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Fixed Friday: Learn These

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Hello, Fixed Axle Faithful! As you may know, this is the last Friday of 2013. What you might know is that this is also the last installment of regular Fixed Friday content—it sounds dramatic, but I highly doubt you’ve seen the last of us, we’ll just be stepping back from one a week. As Ed noted, it’s been fun, and we’re quite proud of our work; after fifty episodes I hope that we’ve given fixed axle acolytes some material to chew on and maybe taught somebody a trick or two. Thank you all for stickin’ with us through this crazy year and for supporting us in whatever comes next.

As this is the last installment of the year, I thought it might be fitting to do a roundup of my favorite concepts. Consider this the Cliffs Notes version of the Fixed Axle master class, and please by all means check out our back catalog… but more than anything learn these tricks!

Before we start talking about individual tricks, I would urge every new Fixed Axle player to check out Ed’s “Back to Basics” clip & article, which addresses most of the questions about equipment, string tension (important!), and all that good stuff.

LEVEL 1

Job #1 is developing good control over the yo-yo. You’ll be spending a lot of time winding your yo-yo back up, so you might as well learn a couple fun ways to do it! I personally favor the thumb start (demonstrated by André here), a quick pushing down on the yo-yo with your fingers to start it spinning again, but it wouldn’t hurt to learn a couple of different regen techniques. Another favorite is Engineer’s Windup, wherein you set the dead yo-yo on the string and roll it along the trapeze to build friction and start the string winding—while many people write this move off as cheesy beginner stuff, I find looping out of it quite satisfying, and Kyle Nations actually built it into a trick with his “Necro” concepts.

Though I don’t feature it in the video, I would be remiss not to mention the almighty snap start. Ed has a great primer on those.

The next trick, Sidewinder, is an absolute essential, because it is hands-down the fastest way to fix string tension on a responsive yo-yo. You can read my full article on it here for a more in-depth look, but definitely learn it! Lefty loosey, righty tighty, keep that string in shape.

Pocketwatch, created by the brilliant Nate Sutter, is perhaps the simplest new trick in years, and that’s what makes it brilliant. Read Ed’s writeup on it and don’t forget to shake your hips for maximum points.

Trapeze Stall & Trapeze-Bro Stall are not only the building blocks of modern stall play, but also the first tricks featured on Fixed Friday. Neat, right? Complete the circle by reading that original article, trapeze stall was a total gamechanger for me and I consider it a modern essential. Once again, Ed’s knowledge is indispensable, and his “How to Stall” video is perfect for fixing your technique, and his Bro-Stall Repeaters video can show you some more advanced variations. The Double-or-nothing (2or0) stall was not covered in depth in a FF article, but once you feel comfortable with your trapezes you should try going all the way around and practicing your rollouts.

Zipper Stalls is perhaps my favorite stall-based repeater, perfect in its symmetry & simplicity. Ed made it, so naturally he’d be the best to learn from (probably in this article he wrote featuring it) but I love seeing the way players’ individual style affects the aesthetics of this trick. Being able to roll smoothly from one stall to another and learning the way the yo-yo flips depending on spin direction is an essential skill that this trick develops in you pretty quick.

Thumb Mount stalls are another fixed axle standby, the perfect fusion of response-powered tricks and string trick precision. The Lunar Landing, addressed a little bit later, is probably the most famous example, and Ed discusses a number of them in his Lunars clip, but you can also see a few good examples in his one-handed clip. The entrances in the video are some of my favorite, but I’ll admit some are harder than others: forward pass to reverse lunar is definitely the one I would try to learn first.

LEVEL 2

Dumptrucks, alright! I’m proud because it’s an original trick, and one of my favorite modern fixie concepts. I addressed it at length in this video, but the main takeaway is that you can flip the yo-yo halfway on the z-axis to dismount and regenerate, something that is stylish, fun, and useful for finding transitions. I may be biased, but I do consider it a staple of the modern fixed axle canon, so give it a try at least.

Behind the back braintwister is not a move in everybody’s quiver, but it serves as a good way to practice stalls in body tricks… and beat fools in butterfly horse.

2or0 chopsticks stall is one of my favorite stall mounts, because of how technically rich it is for being accessible straight off of a throw. I enjoy just mounting and rolling out as in the video, but you can see it applied to a more complex trick in my Crisis video.

