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. Arounds are the most common tricks used as combo finishers.

History

The arm around was invented by Pyralux and was originally called the 'arm bak', but it would be Spinnerpeem who popularized the trick and gave it the popular name Pun Kan (translated from Thai as 'arm coil') after performing it five times continuously in his final round combo of the Pen Spinning World Cup 2010.

The backaround originated from David Weis in 1999 as an attempt to perform continuous arounds without using the fingers to push the pen. The reason the normal of the backaround spins opposite of the standard tilt around is because he found it easier to perform arounds continuously in the "reverse direction" as stated by Weis himself, later on calling it the 'backaround'.

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 palmar 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. The fingers that the pen goes around are added as a prefix in the notation (e.g. indexaround 12-12, midringaround 34-23).

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. The notation may be confusing as the 0.5 suffix denotes the number of times the pen rotates around a finger while notation for something like midbak 1.5 denotes the number of topspin rotations.

Neosonic

An around 0.5 reverse into a thumb slot or the thumb flap.

The name neosonic was coined by Kam as a reference to beginners failing to understand the movement of sonic and doing this trick instead. The original neosonic was a MA rev 23-Tf, which is the trick that Kam had described in Pentix and that Szeto had explained in Iluvitar some years prior, but since then, IA rev 12-Tf has become the de-facto neosonic when no slots are specified.

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 around them. It is due to the added verticality that some spinners incorrectly see spreads as aerials.

The term spread originates in Japanese notation. There was some confusion regarding this trick name from various videos on youtube. Jamie Enns explained in the UPSB v3 how in Japan it’s used for two different kinds of tricks, and that since English notation has enough names for palm down fl arounds (bak, bust, fl around) we should only use it for the other type. [178] In Korean, 스프레드 (Spread) has the same meaning as in English.

Fxxk

The fxxk is a variation of the spread, usually done with the fingers more or less straight and palm up, with the pen rolling on the back of the fingers before being thrown to the air. The most common variation is middle fxxk. It’s from that finger positioning that the name comes from.

Armaround

The Armaround or Arm Around, sometimes referred to by the Thai name Pun Kan, is an around trick where the pen makes 1.0 rotations around the forearm. The trick is almost exclusively used in conjunction with other FL tricks or as a finisher in certain technical spinning combos.

Powerpass

See also: Powerpass

Reverse tilt

Backaround

Shortened to simply 'bak', backarounds are 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.

Midbak 1.5s and pinkybak are very common finishers with the former being an iconic staple for aesthetic spinning, especially for styles that utilize the MX.

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.

Tutorials

Thumbaround tutorial by Eso.

Thumbaround reverse tutorial by Eso.

Around tutorial (Index, Middle, Ring) by Ktrinh93.

Backaround tutorial by Ktrinh93.

Bust tutorial by Ktrinh93.

Multiple bust tutorial by VicGotGame.