YoYo Related News From Around The World
YoYoExpert.com has released another video in their “Trick Theory” series, this one featuring the amazing Anthony Rojas! Widely regarded as one of the most creative and original yoyo players in the country, Anthony Rojas has a truly distinctive style in both 1A and 5A. Widely respected by fans and fellow competitors, Anthony is a stand-out talent in yoyoing.
Anthony’s signature model is the CLYW Dune.
CLYW team member and amazing man-bun transit system Michael Kurti is the star of the latest episode of YoYoExpert’s “Trick Theory” video series. Check out some of Kurti’s signature tricks, shot in glorious hi-def slow motion, and get his take on why he does what he does.
Yoyo used is the CLYW Igloo.
Greetings, gentle readers, and welcome to another installment of #trickcircle! We’re scouring Instagram for 15-second bursts of yoyoing and posting our favorites here. Check out the videos, follow the players, get inspired, and go out and throw. (Don’t forget to tag your own clips with #trickcircle and join the fun!)
To many people, JonRob is the @5AGOAT; he is widely remembered for bringing tech 5A to the masses through his battles with Jake Bullock, but wants to remind people that he’s been “going big since day one.” This wrap & tangler combo definitely backs up that statement, and the continuous motion is a great contrast to his more laidback counterweight tech. JonRob & Tyler Severance were some of the very first people to integrate wraps & tanglers into competition 5A, so if you’ve ever wanted to learn some of those, you could definitely start by picking apart this sequence.
Riccardo Fraolini (@blablanchard) has been featured on #trickcircle before, but how could we not run this insane suicide sequence? No wonder CLYW wanted to pick him up. Riccardo could easily be called the king of the instaclip: seems like every week he’s got another one of these jawdropping tricks. Riccardo’s banger elements are definitely what grabs your attention, but there is also a huge amount of care in crafting the way that these moves flow so seamlessly into each other, and he deserves credit for finding the optimal links between simple moves. And that final suicide! What?!
Serezhk Basygin (@serezhkabasygin, via @aeroyorussia) may not be a household name yet, but with tricks like this it seems like it must only be a matter of time. As is coming to be the standard for Russian 1A, this combo is almost entirely dense, technical maneuvers, including a number of clever slack GT setups, but what really caught my attention is the steady sense of pacing. Pauses are often seen as flaws for breaking up the flow, forcing players to become faster & faster, but this trick is a great example of how slowing down can really boost a trick’s impact. He uses pauses to draw attention to the mounts & elements and let them sink in before mutating them again, and the breakdown to GT halfway through the trick is a beautiful example of tension & release.
In the spirit of 5A May, Junpei Shimizu (@junpei_5a) shows three counterweight entrances to a popular variation on the reverse bind. This is a great use of the Instagram format, using the relatively small amount of time to showcase a few different moves that fit together well, and bonus points to him for hitting them all in the same take. These elements might look simple taken on their own, but they are all well-constructed combo finishers and well-worth adding to your repertoire.
Did you learn that bind in the last trick? Here’s Maxim Gruzintsev (@decaika) using a similar bind in the middle of a 1A trick to catch the yo-yo and switch into a horizontal combo. Players have been chasing plane-changing regens for a while now, but with the increased sophistication of horizontal play and the recent trend of using stalls & catches mid-combo the field is starting to get really interesting. This is definitely one of the more seamless entrances yet, and the implications for a contest situation are enormous: why waste time between tricks catching & throwing into a horizontal combo when you can just switch in the middle? He has a stop-n-go entrance that ain’t bad neither... oh, and he got attacked by a cat on camera. You gotta see that. Cat attack!
Bonus tricks:
Kenji Nakatsuka’s beautiful double rejection
Even Malcolm Chiu’s “silly tricks” are brilliant: an engineer’s windup to GT suicide (?!)
Mark Mangarin’s Boy Scout Laceration
Tomiya Maryoji’s very clever pinky catch whip
Joe Black’s “Maider x Yamaki bind”, horizontal madness
Tsukasa Takatsu’s “Octopus Two”, a great tribute to Justin Weber
Hey gang! Gather ’round the internet machine and join us for the best yo-yoing you can fit into 15 seconds, #trickcircle. In this series (previous installments here) we scan Instagram for videos tagged with #trickcircle, pick recent favorites, and collect them here along with some thoughts on what makes them great. In the spirit of 5A May, let’s keep this installment to counterweight tricks.
It only seems right to start things off with the man who first decided that yo-yos worked better tied to dice than to fingers, @unklesteve (aka National Yoyo Master Steve Brown.) Steve laid a huge amount of the bedrock for 5A; there’s a pretty good chance that he made up half of the tricks you can do back in ’98 with Neff. The crazy thing is that Steve is still shredding: there ain’t nothing outdated about that combo up there, and few people can manage those kinds of finger switches with the ease that he does. I recognize the launch from one of my favorite tricks in Steve’s 365yoyotricks project, “Circuitous”, great to see two equally gnarly paths branching out from the beginning of the combo.
