Dogfish Juggling

It has taken me many years to develop my current attitude toward writing. 

As I look back over the landscape of my memory, there is a clear topography to my past. The early days of taking a profound and simple pleasure in the written word slope gradually upward, through the years of my education, into the plain of academia. 

Across the long plateau of scholarly study, I see my perspectives and attitudes develop, shifting from visceral enjoyment to intellectual appreciation. During my tenure in college, my study of English literature provided the bedrock for the development of an informed and critical eye and mind. 

Yet like the geography of our world, my literary landscape has continued its tectonic shift  with each layer and component of my understanding interacting in a sort of clumsy, gradual ballet. And just as time–the unrelenting drudgery of each passing day–erodes and reveals new facets of the earth, sparks orogeny, and thrusts new peaks into being, so too has that inescapable force wrought great and sweeping changes in my thinking. 

Like the steady drum of rain or the constant shifting of the substrata, the daily practice of writing has rendered a profound effect on my conceptualization of the written word. There is perhaps no adage more trite than “practice makes perfect,” but my personal realization of this truth has had a momentous impact on my life. 

A strange convalescence of forces led to this revelation–led me to realize that, through practice and focus, the scope of our understanding and the depth of our ability are expanded. 

When I began working for The Press-Sentinel, I began writing more voluminously and more fastidiously than ever before. The constant demands of deadlines and assignments drew a constant stream of composition through me. Stack after stack of copy grew before my eyes as I wrote day in, day out for this publication. 

At essentially the same time, I became more fully engrossed than ever before in a seemingly unrelated personal endeavor: to juggle five objects. 

Looking back, I can’t say which task seemed more overwhelming at the time. 

Writing a half-dozen stories fit to be printed seemed as impossible as cleanly releasing five balls in less than two seconds. And at first, I handled both tasks with the same sort of panicked disorganization. Yet as time progressed, I began to see infinitesimal improvements. 

At the paper, certain stories began to flow smoothly from my fingertips. Leads became clearer and cleaner in my mind. As I juggled at home, the breakdowns in my pattern came later and later. The path of each ball seemed sharp and almost tangible in my mind’s eye. 

And the more progress I made, the more strangely related writing and juggling seemed to become. 

At the pinnacle of my progress, I came to a sudden and shocking realization. Nearly everything I’d thought about both writing and juggling was fundamentally askew. 

It was as if I’d stepped off a cliff and plummeted into a new and astonishing reality. 

In all of my previous thought I’d considered the task of writing to be a sort of piecemeal process. Each research paper, feature story or foray into fiction could be broken down into component parts, the details polished to perfection and assembled. To some extent, I feel there is still some validity to this thinking, for, in good writing, every detail must be perfect and polished–every word exact and deliberate. 

And yet, this line of thinking so fundamentally misses the heart of writing it seems shocking that I could have seen what success I have had under its influence. 

It was juggling which led to my disillusionment. For in juggling, like writing, every detail must be perfect; every throw and every catch must be executed with absolute precision and forethought. With the slightest miscalculation, the slightest divergence, the entire pattern devolves into chaos. 

For months I fought the forces of physics, straining against gravity and momentum to send each element into place. For months I failed. 

Suddenly, I had a flash of realization. For any juggler to see some modicum of success with higher numbers, the details of throws and catches must be second nature. They must be absolutely subordinate to the purity and perfection of the pattern. 

In that moment I realized my limitations. What my writing needed was not more well-polished parts. It needed a stronger, more immediate sense of narrative truth–an absolute image of perfection alive and vibrant in my mind. 

To manifest that shimmering and ephemeral image, to make real the fleeting threads of thought within one’s mind, is what every juggler and every writer strives to accomplish. To do this, they must practice. 

They must practice diligence, focus and humility. They must look, without ego, for weakness, for self-indulgence, for divergence. They must practice with a full knowledge of past successes and triumphs and without concern for them. They must practice daily and never stop. 

I stand now, as both juggler and writer, on a new and uncertain terrain. I see the past with the analytical clarity of a cartographer. I see the present and future, looming and inscrutable. 

