One of the coolest things about Offstring Style Yoyoing is that a lot of the coolest
tricks that you can do, at least in their most basic form, are not really that difficult.
Once you have learned how to do your basic throw you have access about a dozen really
awesome tricks that you can learn right away.
But of course that means that first of all you need to learn how to throw the yoyo, catch
it on the string, and bring it back.
In this video I want to equip you with all the tools you need to get started learning
all these great and relatively easy Offstring Tricks by teaching you how to wind the yoyo
up and how to get your first throw, catch, and bind return with an Offstring Yoyo.
The first thing that you want to do when you get an Offstring yoyo is you are going to
have to learn how to wind it up the first time.
We will be teaching you some Fast Winds for Offstring yoyos in a future video, but if
this is just your first Offstring yoyo, it is not that different than any other yoyo.
What you want to do is place the string on side of the yoyo, just like this, pinch it
with your thumb and then start winding.
You don’t want to wind too tight.
You don’t want to wind it as tight as you can.
You also don’t want to wind it super loose.
Just have a nice even wind all the way through.
You can wind the string right into the gap of the yoyo, just like you would with a normal
yoyo.
That should set you up for your first throw.
I say should because there are some things that can go wrong with Offstring Style Yoyoing,
but even if your first throw doesn’t work it probably wasn’t the way you wound it
up, it was probably the way you threw it, so let’s get to that.
In order to throw your yoyo, you do want to hold it in your hand the same way that you
would with a traditional yoyo, with the string going over the top of the yoyo.
You are going to release the yoyo the same way you would release a Forward Toss - like
in 2A style yo-yoing.
If you have not learned that trick you may want to learn that with a Looping Style Yoyo
first, but if you don’t mind winding up your Offstring yoyo a lot it is perfectly
fine to learn it here.
All you are going to do is turn your hand over - so the opposite way you would your
normal throw - turn your hand over.
You will swing your hand by your side and release the yoyo as your hand is moving forward.
With a normal Forward Toss, you are going to throw the yoyo directly in front of you.
With an Offstring Style Yoyo you want to angle it up, so the yoyo is a little bit higher,
so it can fall down into the string and then you can catch it.
As you are throwing the yoyo, what you want to do with your opposite hand is position
it in front of you like this.
What you want to do is throw the yoyo in such a way that the string will intersect with
this hand.
What that allows you to do is to immediately grab onto the string, and then extend it toward
the yoyo, so that you can open the string up and catch it.
When you are grabbing onto the string don’t pinch it right away.
You just want to loosely hold it so that it doesn’t fall down.
As the yoyo leaves the string then you can extend it out.
When you are trying to aim for the catch, what you want to do is use the hand that is
closest to the yoyo to aim.
It is a lot easier to catch the yoyo near one of your hands than it is to catch it right
in the middle.
If the yoyo is far away from you then you can catch it near your opposite hand.
If you throw the yoyo so that it comes in very close to you then you can catch it near
your yoyo hand and you can aim that way.
That will just make it a little bit easier.
Once you have thrown the yoyo up; you have grabbed the string; you have extended it out;
you have caught the yoyo - the first thing you need to do is celebrate, because that
is awesome.
The next thing you need to do is figure out how to get the yoyo back.
It actually works almost exactly the way you would expect.
What you are going to do is you’re going to take the end of the string, right here,
we could call this the tail, and you are going to throw it right down into the gap of the
yoyo so that it swings around and wraps around the yoyo.
That will allow the yoyo to come back.
And, just like a normal Forward Toss, you do want to catch the yoyo with your palm up,
this will set you up for the next throw.
The one thing that is probably going to happen right away, and it is going to surprise you,
as you go to throw the yoyo it is not going to come off the string.
You know that it should, because it is not attached, you wound it up yourself, and yet
when you throw it up it is not coming off the string.
This is probably the most common problem, and this is going to be a reoccurring problem
if you don’t understand what makes the yoyo actually able to leave the string - you know,
besides the fact that it is not attached.
The understanding for this goes all the way back to the very first video that you probably
watched when learning how to yoyo, and that is just how to do Basic Throw and get the
yoyo back up.
What you would have learned from that video, is that what allows the yoyo to come back
up when you pull on it is not so much the pull, it is that you are adding a little bit
of slack to the string.
If you give any slack to the string in a responsive yoyo, that will cause the yoyo to come back.
The crazy thing is that Offstring yoyos work exactly the same.
If you allow any slack in the string at any point in your throw, then that will cause
the yoyo to respond.
That is even true if you throw the yoyo down.
So if I throw the yoyo down and pull up a little bit, like I would with a normal yoyo,
it came back.
What is happening there is the yoyo is starting to unwind, but when I pull it back up and
put that slack in the string, it winds back up, right?
But what is actually happening is the top half of the string is wound one way, and the
point at which it turned around and came back, at that exact point the rest of the string
is wound around the yoyo in the opposite direction.
