Juggling thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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This is principally directed at OpalCat, seeking to take advantage of her apparently considerable knowlege of the subject. Others are, of course, invited to participate.

I’m a fairly new juggler - got started about a year ago. I’ve been juggling beanbag balls mostly - no clubs or rings. I can do a number of the more or less standard 3-ball patterns, including a shower (either hand), Mills Mess and Rubensteins Revenge. I’m not all that solid with any of these - about 90 seconds is as long as I go without a drop, unless I stick to really basic stuff. I know I should spend more time practicing (I typically do about 20 minutes a day).

I’m working on some 4-ball patterns. I can do a 4-ball right-hand shower, but rarely for more than 20 throws (it seems to demand about 8 times the precision of a 3-ball shower). I can flash 4 balls of a 5-ball cascade, though not with any real consistency.

Here are some questions:
What is your level of experience?

What is your preferred size/construction/brand for juggling balls?

What patterns do you recommend for progress? (I’m particularly interested in working up to a 5-ball cascade.)

You mentioned attending juggling events - which ones are the best? Are they helpful for beginners?

Any recommended websites?

Any other tips?

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I started out juggling back in high school at the age of 15. At 22, I got interested in magic and juggling sort of fell by the wayside, but I can still do most of what I was able to do when I was younger. I can do 3 balls, rings, clubs, as well as some basic club passing. I can also do devil sticks basic contact juggling, and cigar boxes. I can do some basic tricks with 3 balls, but I can’t do anything more than 3 though.

For juggling balls, you can’t do any better than the silicon balls manufactured by Frank Radke’s “House of Fakini”. The have superb grip, good weight, and excellent bounce (He doesn’t have a web site, but you can find out his contact information through a Google search).

For books, the best book I’ve ever seen is, “The Complete Juggler” by Dave Finnigan. It covers EVERYTHING, but I think it is no longer in print. There may be others by him though.

Unfortunately I can’t answer any of your other questions as I have pretty much stagnated in my juggling since I turned to learning and performing magic.

I hope what I’ve posted here will help.

Good luck!

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My favorite 3-ball pattern is Mills Mess. I haven’t actually learned Rubenstein’s Revenge though I want to. I don’t actually do much ball juggling anymore, is the problem, and most of the other jugglers I know are the same way. I do mostly club juggling and actually mostly with other people. Most of my energy goes into learning new multi-person passing patterns.

The balls I currently have are, I believe, 3" round beanbags very similar to these Henry’s (mine are black and white).

I use Dubé European composite clubs. My boyfriend uses Renegade clubs. We usually use his because I have only 3 and he has 12, and when you’re passing it always helps to have all the clubs be similar. It can get a little funny if someone brings heavier or lighter or longer/shorter clubs into the pattern.

Festivals are always great for beginners and more advanced jugglers alike. The best one is the annual IJA festival, which is this year being held in Winston-Salem, NC. It’s in late July and runs for a week. You can get more info at the IJA website www.juggle.org

My boyfriend can juggle a lot better than me*, because his whole family juggles–both his parents, his two brothers, two uncles… and they’ve been going to weekly juggling club meetings and traveling to festivals for over 20 years. Me, I stopped juggling entirely for about a dozen years, and before that I really didn’t know other jugglers. I’d run into one here and there and learn something but virtually everything was just stuff I picked up on my own. It’s only been in the last several years that I started hanging out with other jugglers and doing things like passing. I love it though and wouldn’t stop now if you paid me.

I started juggling when I was 11, which would be, uh, 1983. As I said, I didn’t have anyone to learn from, and so I topped out skill-wise pretty quickly at 3 clubs, 3 rings, 4 balls (badly) and a few extra patterns like Mills Mess. Since I got back into juggling I’ve met Steve Mills by the way. Actually I’ve been around Rick Rubenstein though I don’t know if I officially “met” him. Steve Mills would recognize me but probably not know my name. I also know all of the Flying Karamazov Brothers, and actually hang out with one of them on vacation sometimes as his summer house is on the same lake as my family’s. (This is me and my boyfriend and Mark from FKB up at the lake). My point is that the juggling community is pretty close and if you start going to festivals you will meet and become friends with some amazing people. Last summer I watched America’s Got Talent and a bunch of jugglers I knew competed–like the guy on the left here, Ivan Pecel, who got into a big argument on tv with David Hasselhoff. Ha.

I have a page about juggling on my website (which has a video on it that I made to teach myself how to use Adobe Premiere video editing software last summer–it’s not a showcase of world class juggling, just some footage I took with a tripod and a digital camera so I’d have something to play with). If you want to see what juggling festivals can be like you can check out my galleries of juggling events here. The IJA ones are the big ones.

Websites: Ball patterns: Todd Strong’s page is great for breaking down various patterns and has a lot of animations.
the Internet Juggling Database has a lot of good links. And of course, the IJA website I mentioned before (juggle.org). You should join the IJA. You get a cool magazine and stuff.

