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Fixed Friday: Dragons & Eels

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I am spectacular at 5a. By 5a I [of course] mean 360’s, Nunchucks, Butterfly, the occasional Shoulder-Pop, and basic Freegens, which are really all I have ever mastered in order to demonstrate the style to kids. I have HEARD that some innovative players (Miguel Cohumnum, Takeshi Matsomething) have developed tricks outside of this range, but I can’t say I’ve really explored them much. Ok, so that may mean that I’m actually NOT so great at 5a. Despite the attempted interventions and clarifications I’ve received from the style’s founder, I’ve just never really gotten it to the extent that I’ve been inspired to make up 5a tricks of my own. I basically suck at it. That said, for whatever reason, I’ve always dug some Slippery Eel.

Slippery Eel is essentially counterweight yo-yoing without the counterweight. It originated as a fairly lame through-the-leg trick, and kind of stagnated into ignominious irrelevance after Steve figured out that a casino die on the string had more extensive applications. (For my part, I’ve tried attaching a casino die to a stapler, a skateboard, and most recently, a beagle with essentially zero effect upon the “creative floodgates”.) I’ve seen a [very] few cool essays into the realm of fixed axle 5a, but I’m not naive enough to think that my own perfunctory understanding of the basics would serve me much there. Eel tricks though, I dunno… I’ve got some ideas.

Eel’s obvious application to fixed axle is its allowance for real ambidexterity. This was one of SB’s inspirations in developing the Freehand style. His experience as a juggler was kind of at-odds with the “strings-attached”, dominant-hand-dominated mechanism of traditional yo-yoing. When you think about it, a lot of the stall tricks (particularly repeaters) we’ve explored this year tend toward symmetry, but are restricted by the yo-yo being tied to the throw hand. It’s a lot of fun to unhook that slipknot and experiment with using both hands to throw, catch, stall, regenerate, etc. This is true of modern 1a, too, of course, but in fixed axle, wherein the frequency of throws and catches is ramped up, the changes become more numerous and more challenging.

Exhibit A is just a warm-up, but if you’ve never tried fixed axle Eel (and I assume there are roughly 7-billion of you), you’ll want to get the feel down. This is just a series of trapeze stalls, changing hands in between and throwing in some somersaults. I find it really helpful to use a full-length string (I usually shorten mine) tied with an extra loop at the end. This gives me a bit more surface area to hang on to, which is dead useful when we get to the dragons at the end.

2nd trick is obviously Zipper Stalls, but you’ll notice something fishy (or EELISH – oh snap!). In this example, before every stall catch, there’s a hand change. It actually feels pretty natural, although I have an easier time starting out with the left hand for some reason.

After that I get into a couple of no-hands Kickflip-Suicide variations. First up is a simple and unimpressive flat spin, but it’s good to get under your fingers before moving on. Catching the loop and the loose string takes some getting used to. Next up is a sort of “Half-Cab”, which in skateboard jargon just means a fakie 180 ollie, so the orientation of your board and feet have changed directions at the end. Fun, but much cooler is the 2.0 version which follows, going from a Double or Nothing to a hand-changed trapeze. (I’ll note here that one of the coolest things about throwing a responsive yo-yo in Slipper Eel is your ability to end any trick with a Skyrocket.)

Moving ahead to 1:04, we start to get into some more laterally symmetrical repeaters in the style of Salvador Dali Windshield Wipers (originally given the unoriginal name of Glide Symmetry). The first example is kind of a reverse-suicide, catching the string on both sides (as opposed to the loop). Next is the closest to the classic Wipers, only changing hands before each stall (much like the Zipper example earlier). Same thing at 1:24, but offsetting the sequence so as to do reverse-trapeze stalls on both sides. I find both of these to be pretty easy and extremely addictive.

At 1:37, the video moves into a series of tricks based on what I call “Catch the Lashing Dragon’s Tail” (I’m never going to come up with a canonical T’ai Ch’i move, so I have to get mystical where I can). CtLD’sT (or just Dragons) involve grasping the short segment of string trailing behind a nearly-wound yo-yo. The first example is a trick I’m calling “Streamer” due to the catchable fly-away string segment behind the yo-yo. This is a little like a trick I did last year called Hydrangea Bomb, but grasping that string as it comes around injects a little leap of faith. I actually found that you DO get pretty good at this with a little practice, but don’t get it dialed on a yo-yo you’re nervous about banging up a bit. See if you can hit it in both directions.

As far as Dragons go, Streamer is pretty darn easy, as the yo-yo is stalled. The REAL Lashing Dragon Tail has to actually LASH, and for that to happen, the yo-yo has to be in a state of full spin. The 3 final tricks show some variations of this, including over-the-shoulder, from snapstart (SnapDragon! ©™®), and the original version catching the string with a kendo-esque two-hand clap. These tricks are waaaaaaay easier if you took my advice and tied that second loop at the end of the string. Dragon tricks are actually pretty difficult (nigh impossible) with a 5a setup, because the counterweight tends to initiate a FreeGen (awesome in its own right).

I really feel like these examples are just the edge of the wedge with respect to what’s possible (or even what’s obvious). The application of Eel concepts to fixed axle is a natural to me, and I’d love to see some of you kids come up with. While we’re at it, I’d love to see some more fixed-specific conceptual 3a, 4a and 5a.

 

Yo-Yo is the “eh” by SPYY & TMBR and the song is “Harold of the Rocks” by Primus.

Fixed Friday: DIY or Die

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Hey fixomaniacs! We got a special treat for you this week, as we set the tricks on the backburner and make our own fixed axle yo-yos at home.

A huge chunk of the current Fixed Axle renaissance can be credited to the woodworking geniuses keeping the idea of pure & simple yo-yoing alive: TMBR led the charge, of course, but Hildy Bros, and Once Upon a Tree are all doing amazing things. When you throw their spinning works of art, it’s hard not to catch the bug and dream of making your own fixie. Unfortunately, not all of us have access to a lathe, but necessity is the mother of invention, and one unconventional (but extremely fun) way around this problem is silicone molding. Sonny Patrick of Anti-Yo fame was the first person that I know to do this with yo-yos, he made some super cool bootleg Freehand Zeros in 2006.

Now, before we get going, I’m going to throw out some spoilers: I’m making a bootleg Butterfly. As dear as the Butterfly is to my heart, I can look at it objectively and recognize that it’s not as high-class a performer as a Barracuda. To complicate matters further, these butterflies are going to be poured from wax, and let’s just say that there’s a reason there aren’t any crayon yo-yos on the market. Honestly, though, if you’re throwing fixed axle you’re probably already familiar with the fun of working within constraints, and a little extra “surface noise” on a trick shouldn’t bother you too much; to be perfectly frank, I kind of like a yo-yo that doesn’t listen to a thing I tell it.

There are a ton of way better tutorials on how to make molds on the internet, so I don’t want to get too caught up in specifics, but here’s the basic process:

  1. Prepare the yo-yo for molding; for the butterfly, this involved wrapping a piece of Sculpey clay around the axle post and then smooshing the cap into it to make the yo-yo airtight. Put it in a small airtight box. (I took the opportunity to make an extra spiky art yo-yo, and I highly recommend taking the chance to make your yo-yo unique… but it’s also worth noting that the normal Butterfly worked better.)
  2. Mix together the silicone compounds. I used Oomoo 30 from Inventables. Pour it all over the yo-yo.
  3. After waiting for the mold to cure, pop the yo-yo out and clean up any nasty bits of unnecessary silicone or chocolate chips stuck in the mold or whatever.
  4. Melt some wax. I recommend following the instructions on that link and being very very safe, but will confess to melting wax in a soda bottle sitting in a bowl of boiling water from time to time. You’ll get better results by going to Goodwill and buying a cheap pot, though.
  5. Pour the wax into the mold! This is very exciting, but try to do it slow and avoid bubbles.
  6. Wait 20-30 minutes for the wax to cool entirely, pop it out, do it again, and bam! You got some yo-yo halves. I used a Duncan Butterfly axle, but found that it worked much much better if I put a little bit of hot glue on the axle before sliding it into the halves.

And that’s it! You got yourself a yo-yo you made all by yourself. You should probably be noticing by now that wax does not really play like any other yo-yo material; if you used crayons like we did, your string should change colors within four or five throws, and get noticeably stiffer as well. After 20 throws, it may be tough to make it sleep, let alone do a braintwister.

And that’s GREAT! It may not be the same feeling as designing a perfectly smooth machined bearing contest monster, but there’s definitely going to be some smiles the first time you hit a Kickflip on it. If the novelty wears off, you might enjoy casting one out of resin; Death Ray Kendama has made some really awesome resin stuff, if you want some inspiration.

I threw some funky bonus tricks with the yo-yo at the end so you can see it in action. Not gonna do as much tutorial writing this week, but just to highlight three new things:

  • At 1:00, we got a weird chopsticks flipback carrying on from where the trick at the end of “Imperialism” left off. The inital dump truck transition is the main conceptual meat of the trick, but the end is also noteworthy for relying on the return of the yo-yo to switch the orientation of the string.
  • At 1:33, we have a follow-up to that Mach-5 Kickflip Suicide that people seemed to like in the Flip Tricks vid. I’ve found that it’s actually a little bit easier to whip it than to take the rotating slack loop approach, so give it a shot! It’s also worth noting that an unexpected bonus(?) of wax yo-yos is that it makes the string super stiff, which either makes flip suicides a dream or a nightmare.
  • I wanted to close out the clip with a recent horizontal favorite. This is probably one of the simplest fixed axle ‘zontals I’ve found, but it’s still pretty flashy & fun, so give it a shot! From a trapeze stall (ideally caught with a very small loop), use your thumb to tilt the yo-yo up on its side before throwing it out into a UFO. With a little practice, you can intercept it on the return and catch it in a trapeze stall. Bam!