And yet, I know with absolute certainty that one step, one toss, one catch, one word at a time, it will be revealed. 

I recently took a few months off from blogging to try and finish up my grad-school applications (not yet accomplished) and to learn the five-ball cascade (accomplished!). 

I’ve got quite a bit rattling around the old skull box in regard to my newfound ability to juggle five of things, and I do plan to write some of that stuff down. None of my thoughts are very polished yet (they need more time in the polisher) so I don’t want to really attempt an in-depth post on five. 

Suffice it to say–five is freaking awesome. It took hours and hours of practice for months and months and it was absolutely worth it. It makes me feel like a robot. 

It is still slow going to some extent. I’ve been able to keep a qualifying cascade or better going for a few months now, and I have had a lot of really nice runs. I am, however, at work right now and can’t go into any more detail than that. Full report to follow. 

On a side note, though, I’ve been considering whether to add a “Not Juggling” category and expand my blog to other facets of my life (crazy, I know). More on that as it develops. 

I hurt the piss out of my finger. 

I suppose it is to be expected, but I was surprised all the same. Since I started working on 4 clubs I’ve yet to really hurt myself up to this point, which is a bit of a shock since learning 3 clubs involved many painful encounters very frequently. 

I don’t remember exactly what I did or when I did it, but my finger has been painfully stiff for a few days now. I bang my fingers pretty regularly working on 4 clubs, but I must have smacked this one pretty nastily because it is still sore. 

Anyway I kept waiting for it to get better, but when I woke up and it was still just as bad off as ever I decided to wrap it up in tape today and see how it reacts. 

I think I had better take a brake from practice for the next few days as well, just in case I’ve actually fractured it. 

And all I can say about that is it is disappointing. 

In the past week or so I have really come a good ways with 4 clubs, despite a lot of rainy weather that has limited my practice. I have also gotten all of the 3 ball tricks on my list down very solidly, and have made great progress with the 4 ball half shower. I even started working on a 4 ball shower yesterday, but I missed a catch and smacked my hurt finger and that was it for the day. 

I am just going to have to bite the bullet here, accept the fact that I will loose some of my most recent progress, and take the week off. 

Lame. 

I guess there will never really be a time when I will want to take time off, but it does seem like I am on the verge of a lot right now. 

So it goes. 

In 3 ball news, the box is rapidly becoming my new favorite pattern and I can’t wait to start playing with variations. Once my stupid finger is better. 

So I haven’t written anything lately for a few reasons, none of which are lack of material. 

In fact, I might say that the past few weeks have been some of the most productive of my juggling career. When last I wrote, I was feeling a bit lackluster about juggling, and in an attempt to refocus myself I came up with a practice guide. 

It has been more successful than I could have ever imagined. 

Writing it out gave me a wonderful rededication and focus and I have made absolutely wonderful progress. I’ve made a few changes to the guide in practice, but I am not going to go through and make a real revision for a few more weeks. 

The reason for the delay? 

I am learning 4 clubs, and putting in so much time to get past the initial stumbling blocks that I am not following the guide as closely as I hope to once I am more comfortable with 4. 

Well, that sort of lets the cat out of the bag, because 4 clubs is my biggest news. At least to me. I’ve been very happy with my juggling so far, but honestly up to this point I’ve really felt like I haven’t been doing anything that special. 

4 clubs is different. 

I consider running 4 clubs fairly serious juggling, and working on them fills me with a wonderful sense of accomplishment and purpose–which is nice, since other parts of my life aren’t really so hot these days. 

Also something that warrants mentioning, and is directly related to 4 clubs is the Jesup Juggling Jam. I hosted a World Juggling Day event this year and it was a great success. I actually met another juggler in town!

I hope we can arrange some time to juggle at some point. Anyway, it was at the event that I really got the idea that I had 4 balls down pretty solidly. I saw Ian (the other juggler) run 4 and i knew right off that my fountain was much more solid. 

So I thought after a while, “hey I wonder if i could do 3 balls and a club.”

Well, a few hours later I was juggling 3 clubs and one ball, and that night I ordered my fourth and yellowest club. It got here friday and on my third attempt I got 4 catches. 

