Dogfish Juggling

Despite their short lengths my practices have been going very well lately. 

I’ve started doing a few things a bit differently–nothing to dramatic but some positive changes nonetheless.

I am still focusing on four balls and three clubs during my regular practices. I maintain my goal to eventually move on to five balls and four clubs in the near future, but I find I work much better if I don’t have any sort of goal held too clearly in my head. 

I am having a lot of fun working with the numbers I’m on right now and I don’t plan to change that any time soon. I want my skills to be as solid as possible before I try to move on, and I am very content to work on that. 

I’ve even started working more three ball stuff into what I consider my "practice" time–as opposed to "just for fun" or unstructured juggling. I’ve really started to step up the pace and intensity of my claw (overhand) catches. I can run with a tight, fast cascade (traditional and reverse) pattern. I’ve just started putting in a few tricks, like over the top and under the arm, into those patterns and I like what I see so far. 

More difficult–but much better looking–is the 423 pattern. This is an indescribably easy pattern using normal catches, but it becomes unfathomably difficult with the claw. It’s because the throws are different. 

423 works like this (Note: hand 1 starts off holding props 1 and 3): 

• Beat 1–(4)–Prop one is the four toss–straight up from hand 1 (to be caught by hand 1 on beat 4). This begins the pattern. 

• Beat 2:–(2)–Prop two is held in hand–a two "toss" in siteswap notation

• Beat 3: –(3)–Prop three is tossed with a three toss from hand 1 to hand 2 (caught on beat 5)

• Beat 4: –(4)–Prop one is caught by hand 1, Prop two is tossed in a four toss (to be caught on beat 7). This begins the second iteration of the pattern. 

• Beat 5:–(2)– Prop three is caught by hand 2, prop 1 is held by hand 1. The pattern continues from here. Beat 6 will be identical to beat 3 and so on. 

One thing to bear in mind when thinking about this is the (2) beats (beats two and five above) are nigh-imperceptable. This is a very fast pattern, although when it is juggled it does not appear to be. This is because, as you might notice from the above description, one hand rests while the other hand works double time. 

While this alternating hand intensity gives the pattern a simplistic look when juggled normally, if done with claw catches it looks very, very fast and mechanical. But it also makes it different because your hands have to make two different throws in a row–which is difficult for me at this point when catching and tossing from an overhand position. 

I think 423 with normal catches and throws is an excellent beginners pattern, as it can really develop autonomy in a juggler’s hands. 

I am going to cut this post off here, because I have a few things I need to take care of at the paper. More to come on how I have integrated this into my practice and my other three-ball training. 

The spring sports schedule is insane. The past few weeks have been a constant scramble and there is no sign of anything letting up in the near future. Right now I am taking what can only be described as an ill-advised break from my jv baseball story to write this. 

Despite the insanity I have gotten in a bit of practice, though not nearly as much as I would like to. I do have a few interesting developments and ideas from my last few practices which I would really like to flush out here, but I just don’t have the time. Tennis games start soon and I have to get team pictures. But I am going to post part two of my juggling column, just to get something up on the site. *sigh*

(This may be an unedited version)

Out clubbing, juggler’s style. Part two. 

By Luke Eden

I wrote last week about some of my experiences with juggling. Wrote how, until quite recently I’d never met a juggler better than myself, about how I’d really never even seen anyone else juggle until I attended the Atlanta Jugglers Association Groundhog Day Jugglers Festival. 

Going into the festival, my fondest hope was to meet a juggler more talented than myself. 

The first thing I saw when I walked into the convention center for the event was a group of about six people passing more clubs than I could count. 

I can’t describe how extreme the difference between seeing something like this in person was from seeing it on a 15-inch computer screen. 

I just stood there, slack-jawed and staring blankly for about 10 minutes as the group ran through about a dozen different passing patterns, alternating their throws and positions, rotating and moving during the pattern, and doing things with clubs I’d never even heard of. 

As I eventually recovered from my initial awe, a budding excitement grew within me. 

Then I turned around to put my unicyle amidst a pile of juggling props and, quite literally, dropped my balls.  

