Hand-eye coordination and Yoyoing.

So it’s pretty clear by just throwing a yoyo you use nothing but Hand-eye coordination. This skill also used in a lot of different hobbies/sport. I used to bowl and shoot darts, as well as play video games (who doesn’t lol), but through all of those things I learned that if you take a couple days off of all of the Hand-eye use, and rest that skill you get a lot better. I once took a month off of bowling came back and rolled my best game. So can you do it? Can you stop throwing for a week, two weeks, a month?

I usually take a break when I’m feeling bored of yoyoing and just want to focus on other things. I think the longest break was three weeks. After that I felt like I could take on the world with yoyoing lol,

I usually take a break for another hobby like cubing but I’ve noticed the same thing.

The take on the world thing I can relate to lol

yeah i have noticed that too i have recently taken up kendama and i have nticed my yoyoing magically has improved.

Kendama huh? Never really put thought into trying it.

Kendama is great to use before you preform for a bit then yoyo to get ready :slight_smile:

I might have to pick one up last I saw they had some cheap ones at toys r us.

This effect is apparent to me as well. I usually alternate between yoyoing, kendama/voodama ;), and card flourishing. I always expect to be sloppy and out of practice after the hiatus, but instead, I am pleasantly surprised at my competence and natural fluidity. I believe this phenomenon has it’s roots in the fact that new information is more strongly reinforced after a good night’s rest. Here’s an interesting little article and podcast that correlates nicely to this topic:


Try juggling. I did that before I ever yoyo’d and I think it greatly helped my yoyo skills. When I started yoyoing I basically quit cause now I just yoyo. I had gotten to where I could do 5 balls or 4 clubs for a substantial amount of time. It takes lots of practice.

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I used to juggle too.

5 balls = really hard

That you can consistently do that many for more than a few cascades is impressive.

It’s not very impressive in the thought that some people can do 7 clubs consistently and 9-11 balls. But ya It had hours of practice invested to get 5 balls

Not impressive to who? Other jugglers?

Well it might be impressive to anybody until they watched somebody do 9… I actually made good money street performing. Like $80 in 3 hours or so juggling on and off for 2 days.

when I say substantial I don’t mean like a long time… Don’t get me wrong. I messed up a lot when I did 5 balls but if I would practice for a bit usually it would just click and I would just do a lot of reps with few mess ups . Then I would have a hot streak where it seemed I was super concentrated. After a few minutes of that my concentration would die and I couldn’t do it worth anything. Funny and odd how your mind works. It wasn’t that my arms were tired. It was my mind.

5 balls? Flip. I never even got the hang of Mills Mess. I can only do it a few times before things go flying…

I can juggle 3. Working on 4 but anymore than that is crazy! Haha.

1st came across this effect rock climbing years ago.  In Performance Rock Climbing they termed it the ‘reminiscence effect’ and attributed it to the restructuring of your neural command loops.  Basically your brain during off time can restructure all the ‘new’ and learned information into a more readily usable base.  I’ve noticed the effect now with most anything I’ve worked hard at and then taken time off.

http://books.google.com/books?id=zduhTLP2rG0C&pg=PA28&dq=reminiscence+effect+rock+climbing&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gXLAUqefPIvrkQeAsYDoBg&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=reminiscence%20effect%20rock%20climbing&f=false

I started out with yoyoing, but since then, I’ve done numerous skill toys and types of juggling, and it effects my yoyoing greatly. People often tell me that my style is weird or unique, and I believe all of the alternate skill toys I do are the cause. My advice is to branch out all you can, because it will change your yoyoing style for the better.

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My theory-

I believe that it has something to do with your reticular formation. Basically what your reticular formation is responsible for is to filter important information and send it to the rest of your brain. Since many of us throw nearly daily, our reticular formation deems the entire process as unimportant and simply leaves it to your muscle memory, which means that you don’t necessarily improve your skills. On the other hand, once you’ve taken a break from yoyos for a while, once you pick it back up, your brain recognizes it as an important event and uses more brainpower to improve your muscle memory and over make your throwing better.

This logic can also be seen when you have a really long study session (for those of us who are still in school). It is recommended that we should study only 55 minutes in a row any hour, and should spend 5 minutes taking a break. It’s to make you pay attention better.

Anyway, just my 2 cents from taking AP Biology :stuck_out_tongue:

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