Learn Kendama Hole Control

What is Hole Control

Hole Control is the ability to control and accurately predict where the hole of the tama is while performing tricks with the kendama. Mastering hole control helps you spike to spike tricks easily and with confidence.

How to Learn Hole Control

How’s it going I’m going to teach you about kendama hole control, Hole control is an essential part of learning kendama.

In the very beginning, it’s a part of kendama that you don’t know you’re going to be needing yet, but it’s going to be very crucial in learning every trick from here on out.

So when you’ve been doing Basic Kendama tricks, like big cups and and bottom cup you probably haven’t been worrying about where the hole is quite yet. You’ve just been pulling it up being stoked lading it on one of the cups and that’s great! Now the next thing you want to do to level up your kendama game is, learning how to control the hole of the tama is while its flying through the air. It can be done with these two movements described below.

Step 1

First movement: We need to go from the left side of our body to the right, with a simple pull up to make sure that the hole turns just enough so that you’re looking at it. You want the hole to be looking straight up or slightly at you. This will give you a very good chance of landing it on the spike. So here’s how we’re going to do it.

We hold the cup with our thumb, facing up much like we’re going to do big cup. Now, instead of just going down and straight up what I want you to do is align the Ken and tama hanging down with your left leg. If you are playing left handed align the tama with your right leg.

So with the ken and tama in the right hand align it with your left leg then, bend your knees and instead of pulling straight up, I want you to pull up and to the right about 45 degrees. This will get the tama spinning to the right so it lands with the hole facing you.

Step 2

Now, here’s the second step In order to spike the trick consistently. You need to make your hand pull back You’re simply going to be tilting the kendama backwards motion like holding a fishing rod with one hand and jigging up.

Just a little bit to give it a little bit of tilt so the tama gets rotation, and I want you to have it land directly on the Spike pretending the spike is your thumb once again just like when we did the spike tutorial.

So once again we’re going to start the tama on our left leg. We’re going to go down-up, pulling it to the right, and now I need to bend my knees, tilt my arm Back, and let this ball fall in the spike.

Now you notice, I didn’t stab the Tama. That is one thing. That is a common mistake of someone who is not learning right away. So when you go to pull up, try not to stab for the Tama, It may feel natural to stab at first, But I promise it’s going to make it easier on you.

Hole Control Tips

The biggest tip I can give is, to learn to control the hole in Tama to land where the spike is, and let it fall on naturally

Another tip is to start being aware of the eyelet hole in the tama. You can always have the eyelet hole, which is a small hole where the string enters the tama.  This shows you where the Tama hole to spike is. So if you can’t see the Tama hole, you can see the eyelet and you know the big hole is on the other side.

Every time the tama is in a different, weird spot, there’s going to be a different way to get out of it and you’re going to have to just experiment to figure out what works best for you. But for me most times I like to do an earth turn or a half an earth turn to get it back to spike.

So if I pull it up and my strings facing this way, I know the holes on the other side so I’m going to turn my wrist A little bit and give it just a little bit more of a turn back, So it does a little flip and you can get it right back to the spike. Lets say I pull it up and the hole is directly underneath me.

If you feel like it, you could throw it straight up and down and turn your spike up and try to get it on like that. What I’m saying is, if you don’t pull your tama up perfect every time, don’t use that as a discouragement not to spike it.

Just use it as a chance to get better and learn how to spike it from different positions, But if you’re doing hole control right, You should be able to pull it up to see the hole every time and to the spike.

Hole control is very crucial in your kendama career and it’s something you’re going to want to practice. Often Practicing tricks is something that is definitely going to help you up your hole control game. So get out there and start practicing.

Read More: How to Hold A Kendama!