Alright, suckers, that’s all for this week! Now, go try it at home.

Fixed Friday: Babies!!!

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Howdy all. Ed here with an unapologetic change-of-pace this week.

I was at the skatepark this afternoon, and it occurred to me that my skating is pretty much all centered around the expression of joy and simplicity (ok, and falling down). I’ve been on a board since I was about 7, idolizing the Bones Brigade, Blind crew and Girl team through the successive decades. However, though I’ve skated for as long as I can remember, my skating has not “matured” in the way you might assume it would. Although I learned kickflips, shuv-its, and street-plants, I pretty much never saw any value in tricks I vaguely deemed “too technical”… and so I never mastered them. What I did see value in was in crusing, in bombing hills, in dropping in and carving deep. Big ollies and rock n’ rolls are about as “tech” as my skating ever got… and yet I have never stopped LOVING it.

It’s interesting for me to reconcile my skating with my yo-yoing. On the one hand, no one in the know would ever classify me as a technical stylist. However, I’m certainly surpassing the yo-yo equivalents of ollies and carves. For me, Fixed Friday has been a double-edged sword. Its design gives Drew and me a platform to share a style which we are consciously trying to move forward. This column has been the launch pad for new tricks, new concepts, and collectively, a new approach to old tools. I’m really proud of the 40+ episodes we’ve pulled together this year. But Fixed Friday also serves to pull me back; to ground me. Whatever else I’m working on, it MAKES me take some time each week to appreciate “roots yo-yoing”. For all of the Dumptrucks and Fakie-regens, and Insta-bucket Stalls I do on a given Friday, I generally do twice as many Shoot-the-Moons, Loop-the-Loops, and Ferris Wheels. It reminds me that I initially gravitated to fixed axle, not because it offered any fertile creative territory, but because the sensation of the string sliding against a wood axle is just TOPS.

Rock the Baby is the quintessential classic trick. I’ve probably been asked to do it 100 times, and if I dug, there are probably as many ways to show it. Virtually any mount can be Baby-fied, but some variations have almost transcendentally crossed over into autonomy, becoming unique tricks in their own right. A few are shown below, but don’t assume the circle is complete. As is always the case with yo-yo, there is room for you to reach into the void and pull out your own classic version.

Don’t overlook the value of Rock the Baby, because to do so is to overlook the value of the innocent joy which started all of us down this weird road to begin with. No, it’s not a difficult, technical trick, and no it probably won’t “impress” people, even if they ask. But it will make them HAPPY, which is an altogether different sort of power, and every bit as real.

First off, there’s no wrong way to rock. From the front, back, side, whatever. I’ve taught a few hundred kids to do this trick, and one of the ways that seems to work for the less coordinated is the over-thumb method. Make a LOSER sign with your throw hand, and then pull the string through and over your thumb like Bow-&-Arrow. Young kids tend to have trouble with the pinching, and this avoids it (but it does make Dizzy Baby more difficult later on – speaking of Dizzy Baby, that’s shown next in the context of Throw the Baby Out the Window).

John Higby is one of my favorite people ever, and he showed me the next two variations (he does a bunch in his show). Itsy-bitsy Baby requires that you know the length of your string to the inch. You can make 2 or 3 triangles, but the yo-yo has to fit, which makes it a trick worth practicing if you actually want to perform it. Not the case with Lazy Baby, which is a delicious intentional cop-out, and as easy as the name implies.

The next four tricks have been around since the golden age (not the Chuck video), and used to be pretty considered pretty difficult before rim weight and transaxles made a 15-second sleeper automatic. Joint Custody always gets a chuckle (or the stink-eye from divorced people who actually have to deal with that reality). Rock the Baby Down South is one I vaguely remember from an Arne Dixon video, and I have no actual idea if I’m doing it correctly or if it originated with him. I guess you could also call it Rock the Baby in Jamaica, but I live in North Carolina and drive by 3 Confederate flags on my way to my kid’s school (sigh). Rock the Baby in the Eiffel Tower is still pretty tough to do well, and I can totally see it separating the men from the boys in the 60’s (pretty sure about 10 girls total played yo-yo then, too… SIGH).

At Worlds ’10, there was a great Rock the Baby trick circle featuring some incredible players. Some of the hilarious ideas shared were Kohta Watanabe’s Minimalist Baby (using an inverted 7 to form an incomplete cradle) and Hidemasa Semba’s trick, which may have a name, but which I’m calling Slack Parenting. The brilliant Nate Sutter has also repeatedly shown one of his versions, Rosemary’s Baby (essentially Rock the Baby in a pentagram).

I showed Infant CPR a few weeks ago under the name Wake the Baby. Basically just a Pocketwatch that you rock and then wake up. The next two are also mine. Plush Safe He Think is a random reference to the painter JM Basquiat. I thought the trick was worth including because the yo-yo passes through a Trapeze-Baby as a means to fold the string (which I later Tunnel out of). I do a similar thing with the next example – part of my trick Hyacinth – but fold in the opposite direction. It’s worth noting that Babies can be embedded into tricks and move the formation along. The Doc Pop trick Trap Door could be thought of as a similar example.

Chinese Cradle is one of my favorite picture tricks, and it has an interesting story. Back in the 50’s and 60’s, there were way more yo-yoers, but way FEWER people calling themselves professionals. Those that did had an actual job – traveling around from town to town and from school to school, setting up small contests and building up the infrastructure of a micro-community which was developed incrementally over time. Some of these pros were more legitimate than others, and some of the rivalries were pretty intense. Chinese Cradle was a sort of “calling card” trick that only an initiated few (generally the legendary Duncan Men) actually knew, and rarely (if ever) taught. In Helen Zieger’s book “World on a String”, she shows the trick but offers no explanation for how to get into it. When I visited Larry Sayco in his workshop, he confirmed that no one would teach it to him (which is crazy considering he could do Bank Deposit into my cousin’s pocket 1st try at age 89!). I asked Dale Oliver about the trick a few years back, and he said that there’s no place for trick exclusivity in the modern era, which was a relief.

I finish up with another of my favorites from a bygone era. Rock the Baby on the Launch Pad is a variation on Pop the Clutch, and is best done with a fairly long string. Throw hard so as to get a good launch, but recognize that you might well nail yourself in the elbow!

And that’s the news. I know there’s not much there that pushes the envelope, but if you really believe that’s the only reason to play yo-yo… I gotta say I think you’re missing out.

Yo-Yo used is an unfinished Tom Kuhn No Jive I got from Chuck Short and the song is “Film” by The Bad Plus. Have a great week!

 

 

Fixed Friday: Ddoouubblee

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This Fixed Friday, we’re keeping it short & sweet with a little something for everybody—or, at least, one or two tricks for a very specific type of person. Double regens, double trapeze, and the double scary snapstart to flinch. Let’s take a look!

The opening trick is probably the easiest to learn out of this batch, a simple pinwheel-based repeater to transition between a cross-armed 1.5 stall and a split-bottom stall. One of the first stall combos that most people learn is the trapeze>trapeze brother repeater, and this could be looked at as a continuation on that theme. This trick should be fairly straightforward, provided that you’re comfortable with the mounts, just try and focus on controlling the regeneration through the pinwheel and land on the proper strings. While it’s not that impressive on its own, I have sung and will continue to sing the praises of these particular mounts and highly recommend adding them to your stall mixup combos.

We’ll follow up that stall staple with something a little further outside the box: thumb start to flinch. If you’re not familiar with Flinch, it’s a high risk thumb stall that Ed Haponik likes to do, noteworthy because you gotta catch it directly above your face for it to count. Doing it in one motion from a thumb start is a good way to mix it up, and also a good way to knock your teeth out if you’re using a heavy unresponsive yo-yo. Practice your thumb starts to reverse lunar landings and then move your head in the way when you’re ready. Become the envy of your friends!

Another mount I wanted to explore this week is the inverted undermount stall, seen immediately after the trapeze in the next combo. This mount had an increased burst of popularity with the advent of Ando’s arm tricks, but is somewhat finickier with stalls because of the tendency to turn the yo-yo. One neat thing it sets up, though, is the cross-armed dumptruck seen in slow motion here. This can set up in split bottom, a repeater, or any number of things… but the dumptruck is the cool part, so who cares?

Next up, we have velvet stalls. Now, legit fixed axle 3A tricks are probably still a ways off, but we do have this mount in the meantime. Since velvet rolls is basically double braintwister, it opens with a double throw and the right hand mounting an undermount stall. Your yo-yos should be responsive enough that the mount triggers the other yo-yo’s return, at which point you roll backwards and mount it in an under mount stall on its own string. Seem complicated? Unfortunately, it’s harder than it looks… but once you get the hang of spacing your hands out properly and hit it a few times, it starts to fall into place.

The next trick is kind of a conglomeration of weird orphan elements, so I don’t know how to talk about it too much, but Nate’s pocketwatch element sets up surprisingly well for Sebastian’s “hammer time” element.

Double trapeze stall is actually considerably easier than the velvet stall, but looks really scary because everything happens all at once. Actually, I shouldn’t say “looks”; it IS really scary because everything happens all at once. You’re going to want a solid grip on double trapeze before even attempting it, but if you’re a 3A player, I highly recommend giving it a shot ’cause looping out feels awesome. Though everything still seems just barely out of reach, there’s plenty of theoretical craziness that could come out of this: double trapeze-bro stalls, double dumptrucks, double kickflips?!