*he can do 5 clubs or 7 balls for example.

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I took a five ball workshop from Dave Finnegan at the 2005 IJA festival in Davenport. He’s a great teacher. (If you go to the IJA festivals he is always there.)

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I started when I was 15, home sick one day and needed to amuse myself and at some point had an “aha” moment and taught myself how to juggle 3 balls.

Did it pretty seriously for about 4 years. I was decent with 5 balls and could do 6. Never got into numbers with clubs or rings. Torches, knives, tennis rackets, toilet plungers (they are tough, the balance is all wrong), bowling balls and bowling pins. Had a flower stick. Did a lot of chin balancing, I could keep a chopstick on end for quite a while.

I usually preferred beanbags since they don’t bounce off each other and they don’t roll away, I used Squeeze-Its back in the day. Also lacrosse balls (nice weight, cheap, good for bouncing tricks).

Patterns for progress…honestly the cascade is your best starting point, IMHO. All odd numbers work the same way, so learning 5 is just like learning 3, only faster. A couple of tips for 5 - get very good at 3 (consistent throws and catches, you don’t want to be constantly moving around because one hand is always tossing a little forward or something). Practice flashing 3, clap hands, catch, repeat - that will build some speed and accuracy.

Using 5 beanbags, do 5 throws and NO catches - just a nice 1,2,3,4,5 and let them all drop. Focus on good throws - watch where the beanbags land and you can tell whether they’re all on the same trajectory. Go SLOW, there’s no reason to rush the throws, this just makes you inaccurate; make the pace as slow as necessary to get all throws identical, then slowly pick up the pace. Do this a lot, then start adding one catch in (last throw), then keep building up from there. To get used to starting and stopping, hold 5 balls and then juggle three, keeping one extra in each hand.

Another good drill is to have a friend who is learning 5 stand in front of you with his hands out. You do five even throws and he just catches them. Goal is that he doesn’t have to move his hands much (if at all) so you know that your throws are accurate. Then he throws them back. When you’re getting good at this, the interval between his last throw and your first will get shorter and shorter and you’ll be able to constantly run a 5 ball cascade back and forth. I think I got this from Dave Finnigan’s book (also highly recommended, I still have my “first edition” autographed copy on the shelf). He has an excellent approach to teaching which I used when I worked Ren Faires, people didn’t believe me when I said that I could have them juggling in an hour even if they’d never tried it at all, worked like a charm. The whole “do the throws and don’t do any catching” drill is Dave’s and it works great.

Only went to one IJA festival, it was in San Jose in 1984, that was the year that Anthony Gatto (age about 9?) came onstage and just blew everyone away, very inspirational.

Check local colleges, there are plenty of formal and informal clubs, great way to practice and learn from other people. Also check your local YMCA.

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What is your level of experience?
I can do a basic 3-ball without paying much attention.
Not much more than that.

What is your preferred size/construction/brand for juggling balls?
LCI lycra covered silicone gel balls. Usually can be found in computer stores under “CyberGel Stress Ball” though I’ve seen them as “JugGels” recently, so I’m not the only one that likes them.

I have no useful input for the rest of the questions.

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Calling **Doc Cathode ** !

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Thanks for the info. I will definitely have to get Dave Finnigan’s book.

I’ve been meaning to get started with clubs - guess I should do so.

I would have loved to have seen Anthony Gatto at age 9 - I guess he was at that time already considered world-class. (I found this YouTube video from 1985)

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If you can juggle clubs, then you are ready to learn how to pass, and that’s when the great social element of juggling comes into play. Man is it fun.

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I’m a former professional, by which I mean I made a living at it for some years. I can do all the usual things most would expect from a performing juggler / unicyclist, a few unusual things, and a couple of things I’d suggest nobody try to copy.

I’m assuming the OP intends to juggle as a hobby. If so, I’d say you don’t need the most cutting edge silicon balls right away. However, they last a long time so I wouldn’t necessarily talk you out of them either. I’ve had a set of Dube silicons for twenty years and they’re still good.

When it comes to clubs I suggest one-piece plastic. The custom ones with mylar and such tend to wear out easily (unless you never drop them). I’ve had a set of Dube classic Americans for twenty years and only broken one - and that’s several thousand performances and Og knows how much practice.

Patterns… I love 3-ball juggling, and you’ll never run out of stuff to learn. Depends though on whether you’re juggling for yourself or if you want to show off. There are many difficult patterns and moves which are completely uninteresting to a viewer. And there are lots of simple stuff that look great.

In working up to 5, I believe it’s mostly repetition. Although I do remember practicing lots of three ball flashes with two hand claps before catching them. Not sure if that helped. Practicing 4 doesn’t necessarily help in doing 5 - some skills build on others, but many are very task specific. So if you want to do 5, I’d say practice 5. Took me two months to achieve a brief cascade with 5. However, I was 13 at the time - you might do better.

