Dec 12: Diabolo advent calendar

Day 12: 720 degree duicide
When I first saw a Duicide, I couldn’t get my head around how daring it was.
I realise I haven’t shown any suicide tricks yet but I had to show this one.
Throw the diabolo and sticks in the air, then catch them before they hit the floor. Very difficult but during the pandemic I have gotten extremely good at it.
This one is a 720 duicide and it looks good in front of the sunset.

Dec 7: Diabolo advent calendar

Day 7: The high throw
We had the throw and of course we got to have the crowd pleaser. I would add high throws are not too difficult to catch if you point the handstick at the diabolo. The problem I always have in the garden is the wind which will take the diabolo a good 3 meters if you are not careful. Those 3 meters could mean over the fence, although it hasn’t happened yet.

Dec 5: Diabolo advent calendar

Day 5: Its our first combo, the hand grind to whip.
You have seen the previous two separately but this is the beauty of the  diabolo, the combinations. I have seen everything from 2-3 trick combos to 24 trick combos from the pros.
Watching the pros perform their combos is like magic.
Some tricks chain together nicely, some need you to end in a certain way to move seamlessly to the next one. There’s a neutral respect for those who make it look elegant.

Dec 3: Diabolo advent calendar

Day 3: Little more advance trick, the hand grind. Always love this trick and quite like switching position with the fingers (maybe for another day). If you are wondering if it hurts, no because the axel is a bearing keeping it only running in one direction. However if you are not careful, when your finger does rub against the side by accident it does burn and hurt.

My diabolo advent calendar

Diabolo whip

It was during a slack conversation with colleagues, that the concept of a kind of advent calendar came to mind. A diabolo advent calendar, 1 trick per day mentioned on my blog with a brief description.

I will try and record something new everyday but I doubt it will be possible with the winter season. I have recorded some bits in advance just in-case.

So  look out for them…

Learning diabolo tricks during the Covid-19 lockdown in Manchester

One of the things I have been doing while in lockdown from the Covid-19 virus, is learning new tricks on the Diabolo. I’m lucky enough to have a nice large shared garden and green spaces around me. So in between working, walking, etc. I’ve been getting better at the Diabolo.

I decided to make use of my GoPro camera and throw together a number of tricks together with some music (Hit The Decks Volume 2 (htd2 A2) Nightfall at the edge of chaos (bonus mix)).

Here are the tricks with difficulty rating

  1. High throw (2x) – Easy
  2. Around the foot – Easy
  3. Over arm rubber arm to stick grind to whip catch – Tricky
  4. Over arm rubber arm to stick grinds to whip catch (3x angles) – Difficult
  5. Vertex – Very difficult
  6. Suicide – Tricky
  7. Stick grind to finger grind to whip catch – Tricky
  8. Duicide (2x) – Difficult
  9. Stick grind to finger grind to big whip catch (2x) – Tricky
  10. Handy grind drop to whip – Difficult

New diabolo tricks with J-sliding

I’m still working out how to do a vertex as I wrote in my new years resolutions. But while looking for videos to help explain where I might be going wrong, I found a new category of tricks called j-sliding?

J-SLIDING is a new style of juggling with diabolo, 
that enables you to do more tricks.

Its not quite the shift of the vertex before this, or the suicide before that and the grind before that. But interesting move forward regardless.