Let’s take a trip down south to visit @bryanjardin, AKA 2 time Asian Pacific Champ & 4 time Philippine Champ Bryan Jardin. Bryan’s style is fun, exciting, and hard to keep up with—kind of like Bryan himself. Where Steve’s combo was based around clockwork motions within a few mounts between his hands, Bryan’s is all about momentum. He keeps the mount simple, but the confidence behind his tricks comes out in power & speed that make for a very exciting show. Entering red propellor from around the arm at the end of the combo was a particularly nice touch.
Taking us back to technical territory is @scottsm7 (2011 US Champ Samm Scott.) Samm has been exploring this style of combo more frequently in his recent freestyles: dense tricks that rack up by points by mounting, pinwheeling, and redirecting the counterweight & yo-yo around the hands while maintaining control of a central string structure. You can definitely see traces of influence from Jon Rob & Jake Bullock, but more than anything what shines through is top-level string control placing every element exactly where he needs it to be.
Let’s take a break from the long combos and get to something more instantly satisfying: bangers! @danielbudai (AKA Daniel Budai, 2 time Hungarian Champ & 2012 European 5A Champ) brings us this mighty green triangle. The beauty in this trick is that the elements all logically flow together, but the end result is still surprising: the motion of the counterweight out of e-fan naturally unmounts the yo-yo and continues into the crook of his arm, and the momentum of the yo-yo naturally sets up a GT formation to land in. The other best part of this trick is definitely that it lets you flex like a strong man at the end, so if you learn it make sure to pose in the mirror a bit.
@chasebaxter is an American player who has been steadily moving up the ranks in contests and is beginning to make waves with combos like this one. Chase’s style features a good mix of ’07-10 American contest 5A influences and his own “swangle,” perhaps best exemplified with the 1-2-3-4 counterweight mount buildup at the beginning of the combo and the drop suicide at the end. Definitely a name to watch.
At the beginning of the month, Takeshi Kamisato challenged @edhaponik to come up with some Fixed Axle 5A. Ed is certainly no stranger to Fixed Axle, but fixie 5A has gone largely unexamined due to the fact that traditional counterweight tricks are reeeally hard without bearings. Ed sidesteps this technical challenge and uses a responsive setup (a butterfly!) to his advantage with this sidewinder freegen, a visually appealing exercise in quick reflexes & lateral thinking. This trick contains some of the best parts of modern fixed axle play: it may seem like a “dead end” due to its lack of string hits and inability to combo in/out of anything, but it’s not easy to find a single move with a visual effect as strong as this one. Furthermore, even players who understand why a sidewinder flutters can enjoy banging the hell out of their knuckles trying this trick at home—trust me, it’s harder than it looks. And isn’t that the heart of all yo-yo tricks?
Welcome to 5A May!
All month long on YoYoNews we’ll be posting counterweight play tutorials both new and old, as well as new videos from some of the top names in counterweight play.
We’ll be announcing some great giveaways, as well as Instagram trick battles and some new trick theory articles. Get ready!
Let’s get started with the Basic Stall from Miguel Correa’s fantastic tutorial series.
Stalls are a whole new skill set you’re about to learn, but make sure you know how to do a 360 before you work on this!
While this trick is rather simple, it teaches the player a valuable lesson in momentum shifts. In this first lesson in counterweight re-direction, the Basic Stall is mostly a waiting game We allow the counterweight’s natural momentum to carry it back the other way, with just a little help from you. Make sure you watch the tutorial and get the trick down as we will be learning harder variations of this exact trick in later levels.
Timing is key when changing momentum in the counterweight for a successful trick and a smooth looking one too.
Paul Escolar, Jason Lee, Chris Neff, Steve Brown, Jeffrey Longoria, and others at BAC 2000
Ah, the era of the “midschool” yoyoing. Videos were more grainy, hair was more spiky, and cargo pants had more than enough pockets to tote around Renegades, Freehand 1s, and Spinfaktors as opposed to the more slim denim options of today. “Midschool” can be defined exactly how it sounds, and in the yoyoing world it generally means the era just before, during, and after the “boom” of 1998. It was an era of innovation in absolutely all facets of yoyoing, including tricks, contests, yoyos, and the integration of the recently popularized internet into the yoyoing world.
The most popular tricks of the midschool era are some of the tricks that you may have seen or learned from André Boulay’s YoYoExpert tutorials. Some significant ones include White Buddha (Paul Escolar), Superman (Jason Lee), The Matrix (Doctor Popular), Spirit Bomb (Jeff Longoria), and Kwyjibo (Taylor Whitley). What some players may not not know is that these tricks were learned by André during the era in which yoyo videos had to be downloaded using the dial-up connections of the time. Similar to the recent explosion of the #trickcircle hashtag today, they were created by and shared with enthusiasts and those truly in the know dedicated many hours to staying current to the tricks and trends of the time.
