Hello... few questions as a 6 month newbie thrower

Hello all,

I’m Michael (29) - decided to start throwing around 6 months ago to help with my anxiety. It was something I always wanted to do, but didn’t because of my age. Then decided why spend my life worrying about what others think and went and bought my first yoyo since I was a kid.

I bought a 1A Carpfin and a 4A Flight as I wanted to practice both forms, and love them both equally and for different reasons. For the past 6 months or so I have been working my way through YoYo Tricks first 50 tricks, which I have now got to the end of. Still rusty on a few tricks but getting here slowly.

I joined as I wanted to ask a few questions to help my progress:

  1. after learning quite a few tricks, what should I do next? Do I keep learning new tricks, or work on putting a routine together with what I know?!Practicing single tricks makes me feel like I do a trick, and then stop, whereas I feel I should be stringing several into a small routine?

  2. similar to the question above, when I do a few tricks back to back, I get a lot of string tension thus restricting some of the other tricks I can routine in (eg slack tricks). How do you deal with string tension in a routine to avoid this?

  3. after 6 months of use I’m noticing my yoyo is tilting more frequently after sleeping (early in the spin), but also I’m getting string tension more frequently as well. I’ve never cleaned or lubed my bearing as never knew I had to, or ever felt I needed to. Any thought why the tilting is happening now?

Any other advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated - I’m not one for learning every trick, would rather master something and learn something to demonstrate everything I know currently.

Thanks guys,

To answer your first question work on finding ways to quickly and easily begin switching between tricks your comfortable with make little combos. I would still practice new tricks because often times each one opens up an array of new elements to learn from. If you start getting stuck or feel like your not progressing though just work on what you know try and find different ways into mounts, don’t be afraid to experiment with mounts out of fear of knots and you’ll figure stuff out cool stuff on your own.

As far as String tension is concerned it’ll take a little time to really feel when its just right doing the tricks to adjust it but there are a few methods. Check out the string tension videos on yoyoexpert I’m pretty sure it shows a couple of easy ways. If not check Google it’s out there for sure.

Number 3 is kind of choice dependent as I’ve heard some people say they never lube their bearings, but personally I always use lube. It quiets bearings and improves the speed, however I’ve never gone long without lubing my yoyos and just ran with a dry bearing so maybe I’m wrong. Personally I don’t think the bearing would cause it to tilt any more than it does. If you’ve beaten the yoyo up over time it could potentially become unbalanced.However I remember when I first got into yoyoing again as I got better it just seemed to be something I was more aware of and eventually you learn to maintain it. If your not lining up your hands well on your trapeze mounts and the string is pulling or pushing into the yoyo a bit, iy can cause the yoyo to tilt. Once again maybe I’m wrong buy as a newer player I figured this could be a possibility.

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String tension helps me do tricks that don’t require slack easier as well as those that do. Try learning 1a sidewinder or even UFO. Also, Bjack6475, lube slows your bearings, not speeds them up. Thanks

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Good to know grind dude. I was actually wondering if you don’t lube your bearings is it recommended to clean them with like mineral spirits now and again? Like I posted earlier I’ve pretty much only lubed yoyos, as I bought a starter kit with it in there (lasts forever) but ive seen quite a few people swear against lubing yoyos. Just curious as to your thoughts on the matter,

Lubing bearings…

Lube tends to slow a bearing down. Consider putting a few BBs in a glass. Spin them around a bit and notice how fast they move. Now add a drop of cooking oil to the glass and spin the BBs around (a drop or two of water will work fine to demonstrate this as well). Do they move faster? NOPE…

A dry bearing does not experience the slowdown of lubing. But it’s LOUD.

This does not imply that you should not lube your bearings. I do, but SPARINGLY. Just a small amount to quiet them down a bit (and preserve them in my view). Then I blow the bearing off with compressed air. I prefer a lightly lubed bearing.

Note that for a bearing yoyo primarily used for looping (2A style) you do want it lubed, because that yoyo needs to be responsive.

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Like jhb8426, I lightly lube my bearings as I like them on the quieter side. My feeling is the lube does help protect the bearings, but, I’ve read posts by some people smarter than I who say since these bearings are not load bearing that lubing them shouldn’t significantly impact performance or lifespan. That said, just a small drop on the bearing is enough…too much lube and the yoyo will be responsive until the lube breaks down a bit.

As for the first two questions, it is really up to you. When I was new, I would work on tricks individually. At some point, the tricks got cleaner and I was able to start to throw back to back tricks (double or nothing to cold fusion to skin the gerbil type of things). I have also competed in the ‘old man’ division at local contests, so, I needed to figure out how to put things together so I wasn’t standing on the stage scratching my head wondering what to do next.

As far as string tension goes, how old is your string? I find as a string gets old, it may still look great, but, it doesn’t hold tension as well as it did when it was new. I think the amount of life different people get out of a string really depends on the person’s tolerance for tension. I don’t remember breaking a string on a bearing yoyo before I was unwilling to deal with it no longer holding neutral tension long enough, or, getting a gnarly knot that I gave up on trying to untangle.

All of this said, welcome to the yoyo world. try to remember it is a toy and have fun with it. like others have said, don’t be afraid to just explore, take concepts and elements you have learned from a trick and see what else you can do with them. Usually the worst that happens is an unexpected smack to the knuckles or a knot.

french

After 6 months I’d definitely recommend some thin lube. Just the tiniest half of a drop is all you need, but it is sooo much quieter and smoother with it.

Here’s some examples…

I bought this YYF Boss from the b/s/t and the first thing I do with any throw I get is apply thin lube. Here’s why – listen and see for yourself:


That is the exact same throw, exact same bearing, only difference is I did my typical treatment… 2 drops of thin lube plus lots of compressed air spinning. Notice the after video has more spin time and less noise.

Here’s a BBB Endeavor I got the same way… looks like ceramic bearing. Kind of an extreme example, I guess, but thin lube & compressed air hyperspin works even on ceramics!


Heres a G2 OC from a trade, this has a nice new bearing so the spin time is about the same before and after but listen to the sound of the bearing!


  1. I think the best thing is to just play around and do weird stuff. Go into a familiar mount and do something you haven’t done before, maybe do the opposite of what goes tcomes to mind. Try crossing your arms or adding a whip in it. I usually just do random stuff until something I like happens and hope I remember what I did. One of my easiest methods is learning a new trick from somebody else and altering it until it’s a whole new trick.

  2. I’d say just adjust tension before any long combo or a performance.

  3. You might be keeping your hands slightly misaligned and pushing the strings against the sidewalk making it tilt, or possibly landing on strings croooked. As far as bearings they’re so cheap I’ve honestly never really lived bearings I just move on to a new one when they get super loud, somehow I always have bearnings galore despite rarely buying any.

Edit: Did not realize this was so old haha just saw it on top