I’d like to end this clip with a classic: the super disco regen. This one is a lot of fun, not too difficult, and fits into combos between throws, so I definitely think it’s worth learning. It plays off of the multiple whip concept you see in contest laceration tricks so often where you rotate your hand around the yo-yo extra times for an element, but in this case the element just happens to be a regen. Basically: throw a soft frontstyle throw, tug the yo-yo back, and when it gets near the top of the string circle the yo-yo with your hand. It takes a little bit of practice throwing soft and getting the “hangtime” necessary, but it feels great, so do it! Suckers. Oh yeah, and if that’s a little too easy, you can always go for the triple that I hit at the end… that’s on you!

Thanks for tuning in to this week’s Fixed Friday! Don’t forget to tell us what tricks you’ve been working on in the comments, in the Facebook group, and over on the YoYoExpert Forums.

Fixed Friday: Pocketwatches

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Hi, Nate! (Oh, Hi everyone else, too!)

This week I’d like to spend some time looking at a concept put forward by the inimitable Nathan Sutter, longtime member of Duncan Crew and Team SPYY, a fellow alumnus of 365yoyotricks.com, and runner-up at this year’s Fixed Axle Championship of All the World. Nate has put forward a slew of incredible yo-yo elements throughout his career, including (but not limited to) Plastic Whip, Figure Nate, and Shoot the Moon Down Under. At the WYYC this year, he also showed off his Pocketwatch concept, which led to at least 2 consecutive hours of string-burning trick-circlage on that god-forsaken carpet. He also demoed the idea (in an unresponsive context) during his fantastic Alternative Freestyle.

I’d been meaning to explore this idea more since returning from Worlds, but it took me a few weeks to allow the mental carbonation to settle. Pocketwatches are one of the most abrupt and fundamental ways to go from dynamic (spinning) to static (not), which is a key vein running through the fledgling fixed axle style. Although you can get into Pocketwatch with any kind of yo-yo, I feel that it’s best suited to the fixed realm. For one, there’s no distracting bind required to get into it on fixed, and since many of the regenerations out are inherently off-kilter and tough to control, it’s useful to have a yo-yo that’s bent on returning to your hand.

The basic idea is to allow the yo-yo to wind part-way up the string, then grab it before it gets to your throw-hand. Pulling down on the yo-yo abruptly should cause it to cinch and hold, creating a temporary “string-lock”. You can then “do stuff” with the yo-yo partly wound (yet not spinning) until you give it the centripetal force necessary to break the string-lock and spin to life once again. At first, I saw this as a cool novelty concept, but couldn’t really see where it could go. However, as it happens, this concept takes everything fun and kendama-ish about Mark Montgomery’s radical A-minus tricks from a few years back, AND adds the bonus of being able to recall the yo-yo easily.

I hope you enjoy these variations.

The core Pocketwatch concept (demonstrated by Nate in the FS link above) involves flinging the yo-yo around casually with the air of a gentleman waiting for the bus. As you’ll see, most of my examples focus more on trick applications – how can Pocketwatches be applied to, say, a whip, a wrap, a hop, a laceration, etc. Most of the vid is pretty stream-of-consciousness, but there are a few points I can elaborate on. First, if you’re gonna try these tricks (or, more preferably, your own) be prepared to break A LOT of strings and yank the bajesszus out of your throw-hand middle finger. I probably used 10 different yo-yo’s in filming this quick video and had to wrap my finger at one point (what a weeny).

One thing you’ll find is that there are some striking similarities between your everyday Stall-based play and Pocketwatches. The rhythm feels similar, but more importantly, a dead Pocketwatch can be mounted, at which point it effectively IS a stall. What’s different is that while a Stall has tons of potential energy behind it (being almost fully wound), a Pocketwatch’s energy is blocked by the string-lock. This means stuff like kickflips are possible, but anything involving a regen into another hold is more difficult. Also, whereas you can’t really do Eli Hops, Lacerations, and other “dynamic” tricks within a stall, it’s pretty easy to do them in a Pocketwatch setup, provided you’re careful about keeping things straight.

One trick that I think is worth mentioning is “Eat Pray Love”, which was developed collectively at Worlds by Nate, Drew, and myself. I love the way it goes from the Kendo prayer-catch to the “Love” hold between the elbows. It’s one of the few examples in this vid where the cinch is seamlessly integrated into the rest of the trick (the underarm cinch at 0:12 is another).

I can’t claim to know ANYTHING about the Moebius sub-style, but Pocketwatches definitely lend themselves to taking the string off your finger. I go outside for a couple of Pocketwatch Moebicides (am I using that term correctly?), and I really like the idea of looping with one hand, suiciding to the other, and then continuing to loop.

I reference one of my favorite simple kendama tricks at 1:32 in Faster Than Gravity. Snap-start into a vertical Pocketwatch, and then let the bottom fall out. The catch is actually really easy, and you can drop into a normal Trapeze or a Lunar Landing.

The wrap combo at 1:50 is also pretty fun. Needless to say, my wraps are nothing special and totally elementary, but how often can you really DO ANY WRAPS with fixed axle? Using a Pocketwatch hold enables you to forget about that whole pesky, yo-yo-must-keep-spinning issue. You can always just restart it later!

Another of my new favorites is the Hard Restart at 2:18. If you slam it straight enough and hard enough, you can blast through the string-lock you’ve created and bring a Pocketwatch immediately back to a fully-spinning Trapeze. Bear in mind, depending on your restart, the yo-yo may be spinning the regular way or in reverse when you do this. Another way to actively reengage the spin is to wind the yo-yo OVER the string-lock and do some loops, gravity pulls, or Planet Hops before SLAMMING the yo-yo down and through the cinch. Just as offstring players have shown us through the years, there is a LOT we can explore here.

Near the end, you’ll find a fun reference to Adam Brewster’s Folding Gates concept. 5 years later, I’m still fascinated by what he was doing in Bend and Fold. It’s hard to do folds with a stalled yo-yo. I messed around with this in a Tunnels context in the Static 1a Applications vid, but the yo-yo wants to squeak and squirm around so much, it’s pretty tough. But the Pocketwatch hold keeps it in line a bit, and a simple fold out of a GT Pocketwatch is pretty manageable.

Needless to say, there’s some other stuff in the vid as well, and all of it is PATENT PENDING!!! Although, I probably owe Nate royalties anyway, since it all starts with his concept. Hope you enjoy playing around with this concept. Let us know what you find in the comments!

Fixed Friday: Flip Tricks

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Welcome to your weekly dose of fixomania! Let’s talk about flippin’ out.

Flip tricks are a fairly new element, borne out of the realization that a stalled yo-yo need not stay in a single plane the way a spinning yo-yo does. They could be seen as cousins to the suicide, because the meat of the trick is throwing and catching a loop of string, with the crucial difference being that the motion of the loop comes from the stalled yo-yo rotating off-axis. The foundational flip tricks were created on fixed axle yo-yos, and the high-walled responsive nature of fixies may make them easier to learn on, but as Ed pointed out last week these concepts can be applied to bearings just as easily. (Speaking of applying responsive concepts to modern play, did everybody catch Alexis JV’s crazy new video? Holy smokes!)

The first trick in the video is the one that started it, the kickflip suicide. Catch the yo-yo in a trapeze stall, swing it forward, and release the string when the yo-yo is roughly horizontal. With practice, you should be able to send the yo-yo into a controlled flip with the string loop following behind so that when the yo-yo comes back around you can catch the loop on your finger. This is probably the easiest flip trick to learn, as the concept is fairly straightforward, but the execution can admittedly be a little tricky at first; make sure your string tension is good, try to get as big a loop as possible, and GO SLOW. I find this trick gets way easier when I try to focus on moving the yo-yo through a long, slow, graceful flip. It helps you build your control, and gives you more time to stick the landing.

Any readers familiar with skateboard tricks should be able to guess the next trick: heelflips. These are basically “reverse kickflips” where you flip the string towards you instead of away from you—a little bit easier said than done, but made simpler if you turn your hand towards yourself for the catch. I showed this trick earlier this month in our Imperialism column where I did the whole thing from an inverted trapeze stall rather than a normal trapeze stall; this makes throwing the loop a lot easier, in my opinion, but the mount may be more difficult, so really just see what works best for you.

The FS (“Frontside”) Flip is a new one, and definitely a little bit more advanced. As the yo-yo moves through a kickflip, bring your throwhand around the yo-yo as though you’re doing a 360. There’s definitely a trick in timing your hand to properly follow the rotation of the yo-yo, but it’s enormously satisfying once you land it. If you get the hang of this one, try rotating the opposite direction for a backside flip, or get even crazier with a frontside heel.

Shuvits are the newest addition to the flip trick family. Where the kickflip flips the yo-yo forward, shuvits push the yo-yo in a flat spin, which is a bit of an exciting mix-up. While it’s possible to throw a shuvit from a straight stall, it’s much more fun to pre-load the spin by swinging the stalled yo-yo to the side and twisting the string up. When the yo-yo starts to untwist, spread the loop with your fingers and throw it around the axis of rotation. It takes a little practice to see where the loop is going to end up, but once you can catch it at the end of a 360 you feel like a genius. I personally think that sticking a clean landing with no extra twists is the most satisfying, but there’s a certain joy in catching it and letting it continue to twist, and Rafael even suggested that you could let it twist back into a reverse shuvit(!) I find it helps a lot to move your throwhand up above the yo-yo so that the loop can move more cleanly.

