How to Walk the Dog

Found this on Expert Village, it was performed by Andre Boulay; a master of the sport and one of YoYoJam's sponsored players. Hope it helps you learn to walk the dog effectively! :)

How To Do The Walk The Dog Yo-Yo Trick -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

Darn The Busy Schedule!!

Haha, hey everyone, sorry for the delay; having a shop and meetings to go to during the week is taking more work and time than I thought it would. So in loo of this discovery I will be readjusting the scheduled posting time to Friday afternoons until I have my schedule down well enough were I can allocate time to make regular (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) updates.

Next post will be up this Friday, thanks for your patience and sorry for the delay! :)

Can You Say "Filler?"

Haha! Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know I'm going to be really busy this week; I'm in the process of opening a shop in my hometown of Emmett, Idaho and the grand opening is tomorrow so I have a lot of things to be getting together. This being the case this post and the next one will be shorter, but will include a clip video for your entertainment. Enjoy! :)

DTI - Trick Machine from Michael Montgomery on Vimeo.

This is a video of myself practicing some of my favorite tricks in the workshop at Double-Take Industries. My buddy Matt Lewis played the part of the camera man and I editted everything down to what it is here. Hope you all have a great day! Comment and let me know your thoughts on me having a 'Clip Video Monday' from now on (or even occasionally).

About Me

Well I felt that I should introduce myself a little more thoroughly since, I mean, if you're going to be reading my stuff you might as well know who I am right? My name is Michael Montgomery, I was born in California in January of 1990 and in 1994 moved to Emmett, Idaho. I've been in Idaho most of my life now and I love it; it's a great state filled with great people who love to help out their fellow man. I am an entrepreneur and hobbyist. I yo-yo, juggle, read, write, and enjoy playing pool with my friends.

I got started developing business ideas when I was a little bit younger, 15 or so, and from there I haven't looked back. Double-Take Industries was my first business idea; I wanted to make humorous shirts that took two looks to get the joke. These days I am focusing the company on supporting extreme sports and hobbies, which seems to have been a good choice. Since our start in October of 2007, we've sponsored three events: the 2008 Gem County Recreation District (GCRD) Spring Break Skateboard Competition, the 2008 Idaho Yo-yo Championships, and the 2008 GCRD Fall Slam Skateboard Competition.

I love yo-yoing, I've been playing yo-yo since I turned 14, or started the eighth grade. I organize the Official Idaho Yo-yo Championships, the first of which took place on the 10th of July in 2005 at Julia Davis Park in Boise; the second one took place on the 14th of June in 2008 at the Emmett Cherry Festival. I've participated in over ten competitions since then and don't see myself stopping anytime soon. I've attended quite a few competitions, including the Columbia Basin Yo-yo Challenge in Washington, Pacific Northwest Yo-yo Championship in Seattle, Washington, and the Inland Empire Contest in Spokane, Washington. I attended and participated in my first national competition in 2004 and met a great number of other yo-yo enthusiasts who appreciate yo-yoing as a sport - in some cases a lifestyle - rather than just a simple hobby. It was quite the eye-opener. From there I attended the World yo-yo Contest in Orlando, Florida. That was a life-changing experience, to see so many people who are in love with their sport and have a passion for not just being competitive at it but also helping their peers get better and learn more tricks. Overall, yo-yoing has shaped my life differently than any other sport possibly could have.

I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about me, please don't forget to cast your vote in the poll on the right, the more information I can get from you about what you'd like to learn about will help me know what to focus my time on J Have a pleasant day!

Opps, I Can't Throw For Awhile =/

So in an effort to sound more like who I actually am I'm going to make a few occassional posts more personal than the initial ones.

