Dogfish Juggling

I’ve done a bit of work with three balls in the past week or so in an attempt to use some of the increased hand speed and coordination from my work with four and five to broaden my skill set with a lower number.

I am fairly comfortable calling the work I’ve done a success. I’ve finally broken my mental block against learning the shower, and I seem to increase my catches with each attempt. I think if i can ever manage to get some real time invested in working with the pattern I will be able to nail it down pretty solidly and transition into juggling a box pattern with relative ease.

Time, yet again, is the critical element in the equation. My time spent juggling has really dropped off in the past month. A result of many factors, I hope that the shortage of juggling time is a passing problem. I have high hopes for the coming weeks, and I think that if i can just set aside an hour a day to juggle and an hour a day to unicyle i will be able to get back on track. 

The biggest deterrent has been a general lack of energy. I think, though, that starting off with a nice ride around town on the unicyle will help pep me up and get me more in the mood to do some serious juggling. 

I’ve also been working on backcrosses with three balls. This is a pretty intense little trick, i have to admit. In the time i’ve spent trying to learn it i’ve learned to make under the leg throws pretty easily. At this point, after about a week of working on it very half heartedly  (i managed about three good practice sessions) i can start with a behind the back throw 10 out of 10 tries, and i can actually pull one off mid-pattern at about a 3-for-10 rate. 

it seems like behind the back throws, under the leg throws, and under the arm throws are all pretty similar skills. Each trick just involves carrying a prop and throwing it from a new location. To give myself time to pull off the tricks i’m less familiar with, i’ve found that i can just make a high throw with one ball. 

As i continue to work on backcrosses the challenge will be to first achieve a level of constancy, and then try to do it without making such a high toss. The high toss makes the trick work, but it also makes the pattern look broken. 

I did a small bit of fun club juggling at my brother’s wedding. I really like mills mess with clubs, in case that has not been made clear so far. I can get a toss or two of doubles into it and then go back into a normal pattern now, so it is good to see things improving on that front. 

I don’t think i have even tried to work on five much since my last post. I’ve just felt drained and unmotivated whenever i try. 

I am very tired and don’t much feel like writing any more. Hopefully i will have some more productive news for the next post. 

I’ve done a lot more thinking about juggling than juggling in the past few weeks. 

I suppose there are a host of excuses I could get into, but more than anything I have just felt a bit run-down. I went to the chiropractor earlier this week though, and since then I have felt better (not 100% yet but getting there). 

I have spent some time juggling, and have continued to work with five in both the regular cascade and the three-ball multiplex. I’ve not made much progress, which isn’t surprising. To really hit any kind of breakthrough I know I will need at least an hour or two of solid, uninterrupted practice. 

I did notice, however, that after having slacked off for a few days I’ve not regressed at all in what I am able to do. In fact, (and this has been a pretty regular phenomenon) it seems like i am almost a little better in some areas. Not that I am suddenly able to make six good catches with five or anything, but rather, my first five catches seem a bit tighter. 

So, in a way, no news is good news I suppose. 

Mills mess with clubs is also going very nicely. I finally managed to get a thread up and running on rec.juggling (the WJF forum was very lackluster). I got some really nice links. This video by Luke Burrage is by far the best of what I got linked to. 

It is really nice to see someone else do what you are working on, it makes it seem possible, and gives you a better sense of what is really going on. 

I can very nearly put doubles spins on the third throw of my MM pattern now, in fact, I was able to get about five catches with high under-arm tosses. So, as seems to always be the case these days, things are going along slowly but surely. 

Well, thats all for now. 

(Editor’s Note: The term multiplex refers to a form of juggling in which multiple balls are thrown on the same beat by the same hand. The balls are then caught together in the case of a stacked throw, or separately in the case of a split throw. Other throws exist, but these are the basics.)

The five ball stacked multiplex cascade is the simplest of all multiplex patterns involving that number of props. 

While any sustained multiplex pattern inherently involves some level of complexity, the stacked throw is nigh-universally regarded as the easiest and most introductory skill that can be considered a true multiplex talent. 

I think that anyone honestly looking to develop some modicum of multiplex proficiency–especially with five–would view a stacked cascade as step one and a split cascade as step two. 

Multiplexing is a very interesting avenue of juggling, and one that I have explored tentatively since about the time I started working with four (just before the first of the year). 

I never invested much time at all in trying to develop multiplexing abilities. The most I’d done before last week was make two stacked throws with four, just swapping all four balls between my hands in two tosses.I got pretty good in a relatively short amount of time with this very simple skill, but never made an attempt to make more than one catch each.  I have also worked on a multiplex quickstart into a cascade in which all three are thrown from one hand, but that does not have much real bearing on most true multiplex patterns. 

Last week, after feeling a bit fatigued from working on five-ball flashes, I made an attempt to actually juggle a three ball cascade that included a repeated stacked multiplex toss on every third beat. 

This is a step below a stacked five-ball cascade, which is effectively identical and just involves multiplex tosses on beat two as well as beat three. 

