I’m starting to work on tricks that require hopping and popping like kwyjibo or eli hops. Trying to get the feel but I’m almost always either doing more of a hop, moving the whole string plane up, but that doesnt get as much height, or when i try to separate my hands more/faster to give it a pop, it goes into orbit. Do these tricks use more of a hop, a pop, or is it just about feeling out the middle ground? Ive tried to isolate that and just practice starting in trapeze, hop/pop it up and try to catch it back on the string. Any other tips would be welcome
They’re very different tricks. In Eli Hops, the movement is completely sideways. Instead of hopping it up, you just move both of your hands towards each other and the speed at which you do it kinda determines the angle of it. To land it, just get your hand as close as possible to the yoyo before the landing. It takes a while to get a feel for it.
For regular hops, like in Kwyjibo, it is just hopping it straight up off the string. Both hands should be moving straight up at the same time to get that pop.
These are two control workshops that might be insightful. One is from a 1.5 mount and one is from an undermount so not exactly trapeze hops but he explains the mechanics well and they are just good to watch and eventually practice.
If the Yoyo is orbiting in a circle instead of going straight up and down, you’re not timing the movement of the hands correctly. This is kind of hard to explain bc it is such a feel thing but pull hands apart to send the Yoyo up and then move them together to allow it to travel up then apart again to pull the Yoyo back down.
One of my favourite warmup tricks is a mix of Black Hop / Eli Hop. Gets all my fingers working together like a pulley.
In general I try to get all my hops as high as possible, I don’t really care about speed combos. When I orbit out of a hop I try to exaggerate the movement to show I’m doing it on purpose, go high then full speed into a complex looking mount.
For Eli hops at any projection, best advice I ever got was to remember perpendicularity. Start in a good v shaped trapeze (biased to NTH), toss while keeping the first two string lengths perpendicular to each other. Catch and repeat.