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.