26 Levels of Yo-Yo Tricks: Easy to Complex

Hello, my name is Harrison Lee.

I'm a professional competitive yo-yoer

and three time Canadian national yo-yo champion.

Today, I've been challenged to demonstrate yo-yo tricks

in 26 levels of increasing complexity.

[bright upbeat music]

Today we'll be focusing on yo-yo tricks

using an unresponsive yo-yo.

That means we'll not be going

into tricks that you use multiple yo-yo's

or yo-yo's that go off the string.

This is an endless journey into yo-yoing,

yo-yo 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 and precision

and control required.

So there are two main different categories

of yo-yoing there's a responsive yo-yo's

and unresponsive yo-yo's,

for the first few levels.

We're gonna start with a responsive yo-yo,

level one downward sleeper.

So the downward sleeper is the first trick

that everybody learns when they start to yo-yo.

It's the simplest trick and it involves

throwing the yo-yo 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 yo-yo the most spin.

So it's very similar to, you know,

tennis or badminton right 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 yo-yo

doesn't have enough spin other than unfortunately

it'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 yo-yo 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 yo-yo down in a downward sleeper.

You then rest of the yo-yo 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 yo-yo returns to you.

When you're trying to walk the dog

for the first time, sometimes you may not

have enough spin on the yo-yo.

So when it hits the floor the yo-yo

will immediately starts spinning

because of the additional amount of friction.

So a lot of professional yo-yoer's

will avoid this trick simply because

how expensive these yo-yo's can cost.

And so when somebody asks you

to do walk the dog with your $500 titanium yo-yo

yo-yoers cringed for a bit and think,

do I really want to damage the weight distribution

of my yo-yo and mess it all up,

going into the next level.

We're gonna 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 yo-yo returning to you,

you do a full rotation, or you let the yo-yo move

around the world and you rotate the yo-yo with your hand

almost like you're swinging in the spiral motion.

And then you return the yo-yo 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 gonna be introducing a mount

to the next level, which will increase

the complexity and the number

of moving parts going on

Level four, rock the baby.

So rock the baby, like the name suggests

it involves creating a cradle mount and then

rocking the yo-yo back multiple times,

generally a solid rock the baby

involves three full swings,

and then you drop the yo-yo

or you drop the baby out of the mount

and then you bring the yo-yo back up.

It's important that you stop between rocks,

that you're not moving the yo-yo 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 gonna let the yo-yo leave our hand.

Level five, skyrocket the skyrocket begins

in a downward throw, you let

the yo-yo sleep at the very end.

And then you let the yo-yo string

and the slipknot off your hand

and throw the yo-yo up in the air

as a yo-yo is midway in the air.

It rules back up, and then as it's falling down

you catch it in your hands.

So when you're learning skyrocket

for the first time it's really important

that after you let the yo-yo

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 yo-yo will fall on the floor

and you'll dent your $500 titanium yo-yo.

Now that things are getting a little bit more complex.

It's time to switch to an unresponsive yo-yo.

So the unresponsive yo-yo is gonna be harder

because you can't bring an unresponsive yo-yo back up.

You have to purposefully knock the yo-yo

which will be delving into in the next level.

Level six bind, the bind is how

you return an unresponsive yo-yo.

So it's a matter of purposefully nodding,

the yo-yo which contacts the friction surface

on either side forcing the yo-yo to come back up.

This is the first unresponsive

yo-yo trick that people learn

because you need to learn how to bring the yo-yo back up.

Otherwise, you're gonna spend a lot

of time winding it back up manually.

So you begin in a downward sleeper

like our first strict that we learned.

But instead of talking to the yo-yo back up

you rest your index finger

on the front of the yo-yo string.

You wrap around, you hit the yo-yo

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'll have a loop of string

that will fall into the gap of the yo-yo.

This will contact the friction surface

causing the oo 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 yo-yo hard enough,

it won't spin for a long enough time at the very end.

And you'll not have enough time

to wrap the yo-yo string around it to bring it back up.

So in unresponsive yo-yoing

there are three main styles of yo-yo tricks.

So you have your front style throw,

which is where you're throwing

the yo-yo down right in front of you.

You have your side style throw,

which is where you're throwing

the yo-yo off to the side.

And then finally a horizontally throw

where the yo-yo spins off axis.

All the tricks that we see in

past six levels have used a forward

throw the next we'll be using,

a side style through, level seven trapeze.