I went out of town for the weekend, and only practiced a bit while I was gone. I managed to get enough catches for a few nice pictures, but didn’t feel like I made any real progress. 

Once I got back home though, I made a clean qualifying run with a nice collection after about 20 minuets in the yard. Yesterday, after a warmup I went out and got around 10 catches on nearly every try. I had a few long runs, topping out around 30 or so, but it was hard to keep count. 

I feel pretty comfortable with the progress I am making, and it is so very, very exciting even to be working with 4 that I just can’t wait to do another session. 

It is all thanks to the practice guide I made. Since I started doing that my practices are no long just haphazard attempts, they have structure and direction.

I have also made profound progress with 3 ball shower, the box and 4 ball multiplexes. Work with five is also going much faster now. My flashes are much more reliable and I  can actually run a few catches of the chase (505050?) and 50510. I think that if I start flashing from my left hand I will be in good shape by the end of the summer. 

Almost everything I know with 3 is crisper now too. 

I am very pleased with the state of my juggling right now. If i can manage to escape the office, I am going to go do it right now. 

I’ve been bored not from lack of things to do, but simply from a bit of enuiee I can’t really seem to shake. 

The one really happy thing I’ve got going on at the moment, though, is some nice juggling progress. I learned a very nice new trick in the past week, and I have made some really excellent progress with four. 

I learned a 3-ball carrying trick which I’ve seen called “yo-yo on both sides” or something similar. Carry tricks have a nifty look to them, because instead of letting the balls take a natural trajectory, well you carry them in a pattern of your own choosing. The yo-yo carry I’ve been working on is really fun to juggle, and it has a very dramatic visual component. The carried ball seems to sort of hop along with the pattern while the other balls do what they are supposed to. 

The very same day I figured out this yo-yo carry trick (even though I was able to find some videos of the trick after I’d learned it, I figured it out on my own) I had a big breakthrough with four ball crossing patterns. 

I managed to work two different types of crossing tosses into my 4-ball fountain (an outside and an inside switch). For both of the crosses the throws are fairly similar–a high “5″ throw followed by a low “3″ throw, and back into 4 4 4 4 4 etc.–and the only difference is, one uses regular cascade tosses, and the other uses reverse cascade tosses. 

I think that, with the reverse tosses at least, this is how 4-ball half-showers are juggled. I think for the inside (read: traditional cascade) throws, this is the first step in learning some “siteswapy” patterns. 

I have also been working on a cool little multiplex start for coin juggling. This isn’t exactly the most productive thing in the world, but all the same it is cool. I think it could make a good youtube video. I kind of want to go get some $1 coins from the bank though, quarters are tricky to catch with any reliability. 

I also taught my friend Robert how to juggle using my new methodology, and he was up to 12 catches on day 2. 

Juggling has been a bit more of a mental priority I suppose. It is a comfortable place to send my thoughts when things are stress-filled in real life. Sitting at work today, I came up with a structure for practicing.

I’ve thought about doing this, even tried it once or twice, but with very little success. This list, I have been musing over while juggling for the past week, and I am pretty pleased with it. It seems like the more I’ve read from jugglers such as Anthony Gatto, and Jason Garfield–jugglers who are unquestionably at the top of human achievement–the clearer it is that having focus in practice is the most important thing for improvement. 

Taking a page from Gatto’s practice book, What I plan to do with this practice list is go through each item, spending about 2-5 minutes per line trying to get everything on the line down, in sequence, without any drops.  I have toyed with the idea of imposing a “drop limit” per line–after which I would have to move on to the next trick–but I don’t think I am at that point yet. 

Basically, this list represents what I can do, with a huge variety of proficiency. The ultimate goal here is to get everything clean. There are quite a few 3-ball activities, patterns I would call “prep work for 5″ that I have left off. I think if I add anything It will be 3-ball flashes. For now though, I am going to focus on what I have outlined so far. 

I hope that, within a few months of spending at least 1 hour a day, every day, on this list, I will be able to develop the across-the-board-consistency I am looking for. 

