I see youtubers like @Tvelto often describe yoyoing as a stress relieving activity, and I can see his point of view, but as a beginner that’s simply not my experience. Practicing tricks is very stressful for me because I am so hyperfocused on landing them properly. I have a very hard time relaxing while yoyoing. If anything, yoyoing for me is a stress inducing activity, not stress relieving.
Does anyone else feel tense or stressed out when yoyoing? Or is it a meditative experience for you?
Maybe once I become much more proficient I’ll be able to relax more, but at this point I’m kind of a bundle of nerves when I practice.
I find it quite relaxing if I’m just screwing around with tricks I know well or making up tricks. It can be stressful if I’m practicing for a performance that I don’t feel ready for or trying to increase accuracy on a specific trick. Basically I don’t like having a time limit on improvement and not being able to land a trick that I feel like I should be able to do. If you start feeling stressed out when you practice, maybe it’s best to take a step back and just enjoy the tricks you know well, and continue the grind when you feel inspired, rather than frustrated. You’re probably more likely to improve when you are relaxed, rather than when you are tense and hyper-focused.
Yo-yoing is honestly one of the most calming things I do. I use it to de-stress every day. I’ve been throwing for over 20 years, so most of what I do to relax is in “muscle memory.” Learning a new trick takes more concentration of course, but I still think it’s fun and stress-free. I think over time you will get to that spot too!
WARNING: long post! If you have a word digestion allergy; stop now and move along.
It primarily depends on how and/or why you approach throwing yo-yos.
If you are preoccupied with rapidly excelling in yoyo skills to a level beyond your actual potential; than it would not be unusual to identify you are in a state of self generated Stress.
If; like me; you throw yoyos because you simply enjoy them. And you throw yoyos with no fantasy of being the next World beater. And if you can come to terms that you can have a spinningly fun adventure; without feeling compelled to impress others. And you can recognize you can have fun throwing alone and also have fun throwing and sharing positive energy with other yoyo players or those that simply appreciate skill toy tricks at any level>>>>>>
Then; every time you throw a yoyo; feelings of stress should either be non existent or at least a very low level of stress(which may come into play after you have spent 90 straight minutes attempting the second pop up in Spirit Bomb 150 times in a row).
But other than various learning blocks even the Best players experience or exaggerated negative responses that result from loftily expectations; yo-yos should be nothing but relaxing fun.
I have no doubt that there are at least a few people that feel eating a bowl of ice cream can be stressful🤔
…Sometimes throwing yo-yos can be identified as stressful for an underlying reason. A person that may be dealing with one or more other stressors; may not experience enough enjoyment and/or distraction to compensate or cancel the other problems the person is dealing with.
If you use yoyos as a diversion to counterbalance other life struggles; you may gravitate to blaming yo-yos as be stressful pastime. When the frustration is not that yoyos are stressful but that the thrower identifies throwing as a ‘pain’ when it’s actually something else.
I’m leaving now; to go eat a big bowl of ice cream…
Very few de-stressing activities come with the potential to hit oneself in the head or hands when making a mistake. That potential, which exists in spades for a beginner, is a source of stress all by itself…
Well I got into yo-yoing at a particularly stressful time in my life. I was starting at A university and a new job and got a free yo-yo at work and it just grew from there. When I started I did it for 45-50 minutes at a time, and did not care that my hands hurt and my string finger was pinched. It was my stress reliever so I just would zone out and try one trick at a time and for as long as it took. I was so happy the first time I landed a man on the trapeze. It has sense grown to the thing I do that I always make sure is fun. I have a saying I wear out strings and not my nerves. Sure some tricks are hard but when it feels more like work I try another trick and come back to it later. Sometimes you will be surprised at how quickly you get some trick you think has to be impossible and a so called easy trick you just can not get. With a total of 15 years under my belt I am happy at the level I am at but still a tying to master tricks like Boing-e-boing. I mean unless you are trying to make it nationals or worlds in a few years and become the next John Ando or Gentry Stein or Evan Nagao try to have more fun. And I’m pretty sure all of them would say the same thing.
Most interesting that your response does not reflect the thoughts in your original post🤔
You said nothing about the impending Doom of getting smacked with a yo-yo; nothing.
That ‘is’ a form of potential stress generation.
But that stress is the result of fear of injury. It’s not that yo-yos themselves are stressful.
If you would have spelled out specifically why you might feel throwing yo-yos was a stress maker(like stating your personal stress is the/a result of fear; my answer could have more accurately addressed your question.
Personally I don’t have the slightest fear of getting hit with a yo-yo. Just like when I play baseball; I don’t fear getting clobbered with a pitch.
That’s why I stated it’s how you approach the situation.
You will most often potentially get the most accurate or reasonable responses if you make a deliberate attempt to utilize clarity in the wording of your initial question.
I find there are multiple sources of stress, tension, anxiety, or whatever you want to call it, and they occur in varying degrees of intensity depending on the situation.
My fear of injury, currently, stems from having done major nerve damage to my right thumb learning on responsive yoyos earlier on.
But there is also that sense of wanting to land the trick, and disappointment when it doesn’t land, especially when the mind is distracted or the body just isn’t cooperating that day for some reason. Constantly getting knots, or long loops of slack string tangled in the stringwind gets really, really annoying after a while. Frustration sets in, and the stress levels go up.
I may never reach the point where it’s just this breezy, casual, easy, fun activity that I can do without concentrating much, or without any concern for how well I am “performing”.
I have to put my card in the “Stress-free” hat. If i start bugging out on it, i sit it down and cime back another time. Maybe a day, maybe a week later. I always come back and remember that its fun, not work, for me.
I’m with Mo in that the only time I find it stressful is when I’m displacing some other stress within my life. I find the actual PLAY to be relaxing, but whenever you hang something else on it that relates to your own sense of purpose or self-worth, it can be a pretty harsh mistress. But I also don’t necessarily always NEED it to be stress-free - I sometimes like it to be a little stressful to keep me engaged.
Well that’s odd because I had to give my kendama away. I feel like at minimum I get a cool spin and return out of yo-yo no matter how bad my tricks are… and kendama just kinda sits there doing nothing unless you have supreme balance skills.
Yeah that’s kinda the thing about it. It seems like it’s almost so ridiculously impossible sometimes that I don’t feel bad for sucking. I kinda just intended it to be a mostly mindless pursuit.
But I will say that when I totally let go, and gave up on ever doing anything cool, I started to do cool stuff. I’ve been landing lunars lately which I coul never do before
I feel like relaxing while yoyoing is something you gotta learn how to do. I think it’s important to accept that missing your tricks when you’re practicing at home isn’t something that you should be ashamed of. When you think about it, isn’t it amazing that it’s even possible to land a little ball on a tiny string and manipulate it with enough grace to make it look beautiful? Yoyoing is hard, and it’s important to realize that it takes a lot of time to get good. That’s how I try to approach the stress, you just gotta remember how cool it is that you can do the things that you can do and not worry so much about what you can’t do.
I find that yoyoing just for fun isn’t stressful, while preparing and practicing for a contest is pretty nerve racking, especially, if you feel unprepared a few weeks before the contest. Unless a person a busy, sponsored player, they probably won’t compete that often, so I would say yoyoing is fearly stress-free. Please bear in mind that this is my personal opinion gained from my own experience. Other yoyoer’s might be different.
It really depends on my situation. When children are around me they tend to forget that the yoyo could potentially hurt them if they have no situational awareness. This is also the case when people start to crowd around you to watch you play. They tend to forget about being hurt because they are just trying to get as close to the action as humanly possible. When I play secluded from everyone it is relaxing.