So the trapeze starts in a brick way throw

instead of throwing the yo-yo 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 yo-yo in this case is the man

and the string is a trapeze.

So as the yo-yo is coming through that breakaway

you flick the yo-yo onto your index string

and it lands in a formation

or mount called the trapeze

as the yo-yo is coming through.

It's important that you land the yo-yo

on the trapeze when beginners

are learning this trick the yo-yo 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 yo-yo and involves

throwing the yo-yo down in a downward sleeper,

right in front of you.

And very similar to the bind where you go

in front of the yo-yo this time you'll want to go behind.

And so you mount the yo-yo

from behind and you have one longer string

sigment, one shorter string sigment

and you pushed the yo-yo into you.

You force the yo-yo to rotate, and you wanna do

that three times very similar to rock the baby.

You let the string sigment go

and then bring the yo-yo back up.

So the next level things are gonna get

a little bit more complex

because we're gonna be 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 through hand, you unloop the yo-yo

and then you mount the yo-yo

on your opposite index finger.

You unmount, you do a brain twister like motion

you dismount from the trapeze,

and then you bring in the yo-yo backup

for this trick in particular

control is especially important.

You wanna make sure that you're landing

the yo-yo on the string and dismounting it correctly.

Sometimes you make a fumble and the yo-yo

might not land on the string correctly.

And so that precision is super important

because the yo-yo tricky is a longer as well.

It's important that you have

a really good spin at the start.

Otherwise the yo-yo may die

or start spinning midway through.

So now we're moving onto the next level

which could be considered our first mini combo

Level 10 Mach five.

So Mach five begins in a forward throw

and you start in a split bottom mount,

you do a bare rule and then isolate

the yo-yo in the center of the string.

And you rotate your index fingers around the yo-yo.

So it looks like the yo-yo 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 five revolutions,

you dismount and you bring the yo-yo

back up by doing a simple bind.

This strict requires a lot,

a lot of control to keep the yo-yo in that single space.

As you're rotating around it

you don't wanna rotate too quickly

but you also don't wanna rotate too slowly

because you're putting so much pressure

on the yo-yo to maintain it in one space

the yo-yo may spin off access and gyroscope.

The key to maintaining that control is

by pulling your index fingers away

from the yo-yo so that it forces it to stay

in that one position.

And then when you're doing your rotations

you wanna rotate at a constant motion.

So that the yo-yo doesn't start spinning midway through.

The next trick is gonna involve a hop element

which is unlike any other trick

that we seen so far today.

Level 11, Eli Hop, the Eli hop starts,

in a brick way throw, you mount the yo-yo in a trapeze.

And then by bringing your hands together really quickly

the yo-yo springs up and launches off to the side.

You then land the yo-yo back on the trapeze.

And that performs one, Eli hop.

The Eli hop is super impressive because it's so unexpected.

The yo-yo 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 trip to where you can do some Eli hops

which are much larger and 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 boingy boingy

begins in a downward throw,

and then you mount the yo-yo and the 1.5 mount,

you do a single barrel roll.

And then you have the yo-yo,

between your two index fingers

and you pop the yo-yo back

and forth between each string sigment

causing it to boingy boing going back and forth.

You wanna do that a handful of times

you then dismount the yo-yo

and you return it with a bind,

when learning a boy for the first time

it's really easy for the yo-yo to fall

off the string, mid boy, when you're doing

your boingy boing and then the yo-yo will pop

up the string and then you have to restart.

So it's important that you have

that control the bounce of yo-yo,

back and forth between those two strings.

And you have a clear eye on where the yo-yo

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've seen before was the Mach five.

And very similarly, the Eli hop or the rock the baby

where you doing a moment repetitively,

but with the revolution,

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 yo-yo string to slack.

You then rotate the yo-yo string inwards and outwards

from your hand causing the yo-yo string

to fold the yo-yo as yo-yo spins through the air

it's almost like waving a fan after you've repeated it.

A handful of times, you dismount from the mount

and you bring the yo-yo back up

with the revolution very similar to the Mach five.

It's really important that you maintain your momentum

as you're doing each of those revolutions

if you start spinning the yo-yo

midway through the yo-yo slack formation

will break, and then you'll have to repeat it again.

Level 14 Brent Stole.

So the Brent Stole, involves a new kind of element

called the laceration.

So with the laceration, you pop the yo-yo

up into the air and you create a slack movement

underneath the yo-yo and create,

a formation so that when the yo-yo,

falls back onto the string,

it falls into that formation or into that mound.

