I said I skipped a couple of the beginner tricks (for now). That isn’t equivalent to stating that the ladder is unimportant to me, either blatantly or otherwise.
I know what you said
May also do some absolute good…you should read the “Steve Brown” quote/description on how to be a professional yoyo player and what that means exactly…its here in the forum discussions…read it check it out!?
What sort of venue space do you have available for starting a yoyo club?
I don’t, but it’s a dream of mine. Probably years in the future if I’m completely realistic
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How important is the trick ladder to me? Not very. But I see its merit and design. I like to follow my own path of what may interest me. I do not compete, I do not care who is better than someone else, and i dont give much a hoot about any “order” one might be advised to follow. Even if the lists and advise is sound, and I would also advise learning as many of the basics as possible before moving on.
It ONLY helps you, when you drill the basics. Assuming of course, you avoid the burnout that looms over any grind that your not 100% into.
That being said, I am not a rando that thought that yoyo looked cool and wanted to learn. Im coming from a decently long history of being a performer, teacher, and manipulative artist of many forms. Juggling, footbag, contact juggling, buugeng, staff, double staff, palm spinning, poi, fire dance, music performer, and many more types of practictioner. I am more than familiar with the concept of building a solid foundation of fundamentals before moving on to the harder more extreme stuff especially in the performing world.
Now before you go too deep into this and start raving “you are contradicting yourself!” You’d be correct. I am contradiction myself. But this is for another reason. And that reason? That is because I yoyo selfishly. No seriously. I yoyo for me. I do not yoyo for others. Sometimes I do share a vid or insta every now and then, but most of my sharing is either gear pics, or reviews, sprinkled in with some feedback here and there.
Unlike my past life of being a professional performer, it was imperative that I was as good and solid and consistent as can be. That comes with the 10,000 hours practice and having a rock solid foundation of fundamentals and never trying any trick or technique that you are not fully on point with during any performance or comp.
Now I like it when others enjoy seeing what im doing and ask questions, I don’t mind at all. I want them to love yoyo too, but my yoyo path is personal and emotional. My feelings guide me on what i do or dont do in yoyo. I do what feels good, and learn what challenges me. I am not trying to be great. Heck, im barely trying to be good. and thats OK. Its all about the reasons why you are yoyoing to begin with. The trick ladders are guides. They are aides, to help you along and give inspiration.
Competition driven players would do well to follow these ladders to a T and master them all. Casual players, it should not really matter on the condition that you are having fun. Thats the one real rule here. As long as your having fun and not hurting anyone, you are doing it right as far as i am concerned. Learning the basics is paramount to being great. But if you dont care about being great, then chuck the rules to the trash and follow your heart. Its a toy. Play with it. Enjoy it and at times, share it.
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I like this, it’s pretty much where I’ve been up to this point with yoyo. I would like to go back and learn the basics though, because I do intend on being a teacher someday. If I’m going to be teaching people to Basics, I might as well know the basics.
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I actually haven’t looked at the list in a long time. I remember learning almost everything through the advanced section 1, then cherry picking what I like from the rest. This was also around the time I started making up my own basic tricks and combos.
Now that I’m looking at the list again, I’m realizing the trick list on YYE is structured extremely well. A lot of the beginner tricks aren’t really necessary for modern 1a play but they’re a good start to help you better control your yoyo, and they’re all cool tricks to show to people that don’t yoyo. I’m also an advocate for learning responsive play before jumping into unresponsive.
Almost everything in intermediate and advanced is very important because they introduce you to the basic mounts and some of the most basic and common elements and tricks within those mounts.
Advanced 2 and expert introduces you to some more advanced but quick tricks like laceration, suicides, and magic drops as well as other short combos that have common elements used in more advanced 1a play.
The master tricks are a good ending point as they give you a foundation on how combos should and can be structured.
A skilled player should really know the vast majority of the tricks, or at least the elements within those tricks, on the YYE list
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Nah…It’s a hobby…you go through it in the way that you have most fun. If that’s meticulous yo-yoing step by step through a series of tutorials…awesome…
If it’s balls to the wall $200 bimetal unresponsive play learning Spirit Bomb first…you do you.
No rules here buddy. Unless you’re aiming at worlds…it’s probably just best to do what makes you have the most fun.
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Lol I’m 4 years into yoyoing and have never used a responsive 1a yoyo to learn tricks.
