Archives for May 3, 2013

Another glorious Friday! Are you all biting your nails in anticipation of the Duncan announcement tonight? I’m not going to spoil it, but I’m pretty stoked and highly recommend you check back at midnight. In the meantime, though, there are tricks to learn!

This week we’re gonna be tackling whips and a couple other new school slack-y elements. These tricks are usually done on unresponsive yo-yos, but with a little bit of practice and some imagination you can fit them into a stall-heavy diet surprisingly well. I will say that these tricks are particularly susceptible to being knucklebusters, so throw soft and maybe stay away from super heavy razor-edged yo-yos (do you have those?), but whatever, danger is fun! For what it’s worth, I use a Duncan Butterfly.

The first trick in the video is probably the easiest stall whip to learn. It’s based on Spencer Berry’s classic laceration trick, but because it lands in a stall, you have to trigger the response of the yo-yo at the beginning and you have significantly less time to work with. It’s tricky at first, but if you practice throwing soft and launching the yo-yo into the air when you pull back for the return you’ll soon be able to flick the slack out under the yo-yo. It’s worth noting that this probably would not pass Spencer’s test for a “true” laceration, as my finger is in the string loop before the yo-yo hits the string, but frankly this trick is difficult enough that I don’t mind a little bit of chopping.

The next trick is a modified version of the plastic whip, a staple of modern 1A play. It is once again made slightly more complicated by being a stall for two reasons:

1. Because it’s a stall, you have to keep spin direction in mind, which means a normal plastic whip can only be done on a frontstyle throw (or regeneration.)
2. The yo-yo is coming back right at your face and this is terrifying aaaaaaaah

…to solve that second problem, I set up for the trick by pinching the string with my free hand. This allows me to get into the whipping motion with my throw hand slightly before returning the yo-yo, and the slight change in timing gives the slack more room to catch the yo-yo.

If you’ve been following Fixed Friday, the next trick should look slightly familiar: the mach-5 whip. I taught a basic version of the mount two weeks ago, the whip can be seen in several of Ed’s videos, and also in Kyle Nations’ “Sting like a Butterfly” video at 1:10. This trick is actually fairly similar to its traditional 1A twin, so if you can do it on a Freehand you can probably do it on a Wheel. The tricky part is getting the timing on the whip with the throwhand right as the yo-yo is returning, try doing it a little bit earlier than you think you should.

Trick #4 is heavily influenced by Mr. Steve Brown and his hands-on juggling style tricks. “Tough Love” stalls & regens can actually be very useful in setting up stall whips, because they completely stop the yo-yo spin, which keeps the yo-yo relatively stable and prevents it from whacking your hand. In this case, we simply intercept the breakaway, do a reverse plastic whip over the top of the yo-yo and let the momentum of the whip carry it into a stall suicide.

Tricks #5 & 6 build on the foundation laid down by the stall laceration, and are mostly a matter of muscle memory and string control. To be more specific, five is a reverse double stall laceration mixed into a combo, and six is a triple stall laceration – if you can hit four in a row, find me at a contest and show me and I’ll give you a sticker or something. (also, once again, these aren’t “true” lacerations because I chop into them, but also once again they’re kind of tough so we’ll call it even.)

#7 & 8 are a couple of more advanced moves that are meant more as concepts than as next steps to take, but hey, I’d be stoked if you wanted to learn them. Seven is a play on that old mid-school kamikaze whip, except that you do it from a stall and the yo-yo does a kickflip suicide – yikes! I’d love to catch the yo-yo in the whip, but for now I’m much more consistent just catching it on my thumb, which would theoretically set up some slack-style tricks. Eight shows you one way to mix unresponsive whip tricks with stalls, by using a jade whip to set up a suicide and then letting that suicide bind itself up into a pseudo-tape measure. This takes a lot of control, but it feels awesome and looks neat. I’d love to see more integration of “unresponsive” tricks and stall techniques.

Trick number nine – wow, did I really do nine tricks this week? – is another tribute to Abe Ziaimehr, one of my favorite yoyoers ever. Is it wacky? Yes, but that’s just the way that he’d like it. Go be a little wacky, guys.

Figure something new & cool out? Got a request for a trick tutorial? Let us know in the comments!