Around

Arounds are tricks that involve turning the pen in a disc motion around fingers, body parts or other objects.

They are potentially the oldest pen spinning trick, and one of the most versatile and developed, ranging from the simple Thumbaround to the difficult Armaround or Pun Kan.

Variations

Diagram of standard tilt, as in arounds, and reverse tilt, as in backarounds.

Arounds are separated based on normal or reverse direction, plus their tilt of the disc the ends follow when the trick is performed. Standard tilt has the disc tilted towards the palm on the palm side of the hand, and reverse tilt away from the palm on the palmar side. When arounds are performed palm down, their direction of rotation relative to the Earth is reversed, with clockwise becoming anti-clockwise and vice-versa.

Standard tilt

Thumbaround

One of the oldest tricks. The pen is pushed with a finger to turn 360 degrees around the thumb before being caught. Originally performed between slots T12-T1 and pushed with the middle finger. The reverse is typically pushed with the curled index finger in the catch position of the original thumbaround.

Extended Thumbaround

A very common hybrid of a thumbaround and a bust notated as such: Thumbaround T2 ~ Bust 12. The trick transitions from a standard tilt to the reverse tilt and has a total of 1.5 rotations.

Fingerarounds

The pen turns 1.0 rotations around a finger as it's pushed by a finger closer to the pinky side.

Fingeraround 0.5

The pen turns 0.5 rotations around a finger before it is stopped and caught by a finger closer to the thumb side.

Spread

A spread is a palm up fingerless around that makes contact with the knuckles (i.e. backhand). Similar to how continuous fingerless busts are performed, spreads are performed with the pen hitting the knuckles in order to gain vertical height as opposed to fingerless arounds which only spin on them. It is for this reason that some spinners incorrectly see spreads as aerials.

Powerpass

See also: Powerpass

Reverse tilt

Backaround

Like the standard arounds but the tilt is in the opposite direction for a given hand orientation. Palm down around reverses tilt away from the back of the hand, while backarounds tilt towards the back of the hand when the trick starts. Backarounds have the opposite direction to arounds, as historically the backaround was considered to be a separate, individual trick without a reverse.

Bust

A Bust is a common name for a reverse Backaround. Continuous fingerless busts around the index finger are performed with the pen hitting the middle finger in order to gain enough vertical height to spin around the index finger. They are a very common finisher.

Thumb Backaround

Once confusingly called "Thumb lever", it follows the same rule as the backaround. The normal direction is reversed and it uses the opposite tilt for hand orientation. Originally performed palm up only. Rarely performed in reverse.