Back then, there were no GoPro tutorials in which you could see the trick as well as the pair of socks that the yoyoer has chosen to wear for the day. Tricks had to be learned through text, and if you were lucky, text and illustrations along with a short video. If you do enough digging, it is still possible to find some of the old tutorials and learn some old tricks if you have the dedication to do so.
In the years after the boom, the numerous tricks of the era were still discussed and learned on message boards of the time and were still some of the hardest tricks to learn. These days, yoyoers have all they could possibly want as far as learning tricks goes, and the tricks from the midschool era that do not have current tutorials of their own are old memories or completely unheard of by most yoyoers. Therefore, there is a goldmine of old tricks that many yoyoers may have never heard of and would probably break their knuckles attempting on one of the tug-responsive yoyos of the time. Yoyos then had to sleep for a long time, not “catch” the string in the middle of a trick, and still be reliably tug responsive.
Think old midschool tricks can’t hang with the tricks of today? Think again.
If you get the chance, head over to the Sector Y Archive and watch some of their videos in chronological order. Not only can you see yoyoing itself advance, but you can also see the members of the Spindox Yoyo Club push great concepts further and further with each video. At the release of their “Wish We Were at Worlds” clip video in 2001, the Spindox members were at the top of their game.
The most widely-recognized trick from “Wish We Were at Worlds” is probably Breath, by Spencer Berry. Another elusive-but-amazing trick in the video is Paul Escolar’s sequel to his his slightly-less-elusive trick, Red Clover. Red Clover II, otherwise known as Orange Tulips, combines interesting and still widely unexplored Houdini Mount concepts with a a Wrist Mount ending that makes for a fairly fluid, and pretty hard, trick. Check the video above for the trick, starting at 1:58.
The first move of Orange Tulips is taken from Red Clover, but after that, Orange Tulips makes it’s own identity and features a pop through a triangle string segment that is pretty difficult when first attempting the trick. The pop is necessary to complete the trick properly, and you’ll only know it’s done right when the yoyo lands and creates a Wrist Mount-esque segment that is situated on the fingers as opposed to the wrist. The end of the trick basically does the same thing as the ending of Superman by Jason Lee but in a significantly different way. An extra kink through the Wrist Mount is undone, and as the yoyo lands in a regular Wrist Mount, a normal dismount followed by a return to the hand completes the trick.
The trick is still difficult, and when doing it you can see that Paul was clearly connecting trick segments to do-and-undo each other. Even when performing the trick on a modern, unresponsive yoyo it has a midschool feel and completing it successfully definitely feels great.
The video of Orange Tulips in “Wish We Were at Worlds” is literally the only video of Orange Tulips that is currently online. While obscure, it is definitely underrated in my opinion and is honestly a great trick. Learning and performing it on a modern, unresponsive yoyo proves this, and it’s a shame that it hasn’t received more recognition within the community (A Cabin Tutorial, maybe?).
Coming to prominence around 2001, Black Hops is a trick that is mainly based around “hop” concepts that still remains somewhat relevant with players. SAGE (Albert Gonzales, inventor of the Iron Whip.), a yoyoer from the East Coast who was also doing grinds and slacks early in their creation, created a similar but significantly more difficult trick with 8 Diagram Pole in 2001.
I have yet to learn 8 Diagram Pole, but those that have speak of it’s difficulty. It doesn’t appear that it would be any easier on an unresponsive yoyo, but anyone that has thrown responsive and has seen the trick can most likely see it’s difficulty during the time it was created.
The concept behind the hops are somewhat similar to Spencer Berry’s “Insta-Mounts” (which Adam Brewster has been creating and sharing via #trickcircle lately) and despite lacking the flashiness and fluidity of today’s popular tricks, 8 Diagram Pole definitely deserves a place on this list as well as a place in trick history. SAGE has not been involved in yoyoing since the early 2000’s but his contributions undoubtedly left a mark on yoyoing.
TimeTwister is probably the least underrated trick on this list, but it is still fairly underrated in my opinion and not necessarily known as well as some other tricks from the era. While it does have some “modern” exposure, TimeTwister is still a trick that some players may have never heard of or may have forgotten about. I actually learned TimeTwister early in my yoyoing career, and it’s remained one of my favorite tricks since.
In watching a lot of of old Spindox videos, you can see Citadel (Gabriel Lozano) playing around with a lot of concepts that are very similar to the ones in TimeTwister and you can also eventually see him throw TimeTwister itself, too. Everybody had their own elements to mess with back then, and Gabe chose twisty 1.5 mount concepts, rolls, and a sort of flowy trick that’s different than a lot of other stuff from it’s time and stuff from now as well.
In a non-cynical way, my favorite part of TimeTwister is the end. The part at the end in which you manually untwist the strings that you twisted a step prior really blew my mind when I first started yoyoing. The sideways barrel roll/hug movements within the trapeze towards the end were especially tricky for me to hit when first learning the trick too.
Pulling off TimeTwister feels really good, even on a newer yoyo. It’s a pretty long trick, and remembering all of the moves and doing them just right is definitely impressive.