I rubbed my eyes. He was still there. No one I knew, or whose name I even learned, but there he stood, inscrutable and casually juggling a set of five clubs behind his back. As I groped blindly on the floor for my props, my eyes locked on a juggling feat more difficult than I can imagine, I slowly began to realize the depth of talent and skill for which I was in store. 

I can’t even begin to describe everything that went on during the festival. I opted out of the gladiator competition (a “last man standing” contest where a mass of club jugglers try to bat down, steal or otherwise interrupt each other’s pattern), choosing instead to get a crash-course on five-ball juggling from an AJA member named Pam. 

I spent about an hour with a kid named Matt who couldn’t have been more than 12, as I learned the simplest of club-passing patterns. (The knot on my forehead and bone-bruises on my hands are just now fading.) 

An amazing devil-stick performer named Kai showed me some really interesting three-ball tricks, and I’ve finally begun to understand the illusive Burke’s Barrage. 

I even met the founders of Unicyle.com and learned, much to my surprise, that they are based in Marietta. I picked up a set of rings and some new balls from one of the vendors at the show and came dangerously close to buying another unicyle. 

Yet more than any prop I brought home or trick I learned, what I got from the festival was a new sense of what I could accomplish. As much as the videos I’d seen had opened my eyes, somehow they never seemed quite real. 

Seeing people all around me doing things I thought would take me years to learn made me realize how utterly possible everything was. Just seeing a seven-ball pattern or a run of five clubs opened my eyes to what I could do. 

One of the biggest stumbling blocks I’d faced in my club juggling was trying to throw what jugglers call “doubles.” As the name might suggest, this means throwing a club higher in the air with a faster spin so that, instead of turning 360-degrees in the air, the club makes a full 720-degree rotation. 

I’d never been able to do this before the festival. I could, on occasion, manage to get a double spin on one club, but I would inevitably fail, pummeling myself with hard plastic and unyielding wood as the other clubs rained down atop my head. 

I didn’t ask anyone for help with doubles at the convention, although I feel sure I could have. Instead, I watched. I watched jugglers doing back-crosses and chin balances, triple throws and pirouettes. And as I watched, I juggled, and slowly but surely I felt the space. 

I became aware of the club in my hand and could feel the exact moment when I needed to shift my focus and make a high throw. It was slow going, and as seems to always be the case with clubs, it was often painful. Bad throws have a tendency to find some new and previously unbruised part of the body to strike as they fall. 

But by now my bruises have all faded, and I am getting better at doubles every day. I will never forget what I learned from my first juggling convention. 

While I can’t say that I am the best juggler I’ve ever met any longer, I can say, with absolute certainty, I am a profoundly better juggler for the experience. 

(I hope no one recognizes that song).
So, instead of actually writing anything, I am going to post a column I wrote for the paper.
Tada.
Out clubbing, juggler’s style. Part one
By Luke Eden
Until just a few weeks ago I’d never really met anyone who was a better juggler than I am.
I don’t mean to sound self-sure or egotistical in this; I just hadn’t met anyone who seemed much interested in juggling. While this may not seem extraordinary to most people, I found it quite intriguing.
One of the things that has surprised me since I’ve started juggling is the number of people I’ve met who can actually juggle. This is not a large number, by any stretch of the imagination, but still, whenever I am juggling in a crowd, there will be at least one person who can do some basic juggling.
As I have mentioned before, the basics of juggling are quite simple, and anyone can pick it up with a little patience and an hour or two of time. Not many people, though, ever go beyond this initial investment. That’s understandable; it’s easy to feel as though you’ve peaked and advanced as far as you can with the thing. (If you would like to learn the basics of juggling or pick up some new tricks please don’t hesitate to contact me at luke@dogfishjuggling.com).
When I first picked up a set of juggling balls, for months I juggled in a simple, stagnant pattern. I didn’t know any tricks and couldn’t really imagine them.
Eventually, though, I started poking around on the Internet, learning about new tricks and patterns and watching videos of some truly phenomenal jugglers. That’s the time when things started to turn around.
As my thinking about what juggling was and what I could do with my props began to evolve, my juggling slowly followed suit. I began to be more and more aware of my patterns and what was actually going on with the balls as I juggled them. And as I began to become more and more mentally invested in my juggling, something strange began to happen. I began to have what I can only call juggling epiphanies.
There is no question about it when they hit, and the more I juggled, the more epiphanies I seemed to have.
I’ve heard athletes describe the sensation of “being in the zone,” a feeling as if time has slowed down and you are in perfect and absolute control of everything around you–As if, to borrow a phase, you’ve “stumbled into the vector of wisdom.”
This is what a juggling epiphany feels like: a moment when you can see the pattern in your mind and bring it into being before you–when your props hang in the air and you can feel the weight of them linger in your hand and you know that you can do something new.
Once you can feel that space, a whole new world of tricks opens up. And once you do those tricks enough, you start to feel more spaces, and then it becomes a matter of figuring out what you can do with those spaces.
This has been my experience with juggling, and it is why I have found it such an engrossing hobby.
Yet, as much as I’d advanced on my own, I had never met anyone who shared my interest, who’d pursued juggling beyond the most basic of levels. For eight months after my first real juggle, I was the best juggler I’d ever met.
Saying “all this changed” after I went to the Atlanta Juggler’s Association’s Groundhog Day Juggler’s Festival would be putting it mildly.
At the festival I saw a whole world of juggling I’d never imagined–patterns I’d never seen and tricks I still can hardly believe. But that will have to wait for another day, another column, and part two of my Groundhog Day Juggler’s Festival coverage.
(Readers overly concerned with the happenings of the juggling festival will be pleased to know that part two of this column will appear in next Saturday’s edition of The Press-Sentinel.)

