Introduction To Yo-Yo String Tricks

Series Summary

The history of the Yo-Yo is a long and sordid tale, beginning in the Philippines sometime before 500 B.C. Once possibly used as a weapon, the Yo-Yo developed into its modern form in 1866 when it was patented under the name “whirligig”. With a ridiculous name like whirligig, it's no wonder the dizzying disks didn't take. Finally given the respectable name of Yo-Yo, the children's toy achieved ridiculous heights of popularity in the 1920's and then again in the 1960's. Advances in Yo-Yo technology in the 1990's saw yet another resurgence of Yo-Yo culture, sparking the World Yo-Yo competition held annually in Florida to showcase a variety of Yo-Yo tricks. Yo-Yo's can also be seen in film and television, though most often as weapons for small, animated children.

In this free instructional video, our expert will demonstrate a variety of intermediate Yo-Yo tricks for the more advanced Yo-Yoer. Our expert will show step-by-step instructions for advanced Yo-Yo string trick, like the flying trapeze trick, the sidewinder, and the drop in the bucket trip. If you've been looking for a challenge to update your Yo-Yo skills you'll find them here with tips and techniques from a Yo-Yo expert.

Video Transcript

"We're in the intermediate section now. This is when yo-yoing gets cool. You landed on the string; you're doing really cool string tricks. This is the stuff that will impress your friends; it'll impress the kids at school. Even if you have an office or cubical, you can show the guy next door and he'll be impressed. Important thing to consider when you're doing some string tricks. I know you don't know any of them yet, but I want to talk about them. When we start learning them, you can keep it in mind and try and focus in on it. It's going to make you a better yo-yo player, and it's going to help you learn faster and get less frustrated. One of the things you want to learn is before just focus on getting that really strong sleeper. The stronger your sleeper is, you're going to learn 10 faster. You'll be learning tricks at a much easier rate, simply because it's spinning longer and because if you touch it with a string or something like that it's not going to slow the yo-yo down as much. Same thing goes for breakaway. You want to get this really straight because what we're going to be teaching you is how to land it into the string like so. The other one you want to do is when you start learning the tricks we're talking about is if you have a yo-yo on a string, keep in mind that the string is going to be slowing down the yo-yo if it's touching the sides at all. If I'm trying to do a string trick and the yo-yo is doing this I'm not going to get very far. That's one of the main things to consider when you're doing string tricks. Try and keep that string dead center in the yo-yo. See how it’s dead center. Let me show you from the front. This is a trick called brain twister we're going to be teaching you. If I can keep that string dead center in the yo-yo so it's not touching at all, it's going to be spinning a lot longer. When I go to maneuver it, you're going to have a much easier time with it. It's not going to spin out and it's not going to die. Keep that in mind and you're going to be on your way to learning some great intermediate tricks."