One of the most important skills for a yo-yoer to develop is a good throw. Now we may really feel like we’ve accomplished something if we can do this, but, if we’re trying to learn tricks, that’s not gonna help us at all. So, if we want to learn to have a good throw actually the first thing we need to do is make sure that we’re holding the yo-yo properly. So, if your palm is up, the way the yo-yo should be sitting the string should be going over the top of the yo-yo if you flip it over you’ll see that the string is going underneath. And, if you throw the yo-yo like that, more often than not, especially if you’re a beginner, the yo-yo is just going to spin out at the bottom. So, if that’s happening all the time when you’re throwing it, chances are you’re holding the yo-yo upside down.
So, just flip it over so the strings going over the top then when you throw it it’s just going to roll off your hand really nicely. So, our basic throw is just to make a muscle, we’re gonna extend our hand when the yo-yo gets to the bottom we’re gonna turn it over and pull it up to catch it. It’s really important at this point that you’ve already adjusted the string for your height otherwise when you throw the yo-yo down to make sure it’s not going to hit the ground you’re gonna raise your hand up higher and higher and your gonna have to learn all your tricks like this… I’ve seen it done before but it’s not the best way.
So, if our string is adjusted we’re ready to learn our throw. Just throw it out, turn your hand over to catch it. Once you get used to this, the you’re also going to want to make the yo-yo sleep. Sleeping is where the yo-yo spins down there at the bottom of the string. One of the problems with getting the yo-yo to sleep is that the harder you throw it the more difficult it is to make it sleep. That’s because when the yo-yo hits the bottom of the string it has a tendency to bounce and if it bounces it gets slack in the string, if it gets slack it’s gonna wanna come back. So what you need to do is compensate for that bounce with your yo-yo hand. If you watch when I throw it you’ll see that I do just a little up and down motion – I’m cushioning the yo-yo when I throw it. And that cushioning effect, it takes a little while to learn, but, once you perfect it, it will work no matter how soft, or how hard you throw the yo-yo.
Once you’ve got the sleeper it just opens up a whole world of tricks for you to learn.
The Originator, with its clutch return system, is the perfect Peter Fish yo-yo for beginners. The Originator comes back automatically before the spin dies out to help beginning yo-yo players learn the basics of the yo-yo craft.