Okay… those are some of the foundation tricks. Now, we’ll have a short interlude with a stalled magic drop (more on that later!) and get into some new stuff.

First off, the mach-5 whip flip. This was hinted at in the Whips installment of FF but was way too hard at the time for me to actually hit (haha.) Basically, you set up a houdini mount, throw a kickflip suicide, and whip the thumb loop horizontally around your hand to catch the yo-yo as you complete the suicide. Definitely a precision trick, but immensely satisfying when you stick it. One million internet points to the first person who can show me this whip with a shuvit…

Next in the advanced concepts, we got a shuvit 180 drop suicide. This trick is a tribute to the era when Yuuki was doing all these super sick drop suicides and all I could ever learn was the 2or0 to 1.5 drop. Sorry buddy!.. but I digress. The setup is a double or nothing, which is immediately followed by twisting the yo-yo to setup for a shuvit. As soon as the yo-yo launches, you’re going to move your non-throwhand up as though you’re supporting a trapeze-brother and get your throwhand in position to catch the loop as it rotates around. When you catch it, the yo-yo should be stalled on the opposite side, which lends itself to all kinds of tech applications.

Finally, the Kwijibo Flip. This trick was teased in my FACoatW Warmup column, but I think this version (without flipping your hands over) works a little better. Kickflipping from trapeze to 1.5 isn’t too tough… 1.5 to 2or0, well, I encourage you all to try it!

This should keep your hands full for the weekend, but if you want some more flip tricks to practice, you might want to check out these tricks from Alex Curfman, Malcolm Chiu, and of course the Fixed Friday archives. Ed recently responded to the shuvit with a varial flip, something I’ve been totally unable to hit thusfar. Happy throwing, everybody!

Fixed Friday: Applying Fixed Concepts to Bearing Yo-Yo’s

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Yeah, you’re gonna be mad at me.

It’s cool. I’m a grown man. I can take it. I know I’m raining on your fixed axle parade; your special day. The one day each week which you KNOW will not be sullied by the loud, tacky swagger of ball-bearing infidels. And here I am playing with a bearing… in a metal yo-yo, no less. On YOUR Fixed Friday. Needless to say, I will accept the beatings with understanding.

Hear me out though. While I recognize that this column is all about pushing FIXED play forward, we need to constantly keep in mind what that means. I was at Worlds this year, and I saw some cool stuff. One kid came up to me and said “Hey ed, check out this stall!” proceeding to bind his Chief into a slick cross-armed 1.5 before regenerating into the rest of his day. Alexis JV’s 1a final was so replete with beautiful regens that it almost felt like he could have done it on wood. And I saw kickflip suicides on every yo-yo imaginable, up to and including an off-string. It was incredibly vindicating to see concepts we’ve pioneered and advocated for here (and I do not, for a second, claim that Drew and I have been the only ones doing it) osmoting its way into other hardware.

No yo-yo style can exist in a vacuum. Every cool element you see, you should consider “how can I use that?” I’m not even just talking about specific trick elements. Think about the feeling, motivation, and presentation of the tricks you observe and consider whether they might serve you in a different context. Playing a lot of fixed axle yo-yo will CHANGE the way you approach yo-yo’s in general. Somebody commented the other day that my play with an unresponsive transaxle yo-yo is starting to look a lot like fixed. I’m actually kind of surprised anyone would assume it WOULDN’T after the last few years. My tricks have gotten shorter, or else have leaned toward regenerating repeaters. I seem to end everything with some kind of stall. We’ve all seen sweet modern 1a tricks attempted (and landed) on wood. And there’s no doubt that the influence of modern 1a is inextricably embedded in fixed play. So this week’s video is all about how even throwing a wide-gapped, all-metal, low-response yo-yo, you can evoke the rhythm and dynamics of fixed axle.

Ok, so on to the video. Obviously, as mentioned, you can do a Kickflip on any yo-yo. Actually, I find the wider the gap, the harder it is, because the yo-yo bangs around from side to side and is difficult to control. Still, your everyday Bind-to-Kickflip is easy enough to where I think it should be just as much a staple of transaxle style as fixed. If you need to up the ante, try the Kickflip to Casper which follows (or skip to the last trick, which will melt your face).

Next up we have two fun takes on Zipper Stalls, which is one of the few tricks I’ve pioneered that people actually know. Using a bind-return yo-yo is no reason to dissuade you from the regenerating Zipper theme. In the first example, we basically have a bind-regen Zipper which is easy enough to follow (just have to have smooth Planet Hops off your binds), and following that we’ve got a cool bind-to-Lunar Zipper variation. Zipper is probably the first true repeater I learned (off of Ken’s World around 2002), and one of the most underrated tricks. There remains much to explore within the element, even within traditional 1a.

Scooting ahead to :55, we have a great trick showed to me by Jack “Una” Ringca a few years back. I have no idea of its origins, but he called it “1a Shoot the Moon” for obvious reasons. Although this one will saw through your fingers on a humid day, it’s a fun trick which emulates everyone’s favorite vertically-inclined loop trick and evokes a classic feel with which passers-by will connect. You can even end it in a Lunar… sort of.

Drew’s Dumptrucks are some of the coolest trans-regen transitions ever, and while controlling spin direction is more obviously essential with a fixed axle, there’s no reason not to migrate them to your bearing play as well. 1:10 shows a cute little repeater using Dumptrucks as the conjunction. I’m sure with a bit more exploration, we could see Crisis-level truck combos integrated into modern 1a as well. I’ll… leave that to you guys.

Snap-Starts are not only my favorite way to rewind a dead yo-yo, they’re also among my favorite tricks! I’ve dedicated an entire column to snaps and they are integral to at least a dozen of my tricks. Since their efficacy is in how quickly they deliver the wound yo-yo back to the hand, a lot of bearing players overlook them, thinking they need to snap, bind, and then catch. Unresponsive Snap-Starts, however, are perfectly immediate if you just load up a backspin bind before snapping. This enables all manner of Snap-Stalls, too, which are just as rad with a Center-Trac as they are with a walnut sleeve. Also note the Sky-Bind-to-Stall in the middle of that snap-start melee. Some other neat slack-binds yielding simple stalls and redirects in a bit make up a lot of the video’s second half. Sky-Binds to Lunars (1:42) feel especially nice after a fun 1a combo.

At 1:59, I show an application for that one trick that all the kids are trying to learn these days… oh, the kids aren’t trying to learn Andre’s Inner Ring Grinds (or IRG’s or Thumb Grinds, or Grings) anymore? That’s ok, cause guess what! A 180 Ring Grind sets up a Lunar-bind perfectly, and if you really want to nerd it out, rotating it frontside before regenerating is pretty much a lazy man’s Dumptruck.

I can never remember what the bind at 2:12 is called. I get it confused because though it’s not the Guy Wright Bind, Guy Wright showed it to me, so, well you get it. Anyway, consistently stalling out of it is almost impossibly tough, but a quick, spin-reversing straight-string redirect off trapeze is pretty manageable. After that we’ve got trick called Knuckle Grinder which is one of the few tricks I developed on fixed which transfers to unresponsive play with zero changes. Trapeasy is up after that; just some redirects off of slack binds which you can do once or as many times as you like.

It seems like almost everyone has a cool unresponsive Stop N Go these days, but comparatively few people try Eli Hopping out of them. My go-to is at 2:45. Bear in mind, a wide-gapped yo-yo is WAY harder to Eli out of in this way. You have much less control on the walls, which lends itself to crazy tilted hops. What I love about this one is since I switch the position of the yo-yo before the hop, the spin is back to normal. So in theory, I could hop into trapeze and repeat the whole Stop N Go, but that would be both kind of redundant and, how you say… really, really hard.

For some reason I moved outside for the last trick, which I’m calling a Hardflip Suicide© (yes, I talked to Drew, it’s cool). I ran into this one while brainstorming more Kickflip applications. I hit it the 1st time… then it took about 200 tries to get the 2nd. Now I’ve got it about 1/4. The weird integral (but subtle part) that you can see in the slow-mo is that the bind/mutation you put on in the beginning is actually rejected right before the catch. This has more to do with the way you throw the loop around and the way you hold your throw hand than anything else. It’s comparable to 3D Drewicide, but obviously with that extra twist, and also to his brand new Butterfly Horse nightmare scenario, Shuvit, which uses string tension to load up the loop’s movement around the yo-yo sideways.

Ok, so I deviated from the regular column this week. Mind, it’s not because I have no more cool ideas for fixed axle, or because the movement is breaking down, but rather because it is WORKING. I went in this direction because we’re starting to see the style we’re exploring migrating more and more into everyday tools and mainstream contexts. It’s so vindicating to see, and definitely helps me to reevaluate taking inspiration from styles I hadn’t considered. And when you think about it, is the ultimate goal of Fixed Friday to build up walls and create a fortress of solitude inside which the holy fixed-axle pupa may fully mature in a safe haven? Or is it to explore the tricks and ideas which come most naturally to fixed axle, pausing every now and again to see where they apply and how they connect to yo-yoing as a whole?

… Honestly, I’ve forgotten, but whatever these tricks are SWEEEEEEEET!