I’m pretty sure that innovative frontstyle stuff was just about as common, if not a little more common, in the midschool era as it is today. Steve Brown had this frontstyle mount called the H20 Mount which was basically a Split Bottom Mount with an extra segment that allowed a little more creativity within frontstyle yoyoing. Water Bomb is my personal favorite that utilizes the mount, but another trick of Steve’s that utilizes the mount and is equally badass is Chinese Water Torture. Another yoyoer, throwing under the alias “Spiky Haired Raver” had a trick called Spring Water that utilized the mount as well.
Water Bomb definitely makes use of the extra segment within the H20 Mount, along with some rolls and boings to complete the trick. I just really like the midschool-esque fluidity of it all. It may sound obsessive, but I really think it was a combination of the yoyos, concepts being explored, and general climate of the late 90’s/early 2000’s that made for some really, really great yoyoing despite being outdated today.
I first saw Steve throw Water Bomb in the How to be a Player video by Duncan, and was impressed because at the time I had just learned Split the Atom and Mach 5. It really impressed me at the time, and it would still probably be a great challenge to learn today if a proper tutorial existed for the trick.
It was genuinely hard to think of the #1 trick for this list. I didn’t necessarily write it in any particular order, but in any case “#1” should typically be exciting in some way or another. Well, what’s more exciting than a trick called “Havoc”, right?
It’s hard to believe that Spencer Berry invented in this trick in 2001. In my interview with Spencer, he said that Havoc was all about pushing complexity and he definitely did it with this trick. I first saw Havoc quite some time ago, and couldn’t even begin to get a grip on how to do it. Even now that I can do it quite well, it does not feel like any other yoyo trick that I’ve done before.
In my opinion, Havoc is the perfect trick technically, visually, and difficulty wise. Not only is it hard to learn, but it also hard to actually smooth out because all of the moves are so obscure that even a seasoned yoyoer will have trouble figuring them out at first. It follows the great tradition with it’s string segments doing-and-undoing themselves and lots of subtle movements being necessary to do in order for the trick to be performed properly.
Havoc is 1/3 of Spencer Berry’s Destruction trilogy of tricks (alongside Enigma and Cataclysm) and the reason that I chose Havoc out of the 3 is because it’s simply the most different and most difficult in my opinion. Luckily, Chuck over at CLYW dropped a Cabin Tutorial for it last year and if you’re interested in learning it, doing so is only a click away!
Hopefully you enjoyed this look at some obscure yoyo tricks! I actually didn’t start yoyoing seriously until 2011, but in the amount of time that I have been yoyoing I’ve definitely enjoyed learning about the vast history of our great hobby. Shoutout to Gabe and Spencer for letting me use their old videos, and shoutout to Steve for hopefully not feeling really old after reading this! If you have any stories, tricks, or anything to share feel free to email me at: throwplaza@gmail.com!
The deeper one gets into yo-yoing, the more one is exposed to all the wonderful jargon and nebulous concepts that its enthusiasts have come up with. One of the trickiest bits of vocabulary to define has always been “technical yo-yoing”: most players know it when they see it, other players can give you a vague definition, and non-players will look at it and walk away shaking their heads.
This particular style of tricks is known for its intense complexity, its focus on slight details & variations in tricks, and its heightened level of difficulty. Yo-yo tricks exploded in growth with the introduction of the bearing, and it could be argued that the roots of technical play were established with Steve Brown, Neff, and the SpinDox during the Renegade era. However, “tech” as we know it would really hit its stride in 2003 with Johnnie DelValle’s groundbreaking championship freestyle.
The focus on intricate string play and long, risky combos was a huge paradigm shift. Though the Eli Hop and other showy choreographic moves have found their way back into competitive play, technical play shows no signs of leaving. If anything, the championship title awarded to Hungarian tech wizard Janos Karancz a decade after JD’s victory seems to indicate a new golden age of tech.
I thought it would be best to turn to the pros to discuss some of the core tenets of technical trick construction, and am proud to feature well-respected trick theorists Mikhail, Rafael, Isaac, Spencer, Gabe, and Jacob. Let’s hear about it.
Mikhail Tulabut (Team YoYoJam): “The simplest way I can define it is a trick/combo whose string geometry is more complicated and dimensional than Double or Nothing. It’s like holding up a flat piece of paper compared to holding up a paper airplane.”
Rafael Matsunaga (Duncan Crew): “For me, if I call something ‘technical’, I’m mostly thinking about complexity of tricks. Even though some simpler concepts may require more technical expertise and are actually harder than what I call technical, I’m probably more inclined to use technical to describe trick with multiple string folds and hard-to-describe mounts and moves.”
Jacob “Elephark” Jensen (Werrd): “I think of modern yoyoing as the sort of yoyoing that focuses primarily on creation and sharing ideas, as opposed to classical yoyoing, which gives importance to mastering a set of tricks and/or performing for the sake of selling yoyos.
