Overview of Master Level Yo-Yo Tricks

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 series of free yoyo instructional videos, our professional competitor demonstrates the tricks that truly separate the yoyoing champions from the pretenders to the throne. Yes indeed, these are the masters level tricks, where reputations are made and pretenders exposed. André Boulay is a lead judge at the World Yo-Yo Contest, where he has seen a well executed Double Iron Whip bring the competition to its knees and a masterful White Budda receive a rousing ovation. Needless to say, this series is not for beginners, unless you want to see where you will eventually end up with those endless hours of practice. This is the pros, baby, and if you want to get here, you'll have to work very, very hard.

"ANDRE BOULAY: So we are moving on to the master level of yo-yo tricks and this is cool stuff. This is stuff that when you go to show people you're really going to impress them with. If you go and take a look back on the expert level and all the other ones we went through, this isn't necessarily incredibly harder. It's just kind of the next step and these tricks that I have chosen to put in into the master section I feel are fundamentals of free styles, they are tricks that are really good to learn, they are tricks that have been around for a while. They just have lots of elements to them. I've started taken them. I've tried to break them down to 2, 3 steps sometimes to really help you learn them. This should help you out. It's going to make you a better yo-yo player if you go through each step, learn them the best you can. When you're done, you'll be able to do some pretty fancy tricks, so this one's called Ladder Escape, it's on the list and it's one of my favorites."