Comment by vunderba
14 hours ago
Longtime juggler here.
Outside of more complicated tricks like the claw and other specialized patterns, the most common juggling patterns (such as the cascade [1]) don’t rely as much on pure handeye coordination as they do on maintaining a consistent, even toss. The key is throwing each ball so it rises and falls in a predictable arc, so it lands approximately in the same spot where your other hand is waiting to catch it.
When I teach complete beginners, I actually start with a set of special handkerchiefs. They fall more slowly than balls, which gives learners more time to react and makes it much easier to see and follow the path of each object through the air.
My favourite technique is after the initial two ball crosses was for me to stand in for their left (or non dominant) hand.
You stand slightly behind your pupil and get them to put their left hand behind their back and you put your left hand about where theirs should be. You give them one ball in their right hand and then you start the pattern with two balls.
Most people are amazed to find themselves juggling at this point. Yes, you are correcting their mistakes but it gives a real feeling of juggling for them. Most people manage 10 catches quite easily at this point.
Once they have the hang of that swap sides. This one is harder, don't do it too long before setting them off on 3 and they can practice themselves from here on.
I have taught 100s of people to juggle like that :-)
Some of us had a juggling party at a lake. All amateurs, i.e. few could manage much with clubs. An international juggling award winner (don't remember more than that) found out, joined us, and had a number of us partner juggling flaming torches pretty quickly, and kept pushing us into more and more techniques. The quality of the coach matters!
That's a neat approach! It's not really the same, but it kind of reminds me of an interview they did with Michael Moschen (the guy who performed the contact juggling scene in Jim Henson’s movie Labyrinth). He talked about how difficult it was because he had to thread his arms underneath David Bowie’s, so he couldn’t actually see the acrylic ball while he was doing the contact juggling.
Well worth 6 minutes of anyone's time watching him do The Triangle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjHoedoSUXY
A long time ago (pre-internet) I heard a normal person can learn to juggle in 1 day. It took me 2 days, but I learned to juggle 3 balls. But soon I realized what you said, the need for a consistent toss. Not sure of the reason, but I always make some errors with physical movements, they are never perfect. Even with typing, no matter how much I exercise, I cannot get bellow ~3% errors. Wondering if this is some kind of genetic effect, and how many ppl have similar issues.
I haven’t tried juggling for decades but I did manage to teach myself basic three-ball juggling when I was at university (any excuse to avoid revising!)
I think it took me a couple of weeks though. I’m a bit malcoordinated for that sort of thing in general. I think you’re right that there’s some sort of natural aptitude that not everybody has. Fortunately basic juggling is just about easy enough that almost any idiot can do it.
I, too, make unpreventable physical errors all the friggin time.
For instance, I attempted to upvote your comment but initially downvoted it. Sigh.
This made me laugh. The number of times I’ve Admiral Ackbar fat-fingered the flag button when I just wanted to hide a post on HN is almost too many to count at this point.
It's been a while since I taught anyone to juggle, but I generally disrecommended scarf juggling. It's fine if you want some quick validation, but the hand movements are so different from balls/bags that I don't think the skills are transferable.
I prefer the method described in the original post. Just start with one ball and get that right, then two, then three. It's a bit like the Karate Kid, though. Students don't find it as satisfying because they want to jump ahead before they've got the movement down.
The way I taught myself to juggle was something I don't see very often in guides, but I think works quite well — I taught myself to juggle two balls in one hand, until I could do it with both hands, and then three ball juggling with two hands was just doing the exact same thing, but crossing.
Yeah I have wondered about that as a method. You can even just go two balls in one hand, then switch to the other side and back, and that's almost the 3 ball pattern.
I’m very amazed by this site linked in the Wikipedia: https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/3balltricks/Cascade.htm...
Supposedly from 2014, but looks a fair bit older.
When I learned to juggle (which I've forgotten), it was with beanbags, because they don't bounce away when you drop them.
But where's the fun in that? Chasing the balls is half the challenge!
Seriously, knowing the balls are going to roll away if you drop them gives you some incentive to do it right. I think I used tennis balls early on.
My dad bought me a kit of beanbags that looked like globes when I was 9 or 10.
My incentive to do it right was "I want to juggle." I'm glad I didn't have to chase them around, what a waste of time.
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Every time I got better at dancing I got better at juggling too. In my folk psychology, juggling is a partially-attached extension of your hands, so it’s just weird dancing.
If you think of it like 3 jobs you have to do simultaneously everything falls apart. Internalizing the three balls as a single process that you are participating in makes it a lot more manageable.
Of course the only way to get there is some 10s of hours of practice
Yeah I could see that. I think that because dance is so heavily reliant on proprioceptive abilities, it makes sense that there would be some overlap with juggling.
I wonder if juggling positive buoyancy balloons upside down would develop skills transferable to right side up. You can make those as slow as you want. When jugglers juggle balls against the floor I guess they don't start from scratch.
Lol. I’ve juggled non-buoyant, air filled balloons but because of their elasticity they don’t exactly settle into your hand when they land.
In my juggling routine, one of the things I do is transition to lying on my back face up while continuing to juggle. I’m throwing the balls straight up above my head while lying perfectly flat, which feels pretty weird. So I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to be physically upside down while juggling.
Yeah I never really mastered a consistent throw - it's just not how my brain works. I got as a pretty shakey 4 ball shower and that was it.
Oh waw, I had totally forgotten about the handkerchiefs. But this is indeed how I was first thaught juggling when I was a kid. Thanks for the trip down the memory lane!
Any recommendations for youtube lessons?
I love Taylor Tries
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGV8mtb7t-4PuziHauottOfqp...
Great teaching style and a fantastic juggler
https://archive.org/details/Juggling-Step-By-Step-1987
Practice against a wall with tennis balls, it’ll take a day.
I don't recommend tennis balls for a beginner: they bounce everywhere, and you'll spend most of your time chasing the balls rather than juggling. Cheap juggling balls are around 10$.
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could you please link the beginner handkerchiefs?
The ones I have are pretty old, and I got them from a local store that doesn’t exist anymore. They’re kind of slightly weighted, for lack of a better term almost like a foxtail toy.
You could probably just use standard juggling scarves and get much of the same effect. Renegade Juggling is probably one of the better places to buy juggling equipment.
https://renegadejuggling.com/products/juggling-scarf-23-inch...
I learned using plastic bags. Probably not as uniform in their motion as handkerchiefs, but worked to get the pattern down before moving to balls.