26 Levels of Yo-Yo Tricks: Easy to Complex | WIRED

hello my name is harrison lee i'm a professional competitive yoyoer and three-time canadian national yo-yo champion today i've been challenged to demonstrate yo-yo tricks and 26 levels of increasing complexity today we'll be focusing on yoyo tricks using an unresponsive yoyo that means we'll not be going into tricks that use multiple yoyos or yoyos that go off the string this is an endless journey into yoyoing yoyo tricks continuously evolve and transform it's very similar to a hip hop dance where dancers will start with some fundamentals and then build up into their own combinations this is my interpretation of the challenge complexity is defined as additional movements additional elements that are combined in these tricks and layers in precision control required so there are two main different categories of yoyoing there are responsive yoyos and unresponsive yoyos for the first few levels we are going to start with a responsive yoyo level 1 downward sleeper so the downward sleeper is the first trick that everybody learns when they start to yoyo its a simplest trick and involves throwing the yoyo down letting it spin for a bit at the very end or sleep and then bringing it back up so to begin this trick you start with your arm faced out and a muscle formation and then you extend your arm and then flick your wrist at the very end the flick of the wrist at the very end is super super important because that's what allows it to give the yoyo the most spin so it's very similar to you know tennis or badminton where at the very end when you hit and flick your wrist that's where you get the most power if you don't do that the yoyo doesn't have enough spin and unfortunately you'll spin out and die at the end and you're sad moving into the next level will be building off of the downward sleeper and adding an additional element that will propel the yoyo forward level two walk the dog super common trick it's the first trick that people will ask you to do when they know that you can yo-yo walk the dog begins by throwing the yoyo down in a downward sleeper you then rest the yoyo on the floor forcing it to propel forward or you walk the dog and then at the very end you give it a little tug and the yoyo returns to you when you are trying to walk the dog for the first time sometimes you might not have enough spin on the yoyo so when it hits the floor the yoyo will immediately stop spinning because of the additional amount of friction so a lot of professional yoyoers will avoid this trick simply because how expensive these yoyos can cost and so when somebody asks you to do walk the dock with your 500 titanium yoyo yoyoers cringe for a bit and think uh do i really want to damage the weight distribution of my yoyo and mess it all up going into the next level we're going to be adding a few additional elements to make the tricks a lot more showy level three around the world around the world starts in a forward pass and then instead of it returning to you the yoyo returning to you you do a full rotation or you let the yoyo move around the world and you rotate the yoyo with your hand almost like you are swinging it in a spiral motion and then you return the yoyo back to your hand when you're doing around the world it's important that you follow through with your revolution if you don't you have the chance of hitting yourself in the head we're going to be introducing a mount to the next level which will increase the complexity and the number of moving parts going on level 4 rock the baby so rock the baby like the name suggests it involves creating a cradle mount and then rocking the yoyo back multiple times generally a solid rock the baby involves three full swings and then you drop the yoyo or you drop the baby out of the mount and then you bring the yoyo back up it is important that you stop between rocks so that you are not moving the yoyo back and forth too quickly so that you remain in control and the next level things get a little bit more complex because we're going to let the yoyo leave our hand level 5 skyrocket the skyrocket begins in a downward throw you let the yoyo sleep at the very end and then you let the yoyo string and the slip knot off your hand and throw the yoyo up in the air as the yoyo is midway in the air it rolls back up and as it is falling down you catch it in your hands so when you are learning skyrocket for the first time it is really important that after you let the yoyo go off your hand and throw it up in the air you have your eye on the prize ready to catch it if you don't do that unfortunately the yoyo will fall on the floor and you will dent your 500 titanium yoyo now that things are getting a little bit more complex it's time to switch to an unresponsive yoyo so the unresponsive yoyo is going to be harder because you cannot bring an unresponsive yoyo back up you have to purposefully not the yoyo which we will be delving into in the next level level six bind the bind is how you return an unresponsive yoyo so it is a matter of purposefully nodding the yoyo which contacts the friction surface on either side forcing the yoyo to come back up this is the first unresponsive yoyo trick that people learn because you need to learn how to bring the yoyo back up otherwise you are going to spend a lot of time winding it back up manually so you begin in a downward sleeper like our first trick that we learned but instead of tugging the yoyo back up you rest your index finger on the front of the yoyo string you wrap around you hit the yoyo and then cross the strings and then give it a little tug to bring it back up when you give it a little tug you will have a loop of string that will fall into the gap of the yoyo this will contact the friction surface causing the yoyo to spin back up so the most important thing to remember is control and to also have a really really good throw because if you don't throw the yoyo hard enough it won't spin for a long enough time at the very end and you will not have enough time to wrap the yoyo string around it to bring it back up so in unresponsive yoyoing there are three main styles of yoyo tricks so you have your front style throw which is where you are throwing the yoyo down right in front of you you have your side style through which is where you're throwing the yoyo off to the side and then finally a horizontal throw where the yoyo spins off axis all the tricks that we see in past six levels have used a forward throw the next will be using a side style throw level seven trapeze so the trapeze starts in a breakaway throw instead of throwing the yoyo in front of you