So with the Brent stall in particular,

the yo-yo falls into a triangle,

like formation or triangle like mount.

And one of the common mistakes,

when players learn Brent stool

for the first time is not slacking the yo-yo

underneath the string enough

to create a large enough loop

to create that triangle formation,

the yo-yo to land back onto the street.

So the next level is also a repeater

and it involves the slack element.

And you rotate around your non-index throw hand.

Level 15 Yuuki Slack.

So you begin a side style through and start in a trapeze

you then pinch your index finger

and your thumb of your non throw hand

flack the string by rotating it

with a clockwise motion and cast the string sigment

in a double or nothing,

even dismount from that double

or nothing off to the side,

hit the yo-yo on the bottom

of the string and slack

the yo-yo in the opposite direction.

You catch a string semen as it's going around

and then you repeat the motion again.

So you dismount, you hop

onto the string under trapeze

and then you slack it over into

a double or nothing back and forth, back and forth.

After you've done your fair share of Yuuki slacks

you dismount and you bring yo-yo back up.

So when difficulty with the Yuuki slack is that

the trick can fall apart on success of repeats.

As you're slacking the yo-yo back and forth, back and forth.

It's really easy for the string

and the yo-yo to get tangled up

and resulting in a dead yo-yo

and a non in your hands.

Level 16 black hops.

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 yo-yo around the string one more time.

So that there's three strings

sigments on either index finger.

When you're in that triple or nothing,

you then bounce yo-yo off the string,

consecutively until you reach a trapeze.

So you're constantly bouncing the yo-yo back up

letting you on the string,

bouncing the yo-yo back up

letting it on the string.

And then you land in that trapeze.

Once you're at the trapeze

you want to build back up to a triple or nothing.

So you hop the yo-yo back up,

slash the yo-yo off to the side.

It lands in a trapeze and his brother

jump the yo-yo back up it lands in a double or nothing

and you continue totally you're in a triple or nothing.

Once you're in that triple or nothing again,

you drop all the string segments.

So it's just resting on your index finger.

You dismount, and you do it by

and to bring the yo-yo backup.

So with black hops, precision

and control are your best friend.

You really wanna make sure that

you have an eye on the yo-yo

as it's hopping between the 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 gonna

make the yo-yo 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 yo-yo with a karate chop,

like motion that creates a loop

around your throw hand.

And then you rotate around the yo-yo,

multiple times kind of like

skipping rope after you're done rotating

around the yo-yo a handful of times,

you land the yo-yo in iron whip,

which is where the yo-yo trick originated from.

And then you bring the yo-yo back up,

through a bind, like the Yuuki Slack,

like the revolution, like the Mach five,

the follows is a repeater.

What this trick momentum is super, super important.

After you start the trick, you have to keep following

through otherwise the yo-yo and the string

and the slack will get tangled up for the next trick.

We're gonna be incorporating

another part of our body

and the yo-yo is gonna aligned behind our back.

Level 18, leg rap trap.

So the leg rap trap begins in a brick way

through 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 yo-yo back up to your hand.

So this yo-yo trick is also commonly known

as the ball breaker because the yo-yo string

is going between your legs and can break your balls.

Lots of mistakes to be made with this trick.

The next trick is another laceration

and involves wrapping the yo-yo string

around the yo-yo and nut 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 yo-yo up

and spinning yo-yo string

around the yo-yo multiple times

to land the yo-yo back into a mount

when it falls back down.

And this case it's a 2.5 Mount,

which is like the one and a half mount,

but with two and a half strings,

wrapped around the yo-yo instead.

So the yo-yo begins in a breakaway through

you pop the yo-yo up

as the yo-yo is midway through the air.

You take your two index fingers

and you're wrapping around the string multiple times

two and a half times be exact

as the yo-yo is falling back into the yo-yo string.

You land in that 2.5 mount.

So this trick is really challenging,

cause 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 yo-yo back up, spin around with your index fingers

and then land back onto the string.

So with the strict, because you're rotating

around the yo-yo multiple times,

it's common to not catch the string,

when it lands in the 2.5 mound.

So up to this point, we've looked

at the front style throw and the breakaway through

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

and it's more of a side style throw

but horizontal and with the horizontal pinwheel

it's like a downward forward facing throw, but horizontal.

So beginning with banana turnover

you begin an aside style throw but instead horizontal.

So kind of like you're throwing a Frisbee.

