Another parallel can be drawn from a yoyo freestyle to something that isn’t as much of a sport, but requires levels of creativity similar to those required to create a yoyo freestyle. A jazz improve solo. To create a solo, you need runs and ideas that you are familiar with. These runs/ideas create your style, just like how the tricks someone might do in a yoyo freestyle or create makes that persons style as a yoyoer. These ideas often are inspired from other sources, such as seeing a different yoyoers freestyle, or listening to a jazz players solo. Someone might hear/see something they like and take that bit, and tweak and mess with that until it is something else, something new. There aren’t set guidelines for this creation, the closest thing in jazz to a guideline might be a scale. But the point is to be creative, and not be within a set of guidelines. Was thinking about the parallels between jazz and yoyo the other day, and thought this was a nice place to put it. Hope this makes sense.
I think this is…better…but I still don’t really agree with it.
When you’re playing at a high level in any sport, every player guides their own development. There is no one way, or even 100 ways, to be a great basketball player. One player might find more success putting the ball on the floor and developing his handling skill, another player might be a playmaker who is always in the right spot, and a third player might focus on perimeter shooting. And in between there, you’ve got 1000 other players who are developing toward any sort of combination of these skills.
A coach doesn’t create a player. A coach takes the players he/she has, who are individually skilled, and assembles them in a way that they think will be the most successful. But each player has still always been entirely responsible for making themselves valuable on the court, and each of them has spent years focusing more or less on any certain thing that plays to their advantage.
Being great at anything is hard, and it’s always for the same reason. To be great, a person has to develop a unique set of skills that makes them irreplaceable.
I know what you’re saying, and I agree. I’m just not sure that it’s addressing the point; it’s reinforcing what we already know, which is that elite athletes work very hard and have talent that they have put incredible effort (with very rare exceptions) into. I think all of that is a given. It’s also a given that different skills are the focus for different positions and even different styles within that position.
I don’t think anyone disputes that athletes in all sports put in that level of effort and have an incredible amount of talent!
I wouldn’t discount the value of coaching, though. It’s not necessarily true that the player is solely responsible for making themselves valuable on the court. Going back to when they were kids, the skills they learned and practiced were directed by coaches. Drills they did even on their own time (due to their passion and drive!) were still borrowed from their coaches… in cases with an absence of “great” coaching, they probably turned to a mentor of some sort (skilled parent/sibling/friend). Very few players if any ever made it to the elite level without having gone through coaching at every stage. That can’t be ignored! And I think if you ask these athletes, the vast majority will happily and eagerly lay all kinds of credit at the feet of most of their coaches or at minimum one particularly impactful coach.
Great athletes CAN be made. We see it in every sport… some of these people come through it thankful that it’s over because they were forced into it by ambitious parents. And if these players reach those world-class levels without even love of the sport, who can we “credit” but the system that produced them? Not everyone is born with natural talent, but nearly anyone can accomplish amazing things with frightening hours of drill.
Thankfully, I’ve never heard of anyone who became a top-level yoyoer because their parents forced them to practice for hours a day. 
But now I’ve derailed myself!
Now you’re not addressing my point. My point had nothing to do with whether or not players put in effort or have talent.
My point was that players, in any sport including professional yoyoing, all face the exact same challenge whether it’s a team sport with coaches or not. That challenge is making themselves unique players. A basketball player is not “good” because they have solid fundamentals. That player is simply a good shooter, a good dribbler, a good passer, and a good defender. But this is not how a great player is made.
After the fundamentals, there is an entire universe of unique skills and combinations of skills that players have to explore and utilize AND they have to figure out which ones are worth their personal time to develop. Finding this niche is how one becomes great, and I think it’s just as difficult in a coached sport as it is in yoyoing. This is the mental aspect of the game.
I do agree with everything you’ve said, so I’ll stop there before I go off on a tangent that doesn’t address your points again. What you’ve said… it’s all full of truth! 
I might end up being indirectly a parent in that category. However, it’s not due to being forced. My son will play on his own, but is more likely to throw when I’m throwing or others are around and are throwing. I’d like him to compete some day, but that has to be HIS decision, not mine. I refuse to force him to do something like that.
Let’s go with the de-rail for a moment so I can pull it back around:
At the barber/beauty college I partially own, we got students going through the motions. They graduate, they can pass their license exam, they are well skilled and they are marketable and employable. Hours of drill and repetition is a proven method of learning skills. It works. The issue here is that the students for the most part lack that internal drive. There’s a fire inside to get done and get licensed so they can get a job and get money, but even so, that fire is a burning ember and not a roaring bonfire. They don’t have the complete proper set of internal motivation. I’m not gonna complain about people who are money driven, it gets stuff done. However, love of money leaves people a bit empty.