Start learning other players’ tricks once you’ve completed the expert (part 1 and 2) tricks. A good video tutorial youtube channel would be mrmatio. The tricks taught on his videos incorporate variations of new elements mixed in with the tricks you’ve already learned. So, you can start from there. By the way it’s a good idea to skip picture tricks because they do not help your fundamentals and you can always come back to them later. Oh and also, if you can…start using an unresponsive yoyo and learn to bind; it makes learning tricks way easier.
Once you’ve got to expert or even advanced tricks, you probably won’t hit the tricks at a 99 percent rate. Move on once you can hit like 2/3 of the attempts.
It really is OK to practise whatever tricks you want. You’re quite right.
I just feel that the very basics should never be forsaken if you are working through the trick ladder.
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Our learn section is set up to give you a good knowledge base for yo-yo tricks. it covers all the basics so there might be some stuff you aren’t interested in. If you go through and learn them all then that’s great. If you skip over some that’s great too.
I personally skipped over a BUNCH of the videos when I started learning to yo-yo. Once I learned to bind I went straight for spirit bomb and then and whut because I thought they looked the coolest. I probably would have picked up tricks faster and understood the elements better if I learned all the previous tricks in order, but I still had fun with it and that’s really all that matters. We’re playing with toys after all, if you’re having fun then you’re doing it right.
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Yeah, that’s exactly how I feel about picture tricks at the moment. Right now I’m concentrating mostly on just nailing my basic side and front mounts. I feel those are far and away more important and foundational to everything else I will try to do with a yoyo than Jamaican Flag or Eiffel Tower.
I have some unresponsive yoyos and I’m trying to learn to bind, but I haven’t gotten the hang of it yet. Typically the yoyo either gets tangled around my off hand, or it flies off-string towards my throw hand and just bounces off my palm. Obviously my technique needs work!
I learned a few things off the trick ladder on this site, they were helpful. You need to know basic things like throws, mounts, undermounts, trapeze, etc. It helps to practice those on their own in order to move onto more advanced things. If you can’t hit a trapeze consistently, it’s going to be more difficult to learn something like Kamikaze. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it does help to have some fundamentals down before taking on more advanced tricks. Other than that, just learn whatever looks cool or interesting to you, skip what doesn’t seem interesting. It’s that simple. I’ve been throwing for about two and half years, and I think I’m getting to be a pretty solid thrower. I have a bunch of my own combos I Iike doing and at any given time I’m in the middle of learning a couple of other things. I don’t rush it and I don’t have an agenda of any kind. I just go wherever this hobby takes me. To date, I know exactly zero picture tricks. They just don’t interest me. It’s only been within the last year or so that I’ve picked up some responsive throws. Just now getting better at looping and front-style tricks on those. It’s actually pretty fun, but not required.
I do think it might be helpful to maybe update the ladder categories on this site. There may have been a time where being able to do And Whut made you a yoyo master, but by today’s standards, it’s a pretty intermediate trick.
You bring up a good point, Oldthrower3000. I really like the idea of a curated list of tricks to learn by stages. But how do you decide which difficulty level a trick belongs in? I mean, a beginner is a beginner regardless of the ever-ascending standards for competition-level skill, right? Is a trick like And Whut really easier for someone working their way through the ladder today than it was, say, five years ago? I mean, the ladder is primarily aimed at measuring the progress of a new learner, not someone who has been competing for years, right?
The YYE tricklist was made over 10 years ago when yoyos were a lot worse and unforgiving compared to today for the most part. That made the overall level of yoyoing and standard of being considered “intermediate” or “advanced” lower than today. Even then, the “master” level tricks would be considered the beginning stages of advanced play I would say.
Fair enough. Sounds like most, if not all, of the “Intermediate” tricks could be moved to the Beginner category, and basically everything shifted down a level from what they currently are in the ladder.
I don’t think And Whut is any easier for a beginner to learn than it ever was. It was actually the first long trick I ever learned and it took me a couple months to land it properly. I started throwing mid-December a few years ago and it took me until February to hit the trick (I remember I hit it the first time on Valentine’s day in 2016. My wife was not impressed). I could barely throw a straight breakaway and I was still missing trapezes sometimes, but I just decided to take on And Whut because it looked cool. I’m old and half blind, so if I can learn it, anyone can. But certainly doesn’t make me a yoyo master. I’m not suggesting changing the order of difficulty of the ladder, just the categories themselves. I realize now that the categories are just kinda tongue-in-cheek, but as a brand new thrower it was a little misleading.