For the first time in several weeks I’ve had nothing to do. This rare and cherished opportunity has spanned most of the weekend, and aside from an out of town basketball game Friday night, and a handful of soccer games Saturday morning, I had absolutely nothing to occupy my time.
It has been a very welcome relief, and since my last post (just before the AJA juggling festival) I have been kept pretty busy. I’ve not done much on the blog as far as coverage of the festival goes. I made a Juggling Profile page–not quite festival coverage, but certainly inspired by the event. While I haven’t done much on the site, on the up side, I have gotten a fair amount of juggling done.
I’ve kept working with my clubs, and I am more pleased every day with my doubles throws. Before i went up to Atlanta I could barely manage to put a clean double spin on even one club without having to scramble desperately to keep my pattern alive. But after watching other jugglers and picking up a few tips (not to mention several hours of practice) I can now throw two doubles very reliably in a regular pattern and a flash. After a bit of warmup I can even work in a third throw. I’ve tried the third throw with both the regular, slower rhythm of a high three cascade as well as the faster five cascade or "flash" where all three are up in the air at the same time. Surprisingly enough both seem to work about the same and I can usually keep juggling after I make the throw. I can tell I still have a lot of work to do with doubles, because I can’t do a full pattern with them, just a few throws here and there. But the progress is there and I am happy with it.
Speaking of progress, I made some crazy advances in unicycle juggling yesterday (sunday) afternoon. Again, I think a lot of this goes back to just seeing someone actually do this in person. I’ve found that just watching someone juggle or ride a unicycle really helps my own performance. After seeing a chap or two riding around the festival in atlanta juggling casually on a uni, I decided to give it another go. I loaded up my juggling bag, rode my unicycle over to the school and started practicing. I started off with just one ball (I used my heavy exerball for good measure) and rode around for about 10 or 20 minutes just tossing it from hand to hand. I went right to three after that. I used a reverse cascade and I had amazing success. I would estimate I averaged about 50 catches. I feel like I can legitimately say that I can juggle on my unicycle now. Of course I need a good deal of practice still at this point, but again, like doubles, the progress is there.
My four ball progress is slower. I am very pleased with my fountain, but I still have some trouble with synchronous throws, which makes transitioning a bit tricky. No luck on learning the shower (with either three or four). Progress is slow, but it is still very fun to run four and I am happy to just keep churning away at it. All in all I have had a very good week of juggling and even got in some exerball runs over the weekend. I am really looking forward to the point where I can juggle my exerballs on the unicycle (I did it for a bit, but it was quite challenging).
Well, I need to do some “work” for the “job” I have that “pays” me. Right.

my but i can hardly wait to get to atlanta this weekend. 
the groundhogs day juggling festival is taking place, and i am so excited i don’t even know what to say.
*sigh*
it is going to be so sweet.