In my case, I’m no longer really doing audio work for money. OK, yes, I get money. I can’t argue that, I ain’t stupid. I’m not gonna give stuff away. However, I do not charge anywhere close to what I should be charging. Removing money from the equation lets me get back to the core of doing audio: the art and passion I have for the craft of mixing live bands and producing sound for events. I am enabling people to do amazing things they normally would not have been able to do since I can call my own shots and do stuff on the cheap, yet get the same quality of service that an A-list touring performer would get.
Put this back into yoyo and sports in general:
Without that internal fire and drive to be the best they can because they love what they do, that’s a major divider between a player who is good vs a player who will be great. Having worked with countless professionals of sports(and entertainment), they aren’t just going through the motions. They are driven by internal forces to excel at what they do, and they take whatever efforts they can to improve “their game”. They love what they do. You can tell. It’s obvious.
In my case, at the moment, my passion for yoyo is at an all time low. It happens. It will pass. However, I do want to improve. I do enjoy it. Right now, I’m just at a cycle where I’m just not skill-toy centric. There’s a combination of many things going on, but the core is that my priorities are adjusted at the moment and I’m full on in audio mode again. I declined on audio for a while to focus on yoyo, which in turn helped re-ignite the audio stuff. So, I may be at a low on yoyo, but thanks to yoyo, it helped get audio pushed back where it needs to be.
I think once things settle down and I can get the new audio desk, it will be full on “learn this bad boy” and train my crew on it. Once I feel comfortable with the new desk, I can spend more time with skill toys, or at least I think that’s what will happen.
In this situation, the internal fire to excel with yoyo will return. The bad part will be that my skills will take forever to develop. I will NEVER be a great player, but it won’t be for lack of trying. As long as I continue to improve, that’s really about all I care about. It’s not that I have low objectives or set the bar low. The bar is set high, out of reach, most likely. It’s good to have a target to aim for.
Some of us can unlock our potential. Some of us need help. Most of us can benefit from some impartial third party busting our chops a bit and pushing us. I’m gonna admit right now, I’m stalled at 2A. I’m not dead with it. The issue is I need to get my left hand looping decently. Practice, that’s what it’s taking, that’s what is needed. Once I get there, I’m gonna need a “Coach” of sorts to “kick my butt” a bit to get me over any hurdles so I can start looping with both hands at the same time. Similarly, it helps having that outsider helping us move outside of a safe zone so we can move forward.
I really don’t see how yoyo differs from any other individualized sport. Other than it’s not being seen as a “traditional sport”, I just don’t see any issues. There are plenty of sports that stress individualized expression and add artistic elements. Professional dance, elements of gymnastics, ice skating and dancing just to name a few I can think of real fast.
Did I land back on the rails?
In most of those sports with “individualized elements” you will find a choreographer. At junior levels this is sometimes also the coach, or a motivated older athlete who either volunteers or is paid. At the higher levels, this is always a paid choreographer. And they don’t come cheap! My wife’s family has a long background in figure skating, I am good friends with the owner of a dance studio (they have competitive dancers as well; she herself is one!), and my kid attends gymnastics, where we see the activities of all levels.
Funny thing about yoyo: if you were motivated, you could find some coaching. Actually, for my Old Folks battle, I solicited opinions from some friends regarding trick selection. However, I think for the most part it is considered YOUR role to design your own routine. If you had a routine planned for you and people knew about it, you would be met with derision and scorn. If I’m being totally honest, I would feel differently about a competitor who simply performed someone else’s routine compared to a competitor who does it all him/herself.
Studio42, I think you’re in the green for your son’s yoyoing. Being motivated by being around other people throwing isn’t the same as driving him to yoyo practice at 5am and making him do 2 hours of drills before school. It should also be stated in case it wasn’t clear: there ARE kids who are motivated even at a young age to be that person. It’s not all about misguided parents when there’s that much dedication to a sport!
On a completely different point of biew, I literally lost 5 lb in 2 months despite my lack of any exercise. This was however the 2 months before Worlds
Guys, I think this is getting a little too deep, LOL.
I was essentially stating that for me, as a middle-schooler, the path simply seems easier in other sports than yoyoing. While you guys are talking about yoyoing versus other sports at the professional level, I was talking about it more along the lines of middle school sports, hahaha. I had been going through a somewhat emotional time with this though this past weekend (don’t ask, it is kind of complicated). I simply decided to post about it.
Don’t take it too seriously, LOL.
As certain kinds of people get older (like me!), a lot of their enjoyment comes from critical thinking. I can see how to a middle-schooler it might look like a lot of thinking (and maybe it is!) but it’s not particularly deep or serious to have these kinds of conversation… it’s usually just a bit of fun. Don’t worry on our accounts.
LOL, I actually like to think pretty deep, but it just kind of seemed like y’all were kind of “on me”, LOL.
And I won’t worry about it too much now. Just a bunch of “grown-ups” having fun, apparently!
Yup, this is the right mindset. We are not “on you” at all. Just debating for the sport of it. Exploring the ideas behind the OP for fun.