Throw and catch

A throw is the whole of diabolo in one move. Everything later is a longer version of it: the diabolo leaves the string, something happens in the air, and it lands spinning straight. Get this clean and the rest is detail.

Before you throw

Speed first. A diabolo that is not spinning fast will tilt in the air no matter how good the throw is, and there is nothing you can do about it once it has left. Accelerate until the diabolo hums and stays level on the string with no correction from you.

Stand with the string across the diabolo’s axle, sticks at hip height, shoulders square. The diabolo sits on your right if you are right-handed.

The throw

1. Drop both hands slightly, then lift them apart in one movement. Both hands, at the same time, apart rather than up.
2. The string does the work. You are not flicking the diabolo upward, you are pulling the string out from under it, and the diabolo goes up because the string leaves faster than it does.
3. Stop your hands where they end up. Do not follow the diabolo with the sticks.

Start low. Knee height is a real throw, and a low throw you can repeat is worth more than a high one you catch by luck.

The catch

Put one stick under the falling diabolo so the string meets the axle, and let the diabolo push your hand down as it lands. That drop is what absorbs it. A stiff hand bounces the diabolo straight back off the string.

Watch the axle, not the cups. The cups are wide and distracting, and the axle is the part you have to hit.

What goes wrong

It tilts in the air. Almost always speed, not the throw. Accelerate more before you go up.

It lands and stops dead. Your hands went up rather than apart, so the string dragged across the axle on the way out and took the spin with it.

It shoots off to one side. Your hands lifted unevenly. The diabolo follows the higher hand.

You catch it and it wobbles. You caught it stiff. Let the catching hand fall with the diabolo for a few centimetres.

When it is working

You can throw and catch ten times in a row, at knee height, without the diabolo tilting and without a rescue. That is the point at which throwing higher starts to make sense, and the point at which the tricks that begin mid-air become possible.