Gauging Difficulty

by Crazy Ivan

As I'm sure many of you know, I put a new trick on You-Tube every weekday.  Each week we'll select a them and then I'll put up videos for 5 different tricks in that theme, each one a bit more difficult than the last one.

That works out well because it means that beginners will usually get at least one trick they can do each week, but veterans will probably get at least one new move that will challenge them each week.  Of course, with some themes there aren't any beginner moves and for some there aren't any really advanced moves, but usually it works out really well.

But sometimes I'm left with making pretty arbitrary calls between similar moves.  Once I select the theme for the week I'll usually figure out which 5 moves I want to use and then order them by difficulty.  Usually that's pretty easy, but sometimes you really have to scratch your head.

A perfect example of that came up twice last week.  The theme was Foot Variations and the five moves were the Shoe-Snap, the Step Over, the Gui, the Osis and the Pendulum.  Ultimately, that was the order that they showed up in, but that order was the subject of a couple of debates: (a) which is easier, the Shoe-Snap or the Step Over and (b) which is harder, the Osis or the Pendulum.

Of course, "hardness" is a relative measurement and it changes from person to person.  I got a lot of feedback from people this week telling me I'd gotten it wrong and that the Osis was much more difficult than the Pendulum.  I even had people telling me that the Gui was harder than the Osis so there were plenty of disagreements to go around.

And, in their defense, all of these people were correct.  For them, the Osis is harder than the Pendulum (or the Gui is harder than the Osis).  The relative difficulty of a move is different from person to person.  For somebody who is naturally flexible and really thin, a move like the Yoga is probably easier than a move like the Mantis.  For somebody who isn't very flexible and a bit thicker, the Mantis is probably going to be way easier than the Yoga.

In Myachi, we're often left to divide Myachi tricks up into "echelons" like Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced.  A spectacular failure to do this correctly can be seen right now on the new myachi.com where tricks were seemingly randomly fitted into various difficulty ranks.  Even on the DVD where Myachi was in direct control there are some pretty questionable inclusions in the beginner and advanced levels.

Clearly, there are moves that we can all agree are beginner tricks (Cradle, Cold Fusion, Trampoline, Hulk, etc.) and moves that we can all agree are advanced (Crypto, Jedi, Space Cowboy, Double Swordfish, etc.), but if you had to rank those specific moves in order of difficulty, it would be much tougher.  Is a Cradle harder or easier than a Hulk?  Is a Crypto harder or easier than a Jedi?  Clearly there is no precise answer to this one.

This is the position that I often find myself in while ordering the Tricks of the Day.  I usually know which trick should go first and which should go last, but a lot of times those middle ones are real head-scratchers.  I will admit freely that I don't always get it right and that much of the time there probably is no "right".  I honestly don't stress over it all that much.

There is an important element to this whole thing.  See, I talked to some kids the other day on Facebook and they told me that sometimes if the Wednesday trick is too hard they don't bother trying the Thursday or Friday trick.  I suppose that makes sense.  If you can't get the trick I present on Wednesday then it stands to reason that you'll have even more trouble with the Thursday and Friday moves.

But this isn't always true.  When I judge the difficulty level I try to think of the "average" person who isn't particularly flexible, who doesn't have particularly broad wrists or forearms, that doesn't have unusually fast hands, that doesn't have unusually developed foot skills and that doesn't have any other natural advantage to any particular move.  The thing is, though, that nobody's average.  Everyone will have some advantage in some type of trick.

So to those people who don't try the late in the week tricks, I say have at it.  First of all you have nothing to lose, but secondly, you may find that you're one of those lucky, freakish individuals that nails a Clipper Delay the first time they try it.  You may be far more flexible than you realized or you may just have a much better than average catch.

And to those that wrote in to tell me that the Pendulum was easier than the Osis, I offer a shrug and a nod.  I'll never get the order right enough that it suits everybody, but I'll continue to do my best.  And part of doing your best is being humble enough to accept it when people tell you got something wrong.  So keep the feedback coming, both positive and negative.