I think of technical yoyoing as the facet of modern yoyoing that focuses on concepts and elements for their own sake, or the sake of the trick. The science of yoyo tricks, if you will. … For me, I think the term ‘tech yoyoer’ is most accurately descriptive of a player who studies and preferably attempts to expand the library of trick concepts available to the community. Kind of like a scientist. Okay, exactly like a scientist. And there’s theoretical science and there’s practical science, and each scientist gets to choose how many scoops of each to put on his plate at lunchtime.“
Isaac Sams (Duncan Crew, Innovation Movement): “Technical yoyoing: sequencing that is too complex to fully follow without learning it.”
Spencer Berry: “I usually lump technical yo-yoing into most of the tricks that non-yoyoers may be amazed by, but probably can’t tell apart. Which is a huge lump! To a yoyoer, I could probably even get more specific: tech tricks are those that explore holds beyond the building blocks. Sometimes tech tricks explore new concepts or combine multiple simpler concepts into single motions, but more often than that they are the product of kids seeking originality while they bounce from string to string, knot to knot. If the trick is complicated, it is easier to be unique, right? I often hear tech and flow pitted against each other – but a trick can easily have both or neither and of course grades in between.”
David Ung (Team Yoyofactory): “I think a good trick is one that requires every motion. Extraneous movements in tricks and combos really bother me (in most cases. Some people have really interesting “useless” moves that I think are fantastic). Good tricks generally have great pacing, too. I don’t know exactly how to explain/define good trick pacing… but just look at Yuuki or Charles to get a good idea. There is always enough original material/moves sprinkled throughout the trick to keep you entertained the entire time.”
Gabe Lozano (Duncan Crew, Sector-Y): “To me, a trick or combo should follow a general theme. This can be done in several ways, but my personal favorite is taking a move or hold, and then finding all the neat transitions in and out of that move/hold, and then tying it all together in a way that flows nicely. That way, all the pieces fit together and feel cohesive.”
Mikhail: “1. Dynamics. There should be a rhythm to it. Kind of like the 3 Act structure of story-telling. Setup (Mount), Confrontation (String hits and maneuvers), and Resolution (Banger/Reveal/dismount).
2. Flow. Things should always be moving and feel natural. When I’m working on a trick, I like to feel and “listen” to where the yo-yo and my hands want to go. It obvious when I try a movement and the yo-yo just won’t have it.
3. Surprise/Originality. Natural movement and flow is nice, but I also like to see movements/slack/mounts that come out of nowhere and haven’t been done to death.”
Rafael: “I believe good combos are like good music. Everybody likes a different style, but some characteristics are universal to good combos/music. First of all, a good combo must be well executed, otherwise, it’s the same as a fantastic sheet music being played by a mediocre musician. Then it comes to composition itself. If the elements follow a certain pattern or just go well together, that’s a nice combo. I know that’s a bit vague, but like music, once you listen to a good song or see a good combo, you know it. And just like music, some styles and elements end up becoming a fad and nobody cares any longer, even if people keep doing it (like dubstep, or I guess trap these days)”
Spencer: “I’d say most of MY favorite tricks that I CAN do have sensations to them. Either a motion that just fits right or a theme that carries the yoyo through some sort of story (not necessarily literal, but motions that build, climax, release, arc, etc).
As far as tricks I enjoy watching, my favorites are usually exemplary examples of someone’s personality made yoyo trick. I think Rojas and Haycock are perfect modern examples of this – watching them play they are unmistakeable – often imitated – but never faked. There is a sense of identity – suddenly holds, moves, even tricks you’ve maybe seen before become infused with a fresh personality.
The real challenge, I find, is making a trick sufficiently simple for me to both want to learn it and enjoy doing it. In the past i was drawn to long, complicated, proprietary tricks. Because I knew they were mine and I felt like it was new territory. But I’ve definitely shifted into a seek the simplicity phase where it is equally challenging to find something that is simple but fresh and fun to do.“
Isaac: “Since the ‘modern’ style of yoyoing is so young, we have to take inspiration from the non-yoyo world to make any sense of what we’re doing. Some of today’s best tricks are made like this, and the reason why they’re the best is because everyone can make the connection, not just yoyoers. A good combo has no borders.
Another thing to take note of is utilizing all your possible zones. A really long combo done in front of the player is boring, it usually doesn’t catch enough attention. A well-scoring combo will consist of tech placed inside-arm, outside-arm, overhead, over arm—basically, cover as much area as you can.”
Gabe: “I personally dislike combos that are disorganized. If you’re throwing in hops, boings, stalls, grinds, arms, etc. into one combo, it’s just a disorganized mess. Even if every element is cool, when you throw them all together, your elements don’t get the recognition they deserve because they’re surrounded by too many other moves that don’t complement it. The trick then becomes forgettable. Good tricks are memorable, and having a strong theme and focus is key.”
Isaac: “What kills a combo for me is when a player stays in a mount for a while without accelerating through the trick. What I love about the Russian style is that their combos only consist of ridiculous transitions, so you can barely tell when they are in a mount before they’re already out.”
