I am cross posting this from a reddit thread I did, and I did some searching to see if this has come up before here but didn't see anything through the search feature. What are some tips and "aha" moments you've discovered/had while working on new tricks? For example I have been working on Lunars for the past few nights. When I first started I wasn't getting enough pull on the ken, so I was trying to catch it really low (belly button level). My success with these low pulls was, well, low. I realized this and started to try and pull the ken a bit higher (eye/chin level) and I noticed that I was able to land them more consistently as I had more room to go down with the ken and cushion the landing. I'm still not consistent but it is getting better!
I had a good aha moment the other week, after doing sweets special a little while I found (very accidentally) the sweet spot to pull that up to lunar rather than spike it, and it's such a tiny difference have been able to do it pretty consistently after! I think what's helped me, both perform and think of new tricks, is the idea that 'learning from your mistakes' can, and I think should, be taken very literally. Personally I'm of the mind set that if you can do something accidentally once on kendama, you can learn to do it consistently over time and if you fail a trick but something else happens you weren't expecting, but looked and feels good then see if you can do that again, and voila, a new trick. Another tip I like, is that 90% of tama grip tricks need the perfect pull, from airplane to bordersbalance, that pull up is the crux of the trick, hone the hell out of that. you'll find some 'aha' moments in most of those tricks when you find the sweetspot for the pull, and with the more basic ones like airplane you'll start finding multiple sweet spots and be able to pull it up in multiple different ways, that can aid a variety of flows, in my opinion.