you make a muscle formation off to the side you extend your arm flick your wrist just the same and you land on a trapeze so the yoyo in this case is the man and the string is a trapeze so as the yoyo is coming through through that breakaway you flick the yoyo onto your index string and it lands in a formation or mount called the trapeze as the yoyo is coming through it is important that you land the yoyo on the trapeze when beginners are learning this trick the yoyo will fall off and so you kill the man on the trapeze level eight brain twister so the brain twister is a super impressive trick especially when you're starting to learn how to yoyo and involves throwing the yoyo down in a downward sleeper right in front of you and very similar to the bind where you go in front of the yoyo this time you will want to go behind and so you mount the yoyo from behind and you have one longer string statement one shorter string segment and he pushed the yoyo into you you force the yoyo to rotate and you want to do that three times very similar to rock the baby you let the string stay make go and then bring the yoyo back up so the next level things are going to get a little bit more complex because we're going to be in combining two tricks that we've seen before the trapeze and the brain twister level nine skin the gerbil so skin the gerbil funny name begins in a trapeze and then you double mount the trapeze on so there's two loops around your index finger on your non throwhand you unloop the yoyo and then you mount the yoyo on your opposite index finger you unmount you do a brain twister like motion you dismount from the trapeze and then you bring the yoyo back up for this trick in particular control is especially important you want to make sure that you're landing the yoyo on the string and dismounting it correctly sometimes you make fumble and the yoyo might not land on the string correctly and so that precision is super important because the yoyo trick is longer as well it is important that you have a really good spin at the start otherwise the yoyo may die or stop spinning midway through so now we are moving on to the next level which could be considered our first mini combo level 10 mach 5 so mark 5 begins in a forward throw and you start in a split bottom mount you do a barrel rule and then isolate the yoyo in the center of the string and you rotate your index fingers around the yoyo so it looks like the yoyo is stationary while you're moving around it it's very similar to you know contact juggling where the object is staying in one position and you're manipulating around it after you do three full rotations or three mach 5 revolutions you dismount and you bring the yoyo back up by doing a simple bind this trick requires a lot a lot of control to keep the yoyo in that single space as you are rotating around it you don't want to rotate too quickly but you also don't want to rotate too slowly because you're putting so much pressure on the yoyo to maintain it in one space the yoyo may spin off axis and gyroscope the key to maintaining that control is by pulling your index fingers away from the yoyo so that it forces it to stay in that one position and then when you're doing your rotations you want to rotate at a constant motion so that the yoyo doesn't stop spinning midway through the next trick is going to involve a hop element which is unlike any other trick that we've seen so far today level 11 eli hop the eli hop starts in a breakaway through you mount the yoyo in a trapeze and then by bringing your hands together really quickly the yoyo springs up and launches off to the side you then land the yoyo back on the trapeze and that performs one eli hop the eli hop is super impressive because its so unexpected the yoyo is stationary and a trapeze and then suddenly it springs off to the side and hops out and then you land it back on the trapeze so it's very unpredictable and there's so many different variations of the trick too where you can do some eli hops which are much larger in amplitude some which are much smaller and you can combine various eli hops together to create a combo level 12 boingy boingy like the ones that we've seen before with the mach 5. the boogie boy begins in a downward throw and then you mount the yoyo and 1.5 mount you do a single barrel roll and then you have the yoyo between your two index fingers and you pop the yoyo back and forth between each string segment causing it to boingy boing back and forth you want to do that a handful of times you then dismount the yoyo and you return it with a bind when learning a boingy boing for the first time it is really easy for the yoyo to fall off the string mid boy you are doing your boogie boing and then the yoyo will pop off the string and then you have to restart so its important that you have that control to bounce the yoyo back and forth between those two strings and you have a clear eye on where the yoyo is at every given motion so the additional complexity that we'll be introducing in the next trick involves a slack element level 13 revolutions revolutions is a repeater a repeater that we seen before was the mach 5 and very similarly the eli hop or the rock the baby were you doing a moment repetitively but with the revolutions you're manipulating a slack element so you begin in a split bottom mount and when you're in that split bottom mount you pinch the string with your index finger and your thumb causing the yoyo string to slack you then rotate the yoyo string inwards and outwards from your hand causing the yoyo string to fold the yoyo as the yoyo spins through the air it is almost like waving a fan after you have repeated it a handful of times you dismount from the mount and you bring the yoyo back up with a revolution very similar to the mach 5 it is really important that you maintain your momentum as you are doing each of those revolutions if you start spinning the yoyo midway through the yoyo slack formation will break and then you will have to repeat it again level 14 brent stole so the brent stoll involves a new kind of element called the laceration so with the laceration you pop the yoyo up into the air and you create a slack movement underneath the yoyo and create a formation so that when the yoyo falls back onto the string it falls into that formation or into that mount so with the brent stoll in particular the yoyo falls into a triangle-like formation or triangle-like mount one of the common mistakes when players learn brentstall for the first time is not slacking the yoyo underneath the string enough to create a large enough loop to create that triangle formation for the