Fixed Friday: Imperialism

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Welcome back to Fixed… Saturday? Okay, I’m a little late this week, but I got some tricks to make up for it. Let’s take a look:

We’ve got a bit of hodgepodge this week, trickwise, but hopefully that means there’s something for everybody to learn. I opened up with a recent favorite move, “Pocketwatch with Extra Pocket,” a cheeky hybrid of Nate Sutter’s phenomenal Pocketwatch trick (discussed more in the DCUS FF article) and demonstrator classic Bank Deposit. This is a different entrance to Pocketwatch than what Isaac showed last time: rather than catching in your non-throwhand, you start to throw a 1.5, catch it back in your throw hand, and pull the string tight with your free hand. This cuts down a bit on the finger pain, and is also useful for setting up moves like this simple bouncy combo. The real highlight of the trick, though, is the drop into the pocket (a move accentuated best with a corny joke.) Swing hard to dislodge the snag, loop out, and bust some more sweet dance moves to celebrate.

Next on the chopping block we got another followup to a trick in the DCUS column, this time taking on Hank’s loop to triangle. The offhand loop wrap is a valuable weapon in the 2A arsenal, but not always the easiest first wrap to learn. I’ve been spending a lot more time throwing Duncan Imperials lately and strongly believe in the potential of mixing up looping tricks with string tricks, and this is a fairly easy trick that can really help your offhand regen mix-ups. Start with a frontstyle throw over your finger and then start a planet hop, but when the yo-yo returns twist your finger around the string so as to loop it back out. Use this hand to control the loops, maybe land in a split-bottom stall, boom!

I asked the Fixed Friday Facebook group what people wanted to learn and one of the requests was for wrist mount stalls. Jacob Jensen recently reminded me about Shawn Fumo’s extraordinary Wrist Mount Project video, so in the spirit of Mr. Fumo,  here are a few variations on the wrist mount stall for you to learn.

First, the most basic: throw lightly and navigate the strings carefully to get into a wrist mount stall, then dunk the strings and dismount like the end of spirit bomb to dissolve to a trapeze stall. The fact that the yo-yo isn’t spinning can muck things up occasionally, but hopefully muscle memory will guide you through. The next sequence is debatably even simpler, though not necessarily easier: after mounting, open the strings back up and hop the yo-yo up through the gap. While this one takes some practice, it’s very satisfying to use the wind of the stall to continue into a regen. After that, we have a variation on the first exit that minimalizes yo-yo wobbliness and adds in a bit of fancy arm movin’ to boot… but really all you’re doing is using your non-throwhand to mount the yo-yo on the string behind the wrist mount.

The next trick with the black Imperial is actually fairly tech: throw into the wrist mount, but instead of landing on the string, let the yo-yo pass on the outside and mount on your non-throwhand finger. You should be in a variation of the kink mount; don’t drop those throwhand strings unless you want a knot! My favorite exit for this is a little tricky, but very satisfying: dismount from the stall and use the momentum to maneuver the yo-yo up through the gap, undoing the kink and looking like the craziest flyaway ever. If you have a really responsive yo-yo you can loop out at the top, but if not you can try to catch it in a trapeze or whatever.

The move after this is an original one seen briefly in the DCUS video, a variation on dumptrucks through the wristmount; basically, open up the kink with your non-throwhand, turn the whole formation over, and kick the yo-yo out the bottom and back to your hand. Following that, we have an advanced variation on the bounce house trick from our “Huh? Wha?” FF segment: get in the wrist mount, pop the stalled yo-yo up into the top string, and bounce the yo-yo down and out. I end the wrist mount mini-extravaganza with a sketchy attempt at stall spirit bomb, if anybody can do it better go ahead and show me.

The next trick explores one of my recent favorite moves, the frontstyle pinwheel into shoot the moon. Pinwheeling out of a frontstyle throw gets the yo-yo right above your head and slightly in front of you, which lets you power into one of those awesome-feeling shoot the moons that passes right between your arms while barely missing your face, hopefully. It’s a little scary, and even scarier when you connect it to a behind the head stall, but I gotta do what I gotta do. The trick after that takes the danger quotient down a notch with a fairly safe & silly behind the back pocketwatch sequence that more or less speaks for itself.

The next trick in the video is fairly “tech,” in the sense that it may be too subtle to look new, but… heelflip suicides! You’re probably all familiar with kickflip suicides by now, this is their slightly more finicky younger brother, distinguished by the loop rotating the opposite direction. Throwing a loop towards your body is a little more awkward than throwing it away from your body, but I’ve found you can make it a little easier by turning your non-throwhand towards yourself for a gorilla-style stall. It can be frustrating, but really quite rewarding once you hit it.

Speaking of kickflip suicides, somebody else asked for some fixed 5A this week, so I threw in a little tribute to Singapore next: Dice thru triangle kickflips. It definitely looks like a banger, but if you’ve ever hit the original DTT then you probably have the counterweight skills necessary to hit it—just focus on getting a big floaty loop and you’re golden.

After that, a brief return to shoot the moon land: continuing the idea of “broadway shoot the moon”, a terrifying concept that Ed & Bryan got surprisingly comfortable with at Worlds, this trick has you following the yo-yo from a shoot the moon into an undermount stall… except, you have to turn your body 180 to catch it. Yikes! Watch your head, but do give it a try.

The final trick uses the most gratuitous unnecessary slomo yet, but I wanted to get all the way to the end of the song, so WHATEVER. This combo is a tribute to Jason Lee’s first chopsticks combo in Glasslab Experiment 006, one of my favorite combos ever. It opens with a dumptruck-type motion that transitions the yo-yo from the finger to the thumb, stalls over on the other hand like a trapeze-bro, then mounts back on the finger. After the final hop, I like to let the twists naturally unwind themselves, which might be construed as laziness, but hey! That ain’t happening on a spinning yo-yo, so I’ll count it as “using my tools to my advantage.”

Thanks for tuning in to this extra-long installment of Fixed Friday! I used Duncan Butterflies and Imperials. As always, post any questions in the comments, download the song off of my Soundcloud, connect with other afixianados on the FF Facebook and the Yoyoexpert fixie megathread, and have a great weekend.

Fixed Friday: Buckets

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Hi ho, everybody!

I hope it’s been an awesome week, and that you’re ready to kick off those hard shoes, slip on your best organic type-8, and rock out with a refreshing late-summer fixed axle spin session. I read someone on the internets this week describing fixed axle yo-yoing as a “current fad”. As somebody who’s been pushing it (sometimes obnoxiously) for about 7 years, part of me took that as a compliment. However, I don’t see it the same way, exactly.

To me throwing fixed axle is a two-fold path. It’s obviously a great way to connect with our heritage; with the roots of yo-yoing. Our art began on the high-friction noble disks of yesteryear, and every day I try to take time to  appreciate the scope and breadth of what yo-yoing has become over almost a century of innovation. Fixed axle is also a really natural way to push forward though. Playing modern 1a is its own challenge to be sure, but sometimes it can be difficult to see the creative potential. There are so many great players throwing down so many amazing tricks these days, it’s easy (albeit unfair and untrue) to slouch into the belief that you can’t come up with anything new and significant. With fixed axles though, it feels like there is room for a game-changing trick concept almost every week. For years, wood was relegated to the creative prison of the antiquated and/or novice, which has set the stage for the revolution we now enjoy. I literally wake up in the middle of the night thinking “Oh my crap, I can just Dumptruck into that Wrist-mount!”, after which my wife slaps me. Similarly, the empty space in our fledgling fixed axle style is perpetually beating us about the head and neck, and it’s comparatively easy to feel innovative.

Has it gained popularity? Absolutely. At Worlds, pretty much everybody wanted to be Drew. I saw more butterflies and kickflip attempts than I have in summer meadows and suburban skateparks. But I like to think what we’re trying to build is not so much a fad, but a valuable and lasting counterpoint to the mainstream. If it makes you happy to feel like a hipster, go for it. But I think it’s safe to say that what we’re not trying to define ourselves against the current so much as check out newer, smaller connected streams.

In any case, this week I wanted to go back to where we started and look at a standard trick element and it’s applications to fixed axle. Going back to our original model, the video starts with basic concepts and technique, and then gets into some more interesting applications at the end. This week is all about Buckets (and their kissing cousins, Triangles).

In the initial trick, I show a pretty standard entry into a move I imagine most of you have tried by now: a Drop-in-the-Bucket Stall. Discovered by Thad Winsenz, Buckets are an essential aspect of modern string geometry, but are so ubiquitous that they often they pass almost unnoticed in freestyles. In fixed axle, they demand a bit more attention, and will readily reward the unfocused with a snag, a whack, and a knot. That said, they work great for stalls. Since a lot of the string is accounted for, you may want to practice with a slightly longer string than you typically play with in order to make sure you can regen out of the holds.

One of the key discoveries from a few years back that made Buckets way more useful was the Instamount concept. There are several ways to get into a bucket directly from breakaway (or a laceration). In the 2nd trick, I show one of my favorites. As the yo-yo comes around to your non throw-hand side on breakaway, use that non-throwhand index to pull a string segment out over your throwhand thumb and an adjacent segment with your throwhand middle finger. This will open up a nice little 3-string formation, and as you might guess, the one in the middle there makes a perfectly serviceable bucket. While the traditional mount can waste precious time, I can get directly into this version, even with an Imperial.

If you elect to hit the string closest to your body instead, you land in a really cool and immediate triangle. A Green Triangle is essentially a bucket mount minus one extra bend in the string. They have different feelings, but very similar DNA. The tough thing about triangles on fixed axle is that the doubled string at the bottom can easily cause a snag. This is usually easily avoided by reversing the yo-yo’s spin. It’s tough to see, but on that Instatriangle, I threw with a reverse breakaway for that reason.