I have also included focus points for each section, just to give myself a reminder of what I am looking for. While there is no strict relationship between them, it should be obvious that things such as fluidity and continuity are necessarily preceded by things like endurance, accuracy etc. 

Here is the list: 

BALLS 

3 ball–focus on: fluidity

cascade, 1-up 2-up–left, right, cross, underarm cross. 

cascade, 423–high, low, high claws.

cascade, claws; mills mess claws. 

cascade, over the top, tennis, reverse cascade, mills mess. 

cascade, fake 1-up 2-up, yo-yo carry, factory

shower, box

4 ball–focus on: continuity 

fountain endurance. 

reverse fountain endurance. 

pistons endurance. 

circles endurance. 

fountain, reverse fountain, pistons, fountain, circles. 

fountain, synch switch, left, right, cross, shower, switch. 

fountain, inside 5-3 swap, outside 5-3 swap. 

5 ball–focus on: accuracy (first 2 throws)

flashes

multiplexes–focus on: precision/endurance

4 ball cascade stacks

5 ball cascade stacks

4 ball cascade split to 4 ball fountain

RINGS

3 rings–focus on: comfort

cascade endurance

cascade, 1-up 2-up, 4 ring prep work

cascade, over the top, reverse cascade

CLUBS

3 clubs–focus on: continuity/accuracy

cascade endurance.

cascade, 1 double, 2 doubles, 3 doubles. 

doubles endurance.

cascade, 1-up 2-up.

half shower endurance.

reverse cascade endurance. 

423 endurance.

mills mess endurance. 

cascade, over the top, tennis, half shower, reverse cascade, mills mess, UA-double to cascade. 

cool down with mixed props 3 and 4 patterns, or juggling on unicycle. 

I’ve never felt like more of a snob in my life. 

To be fair, I was coming down with a bit of a cold, so I was probably a bit testy to begin with when I went to the Georgia Renaissance Festival.

I already had my doubts about seeing any really impressive juggling there. My mom is a potter, and at a recent show she had a booth next to a group of people promoting the renaissance festival. Striking up a bit of conversation, she started telling them about me, and how I juggled and how, “wouldn’t it be great for me to come see the jugglers at the festival?”

She told me all of this later, and at one point she said she told them how I’d just started working on five. This is where my misgivings came from. 

According to my mom, the lady seemed really surprised and said, “Wow! If he is doing five then he must be really really good, no one does five.”

This was not a good sign. 

Yes. Five is tricky. Five has given me fits for months now. Not that I have been able to dedicate half as much time as I’d like towards it, but since my first flash of five a few months back, I am only up to 7 catches. 

I, however, have been juggling just over a year. That’s one year. One. Probably I’d peg myself at about 14-15 months at this point. 

I’m no prodigy, I don’t have any special gift–I just like to juggle. 

What I don’t like, though, is juggling for money. And therein lies the difference. 

Not to detract from the performances at the renaissance festival–I mean, after all, balance ladders and rolla-bolla’s are neat, they look cool–but still. To watch a half-hour of something billed as a juggling show and to see non-continouious under-the-leg throws be the most difficult trick performed–wait, make that the only trick performed–was a huge disappointment. It was more than disappointing. It made me angry. 

This was not a juggling show by any stretch of the imagination. I realize that it must get tedious doing the same half-hour show dozens of times in a weekend, week after week. 

But still. 

Go ahead, juggle the can of span, garden weasel and knife; the audience goes for it, include it in your act. 

But don’t you think they would respond to some quality 3-club tricks? I’m not asking for 7-ball siteswap patterns–no one but jugglers like that. 

A few backcrosses though, a good run of Mills mess, a pirouette or two, or even a kick-up to a run with five if your up to it–these tricks could be done in less than five minutes. I can’t fathom that seeing them wouldn’t be exciting for an audience and it would do so much to expand their idea of what can really be done by jugglers. Is it really so important that what you juggle be pointy or gimmicky that you don’t have a single club on stage during a juggling act?

I just don’t understand what would lead a person to call a show with so little juggling a juggling act. 

