You’ve got a yoyo but don’t know how to use it yet. You can do a basic drop where you let it fall from your hand and spin back up to your palm, and it is pretty neat. You feel good about it. If you want to learn cool tricks and become a yoyo master, you will need more tricks up your sleeve than a simple wind-up. This article will teach you five basic tricks to start you on your path to mastering the yoyo.
The Basic YoYo Beginner Throw
The basic throw is one of the most fundamental tricks you will learn. Throwing a yoyo is at the core of almost any complex trick. It’s also great practice to understand how a yoyo works with force and spin, and a great trick to learn how to hold a yoyo. A basic throw is what it sounds like. You will throw the yoyo to give it both speed and distance then you’ll get it to come back to you without manually winding it by looping the string around the groove.
To start, you must make sure you’re holding the yoyo correctly. Place the yoyo in your hand with your palm facing up and the string around your middle finger. The string should be looped over the top of the yoyo so that the length of string connecting your finger to the yoyo is in the air rather than across your palm. If you don’t hold the yoyo correctly, it will roll off your palm crooked and spin out of control.
Once you are holding your yoyo properly, curl your arm back like you’re lifting a dumbbell, then roll it forward. The yoyo should naturally roll off the palm of your hand and go spinning to the ground. Once the yoyo has reached the bottom of the string, twist your hand so your palm faces the ground. When you do this, slack will be introduced to the string, and the yoyo will have a straight path up so it will spin right back into your palm.
Throwing a yoyo is as simple as curling, flicking, and twisting! If you need extra power behind your throw, use your elbow. Raise it as you curl your arm and bring it down as you unfurl to add extra strength and spin to your throw. You can reclaim the yoyo with a simple twist as before. This extra power is necessary for future tricks because of “sleeping.” A sleeping yoyo is simply a yoyo that spins at the end of its string. And you are going to need a lot of spin.
Around the Corner
You’ve mastered the basic throw but want to glitz it up a bit. Here comes around the corner. This trick is a variation on the basic throw and a great starting point to get used to manipulating the yoyo’s path. Around the corner is a simple trick that involves flipping your spinning yoyo over your shoulder before it comes back to your hand.
You start this trick by throwing a sleeper, then rotating and lifting the back of your arm. The goal is to flip the string’s orientation. Instead of your hand and the string facing ahead of you, your hand will be pointing straight while the string will be behind you. Once you’ve got your string oriented, you’ll give a tug with your yoyo hand, like you’re waving somebody over. This will send the yoyo over your shoulder with its own momentum. The yoyo will continue to the end of the string, then bounce. This bounce introduces slack and, if your yoyo had enough spin, will bring the yoyo straight to your palm.
Around the corner is a great trick to learn after the basic throw. Both are clean and simple, but around the corner doesn’t look like it. This trick is an important one because it helps you get a feel for how the yoyo moves when you tug on the string from different angles and how powerful your sleepers need to be if you want the yoyo to keep spinning throughout your entire trick. For the next trick, you will want to make sure you have a powerful spin.
Walking the Dog
Walking the dog might be the most iconic yoyo trick of all time. Thankfully, it’s also one of the simplest. This trick involves the yoyo rolling across the ground. It will mostly do this on its own; after all, a sleeping yoyo is spinning rapidly and, if presented a flat, solid surface, will move forward. Walking the dog is also a trick with plenty of variations that allow you to give that dog some exercise.
The basic form of the trick is throwing a sleeper and letting it roll across the ground. But, if you throw the yoyo straight down, you’ll find it barely moves. It might go forward a few inches, but it’s not going to “walk.” You will need to give it a bit of momentum. As you’re throwing it, bring your arm back and then forward slightly. You are trying to make a pendulum with the yoyo. Once you master this, your plastic puppy will zoom ahead, and you can walk behind it.
Be careful about the distance between your hand and the yoyo. Walking the dog involves a fast-spinning yoyo and, if you give the string any slack, it will leap straight back. This helps pick the yoyo up at the end of the trick, but if your hand gets too close, you could spoil the show. Besides moving your hand closer, you can also give the yoyo a good tug to bring it back. Now that you’ve gotten the basics, we’ll look at two quick variations.
