In this video I am going to teach you the trick Slackicide and it looks like this.
Just like that, and once you have gotten better at the trick you should be able to do it again
and again and again. It’s really a trick that you can perfect,
but you need just the right technique, and having the right yoyo setup helps as well.
Some of you will know this trick under a different name,
but we decided to just update it. I like this name better, and it also helps us not
get into quite as many problems with YouTube and other platforms where we are teaching the trick.
So let’s get to it.
In terms of the basic mechanics of just executing the trick, there is nothing here
that is too difficult to understand. The first thing that you want to do is just throw a Trapeze.
Then you are going to swing the yoyo under and then over your yoyo hand and then you are going
to release the string off the first finger of your opposite hand. As the loop swings around
you are going to attempt to catch it back on the first finger of your opposite hand.
The real question is, how do you get that loop to open up wide enough so that you can catch it
consistently? A lot of the tips that we are going to give are going to focus on that. But before
we even get to that, there are some things that you can do with your yoyo setup that will help.
The first thing, obviously, make sure you do not have any tension in your string. If you have
string tension that is going to come into play and make the trick way more difficult than necessary.
Second, in terms of string, you probably want a relatively new string.
Maybe a brand new string can cause some more problems, so if you just break in the string
with some of your tricks for three or four minutes that should get you ready.
You also want response pads that are relatively new. Older response pads
kind of keep the mechanism that makes this trick work from working.
Finally, if you happen to have a previous generation yoyo. A yoyo
that was still playing unresponsive but used a smaller bearing - maybe a type A
or a type B bearing - that actually helps make the trick a little bit easier as well because it helps
that loop open up. Another thing is if you have a normal yoyo that takes a larger size C bearing,
a flat bearing can also help you achieve kind of the same thing. Because what all of these things
have in common, the smaller bearing and the flat bearing, is they help the string engage,
just touch the response pad, just a little bit easier than a string centering bearing
would do. It is that engagement of the string with the response pad that helps this trick to work.
That plays into the one fundamental concept you want to grab onto, and it’s pretty simple. What
you want is as the yoyo is moving through the air, you want the string that it is
sitting on right now to be slowly pulling through the gap of the yoyo, just like this.
There are 2 ways to accomplish that. One is you can have the yoyo away from your hand so
that it is sliding down the string as it is moving through the air. Or you could be moving your yoyo
hand away from the yoyo a little bit. That way you are kind of pulling the string through the yoyo.
At the same time, because we want to have some sort of engagement between the string
and the response pad, what you also want to do is position your throw hand
a little bit in front of the plane created by the yoyo and the string. If you think about it,
all you are doing is you are using this hand, you are pushing forward a little bit,
just to force the string into the response pad. To just help it touch a little bit. When
the string is touching that response pad a little bit as the yoyo slides down the string, or as the
string is sliding through the yoyo, that helps the string loop to open up as wide as possible.
Let’s take a look at how both of them work. The first one is to make sure the yoyo is moving in
this direction, somewhat quickly, but not super fast, which means you probably want to let the
yoyo go a little bit later in its motion. You see how when the yoyo is moving that direction
the string opens up really, really wide. That allows you to catch it on the string.
For the second method, what I tend to do in order to keep the string pulling against the bottom side
of the yoyo is I spread my fingers apart, which pushes my pinky into the string a little bit.
You will see when the yoyo is here your pinky is interfacing with the string. If you move
your yoyo hand away and spread your fingers apart that allows the string to slide along
the bottom edge of the yoyo, which allows the string to open up as wide as possible.
When you are trying to work on this trick and you are drilling it, one of the things you are
going to notice is that string tension is going to be building up as you do the
trick. If you are right handed that means the string tension is going to be getting looser,
if you are left handed it will be getting tighter. Every now and then as you practice you are going
to have to do a string tension adjustment, which is just kind of frustrating. You just want to
work on the trick. One thing you can do is you can do a counteracting roll in-between every
single Slackicide in order to counterbalance the tension that is building up as you do the trick.
If you notice, when you do the trick it is going to be rolling on the outside
of your yoyo hand wrist. Just like that. So you can do one roll on the inside and that
will counteract that tension that is built up. Effectively you can keep the same string tension
you had at the beginning every single time, so your string always opens up as you do the trick.
Another thing that’s really clever that I believe the world champion used when he took the
record for most consecutive Slackicides for one throw, is he setup the string so it would rotate
around his finger as the yoyo went around his finger. That is a brilliant technique that
will also make sure your string tension does not change as you do the trick.
I’ve tried to find a way to get it to work by using a looser string. Seems like more trouble
than it is worth. You could try attaching the string to a ring or something. There might be
a way to work it out. If you can make it happen that is a great way to practice the trick as well.
This is the type of trick that if you pay attention to all the techniques in this video,
you should be able to start landing right away. It will take a lot longer to perfect,
but once you have perfected it and you’ve gotten some confidence there are some
really cool variations on this trick we are going to teach in future videos.
If you have perfected the trick, you will be ready. That is Slackicide.