In this video I am going to teach you a famous classic yoyo trick, Rock the Baby,
and it looks like this. In addition to this I want to teach you a couple
different variations that will jut make doing this trick a whole lot more fun.
One of these variation I just learned today so you probably have never seen this one
before. I sure hadn’t. That will be the last one. I think you will really like that one.
Let’s just start with basic Rock the Baby. When you learn any trick like this,
this is called a Picture Trick, what you want to do is you just want the yoyo to hang down at
the bottom of the string. That way you are not pressured to try to figure it out so fast while
the yoyo is spinning. Just let your yoyo hang down at the bottom. This trick just has three steps.
The first thing you want to do is take your non-yoyo hand,
the one where the string is not attached, and you want to grab the string right about
in the middle. As you do this trick more you will figure out exactly where - you
either want it right in the middle or a little above the middle of the string.
Once you have grabbed it with your whole hand, don’t just pinch it gently but
grab it with your whole hand, you want to take your yoyo hand and you want to pinch the string
a couple of inches above the yoyo. Again, you don’t want to get to close to the yoyo,
and you don’t want to be too far away. You just want to get a couple of inches. You will see why.
The third and final step is you are going to bring your top hand in toward you,
don’t bring it away from you because that will create this awkward hold that,
you just don’t want to rock it like that. Bring it toward you,
you are going to point your fingers forward. As you do that you are going to spread it out. You
will see that now the yoyo is able to rock right through the cradle. Something you may
notice is that the lower the yoyo is in the cradle, that is where the widest part of the
cradle is. You can actually let the string slip through your fingers a little bit so it
can rock as low as possible. That way it is less likely that it will hit the sides of the yoyo.
What you want to do when you are practicing tricks like this is you want to work on them a
couple of times before you try it with the yoyo spinning. You are just going to grab,
pinch, and then flip it toward you. Once you feel like you can do
that pretty mindlessly then you can wind your yoyo up, and you can give it a try.
The yoyo is going to help you out a little bit. If it is spinning. Let me show you
what that looks like. When you throw the yoyo you can see that it stays in place,
and you already know that. That helps with Rock the Baby because it makes the yoyo a little bit
thinner if you rock it straight. So you are going to grab, pinch, flip it towards you. See how it
is setup so that it is very narrow in relation to the cradle, as opposed to if I rocked it this way,
then it is going to be really, really wide. It is going to be harder to rock through.
The other thing that is cool is if you rock it through this way then the string is not
going to be touching the sides of the yoyo. This means it is not going to be killing the spin. If
you the yoyo through sideways like this where the yoyo is at the wrong angle, every time you
rock it the string is pushing into the side of the yoyo a little bit and pretty quickly
that kills the spin and it will make you look ridiculous because you can’t do Rock the Baby.
Again, wind your yoyo up. If you happen to throw it at a little bit of an angle then just
turn your cradle to like it up with the yoyo and then you can just rock it right through.
Another cool thing about Rock the Baby is if you have a very responsive yoyo, when you drop it,
it will immediately return to your hand. So when you show it off to people that is kind
of impressive. They think the whole trick is already done because they can see the cradle
and then it is just right back in your hand all of a sudden. That gives it that WOW factor!
Once you have mastered Rock the Baby there are a few different variations.
The first two I am going to show you are really easy and really silly,
but they are worth learning. They are good for a laugh, the other two are a little bit harder,
but they are pretty impressive, so I think those are worth learning too.
The first one is called the Dizzy Baby. You can see this one is pretty simple.
All you are going to do is rock it on either side of the cradle like this,
as if the baby just can’t keep its balance, it just doesn’t know where it is going. When you
sure you don’t wrap the string around one side of the cradle or else you might end up getting
into a knot. If you just kind of weave in and out then it will keep you from getting a knot.
The next one is even more fun, but also pretty simple. In this one you want to throw it the exact
way I told you not to throw it. You want to throw it sideways. This one is called Rock the Baby in
the Dark. What you want to do with this one is let the yoyo run into the sides of the cradle,
like this. Almost like it is bumping into it. So you can be like “Oh! Ack! Ahhh!
Ow! Whoa! Help! Ugh!” You know, you gotta be careful when you rock your baby in the dark.
This third variation is a little bit harder like I said, but this is probably my favorite.
This one is called Throw the Baby out of the Cradle. That one looks like this.
Some people call this version of Rock the Baby ‘Dizzy Baby’, but I think Throw the
Baby out of the Cradle is funnier, and then I can use Dizzy Baby for that other trick. With
this one all you are going to do is start off by making Rock the Baby just like this.
Then with your pinch at the top, just make a fist with the rest of your fingers. That
will get them out of the way. All you are going to do is rotate the baby through the
cradle three or more times. You just go one, two, three, and then if you toss it up into
the air then you can position your palm upward and the yoyo will just roll right down into it.
Again, you are just going to make your fist, rock the baby through one, two, three, and then maybe
an extra one. You can see my hand is right in position. The yoyo will just return right to it.
This last trick I only discovered today as I was doing some routine yoyo research,
so I am super excited to show you this one,
but for this one I am going to need to take off my hat just to show it to you.
What you want to do for this trick is just throw your sleeper and then you are going
to lay the string on opposite side of your head. If you are right-handed then you lay
it on the left side of your head. You are going to bend over a little bit. What you
want to do is pinch the string a couple inches above the yoyo just like you would for Rock
the Baby. Basically what you are trying to do is you are trying to get clearance for
your nose. So depending on how long your nose is, you might need a little more clearance.
Again, you are going to pinch the yoyo a couple of inches above the yoyo and
then look up at the sky and you can do a one-handed rock the baby, just like that.
When you dismount, you could I suppose just drop the yoyo and hope for the best, but I
usually bend over and then kind of slowly release it from my head so it is just a little bit safer.
Those are 4 easy ways to do Rock the Baby.