The creeper uses the same start but a different end. Throw the sleeper and make your pendulum, but crouch down when it’s time to recall the yoyo and tug the string. This time, the yoyo will come back to your hand across the ground instead of swinging up into the air. Another variation is walking the dog around the park. This is the trickiest of the variations because it involves delicate manipulation of the string. You will throw your sleeper then, as the yoyo rolls across the floor, gently tug on the string. This will alter the yoyo’s course. Instead of going straight, it will curve. Turning as you tug will complete the trick by “walking” the yoyo in a circle instead of a straight line. You must be gentle with the string, however. If you tug too hard, the yoyo will come back up the string instead of turning.
The Elevator Trick
That’s enough variations on the basic throw. The elevator trick does not just require a powerful sleeper, it needs both hands. This trick looks rather complicated. It involves rolling the yoyo up the string like you’re defying gravity. Like around the corner, however, it’s a simple trick that only appears complicated.
The first step, like with many tricks, is to throw a powerful sleeper. Then you want to fold the string around your non-yoyo hand. You do this by pressing a single finger against the string and lifting it up. You are going to lift the yoyo-free hand above your head and guide the yoyo to the string. It will catch on the groove. Once the yoyo is in place, lift your top hand and the yoyo will glide up the string like an elevator. Once your hand is at the top, toss the yoyo straight up. As long as you had a powerful sleeper and the yoyo is still spinning, it’s going to wrap itself back up and fall right into your hand.
There are a few ways this trick can go wrong. The illusion of an elevator can be broken if your yoyo bounces up the string instead of gliding. To fix this, make sure your bottom yoyo hand is extended slightly further than your top guiding hand, like /. Another issue you can run into is when the yoyo rotates around the string instead of going straight up. This means that your hands are not perfectly vertical. This can kill the yoyo’s spin before it reaches the top or even tangle up your string by wrapping the yoyo around itself. To help keep the string straight, imagine it’s a line separating whatever is in front of you perfectly in half. Once you have these techniques down, you’ll be able to amaze your friends with a gravity-defying trick.
Rock The Baby
This is another classic trick and is similar to the Elevator as it requires you to use your free hand to manipulate the yoyo’s string. Rock the baby will help you get used to more complicated hand gestures as it involves more flipping and rolling than the elevator trick. Rock the baby is a type of trick called a “picture trick.” This means you use the string to “frame” the yoyo and create an optical illusion of sorts with the yoyo hanging at the end of the string.
Again, start by throwing a sleeper. Instead of wrapping the string around a single finger, however, you’ll use your free hand to grip the string around the halfway point. Then you will lift your hand slightly, making sure to avoid giving the string too much slack and use your yoyo hand to pinch the string a few inches above the actual yoyo. If you do this properly, you’ll have a very narrow, inverted triangle with the tip being the point where you’re pinching the yoyo string. Flip your free hand down, making the triangle into a pyramid, and stretch out your free hand’s fingers. This will expand the triangle’s base, framing the yoyo in a nice, large cradle.
Depending on how much of a spin you’ve got, you might need to literally rock the yoyo to make it swing back and forth. The ideal form here is the yoyo swaying inside the triangle, like a crib getting rocked. Once you’ve completed the trick, you can just drop the yoyo. The string will have plenty of slack because of the positioning and will leap right back into your hand as long as it has enough spin. The easiest way to mess this trick up is with a weak sleeper. If the yoyo is not spinning fast enough, it won’t move much, and you’ll have trouble rewinding it. Make sure to give your elbow a good, hard flick to put plenty of power behind your spin.
Conclusion
Those are jugglealot.com’s five basic tricks every yoyoer should know. None of these tricks are complicated, even though a few of them look like they are. They are great ways to impress your friends, but also teach you a lot of fundamentals if you want to try moving on to bigger, more complicated tricks. Every trick you will do will require you to learn how to give the yoyo a good throw. Walk the dog and around the corner will teach you how a yoyo moves with its momentum and how to tug the string without recalling the yoyo. Finally, the elevator and rock the baby will both teach you how to manipulate the yoyo’s string with your free hand to create optical illusions. Once you have mastered these skills, you’ll be ready to become a true yoyo master