various elements.
5-6: having enough tricks to throw a decent 1 min freestyle with fewer mistakes. able to make videos in general.
6-7: forming a personal style and can throw an original 3 min freestyle without much difficulty.
above 8: Not something I can relate to atm. at this level you should be confident to compete in final rounds of competitions. the difference between levels 8, 9 and 10 is generally indiscernible from a perspective below level 5-6.
In response to this, I’m going to change up my scale a bit. 1 is still a person trying to learn a bind, but a skill level of 10 now relates to the skill of pro players in general, meaning anyone sponsored by a yoyo company who competes. I should point out that i am quite capable of a 1 minute freestyle with little to no mistakes. Once i start to learn a new trick, I generally don’t try to learn another until i can do it 9/10 times. I don’t try to learn a ton of tricks at once.
It sounds like you haven’t started making up your own tricks yet but know some tricks on the more advanced side so Id say you’re a 3 or 4 at the moment
Well I tinker here and there with tricks. I just assume that if I make something up it’s already a trick. For example, I figured out a one handed bind a few months ago without ever seeing it before but I figured someone else must have done it already. And yeah I was right ha
8 is at the point where you can make finals at regular sized contests (me) but not at big contests (me again)
9 is making finals at big contests
and 10 is placing at big contests
This is definitely a humbling scale. Putting freestyle competition winning at the top really puts “learning tricks” in perspective. That being said this definitely puts me in about a 3.5 range. I’ve learned the entire list up through advanced 2 on this site plus some extras of similar skill from other sites. I’ve also picked up bits and pieces from the expert list and can mostly get through White Buddha. When I can get the 1.5 mount/buddha’s revenge bucket type thing to work anyway… I have definitely started being able to put together a few basic combos but probably nothing real original. And I can definitely learn some moves/techniques/tricks from watching videos without tutorial but usually only based on certain types of tricks. Constantly learning from this community.
I would put myself at a 5-6 I csn mske a decent yoyo video (Check my signature) And I can do a decent one minute freestyle I mean I got 2nd on the Amature division at MWR so it must have been pretty decent.
I’ll redo this
1: A non-yoyoer
2: Learning beginner tricks
3: Learning intermediate-advanced tricks
4: Learning all the tricks
5: Making your own tricks
6: Competing with a full routine of originality (EDIT:) or inventing (not just discovering) your own tricks
7: Doing well in contests
8: Placing at contests
9: Doing well in big contests
10: Placing at big contests.
This puts me at 7-8