The reason a stacked multiplex is so much simpler than a split throw lies in many dimensions. First off the toss itself is harder to make. To make a split throw work the balls have to follow two separately conceived trajectories. Just getting the balls to work together in a stack is difficult enough, splitting them requires an added level of dexterity and concentration. 

Not only are the tosses themselves more difficult to control, but the pattern as a whole is much more complex. 

When depicted in siteswap notation a multiplex throw is shown in brackets. A three-ball cascade juggle with one extra ball and a single, stacked multiplex throw would thus read as follows:

3 3 [33], 3 3 [33]   (*Note: commas delineate a full iteration of the pattern) 

The bracketed threes represent two balls, thrown together with a beat of three. this looks much like the notation of a regular( 333, 333)  cascade and it juggles the same way–everything is a three. 

Stacked notation stays the same with five balls as well. (3 [33] [33], 3 [33] [33])

Things are not quite as simple with splits. I am not entirely sure i have this down, but as best I can figure out a split three-ball cascade, done with five balls, would look like this. 

[32] [32] [32],  [32] [32] [32] (or just [32] in shorthand) 

Because only one ball is changing hands with each toss, and the other is being tossed and then caught by the same hand, it makes every throw interact with two balls. Yet that is really just half the story. 

Now, since I can juggle neither a six-ball stacked multiplex pattern nor a five-ball split patter, I am not in much of a position to say one is easier than another. However, a six-ball multiplexed three-ball cascade is just the next logical extension of the same stacked pattern with five ([33] [33] [33] in siteswap), whereas splits involves an entirely new skill. 

At the moment even my five-ball stacked cascade is shaky, but it is very fun to juggle. It provides a good distraction from working on honest five-ball patterns (a skill with which I am still stuck on flashes). 

Well, that is enough of this needlessly convoluted issue for the moment. As is always the case improvement is just a matter of practice. I plan to continue working 3 3 [33] as a warmup and 3 [33] [33] as a true challenge for the next few weeks. Once I can juggle the latter comfortably I am going to start trying to work out how to make [32] split tosses. 

Splits look much, much better and the added skill it takes to pull them off is well worth it. 

Until then, 

Happy Juggling. 

This entry is sort of a catch-all just to bring things up to speed in the hopes of getting back into a more regular habit of blogging. 

I am not going to say much about juggling at UGA just because it was weeks and weeks ago, but I do want to mention it. Emily and I spent a good two or three hours juggling at UGA last time I was in Athens, and the experience was very nice. 

Everyone at the UGA club (the “Ugallers,” as no one calls them) was very good. Granted, we only met three people, and they were probably the three most dedicated members of the club, but still, all of them could do five quite nicely. 

It was really helpful to see a five pattern going on in person again, and I think it helped steer me in the right direction as far as the five-ball cascade is concerned. 

I was also very glad to finally get the chance to do a bit more club passing. I worked with Mo, a maths teacher at UGA and the head of the club. He is a pretty phenomenal juggler (he flashed eight while we were there) and it was great to work with someone who is so talented. 

We started working on a basic four-count passing pattern, and even moved up to two-count for a bit. Stepping up to two-count was really helpful, it served as a sort of “overload” and when we went back to four-count things went really well. 

I used this same idea, combined with a few tips I picked up at the AJA Festival, to give my first real juggling lesson. 

I was teaching my friend, Helena, after dinner and it was pretty amazing. Inside of an hour she’d gone from absolutely no understanding of juggling to a pretty well-formed 6-catch run of a cascade.

I realize that some people have a natural ability to juggle, and can pick it up for whatever reason with shocking ease. I don’t think this is the case here. Not to disparage Helena, but I don’t think she is exactly a juggling prodigy. She just payed very close attention, and made a good effort to do everything that I said. 

Here is a breakdown of what I did to teach her how to juggle.  So first of we started standing face to face with one ball. I tossed it over to her in a regular cascade throw, just putting it in her hand instead of mine. Next i got her to do the same thing to me. We worked on this for probably a dozen throws, switching out hands every so often before moving on to do the same thing with two balls. 

After a few tosses between us with two balls–which she picked up pretty easily–I went ahead and moved up to three, starting off by explaining what order they were going in, and how the most important thing was just getting the balls in the air in the right order with the right rhythm. Obviously this didn’t go quite as smoothly as things did with two, but we kept at it and by switching back and forth from catches to throws, sending the balls between us each time, she eventually got a good feel for the rhythm 

Once she got the rhythm down i started her working on her own. I dropped her down to two balls, and got her to start throwing to her self. As she got more comfortable with the first two throws I told her to shift her attention more toward throws and away from catches and this seemed to really improve things pretty quickly.

We were probably just under half an hour into the lesson at this point, and I took out a third bag and told her to just hold it in her right hand and keep working on two throws, then switch it over to the left and do the same thing. 

Once she got used to making throws and catches with another ball in her hand i took the balls back and showed her a nice clean pattern with three, explaining how the order and timing worked in a bit more detail. 

In about three tries she’d managed a flash. 