Also, I’d suggest you learn things with both hands. Especially stuff like behind-the-back throws, or anything that can be done on one side at at time.

Conventions… I haven’t been to one in 15 years. When I was performing I usually didn’t have time. But earlier when I was learning I enjoyed them a lot. You can pick up a lot there.

Have fun!

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I’ve been working on flashing 4 with a clap in the fifth slot - I can now cleanly catch all 4 balls about half the time. Do you think this isn’t a useful exercise?

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If you’re doing a 5-cascade pattern with a hole, that can probably be useful. I think that Mach Tuck meant that the standard 4 ball pattern really isn’t a stepping stone to 5 (it’s a stepping stone to 6) because the pattern (typically 2 in each hand) isn’t the same as the crossing cascade pattern.

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Just my opinion, but I don’t think that exercise is all that helpful.

Five balls is fast enough that doing anything else to simulate it doesn’t truly replicate the timing. Four with a hole is awkward - I suspect it would take me some practice to do even now, or it would quickly morph into an alternating cross. Either way, the timing isn’t the same as a true 5-ball cascade.

I’ve studied motor learning a good deal, and I’m fairly well convinced that “time-on-task” is the primary factor in learning most skills. Repetition is the key - but that repetition must be realistic. If a skill is too much modified, practicing it in that manner isn’t useful.

Having said that, I’d suggest the OP practice 5 with beanbags instead of bouncy balls. This will save time in picking them up and free up more time for productive practice.

There are certainly juggling moves that can be broken down into component parts for separate practice. But there isn’t much to break down in juggling five balls. There’s the initial hold and release, and maybe the slightly higher throw involved, but the crucial element is timing. And until we figure out how to decrease gravity for practicing jugglers, we can’t vary that aspect of the skill very much.

I’ve always been fascinated by the motor learning aspects of juggling, so this stuff is very interesting to me. Sorry if I’ve done a slight hijack.

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Mainly I was agreeing with you that 4 isn’t a good way to learn 5, but I added the part about 4-with-a-hole because while I’ve never tried it, I could concede that it at least could be done in roughly the same pattern and therefore I could see how it might help. The standard 4 pattern, IMO, is useless for learning 5.

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Well, I was flashing 3 with 2 claps, so it seemed to make sense to try flashing 4 with 1 clap. I was thinking of this as “5 with 2 holes” and then “5 with one hole”.

But I’m going to take MachTuck’s advice and go to work on 5. My initial attempts are slightly encouraging - it seems I can get the balls to go sort of where they should, and sometimes the height is consistent. With some months of practice, this might work.

I read where Anthony Gatto started juggling at age 6. Having learned 3 balls, he went to 4 simply by picking up another ball and juggling. Ditto with 5. To me, this is about as close to impossible as anything I can imagine.

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Well, we all know that Anthony Gatto is a freak of nature :slight_smile:

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Hey, a juggling thread!

I began learning 5 balls about this time last year. I started just trying to make 5 throws and 5 catches, then when I could do that I tried to make the 6th throw, and so on. Now I’ve got it fairly solid, though not as solid as I’d like.

The advice about concentrating on the throws and ignoring the catches is good; I found that helpful. I’m not sure about 4 ball patterns as practise for 5 - I find I’m better at 5 balls than I am with any of them, but that could just be because I’ve practised them less.

These days I mostly practise clubs. I’m working on backcrosses and some variants on 441 at the moment. I use Beard Circus Special clubs, but they fall apart pretty quickly, so I find myself taping up the ends quite often. They’re cheap, though, so they’re not a bad first set of clubs.

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I’m impressed. I’ve seen the FKB a few times, I never imagined anybody actually meeting them. And this from someone whose best 3-ball pattern is “the drop.”

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Here’s another question: What are some of the most visually appealing 3-ball patterns? (I’d guess that most lists would include Mills Mess.)

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Here’s a topic that took some time for me to get my head around early in my career. As I said in an earlier post, there are lots of juggling tricks that are hard to do and feel great to master and that an audience could care less about.

I started out with a very difficult 3-ball routine which I gradually pared down. After taking out all the stuff I was doing to impress myself or other jugglers, I found these got the best responses from actual audiences:

  • Standard cascade really high
  • Shower, followed by a box (only works visually if it is very symetrical)
  • Yo-yo, and some variations
  • Waterfall
  • Overhead
  • Any bouncing pattern
  • Mills’ Mess
  • Multi-plexing

You asked for patterns, but the other stuff with balls that got a big response were body rolls and bounces. My headrolls were pretty clean, and that always went over well.

If I were still juggling for fun I’d learn some of the Mills’ Mess variations, but they weren’t a good time investment when I was performing for a living.