Rafael: “A trick is boring/bad if no effort is put into it. If you’re just taking existing elements from two popular combos and putting them together, there’s no effort in creativity. If you come up with a new hold but can do nothing with it, there is no effort in construction.
Overusing the music metaphor again, if you’re just doing other people’s combos, you’re that dude with a guitar playing covers on the beach. People may enjoy it, even give you props for playing their favorite song, but when Tom Morello parks across the street you’ll be as good as dead. Good tricks and combos come from trick artists.”
Mikhail: “Never-ending combos. I attribute this to ‘contest yo-yoing.’ Yo-yos spin longer, and regens save time to get more points, but holy crap when a trick should obviously end at a trapeze, and they just regen out of it to regen out again it feels like a run-on sentence that should have clearly ended a while ago but it just didn’t and kept going because it could and it didn’t even use a comma to break up the thought and just started a whole new thought because it was easier to just keep going even though the statement was clearly over and came to a natural and fitting end but nah never mind let’s just keep going for a little bit because I can and then an abrupt. End.”
Spencer: “I don’t want to say that any tricks are bad, I think if someone came up with it and it brings them joy then it is a success.
If a trick or combo is boring it is probably having trouble distinguishing itself. With the abundance of tricks that exist now, it is very easy to create something that may be technically new, but has nothing fresh about it. Which is strange to say—because people make fresh tricks out of old holds, old moves, old tricks all the time—but there is also a lot of new tricks that don’t seem fresh because they don’t assert themselves to anything beyond a series of moves someone put together. Does that make any sense?”
Technical yo-yoing may rightly be regarded as one of the most unapproachable styles, but persistent practice and mindful trick design can also make it one of the most impressive. This is by no means a complete summary of the wide world of tech, but hopefully is enough to inspire you to try some kink mounts.
In 2010, I had the idea that I wanted to push myself to be a more active yoyo player. Back when I first started playing, and all through my days working for Duncan Toys and then briefly as a tour demonstrator for YoYoFactory, I threw constantly. It was not at all uncommon for me to put in at least 5 – 6 hours a day, and if I was on tour or handling a trade show then it easily became 8 – 10 hours a day. But having kids and starting a business take a lot out of you, and in 2010 I was coming off several years of barely touching a yoyo at all. I needed something to kickstart my creativity, and nothing does that like a public declaration so I announced that I was going to start 365yoyotricks.com, a website where I created, filmed, and uploaded one yoyo trick every single day for a year.
It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought, but in 2011 I did it. One original trick, every day. I dipped into a well of older tricks for days when whatever I was working on wasn’t ready yet, but I published video of 364 original yoyo tricks in 2011. (Halloween was a treat instead of a trick, with a coupon code for YoYoExpert.) In 2012 I decided to bring in some people who I personally wanted to see more play from, and put together a roster of players that are some of my personal favorites: David Ung, Nate Sutter, Ed Haponik, Drew Tetz, and Guy Wright. They contributed about a trick a week each, and I filled in the gaps. For 2013 I did the same thing with a new roster of players: Jacob Jensen, Spencer Berry, Darnell Hairston, Jake Bullock, and Rafael Matsunaga. As always, there were plenty of guest spots, but the formula remained; one new, original yoyo trick every day.
I even started a spin-off site, 365cooltricks.com, that is run by my friend Mark Hayward, featuring all kinds of tricks…juggling, kendama, magic, sleight of hand, bar tricks, and other object manipulation. It’s awesome, by the way, and Mark Hayward now has a much stronger understand of what I’ve done for the past 3 years in keeping 365yoyotricks.com going. Ha. Hi, Mark!
Today is the last trick of 365yoyotricks.com, “Denouement” by Hank Freeman.
My time is filled with fatherhood and husbandhood and running this site and organizing contests and generally doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to better the yoyo industry and community. So in the interest of making sure that I put all my energy in the best places possible, I’m closing the doors on 365yoyotricks.com. The site will remain up indefinitely, and thanks to the tireless work of Greg Pettit it’s a LOT more searchable than it was before so it’s now a much more functional archive of amazing tricks from a lot of fantastic yoyo players. (And me. Ha.)
A huge thanks to André Boulay and YoYoExpert.com for his help in keeping 365 going, helping me move the site from Tumblr to WordPress, and sponsoring the project with kickbacks for the players. Much love to everyone who ever contributed a trick, to everyone who ever watched a trick, and to everyone who slapped one of our stickers somewhere inappropriate. A huge thank you to Tressley Cahill for designing the logos for both 365yoyotricks.com and 365cooltricks.com.
It’s been a great three year run! The theoretical successor to 365 is the #trickcircle series that Drew Tetz has been curating from Instagram clips…so follow that hashtag on Instagram, and keep an eye on YoYoNews.com for weekly roundups and discussion.
Happy New Year, and thanks so much for supporting this project! It really did wonders for me as a player, and I hope you got as much inspiration from it as I did.