I’ve chosen Makin’ Da Zines to be representative of all planet hop based repeaters, which you can learn more of in my Planet Rock column. Makin’ Da Zines is a favorite because it’s a stylish & satisfying exit from trapeze stall, something you’ll end up in a lot. There’s definitely something to be said for tricks that just feel “right.”

Shoot the Moon is an all-time classic hall of fame trick, and well worth learning even if you don’t usually like looping. Ed’s Lunars clip addresses them briefly, but it’s the sort of trick that you really have to just work at for yourself. My tips: use something light & butterfly-shaped, make sure your string length & response are comfortable, be careful that the yo-yo doesn’t flip between repetitions, and use a much gentler touch than you ordinarily would.

Stop & Go is a classic 1A move covered in many other places, but Ed does such nice things with them on fixed axles that I thought it was worth mentioning. Definitely plenty of unexplored territory there, and a great trick to show non-yoyoers, too. The following clip with the uncredited clip is also a tribute to Ed, specifically his daring “flinch” trick.

LEVEL 3

Bouncehouse is a subtle & fun transition move introduced in my “Huh? Wha?” clip, and when combined with Charles’ 2or0 entrance it has become one of my bread & butter fixed axle combos. LFO is another blending of elements that make a satisfying whole: you can see it in slomo in that sidewinder article, the blending of dumptrucks, sidewinders, and 3D catches feels great.

Kickflips, Heelflips, Shuvits, and the Mach-5 Whip Flip can all be found (along with other flips) in my Flip Tricks column. I think it’s fair to call the kickflip my “signature move” by now, which is exciting, ’cause I’m like not even a superhero or a wrestler so I’m not supposed to have those… but anyways, they’re high risk stall-specific moves that look great and feel fun, so you should at least try to learn one of them. Probably Kickflips, they’re the easiest, but shuvits are satisfying exactly because of how difficult they are.

UFO Recaptures are perhaps the simplest way to get into Horizontal tricks for fixed axle. Read more about them here. It’ll take practice to catch the returning stall on the string, but it feels great being able to switch between planes on a whim. The Double Regen is silly but fun.

Mystics are very technical, z-axis transitions between strings in the middle of a stall. Though the intricacies are often missed by non-fixed players, they do feel really awesome and open up a whole new way of looking at stall string formations. Check the full Mystical clip here.

…and, because it’s nice to go out with something fun, I ended with Venetian Blinds, a trick you should definitely not show your mother-in-law or the police.

Thank you all for tuning in all year, and I hope that we’ll be able to trade Fixie tricks on a contest floor sometime soon. I’ve had a ton of fun and have so much love for Ed, Steve, & André for helping making it happen. Don’t forget to join the Fixed Friday facebook group and the Fixed Axle Megathread on Yoyoexpert to shun bearings with the other cool kids. Music in this video is a freely downloadable remix I made of a song by Duns Broccoli. (P.S. Bonus shoutout & thanks to Louis DiGiuseppe for helping me shoot this, look for another exciting fixie video from us soon…)

Yo-yos used were the Duncan Butterfly, the Duncan Wheel, and the Moon by 44RPM.

BONUS CLIP: I forgot to put these in the video so now they’re instagram exclusives. Whatever. Broadway stall and kwijibo kickflip suicide.

Fixed Friday – Pictures

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So I’ll preface this by saying “it’s been fun”. It’s been fun, and I’m intensely proud of having made this column a weekly feature on YoYoNews.com; proud of helping to document “the state of fixed axle” during what has been a fascinating resurgence. When I first fell in love with throwing wood, information on its necessary skills and disciplines were few and far between. Progression had stagnated to the point of a dare or punchline, and seeing which long combos could be hit on a No Jive or a Butterfly was the only “fixed axle style” out there. Drew and I set out this year to simply have some fun and see where we could go, but that attitude evolved as we developed a lexicon and identified the directions that best fit this weird medium. Along the way, we had some battles, wrote a preposterous amount of text, and posted up some 2 hours of thematic video. In the back of my mind has been the idea that some guy or girl who finds themselves obsessed with chasing the simplicity and tradition inherent to fixed axle will have an archive of conceptual ammunition to go on.

This week, I wanted to go back to one of my favorite wells, albeit one that is not normally a natural for fixies – picture tricks. Generally, these depictive string formations are much better suited to bearing play, if only because they take a long time to develop. Remember though, that the original picture tricks were classics like Eiffel Tower, Rock the Baby, and Texas Star. Even Sleeper, Creeper, and Shoot the Moon are visually named, suggesting that all of yo-yoing has its roots in pictures.

