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In this video I am going to teach you how to bind the yoyo. Binding is the trick you use when you are playing with an unresponsive yoyo to get the yoyo to wind back up. In this video I am going to teach you a few different ways to bind just to get you started.

The first technique of binding is that usually binding is easier, especially if you are just learning, if you get the yoyo on the string in the opposite direction. The reason for this is, that if the yoyo is on the string in the opposite direction that also means that it is spinning the opposite direction which is going to make it easier to do your bind. If you are doing your front mount, this is normally the way the yoyo lands on the string, to do your bind you are going to flip it around and get it on the string in the opposite direction. The same thing with your side mount or your trapeze, you are going to do your bind over here and that is going to make it easier to get the yoyo to come back up.

The first technique for your bind that I find is very easy to do is pinch the string with your opposite hand. The string is going to be wrapped over your finger here; you can use your thumb, I usually use my first finger here, and once it is pinched you are going to want to raise up your yoyo hand just a little bit. You can see that I have started with my yoyo hand close to the yoyo. Just raise it up a little bit, and as soon as you do that you will start to feel the string wrap around the axle of the yoyo. As soon as you start to feel that you are just going to un-pinch it, pull your hand out, and then the yoyo should wind right back up. So again, you just pinch, you are going to raise up just a little bit, as soon as you start to feel it you pull your hand out and that will cause the bind to work. Same thing on your trapeze. You are going to go over here, pinch, lift, pull your hand out, and that is going to help it come back up.

A lot of guys, instead of pinching the string, what they do is they cross the string like this. Crossing can have the same effect. You are going to want to do the same thing. You are going to want to lift your yoyo hand and drop this hand a little bit. As soon as you start to feel that tension on the inside of the yoyo then you are going to want to pull your opposite hand out and that will cause the yoyo to come back up. A lot of guys that is the exclusive bind that they do and it can work pretty effectively.

The third kind of bind that you can do, again a lot of guys do this but I don’t really recommend it and I will explain why, but essentially what they do is they wrap the string around the axle like this and while they are wrapping it they throw the yoyo up. So the bind looks like that. The reason I don’t recommend this bind especially is because when you do this the string, when it first starts to bind around the yoyo, is actually winding in the opposite direction while the rest of the string winds up in the right direction. When you throw it back out you are always going to have that little bit of string that is going to come out of the yoyo and it is going to mess up your throw a little. You may not really notice, you may not really care, and what is nice about that bind is that you do not have to flip it over you can just get right into it from your normal mount, which is great.

So those are just a few different techniques. Practice them, work on them, see which one you like.

As you are practicing those binds you are going to find that you are going to make a lot of mistakes, so I am going to show you a couple different ways that you can use your binds to wind the yoyo up if you are starting from a dead yoyo. If you are going to do your normal wind up trick like this, then to do your bind you are going to want to mount it just like you do your front mount. If you are going to want to get the yoyo spinning like this then it is going to be spinning the opposite direction so you are going to want to mount the yoyo in the opposite direction, or the direction you normally would for a side mount. One other technique that you can use that I like to use a lot is, instead of just spinning the yoyo and getting it on the string here, you can do it all in one motion. So you can just spin the yoyo and while it is up in the air I just catch it on the trapeze and then you can do your bind and get it right back. Again that looks like this.

There are all sorts of different ways you can bind. If you watch different yoyo players you will find that they favor different techniques and there are a lot of techniques that I didn’t show you here, but hopefully these will get you started so you can get started doing your unresponsive yoyo tricks.