yoyo to land back onto the string so the next level is also repeater and it involves the slack element and you rotate around your non-index throwhand level 15 yuki slack so you begin an f side style throw and start in trapeze you then pinch your index finger and your thumb of your non throwhand flag the string by rotating it with a clockwise motion and catch the string segment in a double or nothing you then dismount from that double or nothing off to the side hit the yoyo on the bottom of the string and slack the yoyo in the opposite direction you catch a string segment as it is going around and then you repeat the motion again so you dismount you hop onto the string on the trapeze and you slack it over into a double or nothing back and forth back and forth after you're done your fair share of yuki slacks you dismount and you bring the yoyo back up so one difficulty with the uk slack is that the trick can fall apart on successive repeats as you're slacking the yoyo back and forth back and forth it is really easy for the string and the yoyo to get tangled up and resulting in a dead yoyo and a knot in your hand level 16 black ops black hops requires a lot of precision and a lot of control you begin in a triple or nothing mount which is very similar to the double or nothing but you rotate the yoyo around the string one more time so that there's three string segments on either index finger when you're in that triple or nothing you then bounce the yoyo off the string consecutively until you reach a trapeze so you're constantly bouncing the yoyo back up landing on the string bouncing the yoyo back up landing it on the string and then you land in that trapeze once you are at the trapeze you want to build back up to a triple or nothing so you hop the yoyo back up slashed you off to the side it lands in a trapeze and his brother jump the yoyo back up it lands in a double or nothing and you continue until you're in triple or nothing once you're in that triple or nothing again you drop all the string statements so it's just resting on your index finger you dismount and you do a bind to bring the yoyo back up so with black hops precision and control are your best friend you really want to make sure that you have an eye on the yoyo as it's hopping between those strings and you're landing on each string segment clearly when you're going down to the trapeze and when you're moving back up very similarly you're landing on each string segment clearly so the next trick we're going to make the yoyo look like it's skipping rope level 17 follows the trick begins in a trapeze like many other tricks and you dismount you then slash the yoyo with a karate chop like motion that creates a loop around your throwhand and then you rotate around the yoyo multiple times kind of like skipping rope after you are done rotating around the yoyo a handful of times you land the yoyo in iron whip which is where the yoyo trick originated from and then you bring the yoyo back up through a bind like the yuki slack like the revolution like the mach 5 the follows is a repeater with this trick momentum is super super important after you start the trick you have to keep following through otherwise the yoyo and the string and the slack will get tangled up for the next trick we are going to be incorporating another part of our body and the yoyo is going to land behind our back level 18 leg wrap trap so the leg wrap trap begins in a breakaway throw you do a handful of around the worlds and then you step over the string with your right leg and then shortly after with your left leg and then afterwards you land in a trapeze behind your back you quickly dismount and bring the yoyo back up to your hand so this yoyo trick is also commonly known as the ball breaker because the yoyo string is going between your legs and can break your balls lots of mistakes can be made with this trick the next trick is another laceration and involves wrapping the yoyo string around the yoyo enough times so you land in a 2.5 mount level 19 2.5 hook so the 2.5 hook like the triangle laceration involves popping the yoyo up and spinning the yoyo string around the yoyo multiple times to land the yoyo back into a mount when it falls back down in this case it is a 2.5 mount which is like the one and a half mount but with two and a half strings wrapped around the yoyo instead so the yoyo begins in a breakaway throw you pop the yoyo up as the yoyo is midway through the air you take your two index fingers and you are wrapping around the string multiple times two and a half times to be exact as the yoyo is falling back into the you string you land in that 2.5 mount so this trick is really challenging because it's quite risky you either get it or you don't you have to try multiple times and it can be quite tiring to pop the yoyo back up spin around with your index fingers and then land back onto the string so with this trick because you're rotating around the yoyo multiple times it's common to not catch the string when it lands in the 2.5 mount so up to this point we've looked at the front style throw and the breakaway throw but we'll be introducing a new throw in this upcoming trick the horizontal throw level 20 banana turnover and horizontal pinwheel so the banana turnover and the horizontal pinwheel are two sides of the same coin they're just different based off of the way that you begin with the throw so in the case of the banana turnover it's more of a side style throw but horizontal and with the horizontal pinwheel it's like a downward forward facing through but horizontal so beginning with banana turnover you begin in a side style throw but instead horizontal so kind of like you're throwing a frisbee and then as the yoyo is going around almost like you're about to hit in the trapeze you stick out your thumb facing downwards of your non throwhand and the yoyo will wrap around your thumb causing it to rotate you do that a couple of times and that rebalances the plane of the yoyo so that you can land it in a trapeze after you're in that trapeze you can do a variety of different tricks the banana turnover is a starting point to many horizontal tricks and then you bring it back up with the horizontal pinwheel you're throwing the yoyo across your body and as the yoyo is fully extended at the end of the string you are doing a series of pinwheels to keep it in the same plane very similar to the banana turnover after that you can transition into a horizontal combo and then bring the yoyo up with a bind horizontal tricks are a lot more challenging than your typical saad style or front style throw because you have to keep the yoyo spinning