Luke Hildebrand sent me a black version of his diminutive delrin throw, the Emmett. Despite its small diameter, it’s pretty solid, and I figured the steel axle would give me enough sleep time to pull off some of these. It did not disappoint, and I’m pretty sure this is the only metal-axle fixie I’ve thrown on FF this year.

I start off with a tough one called Deadpool. To me it kind of looks like the wisecrackin’ Marvel Comics character, so bizarrely portrayed by Ryan Reynolds in that Wolverine movie. Unfortunately, doing this on fixed means, you have about AN second to hang out in the actual picture if you intend to get it back to the hand, so this one came out kind of like a “morbidly obese Deadpool”, but it’s the thought that counts. This trick uses a mount similar to Drew’s classic 20th Century Fox/Flying Ice Cream/Spiderman-in-a-Propeller-Beanie sequence.

Next up, we’ve got my own interpretation of a John Bot classic. Although I initially named it “Space Invader”, I soon realized it was just a frontstyle version of his trick, Cat Star. I do like dropping mine into Eiffel and then braintwisting out. John was the first player who really showed me that picture tricks could be a modern style in and of themselves, and I found his “story tricks” to be absolutely brilliant. My Bionic Rudolph trick uses the same basic mount as his StarFox/Bandit-Elephant sequence, but ends in a seasonally appropriate bit of Xmas flair.

The 4th trick is not picture-ish at all. Whatever, I was just messing around with the Emmett.

At :30, we have one of my favorite tricks ever, Star Within A Star. I heard that this was a boom-era Sky Kiyabu invention (although I could be wrong). Possibly the most awesome work of symmetrical string geometry I’ve seen, and I love how you can pause in the Triforce picture before completing it. Immediately following it, we have a variation I call Sands of the Hourglass, which is kind of my own take on the classic Hailey’s Comet (1-handed Star mounted in trapeze).

The next two tricks are some of my more complex ones, and they require a degree of delicacy on fixed axle. At :50 is Flux Capacitor, which I’m sure I’ve highlighted on FF before at some point, and then after that is a weird trick I call Conjoined Twin Towers. I really don’t fully understand how it works out, but you basically get two Eiffels which are totally interwoven, and yet it drops neatly out. Yo-yo’s… how do THEY work? 1:10 shows another John Bot gem, Takeshi’s Ray Gun. Easy to get into, and brilliantly simple in concept, I do homage to John in my next trick, the star-to-trapeze formation I named “Johnbotulism”.

Pretty much every old-schooley thrower has some variation on the Flower trick. They are perfect for small demos, and say what you will about the pitfalls of princesses and ponies… little girls love the flower trick. They also dig on the Flutter-By trick, which I get into at 1:40. That one has a habit of snagging on the way out, so it’s a bit sketchier for a school or library show. And, speaking of things that flutter, my last trick for this week was named by Drew Tetz as “The Great Blue Heron Or Something”. Seeing as it looks only vaguely like a bird, the “Or Something” is absolutely integral.

And that’s a wrap. Mind you, I don’t think we’re done with Fixed Friday by any means. Though I’m taking a vacation for a couple weeks, I’ll still revisit this column in the new year. It might not be a weekly or bi-weekly thing, but as thematic ideas become apparent, we’ll be there to try our best to document them. Thanks so much to anyone and everyone who has checked out this corner of YoYoNews.com all year, who’ve left us feedback and suggestions in the comments, and who have, themselves, pushed fixed axle play forward through all of the videos, instagrams, and support of small manufacturers. As I said at the top, “it’s been fun”.

Fixed Friday – Scorchers

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So I’ll apologize in advance for the apparent cop-out layup. Except it’s Thanksgiving weekend and my engorged body is incapable of either throwing myself into a ton of hard tricks OR actually caring about it… so consider that apology for what it’s worth.

One of our dear readers – we HAVE them! – inquired in my last column about whether we might dedicate an entry to “long-sleeper tricks”. He offered that while we have produced much content in the realm of 1-and-done stall moves, stop-n-go’s, and the like, FF has largely ignored the bizarre art of hitting protracted tricks involving many string-hits (bear in mind, such tricks max out around 10s on fixed axle). Although we have kind of overlooked those tricks, I think if you’re willing to go back through the archives, there have been several examples to the contrary. Regardless, there is certainly a good reason for our focus on the shorter stuff. I’ll get to that, promise. In any case, this vid combines #throwbackthursday with #fixedfriday, and is essentially a compilation of some of the longer tricks I’ve done on wood. Even more than that, I guess it serves as a fun little scrapbook chronicling my own development as a fixed axle player. Hope you dig.

