Techniques For Yo-Yo String Tension

Video Transcript

"We touched on string tension earlier when we showed you the trick UFO. If you haven't learned UFO yet, it's important to go back and learn it. The trick itself, it's a little tricky to do, but it's going to help you out a lot when you start doing string tricks because it deals with tension. You throw to the right, it tightens your string, you throw it to the left, it loosens your string. When you're doing tricks, like we mentioned in the last segment, it's important to have it straight in the center of the yo-yo, but it's also important the string tension is good. Let me show you an example of something that's not going to help you when you first swing. If I throw a UFO to the right, this is currently tightening my string. I've taught lots of people how to yo-yo and I see them come up to me with this, and they're going I can't do anything. I can't get my yo-yo to work right and it keeps grabbing. You'll see what happens. First of all, it'll do that. It won't really grab the string, it's too tight. The yo-yo has nothing to grab onto. The other thing that will happen is when you're trying to do a trick, it'll do something like that and the yo-yo will rav in the middle of it. It's going to shoot back to your hand, you're going to start getting knots because the yo-yo is raving too much. When you get into this, you'll notice instead of sliding now, the yo-yo is grabbing and it's not going to help you out. What you want is attention that's really even on the string. Let me show you what this looks like. I just did a UFO to the left there, which will reverse the way the string was going. You'll notice that if I pull my hands together and slightly twist them together. To get rid of the tension, you can also just take off your hand. If you can't do the UFO, this is a good way to get rid of string tension. Take it completely off your hand. You start at the top of the yo-yo and just pull all the way down. You'll notice the string is untangling. Put it back on your finger, and you'll notice now when I pull my hands together it's barely twisting together. This is what you want. It's just right and it's going to help you out a lot when you start learning string tips. Keep string tension in mind and it's going to be a lot less frustrating to learn."