The #trickcircle tag on Instagram has become the spot for players to share their latest moves, and we here at @Yoyonews are picking out the best ones to share every week. We’re still about two weeks behind, so we’ve got a huge crop of amazing material to sort through and it might take more than one installment before we’re caught up, but enough talk: let’s get to the tricks!
OK, I know we talked last week about @blablablanchard (Riccardo Fraolini) and that I’m jumping ahead a bit in our queue of tricks, but this was too good not to share. It opens with a fairly understated slack sequence before dropping into an unusual-looking chopsticks mount… and then string starts spitting out the top of the yo-yo into his hand like some kind of weird magic spell. Jaws stay dropped as he moves his hand to charm the string back and forth a few times, accentuating it with a humorous head turn, before propelling it all the way to the other finger and properly finish his mount. Colin Leland (of TMBR Toys) notably made a video in 2007 called “The Magnum Project” exploring this response-centric trick, but few players have been able to crack the concept open as effectively as Riccardo has here. Love it!
@smietanejro (AKA Piotrek Smietana of YoYoJam Poland, Backspin, and organizer of the recent WFC International) compresses a ton of conceptual goodness into a short amount of time with this great 3D bind. It sets up with an undermount tossed into a grind, which is then thrown upwards and outwards which triggers a sidewinder effect on the return. Not only is this creative, flashy, and good for fixing string tension, but in a contest setting it automatically tacks 4 or 5 extra clicks on to the end of your combo. As contest tricks become increasingly dense, it pays to put a little bit of flair into your catches. For a bonus instaclip, check out his “Puff Puff” trick — picture trick tech ahoy!
@daigowerrd (AKA Daigo Komiya of Werrd Japan) brings us this beautiful counterweight combo. Contest judge Boxthor once told me that a hallmark of Japanese combo construction is variations on a theme, and you can definitely see this idea reflected in the redirection sequence at the end of this trick. Daigo’s style, though, crosses all kinds of borders, and he’s known for creative details that make all his tricks feel both cohesive and surprising. The final bind/unwrap sequence is a particular favorite of mine Bonus: check out his bouncy chopsticks 1A repeater.
@johnwrobot (AKA John Bot of CLYW) is the yo-yo player equivalent of a cult classic. While he may not be as well-known as players like Hank or Tyler, they (and many others) will cite him as one of the best dudes to yo-yo with ever, something which is plain to see in the Team Chubby Lovin’ and Tricks Old & New series. Part of his charm is that his tricks are almost narrative-driven: true, they’re fun to watch on video, but the best way to experience them is to watch it performed with accompanying sound effects and a silly story behind the name. This particular trick, Double-on Tondra, is an elaborate double entendre (!) following the creation of a 1.5 zipper he titled the “tondra” while eating burgers in Adam & Seth’s apartment the night before Dave’s wedding. Maybe you had to be there, but the trick is fun no matter what.
@darnell_hairston, the prince of Cleveland, breaks out some unconventional mounts in this trick that blurs the lines between frontstyle and sidestyle tricks. While his body is definitely turned and his motions are informed as though he’s performing a frontstyle trick, the fact that the yo-yo motion occurs outside of his throwhand means that his fingers are pointing the same direction and it could be directly translated into a cross-handed sidestyle trick. It breathes a lot of new life into an otherwise straightforward maneuver.
@yoyopeople (AKA John Higby) proves once again that he is truly a magic man with Magic Sleeper, a befuddling conversion from offstring to 1A. How does he do it? He’s already confirmed that it’s not washing machine… and, frankly, the mystery is part of the fun! Creating a trick that entertains non-yoyoers & hardcore players alike is no easy feat, and John’s sense of fun & endless creativity makes him one of the most watchable yo-yo performers of all time.
CJ Atkinson’s awesome foldy tech trick
Chris Cancino’s… cats. What? Everybody loves cuteness. Bonus cat in Sonny’s videos, too.
Shane Lubecker’s cheery christmas slack attack
David Ung’s great GT combo with an Elephark-inspired ending
Stacks on stacks of slacks from Hulio Baklanos with this clever Reverse fake GT trick
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.
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”.
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.
The #trickcircle tag on Instagram is blowing up with yo-yo players sharing their tricks, and we here at @Yoyonews are picking out the best ones to share every week. This second installment also features our first batch of mini-interviews, in which Yuji sheds light on the thinking behind his combo and Mark questions just what the heck “flow” is supposed to mean anyways. More bangers from John Ando, Malcom Chiu, and more after the jump.
@johnando starts the week off with a huge bang, or rather two: back-to-back bangers in this video, and a second round of brilliant concepts in another. John Ando is perhaps most often remembered for his 2008 World-winning freestyle when he reminded everybody that a trick could be compelling with only a few string hits, and his opening wrap to trapeze proves this to be as true as ever. John is also a world-class 2A player, which surely informs his movement-oriented style and gives you an idea where the idea for a wrap like that comes from. The trick that follows is just as gnarly: while he can make a single string hit look good, he is in no way limited to simple tricks, and sequences like this rack up the points quick. This combo has a particularly satisfying punchline in the form of an elbow slack catch which sets up into a ripcord release, the impact of which is greatly increased by John’s performing it behind his shoulder. There are very few players who can space their tricks the way that John does, and I dearly hope we see more #trickcircle tricks from him soon.