I remember talking with Jack Ringca (who has always been a pretty awesome fixed axle player, himself) in 2006 about doing Cold Fusion on fixed axle, and specifically on a classic wood-axle Russell. That conversation lit a fire in me somehow. I decided to make that challenge my own, and I rolled it up a hill like Sisyphus for half a year before finally hitting it. I found it WAY easier on either a Proyo or No Jive, both of which have immeasurably smoother axles. Part of hitting a long trick on a fixie is simply throwing hard, and with an untreated Russell axle, I will either snap a string or scorch the wood with a single throw. This can be ameliorated by allowing some Vaseline Intensive Care Lip Therapy to cure on the axle overnight (thanks for that tip, John Higby). Learning to cope with those fickle Russells helped me to understand the importance of a smooth axle and, subsequently, ensured my eventual head-over-heels love affair with No Jives. Mind you, I still burn No Jive axles sometimes, and even the smoother, harder TMBR ones (hence the column’s name). It sucks, but at least it smells great.

In 2007 or so, I had no idea what to do with a No Jive beyond just trying to do the same tricks I did with a bearing. Somehow it felt as though doing a long trick on a wood yo-yo translated to being “a good yo-yoer” back then, and I was eager to chase down all of my favorite tricks on that medium. Branding, Hook, Suicides, Brent Stole, Gyroscopic Flop (initially suggested by Jack as “impossible on wood”), Mach 5, Pop N Fresh, and eventually, Spirit Bomb. I found it more tantalizing to be the sort of yo-yoer who could hit those modern classics on wood than to invent the next round of “post-modern classics”, myself (to be fair, I was still making up lots of tricks, but nothing remotely classic). Ironically, most of my stall-based stuff that actually IS progressive and relevant was born out of my missed attempts at longer tricks.

I have come up with some tricks that are at the edge of what a fixed axle will typically allow, in terms of spin-time. Smallpox Blanket comes to mind, but Would even more so. The TMBR Irving Pro is probably more capable of long, technical tricks than any fixie out there, and I’ve never hit that particular trick with any other yo-yo.

In terms of the classical canon, Spirit Bomb represented a line my mind drew in the sand from the start. While not a particularly long trick, it was the first one I came to that I really didn’t think could be done on fixed axle (when in fact, it can be done on almost ANY fixed axle). That line gets erased and redrawn, I’ve found, but it’s always there somewhere. At IYYO in New York that year, it became a fun challenge to hit Spirit Bomb on a No Jive. I was amazed that some guys (Red, Yuuki, Tyler) were able to hit it first try. Adam Brewster, Brandon Jackson, Joey Fleshman took a few go’s each (Adam also hit Superman!). And others (André, Sebby, Samm Scott) took the better part of a night to nail it at ECC, but they all got it dialed. It took me over a week of trying before it finally made sense, and it really opened me up to the truth that a) my technique was really not very good, and b) WAY more than you imagine is possible. That second realization is pretty much entirely responsible for anything/everything cool I have done with a yo-yo in the last 5 years. If even a small part of you believes that you can do something, it’s almost as though you already have – you just have to go through the motions and do the math. Fixed Axle Spirit Bomb became an obsession to me, and I made it a point to be able to hit it on ANYTHING, up to and including the O-Boy in the video, the woodies I made in Steve Buffel’s garage, and Colin Leland’s first ultra-thin TMBR prototype.

For awhile, my standard of impossibility was reset at Kamikaze, but in early 2009 I hit it on a FHZ with a Technic axle, and then again with a No Jive. Pure 143 seemed like a lion, but if you can manage your response through the bucket, it’s really just a kitten. Rancid Milk is a fixed axle killer, and I’ve never been smooth enough through the intro to take a shot at it, but Colin poked his head through that glass ceiling with a purpleheart Irving Pro. And while I thought White Buddha and McBride Roller Coaster (did he invent that trick on a transaxle? Jesus, I hope so) were easy tricks, they just seemed too LONG for wood. With the TMBR axle innovations, though, I could knock them over with spin to spare (OK, not much). Breath is one of the few tricks out there that I’ve never seen done on fixed axle, know could be, and that I’d really like to see. I can get through it on a bearing, but I’ve never been fluid enough to even make a reasonable attempt on wood. Maybe someday. If you beat me to it, I’ll send you a yo-yo and a high five.

