Difficulty: Easy

Safety Warning: Always make sure you have enough space around you, and be careful not to hit anything or anyone with your diabolo – including yourself!

Alan shows you how to do another brilliant diabolo trick – the diabolo magic knot!

First, you need to make sure your diabolo is spinning nice and fast. When it’s spinning well, point your left-hand stick straight across your body so that it’s pointing over to the right.

Bring the right-hand stick up and around behind the left-hand stick so that it goes over the top of the left-hand stick, bringing the string with it. Bring it down in front – now it will be looped over the top of the horizontal left-hand stick. Continue so that the string goes down and around the axle of your diabolo from the right-hand side.

Then, bring it back around, up and over the left-hand stick from the front this time, and then around the diabolo axle from the left-hand side.

Your left-hand stick always stays in the same position, with your right-hand stick doing the journeying.

To release the diabolo, throw it up in the air and point both sticks slightly upwards – this lets the strings slip off the sticks and releases the knot. Alternatively, you can point both sticks down towards the ground to release the diabolo back to its original position.

It sounds tricky, but Alan shows you the diabolo magic knot a number of times. Watch in slow motion, and from an over-the-shoulder view, so that you can get the hang of it!

You can see all our diabolo videos by tagging ‘diabolo’ or ‘manipulation’ on our Youth Circus Home Edition library page here.

Difficulty: Easy

Safety Warning: Make sure you have plenty of room, especially when throwing and catching the diabolo!

Alan shows you how to do diabolo stick grinds, moving the diabolo from the string to one of your sticks and keeping it spinning so it stays in place!

This is a great basic trick for students starting to move beyond just keeping the diabolo spinning on the string. You can practice at your own pace, and when you’re confident you can make the trick more complex!

First, Alan shows you how to move the diabolo from your string to the stick in your off hand. Once you have the diabolo spinning smoothly on the stick, hold your sticks at a right angle to one another, as Alan demonstrates. Raise your main hand up above your other hand so the diabolo rolls onto one stick and angle this stick slightly downwards so that the diabolo stays on it.

Alan then shows you some variations to make your diabolo stick grinds more complex, such as hopping the diabolo from one stick to another, or catching the grind from a throw.

Remember, it takes practice, and you’ll have to experiment to see what works for you!

Alan demonstrates with a solid-axle diabolo, but you can also use a triple-bearing axle diabolo.

If you need to brush up on the basics before mastering this trick, check out our Diabolo Basics tutorial.

You can view all our tutorials here.