@clywlevi (AKA Mark Mangarin of CLYW) was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about this instaclip, “Maclean.”
Yoyonews: What, if anything, was the genesis of this trick? Was there a theme you wanted to explore or did the moves just gel together?
Mark Mangarin: I was creating an extension to a combo that Adam Schultz was working on when I was hanging out with him and Andrew Maider in NYC — ideas from this were adapted into the first segment. The rest was made in conjunction, but it’s part of a much longer trick that doesn’t fit in the instagram time limit (:15 goes by so fast). Theres a debate about the concise definition of ‘flow’ going around right now, so I’m playing around with different approaches.
YYN: What is your personal definition of “flow”?
MM: Haha, oh shoot. Honestly, I don’t like to bother defining the concept. It’s like asking what the meaning of hipster or ratchet is…
I don’t think theres a specific definition. Going by what the community considers flow, then both JD and Sid have “really good flow” so it’s wrong to consider flow as the smoothness about specific physical motions. It has more to do with one’s timing/execution, but it can be uniquely good per person and what’s considered good flow can change over time very quickly, so I think of flow as a vague/undefined subset of someone’s execution style and trick construction.
YYN: What would you consider the centerpiece or main idea you’d like to communicate with this trick?
MM: Personally I think the execution, but the reverse quarterstack whip is a big takeaway too. It’s the easiest to explain compared to the rest of the trick, but a reverse quarterstack mount leaves you with many options because you can drop the loop using your elbow.
YYN: The drop before the reverse quarterstack (trapeze-brother elbow catch) seems somewhat different from your usual combo construction. What are the benefits and disadvantages of including a pause like that in a trick?
MM: I usually never drop strings/mounts randomly as it can make tricks look shallow. I’m just messing around with different things right now, as #trickcircle seems like a good outlet to share ideas including those not fully developed. I think it gives more attention to the whip, but maybe someone out there can make a full drop look good?
While the community may be a ways off from agreeing on a definition of “flow”, few would disagree that @andrewbergen has it in spades. His first entry into the #trickcircle canon, titled “jsmy”, opens with what appears to be a shockwave-inspired chopsticks combo that sets up a lovely falling slack whip before folding its way into a complex triangular string formation. Much of this trick’s strength comes from the sense of rhythm that it establishes early on with back & forth motions, and we at Yoyonews are all hoping that Andrew graces us with some more choice bits of tech soon.
UK National Champ and Yoyofactory star @yujirobert dipped a toe into the #trickcircle waters with this Yuuki-influenced tech tour de force. He also filled us in on the details behind it with a short interview:
Yoyonews: What, if anything, was the central idea behind this combo? What did you want to showcase or express most?
Yuji Shimokawa Kelly: The central element I wanted to showcase is the slack drop which happens just where i’ve selected the screen cap. I wanted to create an effect where i would drop the slack with my arms pointed to the right, and then dismount using the same movement to the left. This was the first time I’d actually filmed it, and I can see that it doesn’t work quite as well as I had hoped.
YYN: Looks good to us. Do you name your tricks?
YSK: I very rarely name my tricks, and this particular one I don’t think is name worthy just yet.
YYN: Would you say this trick is “finished”? How can you tell when a trick is complete?
In terms of the combo, far from it. I don’t think first and second half will ultimately be part of the same combo, I just wanted to fit them on one clip. Watching the clip back, I’m finding a couple of little things I can change to improve it.
YYN: We’ll be excited to see what this turns into, thanks for the look!
Taking a quick trip from England to Hong Kong, we have @jackey_li of team @c3yoyodesign showing us just how good slack can look in slow motion. Slomo really helps break down the subtleties of the trick here, and the fact that it’s only a few moves makes it very tempting to learn. Just because it’s short does not mean that it’s easy, and Jackey packs some serious depth into it: in addition to looking pretty, the opening rejection sets up a clever slack move that gets the strings in place for the following sequence of pops culminating in a triangle.
If you’re anything like us, you probably had to watch the latest tricks from @meowcolm (AKA Malcolm Chiu of Duncan Crew) a couple of times before they made any sort of sense at all. Fortunately, Malcolm’s supplemented the mobile video with an HD slomo clip of some other lassos so you can really gawk at that perfect loop before he hucks it into the gap… but you’re probably going to need some practice before you can get that cross-handed GT down. Apparently, the 720 lasso root trick is Jesse Christe‘s creation, and Malcolm is to be commended for both taking it to another level and properly citing his sources.
Want more insta-madness? Don’t forget to check out all the videos tagged with #trickcircle and submit some of your own for a chance to be featured next week… and, hey! Follow @yoyonews while you’re at it, yeah? Here are some of our other favorites of the week that we didn’t have time to write about.
See you next week!
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.