Next up, we stall that Instabucket out in a trick I call Infinite Instants. I’ve shown a version of it before. In this one, I stall out an Instabucket, regenerate to a Man-Bro stall on the other side, rinse, repeat.

At :30, we get into what may be the ultimate Butterfly Horse trick, Manly Bucket. I have no idea who came up with this gem, but it was first shown to me by Danny Severance on his trusty purple FH2 in 2008. It took me awhile to get it dialed on a No Jive, but man – nothing feels better. It’s pretty easy in concept – just a totally traditional Bucket entry… only you have to do the whole setup during the breakaway. Not a huge problem with an unresponsive yo-yo, but a knuckle-seeking No Jive (or Danny’s FH2) will be dying to punish your hubristic hands before the yo-yo gets to your shoulder. It’s an exercise in control, and as the next few tricks show, it can be stalled out directly or after a hop.

At :50 I come back to another triangle. Though this is not a bucket, the wrist-whip which begets it demonstrates how closely related the elements are. I like this mount way more than the ever-present Brent Stole, but like that Instatriangle I showed earlier, this one will usually require a reverse throw on Breakaway.

Around the 1-minute mount, I start getting more interesting. My bearing play is replete with pinch-mounts (maybe that’s why I love Lunars so much), and this Pinch-n-Roll move is one of my favorite ways into a Spirit Bomb Wrist-Bucket. To hit that on a No jive, I find I have about 5-6 tries max before I need a new string. TMBR’s are certainly more forgiving.

Seth Peterson and John Bot taught me the pull-mount Bucket that leads to my trick Hyacinth at Indy States one year. It’s one of the most aesthetically interesting mounts I’ve ever seen. At 1:20, I go ahead and turn the thing upside down while stalling it out. Was kind of surprised to discover that it works! Anyway, I did the whole Hyacinth trick on 365, and again for my video Big Deal last week – which you should go watch!!!

Ladder Mounts I learned from Jeff Coons of the Millbury Crew. I think Andre does his a bit differently, but they arrive at the same place. The beauty of the Ladder is that most of the segments are actually “safe zones” which you can drop without a knot. Not so with this middle one, which is a true Bucket. (The segment from your throwhand thumb, incidentally, yields a triangle – go figure.)

I come back to Instabuckets at 1:39. It’s me this week, so there’s gotta be a Snap-Start trick. You could just as easily hit this from Forward Pass, but this has more panache! Same mount as that original Instabucket, but you gotta be ready to grab that segment to land it off a snap.

Last two tricks, I think, are pretty cool. It’s possible to Dumptruck out of a bucket, but I had a hard time coming up with a consistent example. Dumping INTO an Instaucket, however, is pretty simple and feels great. I’m calling them Dumptruckets©™®. (I heard what you said, Drew Tetz! Next year, all the kids will want to be ME!)

And finally, speaking of mashup repeaters, we have a trick I’m calling Planet Bombs. Basically, an alternation between a Wrist-Bucket stall and an undermount stall, this one has a distinctly Planet Hoppish feel on account of the no-flip regens so common to stall tricks.

Aaaaaaaand that’s it! I hope you found something you could sink your teeth into, conceptually. If you have a chance to explore some alternate concepts in the fine art of bucketry (or if you have some applications you hold dear), I hope you’ll let us know about them in the comments!

 

 

Fixed Friday: Duncan Crew USA Chillin’

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Greetings, Fixed Axle Fanatics! Welcome to another glorious friday, and another clip from your friends at Yoyonews. As an extra special treat, this week those friends are more than just me! We’ve got some of Duncan Crew USA’s finest throwing down fixed axle knowledge—let’s take a peek, shall we?

First up to the plate, we’ve got Isaac Sams bringing his own unique twist to Nate Sutter’s “Pocketwatch” trick (which you can see in both the FACoatW finals and his alternative freestyle). This unique move captured the attention of plenty of top players at Worlds ’13 with its counterintuitive (yet brilliant!) method of stopping the yo-yo halfway down the string. This is normally considered a snag, but when used intentionally (as Isaac does here for a shortened somersault before entering 2or0) it can really mix up your tricks. What makes pocketwatch even better is how simple it is to learn: catch the yo-yo in your non-throwhand as it’s responding, give it a good hard yank, and then let that baby twirl.

I bump the tech level up for the next combo, which utilizes dump trucks to maneuver between more technical mounts. It opens with one of my favorite chopsticks stalls—I don’t know if it really has a name, as it’s just landing between the non-throwhand thumb/finger after a double or nothing, but I call it “ice cream cone”. I call a lot of tricks that, I guess. The trickiest part of this trick is swinging the yo-yo forward into a chopsticks dump truck, which puts a kink in the string. We get rid of the kink with another dump truck through the bucket before entering a reverse bucket with yet another dump truck. So many trucks!!

World Champion Hank Freeman brings us back to reality and shows that you don’t need string hits for tough tricks with his newest signature move, “The Turbo Rotary Hankinator.” (I name most of Hank’s tricks, btw.) If you wanna try this, just start with a shoot the moon down under, but when you get to the punches turn 180 degrees each rep. You’ll never stop punching! Just like Hank.

Takeshi has something very special this week, showing once again why he’s one of the best modders in the world with a fixed axle Exit 8. He powers through one of his signature 1A combos, a decidedly new school twist on the fixie formula, and proves that wood & metal yo-yos can live in harmony.

Isaac shows us more unconventional uses of the pocketwatch with a trick that could be considered even stall-ier than normal stalls, a pocketwatch to thumb mount. This trick is great because it’s simple, immediately understandable… but still challenging and entertaining. Dig the pacing.

The next trick that I show in the video is actually an ingenious technique for kickflip suicides pioneered by five time national offstring champ, Bryan Figueroa. Before you throw the suicide, if you wrap a bind of string around the axle, the loop will hang on through anything—clearly demonstrated by my even-sloppier-than-usual knee bonk suicide catch. You do have to keep an eye out for the yo-yo twisting around after the wrap, but if you’re the kind of player who likes risky tricks with big rewards and you want to take your kickflips to the next level, it’s definitely worth learning.

Hank takes it back to 2A town with possibly one of the first tricks ever to include both a loop wrap and a green triangle. The loop wrap (using your non-throwhand wrist to control loops) is an invaluable regen tool, but Hank kicks it up a notch by using the wrist twist to create a triangle and catch the yo-yo in a stall. Daaang! Bust this one out on all your friends for butterfly horse, they’ll be salty.

My last trick in the video is another dumptruck-heavy tech trick, titled “Peanut Butter Loves Honey.” This one opens with a wristmount stall, turns it upside-down, and after remounting into a fake bucket goes into some hyperspeed knee bounces.

Finally, Isaac closes out the fixed portion of the clip with a burly variation on his wrist magic drop straight into a thumb stall. Gnarly! Stick around after the credits for some bonus bearing booty from the boys, and don’t forget to comment below about your favorite tricks. Oh, and you can download the song here if you’d like. Until next week, Fixed Axle Aficinados!

Fixed Friday with Kyle Nations: The Lepidopterist

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Butterfly superstar Kyle Nations has graciously volunteered to fill in this Fixed Friday with a detailed post-mortem of his recent video extravaganza The Lepidopterist. Drink in the knowledge, kiddos! –drew

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While Ed and Drew are off at the Fixed Axle Championship of All the World (and something else called the World Yoyo contest; maybe you’ve heard of it), I offered to fill in so that the column can keep on trucking. Get ready to get weird as I dissect my latest video for your reading pleasure and my shameless self promotion:

First thing’s first, you gotta be aware of your string tension. For my setup and the tricks I like to do, neutral tension is the way to go and a sidewinder is always a slick way to get there. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, mac and cheesy. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

The first couple tricks, Web Cartridge Reload and Steve Brown Crisis respectfully, are pretty straightforward variations on one­handed stalls. If you’re comfortable with the standard thumb n’ forefinger stall, the next logical step is to adapt that stall for a different pair of fingers. Actually pulling it off is another matter entirely. You have much more control over your thumb when it comes to the subtle “cushioning” motion that makes the stall work; substitute the thumb for your pinky, and you’ve got a recipe for bruised knuckles. But all you have to do is train your fingers to open wide while the yoyo is on approach and then close ‘em up once it’s passed your 2 fingers to hit the string. If you do it with your palm up, get yourself some red tights ‘cause you’re Spiderman! Hit it with your palm down and suddenly you’re millennial Steve Brown! I do it 2or0 Crisis Flip style because it’s better to rock on with 2 hands.

Nessie vs Champ vs Ogopogo is sort of a one­of­everything buffet as combos go, combining moves seen in Sting Like a Butterfly and some fresh nuggets. It begins with a reworked Anne vs Lizzie, which is a move that I think looks both simple and difficult and actually is both simple and difficult. What’s happening is I’m interrupting the yoyo with my throwhand as it’s responding. This creates a loop of slack which I catch with my freehand. You can get used to the hold by draping the string over your freehand, calling back the yoyo, and catching with your throwhand. But it looks and feels more awesome to do it in one fluid move. And being more awesome impresses more girls. Anyway, next I just swoosh that bit of slack around to my thumb while at the same time turning my throwhand to achieve the correct spin direction on release for a trapeze stall. With the loop on my thumb, I make a hinge­like motion to get into that plain vanilla trap’ stall. The reason I don’t go into a more complex hold here is because I was set on doing a kickflip suicide, and those are hard, man! And this particular kickflip transitions to a cross­armed manbro stall because things can always be more difficult. But think of all the girls you can impress with moves like that!