By and large though, I’ve moved away from this content, which is why the video is populated mostly with content from years past. Tricks, to me, are like surf spots, and pulling off Kamikaze with a No Jive is a bit like stroking into Pipeline on a 10ft balsa longboard from the 60’s (minus the legitimate threat of crushing death). I’ve pulled up to those long tricks and worked through them with my wood yo-yo. Been there and done that and taken the moving digital postcard to prove it. There’s a value to it, absolutely, but you don’t need to keep coming back. While a long trick on your Imperial feels cool and may momentarily validate your sense of yourself, it’s hard to argue that it’s really the best use of the tool. What we’re finding in the past few years is that fixed axle yo-yo’s ARE BETTER at doing some types of tricks than their bearing counterparts. There are unexplored coastlines full of tricks to explore with high response and short-spin, and that’s where I want to go.

It was, however, extremely fun to look at these relic videos and recapture some of the feeling of hitting these tricks for the first time. To imagine that Cold Fusion ever felt hard on a wood yo-yo is just crazy now, but hitting it that night for my first No Jive video felt inexplicably awesome. I hope it will suffice for this column, and I wish you all the best as you load for bear to take aim at your own monsters this week.

Fixed Friday: UFO Recaptures

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Cast aside your bearings, ye fixed axle faithful, and join us as we take a step into horizontal responsive tricks. This may sound like a daunting challenge, as neither horizontal nor responsive play are particularly easy, but we can use stalls to make response work to our advantage with a maneuver called the UFO Recapture.

When a yo-yo is spinning, it’s going to tend to stay spinning in the orientation you threw it thanks to centripetal force. Stalls are neat, though, because they give us the opportunity to swing or rotate a yo-yo however we want, which lets us change directions mid-sequence.

The UFO Recapture is all about throwing the yo-yo out horizontally to a UFO (aka Sleeping Beauty or Flying Saucer) and then capturing it back in a sidestyle stall mount. In its purest form, this is accomplished with a horizontal throw, popping the UFO’ing yo-yo up so that it starts to respond, and then intercepting the yo-yo with the string so that it falls into a stall. The most difficult part of the trick is getting your string lined up and your timing right, remember to take it slow and hook your finger around the string.

Before you try this, you’re probably going to want to be pretty comfortable with the basics of sideways yo-yoing so you can get a good solid throw, but there aren’t many string hits to be seen, so no worries if you don’t quite have your sideways braintwister combo on lock yet. (hey, I still don’t have one!) The biggest difference between frontstyle & a sidestyle spin for recaptures is that a frontstyle power throw has the yo-yo coming back towards the front of the string and the sidestyle breakaway has it coming behind the string. I personally consider frontstyle easier to learn, but try both.

Oh, also, at 23 seconds in: if you do a horizontal broadway it helps you set up a double-or-nothing, which you can then recapture, but that’s probably a little more on the advanced end of things.

28 seconds in marks my personal favorite way to practice the recapture, which pairs it with a dumptruck-style half-swing from a trapeze stall into a UFO. This technique is one of the easiest ways to get into a horizontal trick with a fixie, because you already have control of the string once you restart, and I’ve used it in a number of tricks (one of which can be seen at the end of Mystical.) When you pair it up with the recapture, it can effectively become a repeater, which means you always know a way into and out of horizontal spin from trapeze stall—score! Adam Brewster did some neat things with this as well.

Immediately after the half-dumptruck/recapture is a silly little trick called “knockbacks” you can learn to mix it up, wherein you just bounce the yo-yo off your palm to reset the regen, tough love style… and after that is an even sillier trick, proving that you can catch it in a thumb mount and broadway out. Or not broadway out! But really, who doesn’t want more spin moves?

At 1:05, we take a break from the UFOs to explore a mount we haven’t talked about much on FF: the fake triangle stall. Pulling the string through the loop on a trapeze stall creates a fake triangle suitable for really big suicide loops, something that I used to my advantage with this weird semi-horizontal offplane monster, based heavily on Paul Yath’s 360 suicide. Ideally it would be even more horizontal, but it sure is nice not having to keep the momentum afterwards. After that, we have another suicide trick that shows you more ways to use horizontal tricks to create pauses: this shifts the plane by intercepting a kickflip suicide halfway through, tossing a whip loop over it, and then continuing into a mach-5 mount.