Other performers at the festival, I am thinking here of the Dexter Tripp Thrill Show (note the lack of juggling in the billing) actually did much more real juggling on stage. 

While the Thrill Show didn’t feature anything too elaborate, and despite having five torches on stage, Tripp only juggled three (I learned later, from his fiance, that he can do a run of continuous back-crosses with five torches) he also didn’t bill himself as a juggling act. 

I actually really enjoyed Tripp’s performance. He did a great act on a loose high-rope, and when he did a nice, clean run with three torches while standing on an audience member’s head, it looked really nice. 

He also threw in a few double tosses, and when he did chops with the torches, I have to admit it looked way, way better than club chops–the trail of fire really made the trick stand out. 

Tripp, too, used some interesting props. He did a run with a knife, an apple and a chainsaw that ended with the apple being cut in half by the saw. He played it up well, and it got a nice reaction. 

While Tripp didn’t do anything juggling wise that I would call exceedingly technically difficult, he didn’t bill himself as a juggler. His was a thrill show, and the focus was on the rope act. His performance there was fantastic. 

His tricks were complex, difficult and technically demanding; and it showed. He was a great talent because he pulled them off. He was a great performer because he made them entertaining. 

The same thing is true for good juggling. Good juggling, done well, is hard. Making it appealing onstage is even harder. 

The irony of all of this is that, of all the performances I saw, the “Juggling Show” not only had the least amount of juggling, but the juggling it had was also the most boring. 

Even the Barely Balanced Acrobatic show had more juggling in it. There were a few runs of simple 3-torch cascades, and some very clean four-count passing. 

I didn’t go to the renaissance festival to see a WJF or IJA routine. But I expected to at least see something that I couldn’t get up on stage and do after scarcely more than a year of casual practice. 

And for a final note, the juggler who tossed the can of spam and the other “dangerous” objects, was celebrating his 21st year on stage at that festival alone. 

The end of the school year has certainly kept me busy for the past few weeks. 

Between end-of-the-year banquets and the added workload of graduation, I have had my hands full at the paper recently. 

With everything going on, I have more or less abandoned the notion of making any real juggling progress for most of this month–and that is a pretty good explanation for the lack of posts recently. 

This has really been a growing trend lately. But even with these time-constraints I have still managed to do a good bit of juggling–it has just not been as goal-driven as in the past. 

Most of the juggling I’ve done has been in short bursts. 10-20 minuets or so a few times a day. 

I have been under so much stress and had some many obligations that I just haven’t had enough long, uninterrupted bits of time to have a long session. 

I have been having a lot of fun with four balls though. I can feel the pattern getting more and more solid, even after having it comfortably in hand for months now. 

I can manage a nice little transition from 3-4 (starting with the fourth held, tossing in a few stacked multiplexes, and then moving into a asynch fountain). From there I can make a nice transition to a synch pattern, manage a few simple placement tricks, and then move back into an asynch, and then back into a 3 ball cascade. 

It is nothing impressive, but it is very fun to work on stringing a few tricks together, and it is something that i haven’t really attempted in the past. 

I’ve also started working on a similar string of tricks with 3 clubs, but this usually takes me a bit longer to warm up into. 

From a cascade I start with an over-the-top tennis, go into a half shower, into a reverse cascade, into mills-mess (this part is ugly), then work a double toss on the underarm throw of mills mess and use that to go into a doubles cascade, back into a regular cascade, and then throw three 1.5 spins to end up with an all fat-end cascade, then back. 

I don’t think I’ve ever finished all of that, but writing it out makes it a bit more real in my mind, and I think I will be a bit more dedicated to getting it all together in the coming days. 

I’ve also done a bit of work with 3 balls, and I finally managed a few decent runs of a clawed mills mess. It is  very fun to juggle. I’ve also started working on the factory, and I managed a few catches of it.. although they were ugly. 

My shower is still ugly, too, and I would like to see both of those improve a bit. 

Other than that I have not done much. I haven’t dedicated any real time to progressing with 5, but I usually end my short sessions with a few flashes, just to keep the feel and form fresh. 

