Recently on America’s Got Talent you may have seen a yo-yoer who really impressed the
judges.
Now he might have caught them off guard, but for those of us who are in the yoyo world,
we know who this is.
This is Shu Takada.
In fact, in a previous video we made we named one of his routines the Best Yoyo Routine
of All Time.
When he really impressed the judges it didn’t surprise any of us.
What did surprise me is that when he did this routine he was really holding back.
In fact, a lot of the tricks that he used in this routine were simple you could learn
them right now.
In this video that is what I want to do, I want to teach you the 5 tricks that he used,
that are really easy, to really impress the judges.
Now one of the questions you may have been asking yourself, is, what yoyo was he using
when he was doing all those amazing tricks?
Well, he was using the Loop 720, and if you look carefully at his yoyo, his name is actually
on the yoyo.
That is because he has earned it.
He has won several world titles using yoyos like this, and this currently the one that
he really enjoys.
This is one of our all time favorite yoyos.
Now it is designed for advanced two-handed yo-yoing, where you are using two at the same
time, so if you are just a brand new yo-yoer, you might not be ready for that style of yo-yoing,
so in this video what we are going to use is the yoyo we recommend for new players,
which is the Fizz.
These two yoyos are similar in that they both have a ball bearing, which means they can
both sleep a long time, but the Fizz also has some extra features that make it just
a little bit easier to use, and yet it is still going to be able to do all the tricks
we are going to teach you in this video.
If you are having trouble with any of the tricks we did put together a playlist that
has more detailed tutorials for every tricks, but if you really want to get serious about
yo-yoing the best thing you can do is download our free app for any of your devices.
In this app we teach over 350 different tricks, we always arranged the tricks by order of
difficulty so you can easily find which trick to learn next, and we have even gamified it
so that as you learn tricks you can gain experience points and eventually Level Up!, which makes
it super fun.
Now let’s get to the tricks.
The first easy trick that Shu used to WOW the judges is just throwing the yoyo down
and getting it back up.
Of course Shu added his own dynamic dancing style to it, which is what made the trick
feel so impressive, but really all it was, is just throwing the yoyo down.
So how do we do that?
The first thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that you get the yoyo onto
the right finger on your hand.
If you are going to throw the right way and the yoyo string is not properly attached,
then the yoyo is probably going to fall off your hand and it is going to short circuit
any advancement you are looking to make right away.
What you might not know is that the loop that is at the top of the string on all yoyos,
that is actually not for your finger, because in a lot of cases it is going to be too small,
and in other cases it is going to be way too big.
What do you do with that?
What you want to do is take the string that is below that loop and fold it over and turn
it into another loop, just like this.
Then take that loop and feed it right through the loop at the top of the string.
What that is going to do, is make a slip knot.
Now you can place your finger into that loop that you made, and tighten it down on your
hand.
Now the yoyo is going to be secure.
It is not going to fall off your hand, which is a great thing.
You may have notice that I put the yoyo onto my middle finger, yo-yoer call this the yoyo
finger.
In fact, every body should call it the yoyo finger.
Middle, that’s not even like a name for a finger.
So you’ve go your index, yoyo, ring, and pinky.
Let’s get it into science textbooks.
Alright, you can help me out with that.
What I do, is I put it on the middle of my yoyo finger, in-between my two knuckles.
For the most part that is where all yo-yoers put it because that gives you a little more
range when learning your tricks.
Once you have the yoyo on your finger, now you need to know how to throw it.
What you notice is that he didn’t just drop the yoyo like this.
No, he threw it.
And when yo-yoers throw their yoyo, they turn their hand over, and they throw the yoyo down
like this.
Again, that might seem pretty straightforward, but the first thing that you need to know
about the throw besides getting it on your finger is you need to make sure you are holding
the yoyo properly.
What you want to do if you want to hold the yoyo properly is just unwind the yoyo a little
bit from your hand like this.
You will see the string goes from your finger to the yoyo.
What you want is for the string to go over the top of the yoyo like this.
What that allows the yoyo to do is if it starts to roll off you will see that it rolls off
very smoothly.