And then as the yo-yo is going around

almost like you're about to hit in the trapeze.

You stick out your thumb facing downwards

of your non throw hand and the yo-yo

will wrap around your thumb causing it to rotate.

You do that a couple of times,

and that rebalances the plane,

of the yo-yo so that you can land it in a trapeze.

After you're in that trapeze

you can do a variety of different tricks.

Bend down and turnover is a starting point

to many horizontal tricks.

And then you bring it back up

with the horizontal Pinwheel,

you're throwing the yo-yo across your body.

And as the yo-yo is fully extended

at the end of the string you're doing a series

of pinwheels to keep it in the same plane

very similar to the banana turn it over.

After that, you can transition into a horizontal combo

and then bring the yo-yo up with a bind.

Horizontal tricks are a lot more challenging

than your typical side

style or front style throw

because you have to keep the yo-yo spinning.

Otherwise it'll spin out of plane.

Level 21 UFO, the UFO is a horizontal trick

and you begin by doing a banana turnover

as the yo-yo 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 yo-yo up

and you catch the yo-yo returning it into bind.

And it's called the UFO

because it looks like a UFO is about to land.

The yo-yo is flat when you're performing the trick,

flat on the horizontal plane

and the yo-yo string spirals around it,

because it's about to die.

You know, you've done the strict correctly

because the yo-yo will look

like it's hovering midway through the air.

So the UFO is all about timing and it's about timing.

The amount of spin left in the yo-yo,

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 yo-yo may spin out of control.

The yo-yo may die in between or you may not touch,

the yo-yo as you pop it up.

We're at a really advanced level now.

And for the next trick we're gonna add

a little bit of complexity by involving our neck.

Level 22, the Zach Gormley neck trick

and involves starting in the trapeze,

dismounting, bringing the yo-yo string

above your head and above your neck,

wrapping the yo-yo strings.

So it lands in a chopstick with your index finger

and your thumb of your throw hand,

pulling apart almost like you're doing a revolution

extending the yo-yo above and over your head,

crunching down so that the slack follows you,

dismounting and bringing the yo-yo back-up.

So this trick involves a lot

of the levels that we've seen before,

including the trapeze, the revolution and the slack.

So with the Zach Gormley neck trick,

at one point you're not able to see the yo-yo

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 yo-yo

on your finger, level 23 finger spin sidewinder.

So the finger spin sidewinder begins

and a horizontal pinwheel through

after you pinwheel a handful of times

you pop the yo-yo up and land the yo-yo

on your index finger of your non throw hand,

I will spin there for a couple of moments.

And after the yo-yo is about to die,

very similar to the UFO.

You lacerate into the center of the string

causing the yo-yo to bind as the yo-yo

is binding you hover your throw hand

on top of the yo-yo causing

the yo-yo to do a sidewinder movement

causing the yo-yo return back up to your hand.

It's really important that you keep

in mind the timing very similar to the UFO.

When you landed on your finger

the yo-yo will spin out really quickly

because of the additional amount of friction.

And initially, after you return the yo-yo back

up to your hand, it'll 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, yo-yoers

will often perform an Eli hop combo.

So an Eli hop 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

and the reverse Brent stool,

I popped the yo-yo 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 then the yo-yo 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 yo-yo string inverted

in an inverted trapeze.

And then I return the yo-yo back to my hand.

So this Eli hop combo is something

that I've been working on from 2017.

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 Yuuki slack like movement.

And as a result you go around your neck,

wrapping around your neck.

And when you unravel your unravels,

so the yo-yo is landing behind your back.

When the yo-yo is behind your back

you do a pop like motion returning

yo-yo back to a trapeze in front of your body,

invert yo-yo string.

And you go underneath your non throw hand leg.

So it catches underneath after you catch the

your string underneath your leg.

So that it's, the yo-yo is hanging

underneath your leg but you do a series of pop movements

and then eventually pop the yo-yo back to a trapeze.

You do a series of laceration like elements

and then landed an amount to return

the yo-yo 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 yo-yo string

around the neck, so that it lands behind your back,

Oh 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 yo-yo 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.

And it's a matter of then taking those tricks

matching districts to music,

playing around with the pacing,

playing around with, you know,

body elements, playing around with tricks,

which was 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 and it's really about

messing around and seeing what works, seeing what doesn't.

And that's one of the fun parts about yo-yoing

because there's so many limitless possibilities.

Thanks, Wired.