That means on your second throw the yoyo is also not going to come off the string.
You need to keep that in mind that any time you do any type of throw and the yoyo does
not leave the string, almost always you need to clear it one time because of that thing
that is happening where the string is wound around the yoyo in 2 different directions.
If you keep that in mind, that will help at least part of the time when you are doing
the trick.
The question is, how do you make sure that doesn’t happen on accident when you are
just doing your normal throw?
The first thing is, kind of like we said when you are throwing the yoyo, you want to be
kind of aggressive about it.
You don’t want to throw it soft, because if you are soft in your throw, then you can
see, even when I threw it right there, there is some slack that built up and as soon as
it affected the yoyo it came right back.
What you want to do is make sure to not allow any slack in the string whatsoever.
But, that might also cause another problem.
If you are throwing the yoyo and you are really aggressive, and you just throw it as hard
as you can, the yoyo may launch far away from you.
Obviously, that is not what you want.
How do you balance this out?
How do you get it so there is no slack, and the yoyo comes off the string?
The way I do it is I make sure I give a really good throw, but about half-way through the
motion I stop my hand from moving.
You can see that, that even though the yoyo is continuing to move off the string, I have
paused my throw hand.
What that does, is it keep the yoyo from moving forward.
If I were to continue and kind of follow-through with my throw the whole time the yoyo is leaving
the string, that is what make it launch far away.
If you stop your hand, then that allows the yoyo to pretty much go straight up.
That allows you to catch it a little easier.
Another thing you can do, this is just a little bonus tip, which this might make it more difficult
at the beginning, but you will want to remember this, you can actually pull back on your hand
a little bit as you throw it.
What that will do is it functions kind of like a rip cord, even though the yoyo is out
of your hand, it is going to accelerate the yoyo and cause it to spin a lot faster.
What is great about that is it also pull the yoyo back towards you, so it will keep the
yoyo close to you instead of moving away from you.
You can see that it came back toward my yoyo hand.
That is because I pulled back on it.
I don’t know if you can hear it, but it is spinning a whole lot faster.
That is another way that, once you get better at the trick, you can do that.
But, you know, if you are pulling back on the yoyo, we already know that if you pull
back on the string it causes it to come back.
The key to this is to have a very smooth motion.
If you pull a little bit in like a jerky fashion, or if your pull is kind of sudden, then that
will also add a little slack to the string and make it come back.
Any manipulation you do with the string as the yoyo is leaving the string, it needs to
be very smooth.
If you can get it just right, you know, in the beginning you probably just want to pause
your throw and allow the yoyo come off, that will make it go straight up.
But as you get a little better you may even want to pull a little bit which will accelerate
it and will make it go as quickly as possible.
Once you have sorted out your throw, the next thing that might be causing you some trouble
is getting the yoyo to bind return consistently.
There are also some other problems that can come up with the binds, so we will get into
some detail here.
Like we already said, what you want to do is take the end of the string and throw it
down into the groove of the yoyo.
What you might not be really comfortable doing at first is you want to do this while you
swing the yoyo away from you.
The reason you want to do it with the yoyo swinging away is that makes sure you don’t
have any slack in the string as the yoyo is wind up.
If you are feeling a little bit timid and you don’t want to move the yoyo away from
you, even if you can get the yoyo to bind, which is going to be tricky all on its own,
chances are it is going to be a pretty uneven bind, because the string isn’t going to
be really tight in the gap.
If you have an uneven or kind of a loose bind, then when you throw it some of that slack
is going to come out and it is going to make the yoyo come back and it is going to be really
irritating.
But, if you have the yoyo moving away from you, which is what you need to do.
Then sometimes, especially when you are practicing it is going to slip right out and you are
going to miss your bind.
How do you deal with that?
First of all, make sure you give the string a really good throw into the groove of the
yoyo so that you can get multiple wraps of string around the bearing.
But, what is really crucial is not what you do wit your opposite hand, it is what you
do with your yoyo hand as you are performing the bind.
What you want to do is get the yoyo moving away from you, throw that string into the
groove and then immediately you want to pull just a little bit, and I mean a real small
amount, back away from the yoyo.
What that is going to do is accelerate the end of the string so that it wraps around
more quickly.
You pull a very small amount, and then immediately you move your hand slightly towards the yoyo.
You know if you move your hand towards the yoyo, that is going to give it some slack,
but in this case that is what you want.
Because you want the yoyo to come back once enough wraps of string are wound around the
yoyo.
That really quick motion of a small pull back and then pushing your hand forward which opens
you up so you can catch the yoyo, that is all you need to get much more consistent binds
as the yoyo is moving away from you.
That will make your binds tighter, which will make your throws a whole lot more consistent.
If you just work on all the techniques we talked about in this video you will have your
throw, catch, and bind with your Offstring yoyo pretty quickly.
That is going to open you up to a whole bunch of different tricks.
That is the Offstring Throw and Bind.