The alternative would be if the yoyo is flipped around in your hand like this.
You can see now it goes from my finger underneath the yoyo.
Again, if you were to try to get it to roll off your hand, you see it kind of get stuck,
and then if it leaves your hand then it is going to have to turn, then it will just completely
lose control.
It won’t allow you to learn the trick.
That is the key.
Get it into your hand, make sure the string goes from your finger over the top of the
yoyo, then wind it up tight.
Then the next thing you want to do is bend your arm kind of like you are making a muscle.
You are going to extend your arm just like this.
On any given throw it really has three components.
So get your hand and muscle like this.
You are going to extend your hand and release the yoyo.
That is 1.
The second step, and it is a totally different step, you are going to turn your hand over.
The third step is you are going to pull the yoyo back up.
If everything worked the yoyo will come right back up and you will be able to catch it which
is kind of like step 4.
There are a few places where you can go wrong, so let’s zone in, zoom in maybe a little
bit and we will see what we can learn.
The first thing is that the yoyo is going to stay, it is going to lean or not lean depending
on how flat your hand is when you release it.
If you hand is a little bit crooked or off to the side when you release it, then the
yoyo is going to sleep, it is going to move crooked.
The more crooked it is, then the slower it is going to be spinning, the faster the spin
is going to die.
The yoyo won’t work quite as well.
It is really important when you throw it to have your hand be completely flat.
As long as your hand is flat, most of the time that means your yoyo is going to spin
straight.
The main area where most people get this messed up is they try to combine steps 1 and 2.
Step 1 is throw, step 2 is you turn your hand over.
Some people think they can combine it, but when you combine it watch what happens.
You throw it like this, and then your hand is not flat when you release it.
Just break it down into a few different steps: you throw, turn your hand over, and then if
the yoyo is spinning all you need to do is give it a little flick with your wrist and
that will allow the yoyo to come back up.
If you don’t want the yoyo to be spinning at the bottom, and you will notice Shu did
not have his yoyo sleep, he just brought it back up, all you need to do is as the yoyo
reaches the bottom of the string, if your hand is moving up at that point, then the
yoyo will come right back up.
If you put all of that together then you can start to throw the yoyo the way that Shu did.
You want to combine that with some dancing if that is something you are capable of, then
you can start to impress people with just a basic yoyo throw!
The second trick, if you have mastered the first trick, is going to really seem like
a breeze, and that is the trick Walk the Dog.
The nice thing about walk the dog is as long as you can throw your yoyo and make it sleep,
then this trick is really not that difficult.
All you want to do is get your yoyo and throw it as hard as you can to get a really good
Sleeper.
Basically all Walk the Dog is, is you are going to touch your yoyo on the ground and
as you touch it on the ground, it starts to walk forward.
There are a few things you can do to make this trick a whole lot easier and make it
a whole lot more impressive.
The first thing is, if you swing the yoyo to get a little motion on the yoyo first then
that will help it walk a little faster.
That looks like this.
You can just swing it behind you and as it swings forward you put it on the ground.
Of course if you want to you can take a couple steps with the yoyo, which is what Shu did
in his routine.
The second thing that you want to make sure you are doing when you do this trick is you
want to make sure you don’t get your hand too close to the yoyo.
If your hand gets close to the yoyo, then it will come back up.
This is even true of a regular sleeper.
If you just drop your hand quickly, that makes the yoyo come back up.
When you are doing Walk the Dog, one mistake people make is they get their hand too close
to the yoyo, and then it comes back like that.
If that is happening to you just make sure the dog leads you and you have mastered Walk
the Dog.
The third easy trick that Shu used to impress the judges was just called the Forward Pass.
As you can see this is basically just like a throw except you do it out in front of you.
If you have already mastered your throw this one is not going to be too difficult.
The first thing you need to do is hold your yoyo the same way that we showed you how to
hold it with the basic throw.
That is with the string going from your finger over the top of the yoyo.
Then, instead of throwing the yoyo like this with your palm up, you are going to turn your
hand over and, again, you need to get a little motion on it, and you swing your hand right
by your side.
