Archives for July 12, 2013

Hello again, fixie faithful, and welcome back to another installment of Fixed Friday. This week we’re taking a look at a hodgepodge of maneuvers with no common thread beyond being bearingless… but isn’t that the joy of the fixed axle community?! We’ll get back to the group hug later, in the meantime let’s check out the tricks.

The first trick is actually maybe the hardest in the video, but also one of the most rewarding due to being a fusion of string trick techiness and responsive stall zippiness. The mount is based heavily on the 2or0 chopsticks stall that you may have learned in our Crisis installment, but keeps the throwhand more involved; basically, you’re going to throw a double or nothing, but spread your finger & thumb the first time the yo-yo comes around your non-throwhand so that the next time it comes around you can land between them. This can be tricky if you’re not experienced with chopsticks! I definitely recommend practicing it with a spinning yo-yo before trying to catch it as a stall. The fun part of the trick, though, is moving your throwhand (which is still holding a string) underneath the yo-yo and pulling down like a pulley trick to launch the yo-yo out of the mount—in this case, launching out initiates a regeneration, which I personally like to send into a Makin’ da Zines and transition right back into the trick. This trick is in the “little kid dropping their ice cream cone” family (along with Ice Cream on the Moon and Kid Cone), so in further tribute to Seth Peterson I like to call this trick “Lactose-Free French Fry Ice Cream.”

Next trick is a bit of a silly one: z-axis rolls to dumptrucks. One of the best parts of stalls is breaking out of the mindset that yo-yos stay stable and only move on one plane… while this trick is kind of silly, it’s also easy and fun, and using the momentum of the swing to continue into an upside-down dismount shows that it could have potential in the middle of “real” stall somersault combos. And who doesn’t like weird spinny things?

The next trick is a simple leg wrap behind the back stall combo. Now, I say “simple”, but as with any behind the back trick it has the potential to be totally obnoxious if you miss. I recommend learning the btb braintwister stall at :38 in “The Butterfly Video” as a primer for this if you’ve never done a btb stall before, but the turn and reset is one of my bread & butter moves to show nonyoyoers so I’ll stand by that, too. Under the moon to spin move out is optional.

Next up is more or less a string trick combo, but it’s good to remember that those can be done on responsive yo-yos, too. The most useful move to pick up out of this is probably the “monster tickler dismount” that happens at 32 seconds: from a trapeze, do that cross-armed dismount Kohta & Yuuki make look so good, but let the yo-yo start responding so you can catch it in a stall when you uncross. This gives you plenty of momentum to go right into a somersault a la zipper stalls.

The next trick is directly inspired by John Ando. While many new kids primarily think of him for his (mindblowing) 1A, never forget that he is also a 2A National Champion and that 2A concepts are ripe for the pickin’ in responsive 1A. This particular trick uses a trapeze dismount to send the yo-yo out behind the throwhand arm before recalling it, and then allows the yo-yo to bump the throwhand bicep on the return. The arm bump is one of the more subtle tough love regens, and (like everything I do) combos nicely into Zines.

At 50 seconds in, we got a “lazy laceration.” We briefly explored grabbing the yo-yo in our Whips column, and here’s another way to set up a string loop with a non-spinning yo-yo. Right after that, we got… I dunno… Horizontal revolutions to trapeze stall? It looks like cheating, but it’s somewhat relieving that horizontal stalls naturally swing right back down to trapeze (thanks, gravity!)

I close out the clip with another exit from the 2or0 chopsticks stall, this time using that z-axis somersault. Twenty points to the first person who can show me this trick in reverse – can you swing from a trapeze into a 2or0 chopsticks? Other possible applications include letting the momentum carry you into a dump truck dismount or a crisis flip into wrist mount. Let your heart be your guide!

What are you throwing this fixed friday? Learn a trick? Got a trick request for next time? Let us know in the comments!