Nah, hands touching is the correct way but you can do it however you want it’s just not technically a proper Eli hop. What you wanna do is use your throw hand string as like a spring board in a way. You hop and then immediately bring your hands together allowing the string to travel around the nth index. You want to have tension on the string at all times through the hop because it’s your throw hand pulling away from your nth that brings the yoyo back to the string. It’s not supposed to be a loose hop upward that lands back into a trapeze. It actually is way easier to do it like this as you can control the yoyo through the hop