As your hand passes right by your side right here you are going to release the yoyo.
That will allow it to go forward.
There are a couple of things that can go wrong here.
This is where a little fine tuning is necessary.
One is if you let the yoyo go a little too late then it is not going to come up and come
back down to your hand.
Instead it will go back down like that.
If you find the yoyo going out and then falling down, that means you need to release it a
little earlier.
Another thing that can happen is the yoyo might sleep instead of just going out and
coming right back.
It might kind of stall at the end of the string.
That is okay, but it is not really what we are looking for.
If it stalls like that, it might mean you are letting it go a little too early because
the yoyo is swinging around.
You want to find that perfect balance for you.
Swing your hand, release the yoyo.
Just like with your normal throw, when you catch it, what you want to do is you want
to turn your hand over.
What that does is it makes sure the string is setup to go over the top of the yoyo again,
which allows you to go right into your next throw.
If you don’t turn your hand over, then the yoyo is going to be in your hand upside down,
and that will keep you from doing the trick again.
The fourth trick that Shu did that really impressed the judges but was also really easy
is called Around the World.
This is another one of those really famous trick that is actually not too hard.
If you have already mastered the Forward Pass, this trick is going to be really easy to learn.
Just like we said in that part of the video, where if you let it go to early then the yoyo
is going to kind of stall at the end of the string, it is going to sleep out there.
That is what you want for Around the World.
All you are going to do is a Forward Pass, but instead of letting it go at the normal
time, you are going to let it go a little earlier.
You also want to imagine, even though you are letting it go earlier, if you imagine
throwing the yoyo really far away from you, what that will do is it will give you a lot
of power.
That power allows the yoyo to spin all the way around, just like this.
That is what Around the World is.
It is just a Forward Pass where the yoyo sleeps in a full circle and then comes back to your
hand.
If you act like you are throwing it far away from you that should get you enough spin to
get the yoyo to go all the way around.
The key to getting the yoyo to come back is you want to stop its big, circular motion
right when the yoyo is in front of you.
As long as you stop the yoyo right there, it will come back right in the best position
possible.
Now the tricky part about this is wherever it stops the big circular motion of the yoyo,
that is when it is going to come back.
So if you stop it right up here, then it is going to come back to your hand like that.
So you need to keep swinging the yoyo, just have a tiny bit of tension on it as it goes
around, and you can do several Around the Worlds if you want to.
Then stop the yoyo right in front of you, catch it, and you have mastered Around the
World.
The fifth trick that Shu used to really impress the judges was actually the trick he used
to close his routine.
That was called the Dog Bite.
This trick is not too difficult.
You need to things.
You need a yoyo that sleeps, of course, and you need pants that are a little bit baggy.
You will notice in that routine Shu had some really flowy, some kind of thin pants.
That makes this trick as easy as possible.
You can also do it with jeans if they don’t fit too tight.
What you are going to do for this trick, you are going to throw the yoyo.
You want to release it a little earlier than a normal throw so that it will arc behind
you, just like this.
So let it go early, swing behind you.
What you want to do is swing the yoyo right between you legs, just like this.
When the yoyo swings between your legs, one thing you want is you want to bring your hand
down a little bit so the yoyo can go way far behind you.
You don’t want to just let it go a little behind you.
You want to allow the yoyo to go way back.
You also want to make sure the string is touching your leg right around here.
If the string is not in touch with your leg then the yoyo is not going to run into your
leg when you want it to.
You are going to throw the yoyo, make it swing back behind you, make sure it is touching
your leg.
When the yoyo is as far away from you as possible and it is a little above the point it is touching
your leg, then you pull back and it should grab onto your pants.
Just like that.
You can see, again, nothing too tricky to learn about this particular trick.
Just a matter of having the right setup, knowing the right skills.
In this routine while he did also do a lot of really difficult tricks that were pretty
awesome, Shu really showed us that even basic yoyo tricks can be super impressive.
If you like this content, be sure to like, share and subscribe and definitely download
our free YoYoTricks app if you are interested in learning all kinds of yoyo tricks.