Moving on, things get way easier after that kickflip. I simply uncross my arms before regenerating and stalling back on the other side of the same string segment. From here I perform a really odd move that’s hard to see in the video, so I’ll do my best to explain. I grip the stalled yo with my forefinger, pinky, and thumb so that I can fwoosh around the slack held by my freehand to end up in a braintwister stall. Now I twist that braintwister through the z­axis, regen, and perform a gorilla­style trap’ stall in preparation for an easy­mode dumptruck, followed by one half of Salvador Dali Windshield Wipers interrupted by a thumb stall. I dump that stall over my freehand for a little wrap flowing right into one of my favorite moves, the

Slap Wrap. Garnish with a somersault and an elbow bump and there you have one monster of a combination plate.

I hope that wasn’t too much jargon for you to handle, but don’t worry because it’s all smooth sailing from here, especially since we’ve arrived at Son of Thriller! Believe it or not, there’s actually more to this trick than awkward gyrations. Throw a forward pass, but catch it without turning your hand over. Then throw it back out, but be careful because now that the yoyo is flipped over, it’ll want to turn sideways and blow raspberries at you. Keep up the rhythm and you’ve got the trick. The throw and catch by itself looks a bit too much like a nazi salute, hence the Thriller pose. A Wayne’s World “we’re not worthy” pose is also acceptable.

The next couple tricks are my answer to Ed’s snap start tricks, but instead of snap starts, they’re based on rolling starts. What’s unique about rolling starts is you can start a dead yoyo without touching it which opens up intriguing possibilities. The first, Cosby Resurrection, is an interesting case because it begins wound and is promptly killed before being brought back to life. “I brought you into this world, and i’ll take you out,” and then back into it. The meat of the trick is just a double­on hook that you unravel and roll start out. I like it because you could throw it into a combo without breaking your rhythm. The second roll start trick is called Necrophilia because you’re playing with a dead yoyo. Mostly, anyway, because I do give it a tiny bit of spin so I can perform the laceration without the yoyo going wibbly wobbly. It will be much easier to practice that laceration with a long spinning yoyo if you wanted to try this trick out. The really difficult bit, however, is the dump onto the back string. We’re getting really close to kendama territory here, so use your knees. Also, any trick looks good if you punctuate it with a Rump Bump.

The last trick is my favorite of the video because it looks good, feels good, and I can hit it more consistently than I think I should be able to. It’s called Pete Townshend’s Magic Triangle. Oddly enough, the windmill jam at the beginning was not initially the Pete Townshend part. After the bowling toss, which has a Son of Thriller­esque trickiness, I perform a move I call a Pete Townshend. You can see the full version of that trick 54 seconds in to Sting Like a Butterfly. Your throwhand revolves around in the same direction, and it always felt like a mini version of Pete’s windmill to me. So after that I do a stylish straight­string redirect to achieve the spin direction needed for a split bottom stall. From there, I found that if I dismount/regen over my throwhand, suddenly I have a loop of slack to throw around. So I whip that bad boy around to my freefinger and simultaneously stall on the back string. In this hold, I discovered that I can pull the front loop through the back and bingo bango: false triangle! But this false triangle has a mutation that makes a stalled yo want to untwist. I let it, but carefully because if it spins too far, it’ll have too much momentum in the wrong direction. It needs to twist and stop. The next move is similar to a kickflip suicide, but it’s really more of a pop shuvit if we’re going to stick to the skateboard vernacular. Now comes the magic because I don’t re­catch it in the same loop, but rather the tiny opening down by the yoyo. By hitting that spot, the triangle dissolves into a trapeze quite magically. If you’re trying it for yourself, you can also stick your freethumb into that little opening to reach a similar end if you can’t hit the pop shuvit, although this method is not nearly as magical. But either way, you must end the trick with wiggling “magic fingers”. It’s not right without it.

And there you have it! The Lepidopterist scrupulously analyzed in hopes that it gives you an idea of what’s going on between my hands, a string, and that hunk of plastic at the end. And hopefully I’ve given some of you a couple ideas to toy around with and make your own. Ed and/or Drew will be back next week I’m sure with plenty of tales to tell from Worlds. Thanks for reading all you a­fix­ionados out there!

Fixed Friday: Freestyles

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Happy Friday, fixed folk. As I’m sure you’re aware, we are just a few days away from that merriest time of year (no, not Arbor Day): Worlds!!! Say what you will about Orlando, Prague, dance parties, etc. All drama, geography, and pageantry aside, Worlds is the time of year when the best and friendliest in the world meet up to throw down. It’s the best.

I have never been much of a contest player. I mean, I’ve competed in contests, and I did alright once or twice, but I’ve never really understood it. As such, I completely agree that I’m unqualified to talk about what a good (much less a “winning”) freestyle should be composed of. My lack of competitive-savvy is probably directly tied to what I love about the annual Fixed Axle Championship of All the World (as Drew discussed last week). It’s judged by your fellow “competitors”, all of whom are as stoked to watch their friends nail a trick as they are to pull off a banger themselves. It’s based on randomly-selected criteria. And, as a 3-try best trick-off, it’s generally much easier to quantify than your average freestyle.

However, for the first time ever this year, the final round of the contest will consist of a freestyle. This allows whoever has made it to the end to really show a chunk of their style in a performance context.

If you’re any kind of yo-yo player, you have to be able to show off your tricks. You have to be able to perform. Otherwise, your experience will be limited to exploring the mysteries of string geometry in your room. And sure, that’s valuable, but the other side of that coin, expressing your joy for the art to an audience, is equally valuable and can serve to inform your more inward “progressive” playing, too. Not all performance is competitive – it just seems that way in yo-yoing sometimes. Fixed axle freestyles are becoming more and more of a “thing” these days. At least 5 large contests (besides Worlds) of which I am aware have had a Fixed Axle division in the last year, and most of those were based on freestyles. Although the word “freestyle” is an amusing misnomer (usually being composed of carefully selected tricks), it’s still worthwhile to develop a sense for how you might put tricks together in 1-, 2-, or even 3-minute chunks. We’ve all seen dozens (if not hundreds) of modern freestyles, but fixed axle represents some interesting obstacles.

For one, most of the fixed tricks we delight in are pretty hard and decidedly low-percentage. I’m certainly not suggesting that Mickey, Marcus, and Chris have easy tricks, but I find it much easier to throw together a sequence of my own “unresponsive string-tricks” which I am likely to hit than my own “fixed axle tricks”. I bet the world champ would say the same thing. You might hit that cross-armed kickflip suicide just one in ten tries, but MAN it feels amazing when you do. That said, no one wants to see you miss 9 times on stage. The difficulty is just inherent to the medium (it’s probably why you love it enough to read this drivel).

The rhythm of fixed axle yo-yoing is also totally different from mainstream contest play. Today’s modern metals have the angular momentum-to-drag coefficient ratio to blast through minute-long combos, even without a regen. By contrast, a “long” fixed axle trick takes about 10 seconds. But, since stalls are so utterly endemic to progressive fixed axle, it’s much easier for me to see tricks linked into organic wholes. Also, take a look back at some of the past 30-odd episodes. What percent of the tricks have been repeaters? 50? The natural tendency toward stall-regen repeaters also makes it easier to plan and link combos.

I approach the idea of a fixed axle freestyle the same way I approach any other performance. It should consist of tricks which I can hit consistently. The tricks should be organized so that they flow together relatively seamlessly. The material should be original. And it should be fun to watch.

… That’s a pretty tall order, and I certainly fail to live up to it in a few parts of my vid this week. First of all, it’s worth noting that this freestyle leaves out a few tricks which I would probably throw in near the end. 1.) I want to reserve some interesting stuff for Worlds and 2.) Most of that stuff is hit-or-miss. The vast majority of the tricks I put together this week are elements which, independently, I can hit very consistently (say 4 out of 5 times). Even so, having a 2-minute freestyle composed of tricks you’re 80% likely to hit is still VERY dicey, and as you’ll note, I have some misses (notably on Dali Winshield Wipers and that last Under-Moon Tough Love Lunar).

I tend to front-load my freestyles a bit. That is to say, the first minute is generally tougher than the second (or third). As I said before though, none of this video is really very hard at all. It’s when you put it into a fluid context and take away stops that it becomes challenging. This hypothetical FS starts with a snap-to-cross-1.5. I like that initial move because I have it down pat and it’s kind of unique. Most freestyles don’t begin with the yo-yo unwound. After that is a little Zipper-Stall/Milk-the-Truck combo ending in a stall GT. Next I get into some Lunar/Crash Landing stuff. This can be pretty inconsistent, even if you do them all the time. It doesn’t take much to send a Shoot-the-Moon off a centimeter, which is the difference between a catch and a miss.

It’s a good time to talk about yo-yo’s. You’ll note that I’m using a Duncan Profly this time. Fixed axle yo-yo’s are SO varied in terms of what they can do, and you really have to think about the character of the freestyle you’re attempting before selecting one. TMBR’s are some of my favorite fixed axles out there, but I know I would have a harder time connecting a lot of these tricks together with one. They spin way longer and stall fine, but I tend to lose a little juice on my regens with the thin axles and wider gaps. If I was going for a freestyle full of longer, 1a-style fixed axle tricks, you can bet my EH, Lovejoy, or Irving Pro would be the call. It might also be reasonable to switch yo-yo’s mid-stream, planning your long-spin tricks near the end (and suffering the deduction associated with a switch-out).