We worked on just getting 3 throws, 3 catches from the right hand for a bit until she was comfortable with it and then moved on to the left.  In the next 10-15 minutes she’d moved up to four, then five and eventually six catches. 

I was pretty pleased with the progress she made, and with the success of my teaching methodology. 

In Luke-related news I have been steadily improving my basic skill set in the past few weeks. 

I’ve managed to improve my clubs mills mess to the point where I can move seamlessly to and from mills mess and a cascade. This is a pretty big improvement, and it makes mills mess feel like much less of a “one trick pony” as it were. Not only that, but I have also started working a doubles toss into the pattern 

It’s all going along pretty nicely. Five is slow but steady, but to be honest I have not had much time to really devote to practicing. 

I did manage to get a nice stacked multiplex pattern going, but I want to put that in an entry of its own. 

All for now. 

(Editor’s Note: I decided to break this entry up by subject. This one is about five ball, posts on clubs, unicycling, the trip to UGA and teaching juggling to come.)

What an exciting few weeks of juggling I’ve had. Between problems with dreamhost, the demands of the work week and other developments of an interpersonal nature I have had much less time to write about juggling than I have had to actually juggle. 

There are so many things to cover in this post! I hardly know where to begin. 

I suppose I can start with what is, to me at least, the most dramatic, unexpected, and exhilarating bit of juggling news I have. Just under two weeks ago (the day before spring actually) I flashed five balls. I can honestly say it was one of the most fantastic juggling experiences I’ve had to date. 

In the days leading up to the flash the immanence of spring (and the one-year mark for juggling) set my mind to thinking about my new year’s resolution. In December I decided that I would make my new year’s resolution to juggle five by spring, but I never really followed up on it. I got caught up in four and spent most of my practice hours working on the asynchronous fountain. I even went so far as to change my resolution a few months into the year and vowed to learn four clubs instead. 

Well I never did much to follow through with four clubs either. I can nearly do two in one hand now (more on that later) but I never went so far as buying a fourth club. Regardless of resolutions, or changes thereto, the day before spring found me sitting alone and bored. I’d been out juggling clubs for a bit, and done a bit of work with four ball and had just spent about 15 or 20 minutes watching a few parts of the WJF dvd. 

I watched the section on five balls and decided, what the heck, lets give it a go. After a few horribly wild throws I started to get the rhythm of the pattern down a bit. Rather than just sticking to Jason’s regimented guidelines though, I followed the advice I got back in February from Pam at the AJA festival. 

Standing over a bed I spent about 20 minutes just trying to get the balls out of my hands. This proved to be wildly successful. Totally abandoning the instinct to try and make catches, I devoted my entire attention to throws. 

I’ve heard more times than I can count that you should always think about “throws not catches” when juggling, and never has the veracity of this statement rung truer. Watching the WJF video had given me a very clear image in my mind of what the five-ball cascade should look like–after all Jason’s pattern is, well, flawless. 

Holding that image at the forefront of my mind I just kept working on my release, focusing on making controlled and purposeful throws. It was amazing, as if the pattern just snapped into place in my mind. As I worked more and more at it I could pick out every bad throw, see the source of every collision and failure point in the pattern. I had the most difficulty getting the No. 5 bag out of my starting hand and in the right direction. For a good 50 throws that fifth bag would just go straight up in the air. 

But even though I was making a bad throw I could see it, I knew what was happening and where it was going wrong, and eventually got the first four tosses down solidly enough to really focus on that last prop. I have no idea how many times I threw those five bags up in the air and watched them bounce to the bed, but every time the landed in tighter and tighter clusters. 

And then it happened. 

I threw them up in a prefect cascade and every ball fell right into my hands. I didn’t even thing about it. I didn’t reach for them, or try to make a catch, they just landed in my upturned palms as if guided by some divine hand. 

It was astonishing and more exciting than I can describe. The balls had a perfect rhythm, and the feel of them dropping into my hands was an almost sensual pleasure. As much as I enjoy four (and since working with five I have come to enjoy doing four even more than before) the feel of the five-ball cascade falling into place for the first time far and away the most satisfying sensation of my juggling career. 

There is something so captivating, so meditative and soul-satisfying about that rhythm–I can’t describe it. It is fast and relaxed at the same time. The tempo is rapid and exhilarating, but somehow fills me with an all-pervasive calm. 

I have continued to work on the pattern as best as I have been able to, sticking with trying for flashes and trying to make every throw perfect. Life has kept me from devoting as much time to learning the pattern as I might otherwise like, but even still I am at about a 5-for-10 success rate with flashes at this point. I think I could probably move up to 6 or possibly 7 catches this week, but I think I am going to stick with Jason on this point and get 10 flashes perfectly from the right hand and then 10 perfictly from the left before I even try to go on. 

Not to be derisive, but I have seen some very ugly five patterns and I really want to have a clean run when I start going for endurance. I have gotten myself so excited about five now that I can hardly stand not to dash away from my desk and start tossing my balls around right now!

Oh well. All good things are worth waiting for I suppose. 

Happy Juggling.