Practice and Contests

Practice, Play Healthy, and Everyone Can Throw

You don’t need hours a day. You need a little time most days, a reason for each session, and patience with yourself. Here’s what experienced players on the YoYoExpert Forums say works.

Practice with a purpose

• Make time, even a little: one player who improves steadily plays about an hour a day, often less, and argues that 15 to 30 minutes of real practice beats waiting for free time that never comes.^[88]
• Know why you’re throwing: the goal can be as simple as “I want this trick a little smoother.” Playing to relax counts too, if you focus on doing each move well.^[88]
• Slow is fast: a classical musician in the same thread says to practice slowly until your hands know the trick, leave your phone in another room, and take a day off when you need one.^[88]
• Say “yet”: “I can’t do this yet, but if I stay consistent I will.” Don’t dwell on a long break or a late start.^[88]

Learning from videos

• Go frame by frame: on YouTube on a computer, pause and press the comma and period keys to step back and forward one frame. On a phone, screen-record the tutorial and scrub through the recording slowly.^[92]
• Learn in pieces: break a trick into sections that start and end in a mount, then link them. See How experienced players learn below.^[73]

Your throw, tilt, and restarts

• The floor-line drill: stand over a straight line in the floor, like a tile seam or the gap between floorboards, and throw a sleeper so the yo-yo’s gap lines up with the line.^[93]
• Don’t chase a perfect throw: experienced players say tilt correction comes on its own after thousands of throws. In a trapeze, you can level a tilted yo-yo by pressing the string against its high side.^[94]
• Restart instead of rewinding: when the yo-yo dies on the string, hold the string with your free hand and spin the yo-yo back up with your throwing hand, then bind. Some players twist cleanly, “like turning a doorknob,” instead of snapping hard, because a hard snap can jam your fingers.^[95]

Stuck? Everyone hits a plateau

• Switch it up: try another style for a while. Players suggest modern responsive or 0A to relax, and 5A, where “the mistakes are often better than the tricks.”^[89]
• Get a quick win: go back to basics, or learn a short trick built from elements you already know.^[89]
• Stop comparing: some players started as little kids. Take a break when you’re frustrated and come back fresh.^[89]
• How long it takes: one player saw spin time and technique jump at 6 to 8 months. Another compares it to an instrument: about a year for the fundamentals, two to feel comfortable, three to feel “good.”^[90]
• Is learning on an unresponsive yo-yo cheating? No. “A completed trick is a completed trick.” Or, as one longtime member put it: “There’s no cheating in yoyoing, just smiling.”^[91]

Play healthy

• String burn happens: almost every player gets it learning tricks like Boingy Boing. Most build a callus over time. Some wear a glove, which protects your finger but lets you feel the string less.^[96]
• Watch for overuse: one player developed what they believed was golfer’s elbow from all the repeated throwing.^[97] Take breaks, switch styles, and stop if your arm hurts. See a doctor if pain doesn’t go away.
• Throw soft after a shaky bind: if you’re not sure a bind was clean, throw a softer “safety throw.” A snagged string on a hard breakaway can swing the yo-yo back into your face.^[99]
• Mark a yo-yo zone: when you play with a group or teach kids, tape lines on the floor, or set cones outside, and only throw inside them so nobody runs through and gets bonked.^[100]
• See also the safety tips in Tips from Experienced Players.

Everyone can throw

• Any age: in “Too old to start again?” players in their 50s and 60s trade stories. One started around 50 and throws every day; another has played since 1966. The obstacles they named were joint pain, practice time, and impatience, not age.^[101]
• One hand: a player who lost the use of their right arm learned Walk the Dog, Forward Pass, and One-Handed Star. The forum pointed them to 2A looping and to a sponsored player who plays one-handed.^[102]
• A way to reset: many players say yo-yoing helps them decompress, like a nurse who throws after hard shifts, and others who use it to quiet anxiety.^[97][98] Doctor Popular’s PopCast interviewed a social worker who uses yo-yos in counseling with kids.^[98] It isn’t a treatment, but it’s a great way to focus.
• Come throw with us: our monthly meetups are free, all ages, all levels, with loaner yo-yos and someone to show you your first throw.

Contests and Judging

U.S. contests, including our own VSYC-26, score freestyles with the National Yo-Yo League (NYYL) rules. A freestyle is a routine to music you choose; a trick is any demonstration of yo-yo skill; and an element is one specific, scorable movement inside a trick.^[80]

Two halves of every score

• Technical Execution (clickers): each judge holds two hand tally counters, one for positive clicks and one for negative clicks.^[80]
• Routine Evaluation: four categories: Trick Presentation (mastery and style), Performance Quality (professionalism, stage use, audience), Musicality (hitting cues and pacing to the song), and Routine Construction (trick order, cohesion, theme).^[80]
• In a 1A Championship final, a 3-minute routine, Technical Execution is worth 60 points and Evaluation 40.^[80]

