Since there is a separate section for Beginner dama players to seek out help, thought I'd start one for the players who still need help with tricks that are far and above the beginner level. One trick that took me forever to learn was Spacewalk the year I started playing kendama. Coming up on 2 and a half years of kendama now and I still have yet to successfully and consistently land Moonwalk, Lightning Drop/Double Spacewalk and beyond. Just having issues tracking while it's spinning in the air and timing my catch of the ken/tama. Any suggestions/tips to getting these tricks down?
I can't help you there but I personally am looking for any tricks on airplane to trade spike as well as lighthouse flip trade spike. I can get Downspikes from both of these but can do it normal. Also lunar tre and barrel roll are just impossible.
I saw on @Steezdiaz IG story a tip for trade spikes to spin the tama (earth turn/tornado) rather than trying to hold it steady. This way you can control the spin speed rather than searching the ana for a spike.
Been playing for about 7 months, still can't land juggle, i can flip the ken, but i can't seem to track the tama and spike it
Can you do it to big cup? If so try multi juggles before doing juggle to spike because you naturally get better control. Pretty much you end up grabbing the tama and throwing it again instead of just whacking it and hoping you get it on the spike. I hope this helps!
Moons were a weakness of mine for a while, I think I learned double spacewalk before I learned mooncircles. For moons, you have to loft it. Follow the ken with your hand so you can catch it. For dub spacewalks, whip it faster. You can just whip it higher if you want but I find it harder that way. A lot of it is just muscle memory and timing. You just have to get used to seeing it a bunch of times to get used to it. I remember seeing lightning drops go around and I would have no idea how people did them until I started experimenting with them myself. Also try watching some edits with those type of tricks in them and studying their movements and timing. I think that played a big part for me in terms of getting the timing down. well for airplane 1.5 trade spike, act like you're going for a dub j but swap early. you should catch it in ken grip (that's how I was taught to go about it because I used to suck at tracking single rotations). some people spin the tama for the swap, but I just float it so that the hole goes from facing up and makes a half rotation to face downward and lands onto the spike. flip trade from house is the same thing. do a lighthouse flip, swap to the tama right as the ken is finishing the flip, and float the tama so that the hole comes towards you. for lunar tres, flick the corner of the cup. if you're right-handed, thats the north east corner. basically imagine that the cup is a square and flick the corner. from there its getting used to how the ken twists. its really gnarly at first. for barrel roll, flick either left or right only. if you can flick the ken and it stays flat without twisting, you're doing it right. I would also watch Uriel Sanchez's tutorials cause those helped me comprehend the trick as well as just experimenting on my own. Sorry if these descriptions don't really unlock the trick for y'all. It would be much easier to explain this in person. I'll try and give an overall summary though. For any sort of swap trick, I don't spin the tama. I try to float it so that the hole goes where I want it to. If I'm in plane and I want to do a 1.5 swap spike, I will flick the ken and swap when it comes around to ken grip and then I will float the tama upward. The hole goes from straight up, makes a half rotation towards me and ends up being straight down, aka on the spike. If I wanted to do a swap downspike, I would float the tama straight up without making it rotate towards me. A big part of this is the tama, so practice the motion of rotating the hole towards you a lot. I did it over and over just in my hand, catching it and re-doing it a bunch of times
The longer you linger on the tama, the worse it gets (one of the fingers might linger too long, causing the tama to rotate). So grab the ken as quickly as you can, and be sure to pull the whole jig straight up.
For me, when doing regular lighthouse trade spike it was a lot of elbow action. For lighthouse trade downspike I took that elbow movement out of the equation and just tried lofting the lighthouse so the hole stayed facing upward as I grabbed the ken. Like @azleonhart said too, grab the ken as quickly as you can
I recommend using kendama with a silk/rubber paint. It is good to have some grip so you can concentrate just on doing downspike. Also it can be harder to do it on sticky paint because it sticks a bit to your fingers and it gives a spinning motion to tama. And as my friends said, just throw it gently straight up, catch it, and downspike. Hope it helped
Try keeping the base cup and tama in contact for as long as possible. Then when the whole thing is rising slide your hand up toward the ken, then grab the ken off the tama for the down! Same principle for regular lighthouse tradespike. This is what works for myself as it seems to stop the tama spinning all over the place.
Throw the ken higher and lightly pop the tama up, try doing this slowly, you'll be surprised on how slow you can get. Also if you haven't seen it yet, sweets kendamas tutorial helps
just started learning these myself. can you do a regular downsling? if not, I would recommend learning those first to help you understand the motion of slinging the ken around one of your fingers. But for thumbslingers, put your thumb on the bottom of the small cup and push down. The ken should whip around your thumb. I'm still learning these so it may not be the most helpful, but that's the information I was given. I will update if I figure out another method
thanks for the reply Nick, yes I can do a regular downsling. with a normal downsling, for a right hander, my small cup is facing me and I sling away from myself. for thumbslinger, is it the same position but sling towards myself??
Yeah towards yourself. I'm not too sure how it's supposed to feel exactly, mine isn't "slinging" around my hand but it looks like it is on film, so I'm guessing that's how it's supposed to be done