Hopefully in the coming weeks things will be more juggle-freindly. 

Owing to the egregious lack of free time in my schedule over the course of the past few weeks I didn’t expect to see any real progress when, last Firday, I decided to hop on my unicycle and take a few laps around town.

Just to give me something to do with my hands, and in an attempt to casually further my goal of juggling clubs on the unicycle, I brought along two clubs to toss around during the ride. 

After about 10 minutes or so of this, I was surprised by how well I was doing, so I swung back by the house and swapped out the pair of clubs for a set of three balls. 

Now, let me back up here to just review my last attempt at juggling on the unicycle. It was about a month or so ago, and it was terrible. I could barely manage a cascade beyond four or five catches. I am a bit better at the reverse cascade, and I was able to keep that going for about 8-to-10 catches, but with a total lack of control on the unicycle-end of things.

The moment I pulled out of my driveway Friday afternoon I started a cascade that was as well-controled as anything I’ve juggled on two feet. I kept the pattern going and rode down the block, turned up the road and started rolling around the elementary school beside my house. Within the next 20 or so minutes I was doing mills mess and almost any trick I could think of. 

I spent about 30-45 minutes enjoying my new and unexpected skills before heading back home. I grabbed my clubs and took a short spin around the block, and I managed to get better than a qualifying run in before I smacked myself in the face and decided to call it quits for the day. 

I went out again Saturday, just playing with balls, and happily discovered that, no, i had not, in fact, been possessed by some strange juggling-disposed deamon, and that my skills were my own to do with as I saw fit. 

I didn’t make much more progress with clubs, but I also didn’t work much on them. 

On Sunday I took another, longer ride, and brought all 7 pounds (3198 g for you metricly-inclined chaps) of my Exerballs along with me. Just as before I found an unexpected and inexplicable level of success. 

What’s more it was probably the hardest-core (hard-corest?) workout i’ve done in a good long while. I was very pleased. I made it around the entire walkway of the school with only 2 drops (at the two tightest, pole-lined turns). 

I even had a chance to showcase my talents, and I took my unicycle and props out to the local Relay for Life. 

I am not really sure what can account for this sudden breakthrough. I don’t really feel as if I am appreciably better at either juggling or unicycling since my last attempt to wed the two, but something has certainly clicked. I find it much easier now to keep either activity going smoothly while shifting my focus from one to the other. 

I still am more comfortable with the reverse cascade, and i usually drop into it whenever there is a difficult patch or a sharp turn coming up. I have the feeling that making the tosses in toward the center of my body, instead of out and away from them, and having all of the balls heading toward my center really adds a lot of stability and control to my pattern. 

It is an interesting point, and one I have been thinking about for awhile, juggling on the unicycle seems to have re-emphasised it in my mind. 

I really think that a well-controled reverse cascade is an inherently more stable pattern than a traditional cascade. The props cross at different places in the pattern, and it seems to make collisions much rarer. Even on a wild throw, the reverse cascade seems more salvageable. With everything moving into the center of my body, I can usually manage to cradle a mistake between my arm and torso–a much easier feat than reaching out to grab a 2.35 pound ball while perched atop a unicycle. 

For a while I thought this might just be a personal bias. Since I learned to juggle with the reverse cascade, I thought that this explained my higher level of comfort with it. 

I am not so sure now. I think there are some legitimate advantages to the pattern in terms of sustainability and resistance to degradation. 

Now, of course i realize that it is much less well-suited to higher numbers. The accuracy and height requirements of five make the regular cascade seem like a better and more natural choice. But when it comes to regular old three ball juggling, anything I do feels a bit more stable with a reverse cascade. 

Claw catches especially go much more smoothly for me in reverse, and I can juggle the reverse in a much, much tighter, faster pattern. 

I think that this goes back to the issue of where and how the balls cross. In the reverse my props’ trajectories cross as they are falling, meaning any collision is less likely to cause an unrecoverable disruption. 

Also, it seems like the pattern just keeps the balls farther apart in general. I wonder if there has been any experimentation with these issues by jogglers. 

At the very least, it warrants some further exploration. 

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.