Yo-Yo - Walk the Dog and Other Sleeping Tricks

Hi! I am Dick Stohr, also known as That Yo-Yo Guy. What we've been talking about up to this point is the basic non-sleeping yo-yo tricks, where the yo-yo goes to the end of the string and comes right back to your hand.

What we're going to do now is take that second loop of string off of the axle, so that we can do the sleeping type tricks. So you untwist the yo-yo string, open up, take that off; so if you take both loops off, it's like putting a new string on a yo-yo. So, one loop allows the yo-yo to spin inside of that single loop. Now remember, this is a fixed wood axle yo-yo, so there is friction on the string, and it will not do a lot of the advanced tricks that require a ball bearing or transaxle yo-yo. But we are going to move now to the very basic yo-yo sleeping tricks, okay?

When you wind a string now, you have to trap it; you can over your finger and underneath, one, two -- notice I am not pulling on the yo-yo string, I am just guiding it into the groove. This time when I get it all wound up and I throw it down the first time, that extra loop will come right out, and will bring it up right away. This is now a sleeping yo-yo. It will do all of the sleep tricks. The basic sleep trick is what I just did, the Sleeper. This is where the yo-yo stays at the end of the string, and you bring it back up. What we want to do is help you understand that that is the basis for the kinds of things that you can do with a yo-yo, but you have to have the power. So, remember the yo-yo Power Throw; start with the wrist, cock it, raise your elbow, throw, turn, wait, catch. That's how you do the Power Throw; and the more power that you put into it, the more force that you get from the arm throwing from up here -- not the wrist snap, but the throwing from up here, you will get the powerful, straight yo-yo, so that you can do the sleep tricks. There is the basic Sleeper. From the Sleeper, the next progression then would be to do Walk the Dog, and this is the trick that everybody remembers. This is where you get it sleeping, you put it on the floor, let it walk away and then bring it back up. Make sure that the yo-yo is in front of your hand when it hits the floor, because if it's underneath your hand and you hit the floor, it will bounce right back up. But you swing it out a little bit, let it pull on the string, it will do the walk, and then you can bring it back to your hand.

Notice my hand when I do the yo-yo trick; notice that the hand just gives a flick and that gives the string enough slack, so that the yo-yo will jump on to the string and come right up to your hand. You dont have to do a lot of work to do that, its just a nice, smooth flick.

Now, Sleeper, Walk the Dog, the next then should be something called Rock the Baby in the Cradle. And this is something where we will start now to learn strings with a term called Dead String. We are going to let the yo-yo just hang and ignore the yo-yo until we learn the fingering for the hand.

What we are going to do now, is take your hand and karate chop your thumb, grab the string, pull it up and over, spread and point these fingers and go underneath the yo-yo. Notice the yo-yo swinging in here, this is called Rock the Baby in the Cradle. Don't worry about the fact that the yo-yo is not spinning; what's important is to learn the sequence of getting your string into the proper configuration. So, you say stop, chop, four fingers pull, spread, point, swoop right underneath the yo-yo. That's how you are going to do, Rock the Baby in the Cradle. Now we can do it with a sleeping yo-yo; again, because this is a sleeping yo-yo you have to trap the string, clear the loop, okay? Now, Rock the Baby; Sleeper, up, over, Rock the Baby, drop it, bring it back. So, the Rock the Baby trick consists of the movement of your hands to configure the yo-yo string to make sure that you are going to do it properly.

So, we've learned the Sleeper, the Walk the Dog, and the Rock the Baby, and now what we are going to do in the next clip is learn more of the yo-yo sleeping tricks.