otherwise it will spin out of plane level 21 ufo the ufo is a horizontal trick and you begin by doing a banana turnover as the yoyo is spinning around your thumb you let it rest for a second almost allowing it to spin out and spin out of control but before it starts spinning you pop the yoyo up and you catch the yoyo returning it into bind it is called the ufo because it looks like a ufo is about to land the yoyo is flat when you're performing the trick flat on the horizontal plane and the yoyo string spirals around it because it's about to die you know you've done this trick correctly because the yoyo will look like it's hovering midway through the air so the ufo is all about timing it's about timing the amount of spin left in the yoyo before you return it but you also want it to let it spin out for a couple of rotations so that you can get that cool hovering effect in that process the yoyo may spin out of control the yoyo may die in between or you may not catch the yo-yo as you pop it up we're at a really advanced level now and for the next trick we're going to add a little bit of complexity by involving our neck level 22 the zack gormley nectric it involves starting in a trapeze dismounting bringing the yoyo string above your head and above your neck wrapping the string so it lands in a chopstick with your index finger and your thumb of your throwhand pulling apart almost like you're doing a revolution extending the yoyo above and over your head crunching down so that the slack follows you dismounting and bringing the yoyo back up so this trick involves a lot of the levels that we seen before including the trapeze the revolution and the slack so with the zagwormly electric at one point you're not able to see the yoyo because it's above your head so you need to make sure that you're extending far enough over so you don't accidentally hit yourself so the next trick is the last of our non-combo tricks and involves spinning the yoyo on your finger level 23 finger spin sidewinder so the finger spin sidewinder begins a horizontal pinwheel throw after you pinwheel a handful of times you pop the yoyo up and land the yoyo on your index finger of your non throwhand it will spin there for a couple moments and after the yoyo is about to die very similar to the ufo you lacerate into the center of the string causing the yoyo to bind as the yoyo is binding you hover your throwhand on top of the yoyo causing the yoyo to do a sidewinder movement causing the yoyo to return back up to your hand it is really important that you keep in mind the timing very similar to the ufo when you land it on your finger the yoyo will spin out really quickly because of the additional amount of friction and additionally after you return the yoyo back up to your hand it will mess up the string tension so the slack and the string will be all over the place so it'll be really difficult to do subsequent tricks if you decide to do a finger spin and sidewinder during the middle of a routine so the next couple of tricks are combinations that i've created myself level 24 the eli hop combo so in a competition yours will often perform an eli hop combo so an eli hog combo involves the trick that we saw before the eli hop it's a matter of doing different variations of that same trick in different directions in different sizes in different planes so my take on the eli hop combo begins in a reverse rent stool i pop the yoyo off to the side my right hand side i then pop it in the opposite direction to the left hand side of my body i then do a series of pop elements and land the yoyo in a reverse hook i then do reverse behind the elbow double or nothing i dismount very similar to a black hop i land the yoyo string inverted in an inverted trapeze and then i return the yoyo back to my hand so this eli hop combo is something that i've been working on from 2017 and i've been continuously adding new elements and new tricks as i've learned them level 25 neck behind the back leg combo so the neck behind the back leg combo involves three body parts your neck your leg of course and then doing tricks behind your back so you start in a yuki slack like movement and as a result you go around your neck wrapping around your neck and when you unravel you unravel so the yoyo is landing behind your back when the yoyo is behind your back you do a pop-like motion returning the yoyo back to a trapeze in front of your body invert the yoyo string and you go underneath your non-throwhand leg so it catches underneath after you catch the yoyo string underneath your leg so that the yoyo is hanging underneath your leg you do a series of pop movements and then eventually pop the yoyo back out back to a trapeze you do a series of like elements and then land in an amount to return the yoyo back to your hand so a lot of things can go wrong with this trick simply because of the number of different body parts involved the number of different elements and the number of transitions that you have to make between each of those main components so behind the back around the neck and around the leg when you're trying to unravel the yoyo string around the neck so that it lands behind your back it will unravel in the wrong direction causing you to have a yo-yo just wrapped around your body ultimately the possibility for combinations are endless all those tricks that you've seen all those levels can be combined in various different ways to create various combos in a competition players will take their own tricks take their own combos and create a freestyle routine freestyle yo-yoing is arguably the most difficult because it combines various elements tricks and combinations into a single routine level 26 freestyle freestyling is when you just let the yoyo do its thing you do the first trick that comes to your mind and then from that trick you transition into the next trick really wherever your hands take you freestyling is about making decisions in the moment it's more of an intuition thing where you're just transitioning between elements transitioning between mounts so that you're creating various combos as you go it's a matter of then taking those tricks matching those tricks to music playing around with the pacing playing around with you know body elements playing around with tricks which are smaller and technical and really going with the song and the moment sometimes those decisions may lead to a knot sometimes those decisions may lead to a fantastic trick it's really about messing around seeing you at work seeing what doesn't and that's one of the fun parts about yoyoing because there's so many limitless possibilities thanks wired