Anyway, fter that Moon combo, I start to get into the meat of the FS, which is basically a series of sidestyle elements. In order, I go from some Stop-N-Go/Stop-N-Pops into some Dumptrucks (yes, these are Drew’s and yes, they go against what I said about originality – whatever, I like going to that 2.0), then Salvador Dali Windshield Wipers, a little 1-hand repeater I call Yin-Yang, some Radial Nerve Bonks, and finally some Instabucket stalls. That’s functionally the end of my plan. As I said earlier, I’m definitely withholding a few tricks, which will hopefully account for the extra 20 seconds. I generally have a tough time planning an ending to my freestyles, to their detriment. If I hit what I have planned in the first 1:40, the last :20 will typically consist of a few harder tricks which, if I make them, will leave an impression. Unfortunately, they also make an impression when I don’t.

Competition at the FACoAtW this year will not be “fierce”, but it will be tight. Getting into that final freestyle round would be awesome, but there are a lot of guys on equal ground right now. The inherent inconsistency of the fixed axle medium makes the whole event a wonderful toss-up, and I can’t wait.

Note that since Drew and I will both be at Worlds, there will probably not be any kind of organized FF column next week. However, you should definitely tune into the live feed on Saturday at 3:00pm, as that when the FACoAtW takes place on the main stage. The up-side to no column next week is that we will probably collect enough footage for several weeks of FF dissection/discussion! If you’re going to be in attendance and want desperately to shred your stuff on stage, talk to me or Drew at Worlds and we’ll see if we can get you in there. Actually, talk to me anyway because I’d love to meet you.

Hook us up with any nuggets of wisdom you’ve accrued in planning fixed axle freestyles in the comments!

 

Fixed Friday: Fixed Axle Championship of All the World Warmup

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Happy Fixed… almost Saturday! Okay, yes, I’m running extremely late on this one, but hopefully Kyle warmed you guys up and we can keep the Fixie train rollin’.

This week is special because it’s my last Fixed Friday column before the World Yo-yo Contest! While Fixed Axle doesn’t have a dedicated division like 1A-5A, the Fixed Axle Throwdown is a time-honored tradition, and last year’s onstage antics brought it to new heights (as you may remember from David Ung’s documentation of it.) While the show is traditionally semi-invitational in order to fill the correct number of slots, we’re accepting applications, so if you want a shot at being a wildcard comment below and find me or Ed at Worlds to let us know you’ve got what it takes… to be Fixed Axle Champion of All the World!!!

Please pardon the extra exclamation points, it’s just so exciting.

This year, as in years past, we’re going to have a peer-judged, criteria-based best trick contest. What does this mean? We randomly choose a theme, the competitors perform a trick based on the theme, and then use their shoes to vote for their favorites. We’ve got a good solid lineup of star players and some fun surprises for the day of the contest, but why spoil those? Let’s get back to the column.

There’s no real unifying theme on the tricks this week, but I brought out a couple of bangers & combos to get myself pumped up for Worlds. Combo #1 is performed on one of those crazy 70mm wood yo-yos Chuck & Jensen have been using. It’s not my place to hype, so I can’t tell you if or when these will be available, but Jensen’s impeccable flow was definitely a big inspiration in these sequence. If you want a challenging trick for the weekend, give the broadway 2or0 a shot: throw a breakaway, rotate your body towards your throwhand (clockwise for righties) and try to catch the yo-yo in a double-or-nothing. Tough stuff, especially if you aren’t into hitting your face! Not to brag or nothin’, but the one in the video is actually a broadway 2or0 stall that I regenerated into… hit it in front of me at Worlds and I’ll give you a Butterfly or somethin’.

Next on the chopping block, another string/stall fusion sequence, showing how you can exit a complicated mount straight into a stall and mix it up with your normal tricks. This particular example is more a combo of some of my recent favorite moves than a super original trick, but I encourage people to try and find similar links.

Next up, we got a reimagining of one of the most classic string tricks of all time, the Kwijibo. My favorite thing about Kwijibo is that it’s such a recognizable, classic format that people can really play with it and get some interesting “tributes” to it. For example, Elephark & yours truly each came up with a distinct E-fan Kwijibo. This variation throws kickflip suicides into the mix, which isn’t too tough on the first transfer but deceptively tricky for the second throw. I’m proud of it.

For an intermission, a brief glimpse at one of the perils of plastic yo-yos. We love ’em. I’ve really been putting this orange butterfly through its paces this week, but was still a little surprised when it popped open on camera.

…but let’s get back to the real tricks. The next trick, the Fingerflip. This is a bit of a retcon on the original “kickflip” trick, combined with the tough love setup for slacks & whips. Basically, throw the yo-yo, catch it with your non-throwhand, throw a flip (carefully!) and remember to use your knees when you catch it back on the string. A subtle, but very rewarding move.

Continuing in the vein of the broadway 2or0 stall is another weird instamount, the Burly or Nothing stall. So called because it’s so burly, I very highly recommend practicing this trick in a mirror with an unresponsive yo-yo before going for the full blind catch. Once you feel comfortable (or at least not terrified) with that, try switching to a responsive yo-yo and catching it in a stall. It’s fun! As long as you don’t hit yourself in the face, I mean, but isn’t that true of everythign?

Now, I’d like to slow it down and return to the trick that was giving me technical difficulties earlier, the Straitjacket stall. Straitjacket is a trick pioneered by Brazilian visionary Sid Seed that involves eating your vegetables in the morning and having a lot of skin, and has caught on in a major way with some of the lankier young players — most notably, Isaac Sams. I think Isaac’s actually hit the straitjacket stall on camera before, so I made sure to add some original flavor with a behind the back catch to ninja spin. You’re welcome. (Also, for anybody attempting to learn this trick, I strongly recommend using some long string and a Butterfly. Trust me. You’re gonna bang your knuckles quite a few times, you’ll want something light.)

Final trick of the video is a weird & goofy trick with a lot of body language, but I like it. Heavy inspiration from Anthony, Chuck, and Kyle Nations. For those of you who are interested in trick theory, the binding concept for this trick’s construction was trying to cross/recross/uncross my arms at every step while remaining at one or two levels of string. It’s a lot slower than some other combos, but has a neat back & forth pumping effect, too.

While Fixed Friday is almost over, hopefully these tricks will carry you through the weekend. Don’t forget to sign up for the contest if you want a chance to shine, practice hard on your spin moves, and go have fun! Also, I know this week’s beat is kind of crazy, but if you wanna download it you can totally do that right here.

Drew Tetz – Top 5 2012 tricks

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Hey gang! Drew here, I’m very excited about my signature Barracuda and we’re pulling together some awesome exclusive stuff for Yoyonews celebrating the launch, but I thought it would be nice to start with some of my favorite tricks from last year. I was extremely proud to be a part of the 365yoyotricks roster and ended up filming a total of 64 tricks for the project – not a bad run! While you should really be checking 365 everyday (or at least following it on Facebook and Twitter,) we understand if you missed a day or two, and I wanted to give a rundown of my personal highlights for the year.

5. Keith Haring Dog to Flying Ice Cream Cone to Spider-Man in a Propeller Beanie to Batman

In my opinion, every yo-yoer worth their salt should have at least one signature picture trick, and if you can link a couple of good ones into a picture trick story then you’re gonna have my respect forever – shout outs to Ed, John Bot, Hank, Nate, Abe, Blake, Malcolm, and everybody else still making tricks that nonyoyoers actually like. Also, when I was 8 I made a bunch of comics featuring “The Amazing Spider-Bat”, so this is kind of just a continuation of that dream. (ART SNOBS: I know this doesn’t actually look that much like a Keith Haring dog, next time you see me ask for Keith Haring dog 2013 and I’ll show you the new & improved one.)

4. Hyper Drew Special Engine


I’ve probably gotten more questions about this than any other trick, so I was glad to finally have a clear video of it. If you’ve never seen it before, it’s a pretty neat rejection illusion, check it out! Rei Iwakura named it for me, which makes me feel super awesome, so every time I do it I shout the name as loud as possible.

3. Mousewrap


I didn’t have too many all new full-length 5A combos in 2012, but I definitely considered this one a banger. Proud of the density of concepts, the aesthetic, the way it feels, and… frankly, I’m also really stoked on the way that Steve synced the catch up with a handclap, haha. This is a pure representation of how I wish 5A looked, made much easier by the use of a Barracuda.

2. Crazy Counterwrap

This trick is a blend of some of my favorite original 5A concepts, and a continuation of an idea my Red vs. Drew video. I’m pretty stoked with it on a theoretical level, but also happy that I’m finally good enough to get it looking close to the way I want it to look, haha. I would be thrilled if people wanted to learn it, but at the same time I’m secretly proud of how difficult it was to get down.

1. Kickflip Suicide


Those of you following Fixed Friday may be well sick of this move by now, but it was definitely my favorite trick of 2012. I feel very proud having run into this element, simple tricks are often a lot harder to discover. This one is cool because it’s a new school trick, but is quite a bit easier on responsive yo-yos, and sort of represents the new wave of fixed axle yo-yoing for me. It can also be used as a transition move or in more advanced suicides, and I’m really trying to push it, ’cause it’s super fun and I want everyone to do it.

Thanks for indulging me! You’ll be seeing a lot of content from me this week as part of the big YoYoNews takeover – or should I say YoyoDREWs takeover?! No, I shouldn’t? Okay, yeah, you’re right. I’ll try to keep the puns down from here on. Keep checking back throughout the week for more tricks from me, battles with my friends, exclusive clips and other goodies!

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