Finally, we close out the video with a cross-armed 1.5 stall pushed out around the arm into a UFO and recaptured in a double or nothing stall. Going around your arm and keeping the string structure clean isn’t easy with a responsive yo-yo, but the feeling is totally awesome, so I recommend at least giving the entrance a shot.

Thanks for tuning in, and see you next Friday for more bearingless brouhaha. As always, the yo-yos used were Duncan Butterflies & Wheels, and you can download the beat for free from my Soundcloud.

Fixed Friday: Mystical

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Welcome to Fixed Sunday! Sincerest apologies on the lateness, but we’re back with your weekly dose of fixed axle features. Before we get into the column, I’d like to call a little attention to two great recent entries to the fixie canon, Alex Curfman’s “One-Hand Wonder” clip and Ed Haponik’s “Mystic Dumps” trick. On with the show!

This week has a mix of concepts, but is intended to be a follow-up to my “Mystics” clip for LSFC last week, so you might want to check that out also. Before we get into the tech-y stuff, though… foot start to bucket stall! Preloading a mount and then propelling a dead yo-yo into it with your foot is a fun trick to add to your arsenal, simply because it’s one of the rare moves that’s easier to perform while sitting down.

The second trick in the video is what we’re calling a “mystic”, a gentle cousin to the kickflip transition and the dumptruck. The basic idea behind a mystic is to swing a stalled yo-yo off-plane so that it is turned upside-down and dumped onto another string. It seems like a fairly logical followup to dumptruck dismounts, but planebreaking transitions are still fairly unexplored terrain, so while traces of the trick were floating around there wasn’t really a name for it until Ed put out “Mystic Dumps”. This trick sums up the concept of flipping from one mount to another very succintly while simultaneously paying tribute to Paul Escolar’s classic magic drop trick, and I highly recommend learning it.

Having said that… I personally find mystic dumps a lot harder than the trick in this video, which is a mystic from a double or nothing stall to an inverted trapeze stall, so if you have a hard time sticking the landing on Ed’s try this one out. Throw a double or nothing stall, and then swing the whole formation forward as though you were going to kickflip or dumptruck out of it. As the yo-yo gets to be about horizontal, curl your non-throwhand finger and point both your hands in towards your body to guide the yo-yo onto the back string. This transition takes a little time to get the feeling of, but is a great way to mix up your stall transitions.

If you’ve already advanced past both mystic dumps and 2or0 mystics, trick #3 might amuse you: it uses the same chopsticks truck as my first trick in DCUS Chillin’, but lands on the string instead of dismounting, which somehow sets up a reverse GT stall. Trippy! Ten points to the first person to kickflip a reverse GT…

The trick at 30 seconds is a fun, silly whip. If you’ve been looking to get into stall whips but don’t know where to start, this one features a fairly easy setup and a nice delay before the landing. It opens with a 2or0 stall, followed by a dunk, which sets a ripcord up on the string for the whip. Take your non-throwhand finger out of the loop and whip the string around your throwhand into the gap… which is conveniently held in place with your free hand, because stalls let you do that. I enjoy this trick because it’s based off of the modern 1A grind/whip formula, but the “grind” portion is actually made much easier by stalls.

Next in line is another technical mystic, this time based on an old Jason Lee chopsticks combo (referenced also in Imperialism.) The opening sequence can be a little confusing: mount trapeze stall, and cross the string over your thumb as you dismount, which creates a wrap around your thumb as you mount a trapeze-bro stall. This trick departs from the other combos when you mount back in a stall over your thumb, at which point you swing back to the back string (as in 2or0 mystics) and then perform a second mystic onto the middle string, which puts you in that weird “i’m not actually a bucket” mount. My personal favorite thing to do upon landing a stall in this mount is actually another Jason Lee masterpiece, “wiggly thing”, though my wiggles aren’t as clean as his… but you can also dismount or do whatever.

The final combo is a recent favorite, “Boyfriendcat loves Sea Glass.” It opens with a pinwheel that lets me launch vertically before a 2or0 chopsticks stall, which adds a nice touch of drama. Dismounting to behind the head zines and then cross-armed 1.5 stall is a bread & butter combo for me, but it gets spiced up a bit when it’s swung upwards and pushed out into a horizontal pinwheel, naturally continued into a UFO. The benefit of launching from a 1.5 instead of a trapeze is that the string is naturally set up for a whip, and I put my concentration face on to catch the UFO in a horizontal whip… phew!

Anyways, that’s it for this week. Thanks for letting me be late. Beat’s available to download free on my Soundcloud. Go watch Mystics. Okay.

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: 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!

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