Channel: WIRED

Views: 1,664,478

Rating: 4.9434481 out of 5

Keywords: yo-yo champion, harrison lee, harrison lee yoyo, harrison lee yo yo, harrison lee yo-yo, yo yo tricks, yoyo tricks, wired yoyo, yo yo tricks wired, wired yo yo tricks, yoyo levels, wired levels yo yo, levels wired yo yo, yo yo wired levels, yo yo levels, yo yo tricks explained, yo yo tricks how to, how to yo yo tricks, how to do yo yo tricks, simple yo yo tricks, complex yo yo tricks, wired yo yo, yo yo harrison lee, yo yo trick, yo yo explained, how to yo yo, wired

Id: HeJKz1Cc0mc

Length: 25min 40sec (1540 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Ferrocile]

I'm sure everyone will have their own opinions on the various levels, but overall I think it's great exposure for throwing. Good on Harrison for the feature and the exposure.

[u/spam_with_rice]

I saw this the other day on YouTube. I’m a noob... but, the one handed bind he threw, to recover from a fail, blew my mind. I just ran around the house telling my whole family about it. I got strange looks. I may have been way too excited.

[u/AgentTim5o]

Level 21 UFO lmao. I guess I should start competing.

Edit: watched the whole video. He meant unresponsive ufo, which is a lot harder. My bad

[u/Andre-YoYoExpert]

Harrison is such an awesome person - great work!

[u/marsfromwow]

I haven’t yoyo’d in almost ten years. I always thought the spot has long pasted me up, but I can still do up to(and including, except yuki slack) his choice for 18. Gives me some inspiration to start up again.