7 cool yoyo tricks you must know

Knowing the basic tricks is great, but mastering even cooler yo-yo tricks can be far greater. These tricks allow you to dive into the yo-yo world much deeper and open you a new realm of possibilities. The availability of advanced yo-yo tricks will dramatically increase, as what you’ll learn may take part in stunning combos that you would have never imagined. In this article, I’m going to present 7 tricks to show off your dexterity to impress everybody around you and entertain yourself.

During this tutorial, I’m going to assume that most of you are right handed so when I explain there will be no problem in regard to which hand should you use (that’s important because if you throw the yo-yo with the left-hand, the trick completely changes).

 

Brain-twister/scrambler

You start doing the trick by throwing the yo-yo in the first place. The next thing you are going to do is to make a front mount (trick explained in another blog post). In this position, you are holding the loop on the middle finger of the left-hand and you also have a string coming from the yo yo hand in front of the loop, Now lower the right-hand and bring the pointing finger just below that loop.

 

Then, you push the finger against the created loop and make the yo yo swing towards your body. With this motion, you make the yo-yo spin around the left-hand middle finger, which will stay as an axis for the imaginary disk created by the yoyo’s rotation.

The yo-yo will eventually come back to the original position.

 

You can make the yo yo spin around the axis determined by the middle finger only once or if you really want to seem more interesting in front of others, you can make more spins.

Split-bottom-mount

There are several ways to execute this trick.

• First way

After throwing the yo-yo you put your pointing finger from the left-hand at the back of the string, parallel to your body. The next thing you should do is to push the string with the same pointing finger, raise your left hand and at the same time bring the right-hand at the same level as the yo-yo.

The left-hand should stay at the eye level and the right-hand remains at the waist level. The shape of the string resembles an upside-down V. Now use the right pointing finger and put it also parallel to your body.

Next, you begin to swing the yo-yo towards yourself by using the left-hand and yo do something similar to a front mount and you use the right pointing finger against the string. The momentum of the yo-yo will make everything much easier.

• Second way

You do something similar to the front mount, but with a slight difference: instead of landing the yo-yo on the string you miss that string. How do you do that? Good question. You don’t hold the string straight, you pull it to the right from your yoyo hand, so that when the yo-yo emerges after swinging again towards the body it won’t land on the string.

 

Though, the toy will continue its circular movement and will gain momentum, which will help you recreate the front mount (I  forgot to mention that you hold the middle fingers of both hands the same way as the first way to Split-bottom-mount).

In this case, the yoyo doesn’t touch the string, it goes to its left.

The yoyo jumps and then begins to descend.through this method the yoyo has enough momentum to wrap around your right index finger.

You end up in the Split-the-Bottom Mount.

 

• Third way

You first do the regular front mount. You can use your pointing finger from the left-hand in this trick, Now you have the pointing finger holding the loop and the string coming from the yoyo hand passing underneath the yo-yo bearing.

 

The next thing you are going to do is to use the right pointing finger to and put it in the loop next to the other pointing finger. Now, leave distance between the two pointing fingers. What will you obtain will be a triangle.

 

Observe some distinct things: you have the string coming from the yo-yo hand, then the string continues from beneath the yo-yo until it reaches the left pointing finger which is the closest to your body. That’s one side of the triangle. The second side, the most important one, starts from the left finger and stops at the right finger. The third side of the triangle comes from the right digit until the yo-yo bearing.

What’s our focus now? To hit the upper string, the second side of the triangle. To do that you need to push your right finger forward and slightly down to make the yo-yo jump up, hit the string and land on it. When this happens, the left hand will be the highest point of the toy-hands ensemble.

 

The yo-yo will be at a lower level than the right-hand pointing finger, which will be within a string loop. That would be the usual way to do the trick.

If you want to understand better what are you doing in fact, you can also do the following way: take your left digit and pass it below the yo-yo and after that, you continue to push against the string. Next, swing the toy towards your body and just flip it. Voila, you obtained the Split-the-bottom mount!

Double or nothing

Double or nothing is very helpful in a great number of cases. It represents an essential part in some more difficult tricks, such as The Matrix. So let’s learn it!

Start with a breakaway. It’s important to make the yo-yo dangle. As a result, the yo-yo will have momentum and do what we want it to do. Use again your pointing fingers directed to the exterior, perpendicular to body plane, at your hip level.

Now you do something similar to the man on the flying trapeze, but in this case, you let more string cover both the left digit and the right digit so the yo-yo will land beyond the right pointing finger.

From this position, you continue by making a mini-trapeze with the remaining string(the other part of the string is used for covering the fingers ). That’s it!. It may not be that simple until you get it, but you’ll eventually manage to do the trick correctly.

Under or nothing

It is a slight variation for the double or nothing yo yo-trick. Do a breakaway or just throw on the side, swing the yo-yo, put your left pointing finger below the string and after that, you put the string over the right pointing finger and make the same mini trapeze.

One-and-a-half-side-mount

Before we begin you need two know something very important related to the type of tricks depending on the side we play with the yo-yo. Front tricks are the ones played in front of the body, and the side ones are performed on the side, parallel to you. I might sound too Captain Obvious but maybe some of you have never heard of that :)).

You do the same thing as the Double or Nothing but without that so-called mini-trapeze. Now you have two strings: one coming from the yo yo hand and stopping at the left pointing finger and the second one starting from there until the right digit.

What you need to do now is to make the yo-yo move in a way that it hits the furthest string from your body and land on it. You can try the following method: raise your left arm to your chest level and let your right-hand be at the waist level.

I think it gets much easier to swing the toy and make it land onto the needed string. What you’ll eventually get will be a loop around the yo-yo and another string coming over the right pointing finger.

 

Reverse flip front mount

You just do a front mount. Then, You pull the string coming from the yo-yo hand over the left pointing finger holding that loop created in the mount. Flip the yo-yo outwards so that it eventually comes back in its circular trajectory and you take care of maintaining that front mount. Just as simple as that!

Houdini mount

Maybe this name makes you think of the famous magician, but in our case is not that much magic involved in the trick, but a lot of physics. For most of the people, this trick may seem like a magic show. So let’s try it out!

Houdini mount relies on the same principle as in Double or Nothing. The main difference between the two consists in the fact that in the Houdini mount you no longer use the left pointing finger. Instead, you utilize the left thumb in order to achieve the same kind of mount as for Double or Nothing.

Where do you go from here?

These were some basic to intermediate yo-yo tricks. They can help you in a series of other tricks, but until you get them it will be a little hard. Don’t get discouraged! As you practice your performance will improve significantly and you’ll be finally able to step up your game. In the next articles. I’m going to show and explain to you more amazing tricks which are going to make you a professional yo-yo-er.