How To Do The Skin The Gerbil Yo-Yo Trick

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 expert Yo-Yo tricks for the very advanced Yo-Yoer. Our expert will show step-by-step instructions for expert Yo-Yo string tricks, like the gyroscopic flop trick, the jade whip, and the skin the gerbil trick. If you've been looking for the ultimate challenge to update your Yo-Yo skills, you'll find it here with tips and techniques from a Yo-Yo expert.

Video Transcript

"Next trick I'm going to teach you today is "Skin the Gerbil". It's a cool trick. It's one worth practicing. If you can get it down fast and smooth you can really impress people. Trick looks like this. It's a really smooth. It really flows when you're doing it. Goes back and forth and hits all sides of the string. It's one of my favorite tricks. To start off "Skin the Gerbil" you land on a trapeze. Looks like this. You want to take your throw hand and turn it in towards yourself like that and then you push in on the string hair. It makes it swing way around like that. You push in. What that does is it allows the string to go around without getting in a knot. So what you do is take your throw hand, you push in, makes it go around. It's kind of like a backwards brain twister. Once you do that move you actually go right around and land it twice onto the string like that. You double up on the string. So it comes around twice. So we'll try that again. So push in, double around, like so. That's the first step of "Skin the Gerbil". Once you have that then push in, double up, come around, and you'll land it on this side of the string. Land it right there. Let's try this again. So you take it, push in, come double around, come back around, double up on the other side. One more time then we're going to break down the next part in the next segment. So double goes in, double up, comes around, goes around. When you're doing this try and get it really smooth. You want it to be one flowing motion. The last step you want to throw in is that part from "The Matrix" where you do this. Comes around like that. You want to do that move after you come double up. See, come double up. Undo. Do that move. Comes around and hits this string. So one more time now. So do what we were doing before, double up, throw in the extra turn, and come around and hit this side of the string. That's the first step to "Skin the Gerbil" and we're going to address the second part next."