How clicks work

• One click for difficult but low-risk elements, like an Eli hop, laceration, or iron whip in 1A; loops, wraps, and around the worlds in 2A; rolls, kink mounts, and double trapezes in 3A; whips, recaptures, and boings in 4A; and 360s, propellers, and direction changes in 5A.^[80]
• More clicks for riskier variants, like a multi-hook instead of a single hook.^[80]
• Negative clicks for any missed element or loss of control.^[80]
• Repeats score less. Six Eli hops in a row score only the first; a later repeat can score zero. The point is to reward variety.^[80]
• No clicks for moves that don’t show yo-yo skill, like picture tricks, string moves that don’t involve the yo-yo, or tricks where the yo-yo never interacts with the string. Save picture tricks for the crowd.^[80]
• Normalization: each judge’s top scorer gets 60, everyone else is scaled against them, then the judges are averaged, so one generous judge can’t swing the result.^[80]

Major deductions

With two yo-yos, deductions count per yo-yo, so swapping both after a 2A or 3A tangle costs −6.^[80]

Divisions for everyone

• Sport Freestyle: a 1-minute, low-stress division with no negative clicks and no major deductions, split by age. It’s the place for a first contest.^[80]
• Trick ladders: a set list of tricks in rising difficulty, the other gateway into competing. See the ladder above.^[23]
• X Division: 2A through 5A compete together, with clicker multipliers to level the field: 2A ×1.40, 3A ×1.50, 4A ×1.30, 5A ×1.60.^[80]
• Over 40: a showcase division, mostly at the U.S. Nationals, where players over 40 pick any style from 1A to 5A. Nationals also hosts International and Women’s divisions.^[80]
• Music: anything appropriate for all audiences. Explicit lyrics or themes can mean disqualification.^[80]

How each style is judged

Every championship style uses the same two-part system: Technical Execution from clickers and a performance evaluation. What changes is which elements score. At the World Yo-Yo Contest, 1A through 5A each crown their own World Champion, and a 3-minute final is worth up to 60 points of Technical Execution and 40 of Freestyle Evaluation, minus major deductions.^[86][84] In every style, the yo-yo must be spinning, powered by the unwinding string, for a trick to count, and both the yo-yo and the string must be used.^[84]

• Combos are counted by element. Tricks like Gerbil or Rancid Milk are treated as a string of elements, each scored on its own. Repeating an element usually scores nothing the second time, though a high-risk repeat, like a suicide combo, can score again at reduced value.^[84]
• No bonus for non-yo-yo skills. Dancing, miming, juggling, or acrobatics earn nothing in Technical Execution, even during a trick.^[84]
• Two yo-yos, twice the risk. Negative clicks and major deductions count per yo-yo in 2A and 3A.^[84]
• Style-specific deductions: a detach costs −5 in 1A, 2A, 3A, and 5A (both the yo-yo and the weight). In 4A the yo-yo is meant to leave the string, but letting it fly off the stage into the audience in any style, including 4A and 5A, can mean disqualification.^[84]

The World Contest’s eight evaluation categories

At Worlds, judges split into two groups: Group A clicks Technical Execution, and Group B scores the Freestyle Evaluation in eight categories from 0 to 10, halved to make 40 points: Execution, Control, Trick Diversity, Space Use, Music Use (choreography), Music Use (construction), Body Control, and Showmanship. Only Technical Execution is normalized between judges.^[84] U.S. NYYL events use the four categories above instead.^[80]

Artistic Performance (AP)

• No clickers. AP is judged mainly on performance rather than technical skill: choreography, music, creative stage use, movement, and entertainment. Solo players and teams can enter.^[85]
• Awards, not places. Judges may give a Grand Prix (the World Champion title), a Creativity Award, an Artistic Award, and an Entertainment Award, or none of them.^[85]
• The yo-yo still leads. Dance, acting, and props are welcome, but the yo-yo must be the main act. There are no deductions for misses, yet judges expect close to zero mistakes, like a professional show.^[85]
• Format: routines up to 4 minutes; finalists are chosen from submitted videos.^[85]

When styles are combined

• X Division: some contests lump 2A, 3A, 4A, and 5A into one division. The NYYL multiplies clicker scores to keep it fair, because some styles tend to score higher: 2A ×1.40, 3A ×1.50, 4A ×1.30, 5A ×1.60.^[80] At VSYC-26, X Division covered 2A, 3A, 4A, or 5A, and you picked one.
• Exhibitions at Worlds: Women’s Freestyle and Over-40 Freestyle are 2-minute routines and Junior Freestyle (16 and under) is 90 seconds; in each, you choose one style from 1A to 5A. Championship divisions themselves have no age or gender classes.^[86]
• Sport and beginner divisions: no negative clicks and no major deductions, so new players can get on stage without pressure (see above).^[80]
• Duos: Doc Lucky Meisenheimer created “Doc Lucky’s Duos,” now part of the National and World championships.^[87]

For the history of each style and the gear it uses, see Styles of Play on the Gear page.

Your first contest

• Ladders aren’t just for kids: many sport ladders mix ages, and a set trick list gives your practice direction. One player’s advice: compete while you feel unprepared, so you know what to expect next time.^[109]
• Make it memorable: asked about common mistakes in a first freestyle, Evan Nagao said new competitors use too few music cues and “hype moments.” You probably won’t win your first contest, so aim to get the crowd going or do something creative.^[111]
• Sometimes it works out: a player who entered 5A for the first time at the 2022 German Nationals came home as the division champion.^[110]
• Filming a video entry: pick a spot with room to move, keep the sun behind the camera, plan the song and tricks before you shoot, and retake any trick you miss.^[112]