My Secret Competition Yoyo

For the last few months, I've been on a competitive yo-yo spree. I competed against a world yo-yo champion, Prague. I did a demonstration freestyle in Vietnam. I even quietly won the Malaysian Yo-Yo Open. Now, to the casual observer, it was obvious what yo-yo I was using. This, and Outlier 3. Only issue is that that's not entirely true. What I was actually using was this. My secret competition yo-yo. Let me explain. After suffering my loss at the US National Yo-Yo Contest, I realized an incremental evolution in my yo-yo ability and yo-yo equipment wasn't enough. I needed like a drastic leap. Now, when it comes to my competition yo-yo, what exactly did I want? Well, width. By far, my biggest competitive issue was that I kept missing my tricks. Now, 90% of that was basically my entire fault. But maybe, maybe 10% could have been prevented if my yo-yo had been wider. Don't believe me? Go pick up a competition yo-yo from 2004 and see how clean you can hit a competition routine. You'll see a noticeable decline. And this makes sense. If you look at competition yo-yos over the years, you'll see progressive trends of the world's winning yo-yos progressively widening. But we seem to stop at this 44 to 47 millimeter mark. So I became obsessed with this idea of what if I could make the outlier 50 millimeters wide. The only issue is that the wider yo-yos get, the more likely they are to harmonically vibe. This is especially the case with outer ring bi-metals. And it's for this reason that most outer ring bi-metals usually have some sort of innovative ring design that widens the yo-yo out, but avoids placing the heaviest material right on the rim of the yo-yo. And that allows that yo-yo to be manufactured wide without running into the whole harmonic vibration issue. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of those designs, but what I wanted was this weight distribution exactly the same, just wider. Is it really that like? So I reasoned if I really wanted to pull this off, I would need probably a year to allocate for a bunch of failed prototypes and I need a damn good yo-yo designer. To create the Outlier Plus, I commissioned Jeffrey Pang. From pushing the limits of titanium, plastic, and now bi-metal yo-yos, Jeff had done it all. These days, anyone with a decent CAD software can design a yo-yo, but to ensure that yo-yo can be manufactured is a different story. Jeff is a practitioner ensuring the yo-yo designs he creates can be commercially produced. And there are few people who have as much hands-on experience designing yo-yos. And for his expertise, he charged a hefty premium. But if I wanted a revolutionary competition yo-yo made, I needed the best. And he was the best. And after that week, we had this. A fully functioning 50mm Outlier, more durable than the Outlier 3. And smoother too. When I received the prototypes in Australia, this was by far the best competition yo-yo I'd ever tried. Initially, the yo-yo felt too wide. But after doing a practice routine, I immediately felt comfort and ease I'd never felt with my yo-yoing prior. It was as someone handed me a yo-yo from the future. My newfound comfort and confidence wasn't due to an increase in yo-yo practice. This was an overnight leap in ability entirely due to the yo-yo. I knew then that I'd never again use a yo-yo less than 50mm wide to compete in a yo-yo competition. Now, there was just one problem in all of this. Because Jeff had done his job a little bit too well, the yo-yo was fully operational like a year ahead of schedule. The Outlier 3 had only been released for about a month at this point. I couldn't just release another one and say, hey, hey, hey, this is way better. And so I ordered a small batch of the Outlier Plus and had it anodized to make it look like an Outlier 3. But if you were really paying attention, you would know that I was using something else. So for the majority of 2023, I put the Outlier Plus through arguably the most comprehensive stress test ever devised. Most yo-yos are tested in a quiet room somewhere, in an environment where you're comfortable and relaxed. Speaking from personal experience as a yo-yo reviewer, it's one thing to watch yo-yo players speak about their opinion of a yo-yo from the comfort of their homes. Realistically, any yo-yo is good enough under those circumstances. It's only as the stage lights are in your eyes, the music is blaring in your ears, and you're nervously performing a set of yo-yo tricks at the very edge of your capability, does every deficiency you have as a yo-yo player begin to expose itself. You begin missing things you've never missed in practice. And only when you're at your absolute limit, do you then realize that not all yo-yos are made equal. So for the majority of 2023, I used the Outlier Plus in virtually every yo-yo competition I could feasibly travel to. Tweaking and perfecting it with each subsequent contest. For instance, after battling Evan and Kieran at the Czech National Open division, I realized that the yo-yo's width combined with its sharp rims made it difficult to catch back in your hand. So we tweaked the edge of the rim ever so slightly to make it a little more rounded and less jarring to catch. After that, I went on to hit the cleanest three-minute routine of my life to win the Malaysian Yo-Yo Open. But it was there I realized another flaw. The initial prototype had a tight bearing seat. Now, this is good for the smoothness of the yo-yo. But if you're using a yo-yo to compete, you inevitably screw and unscrew the yo-yo to change bearings or pads or to just unknot the yo-yo. After weeks of handling that stress, my prototype threaded. So for the final version, we ensured the bearing seat wasn't too tight to improve the yo-yo's overall durability. And finally, we added more weight. Conventional wisdom states that light yo-yos are better for competition as they enable you to go faster. But what I found was that when you're nervous on stage, your hands tremble and you subconsciously play faster than you've practiced. And so a yo-yo that's too light, irrespective of how stable or long-spinning it is, is actually detrimental to your competitive yo-yo performance. So by adding one or two grams extra, it's easier to control and with the added weight, is way more stable and long-spinning. After a year of minor tweaks and iterations, the yo-yo was by far the best piece of competitive equipment Offset Yo-Yo had ever produced. A drastic departure from anything that came before it. And in my opinion, the next generation of competition yo-yos. And finally, in a stroke of poetic harmony, I used the final version to win the US International Open, correcting the very loss that sparked its entire existence. Now over time, my secret would eventually start to leak. Hardcore members of the Voo Crew, other community forums, started speculating I was using something different. So this is me, coming clean. Y'all were right. I was using this. And today, officially, it's available on OffsetYoYo.com. Okay, I feel better getting that off my chest. All right, see you guys next time.