So, I was getting some supplies Tuesday to ship out some yo-yos I sold on eBay; I'm selling some to help pay for some of the costs I'm going to be encountering by opening my shop in Emmett, ID. Anyways, I was loading up my car and was giving this elderly lady some space to load up her car behind me, and didn't pay enough attention when I was closing the door and SMASHED my middle finger on my throwhand in the door. The result? A blackened nail, a bloodblister on the pad of my index finger, and horrible pain every time I forget I've damaged my finger. Moral of the story? Don't be stupid, pay attention to what you are doing.

Anyways, I'm still getting use to blogging and would still like you to vote on the poll I've set up to the right of this :) Any help I can get coming up with topics the more likely you'll find information on here you'd like to read. I know with blogging you should focus on what you'd like to write about, but when It comes to yo-yoing, so long as it's loosely focused on that industry, I don't mind what I write about, yo-yoing is my life! :D

Anyways, hope everyone has a pleasant day! I'll be working on some more posts for next week while I wait for my finger to heal. :)

The Proper Way to Hold a Yo-Yo

Today's blog is focused on the beginner yo-yoer who wants to learn how to correctly hold a yo-yo so that when it is thrown they can achieve their maximum spin time potential. This particular article is taken from a project I've been working on for the past few months in association with the yo-yoing class I teach at my shop in Emmett, Idaho. This is an excerpt from the soon to be published, first installment in a series of books called "Learn to Throw: A Course in Yo-yoing from Beginner to Master". Tentative publishing date is to be the 25th of March 2009. More info on the book series will be published in later blogs, I hope you enjoy this first piece.

"The way you hold and attach your yo-yo to your hand is very important. If you don't attached the slip knot between the first and second knuckle of the middle finger on your throw hand you will lose a lot of your control over it. Putting the slip knot too close to your palm (between the second and third knuckle) will make it more difficult to throw the yo-yo and do the intricate tricks you will be learning later on.

The way the yo-yo is set in your hand is also very important. If the yo-yo is upside down in the palm of your hand, you will not get a lot of control of out it when you throw the yo-yo. The way to know if the yo-yo is right side up in your hand is to look at the string. If the string attached to your finger rolls up along the top of the yo-yo then you are holding it correctly. This way, when you throw the yo-yo, it will roll easily out of your hand down the string, and when it returns it will automatically be facing the correct way if you catch the yo-yo correctly as it winds up. If the string is going across the bottom of the yo-yo (the wrong way to hold it) when you throw it, the yo-yo is likely to flip over, causing it to descend at an angle making it difficult or impossible to return to your hand. The reason for this is simple physics; the yo-yo will try to flip over, wasting much of the energy you have put into the throw. When it flips over, the yo-yo is likely to be spinning at an angle, causing the string to rub against the sides of the hubs of the yo-yo. This will cause it to slow and tilt further, usually resulting in the yo-yo spinning out of control."

I hope you enjoyed the article, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions regarding today's post please use the comment feature conveniently located beneath this post. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions not relative to this article please email them to me at info@twinepitched.com. I'll do my best to respond to questions by the next blog post. Until next time; keep on throwing!

How May I Help You?

Hey Everyone!

Just putting together a list of things I’d like to cover on this blog, which I’m officially starting on the 2nd of March and from that point on I plan on following a Monday, Wednesday, Friday update schedule. Things I’d like to cover are how-to guides, new skilltoy related products (like clothing, bags and cases, accessories, etc), new Yo-yos, historical essays, current events and competitions.

At this point I’d like to know what you’d like to have covered more often, which is why I’ve put a poll up on the right-hand side of the blog; I encourage you to cast your vote. I’ll write some stuff for Monday’s blog in the meantime and then I’ll start focusing on what you’ve told me you’d like to see from the results I get in the poll.

One thing I’d like to cover that I mentioned earlier, is events and competitions. If you happen to go to a competition and have some pictures or even a video clip of it and would like to write 2-5 paragraphs about your experience I would be happy to post that for you! Just email me at info@twinepitched.com with any information and pictures from the competition with your write-up and name, email, and if you have one, your yo-yo community nick name, and I’ll let you know when I’ll be posting it.

Have a nice day everyone!