Dogfish Juggling

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. 

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. 

 I got in a very good practice session yesterday (Saturday) afternoon. 

This was the first real chance i had to put hands to my clubs for any real lenght of time since I made my initial Mills Mess progress, and I was very anxious to get back into the pattern. It took me a good half hour to get really warmed up, it was a bit blustery outside and the wind made things tend toward instability, so it was a challenge to adjust. I moved into an area of the yard sheltered by the bamboo grove though, and things went very well after that. 

I started off just as before, working on getting my under-arm tosses very clean and steady before i actually made a go at mills mess. It was so exciting though! once i started the pattern came very naturally. I spent about an hour working on the new pattern. I absolutely love it. It has such an unexpected grace. 

Mills Mess looks very distinctive with balls. Of course there are many different stylistic changes you can make to the pattern just depending on how you arch each throw, but in general the pattern has a rolling, back and forth look to it when done with balls. It seems to flow back and forth from one hand to the other. 

This is not really the case with clubs. I started off trying to get that same sort of flow, almost as if i were attempting to toss one club over the other. The more i practiced though the more the pattern seemed to take on a very different look. Rather than following the easy rolling pattern of their spherical counterparts, the clubs seemed to prefer a sort of halting, mechanical-looking path. 

Mills Mess with clubs seems to work, and in my opinion look, best when the pattern seems to put just one club in the air at a time. This is a bit of a deception, but the effect makes it seem as if each club is just popping up in a straight line and falling right back down (like columns but with three). Because it is a Mills Mess pattern, though, and my arms are crossing with every throw the clubs are not actually doing this. They are changing their order with every toss so the colors switch up as they are juggled!

It has a very nice look to it. The throws all seem very simple but they are juxtaposed with the complexity of the arm movement. I love that my clubs are three different colors because this just adds to the pattern. It gives off a very strong feeling of change and really adds a lot to the pattern. 

I have loved Mills Mess since i first stared working with the pattern. It was fun with balls, but with clubs it is utterly immersive. The work I did yesterday really made the pattern stick and I am pretty confidant in it now. It was so much fun I really didn’t want to stop, but my fingers were cracked and bruised and I had a few broken nails (they were way too long anyway) so I called it a day and went out for a bit of unicycling. I woke up pretty early this morning and after a bit of coffee i couldn’t resist picking up my clubs to see if i could jump right into Mills Mess.

The wind was still a bit troublesome, but i was able to run through the pattern from a totally cold start. My first few attempts probably didn’t break eight catches, but within minutes i was juggling comfortably in Mills Mess. The beginning of Spring is so full of excitement!

The windy weather has been a bit of a challenge juggling-wise, but it has been perfect for unicycling. I’ve recently gotten much more comfortable on the unicycle. I can move in a totally new way that is more akin to a stairmaster in a lot of ways. It is a lot slower to do this, and instead of moving with a steady flow i move along in a halting bouncy sort of way. 

Shifting most of my weight off the seat and onto the peddles makes riding much more strenuous. It is very labor intensive but gives me a huge amount of control and stability. Since i’ve gotten more comfortable with this way of riding not only can i cross rough terrain much more easily, but i can also go for far longer rides.

One of the most limiting parts of riding up to this point has been what unicylists refer to as "saddle soreness." its a pretty self-evident term and up to this point i’d not really stayed out for more than about 30 minutes at a time. I easily doubled that yesterday. It was such a nice trip, riding through the sleepy little town on a warm spring afternoon. The whole world seemed to be new and taking its first cautious steps of life. 

Well, I’ve spent enough time writing about my hobbies for the moment. I’ve had so much fun with clubs over the past week that I want to go back and re-watch the 3 and 4 club section of my WJF DVD. 

I’ll be sure to tell you what i learn from old Jason in my next post. 

 Tut tut so much to blog about!

I suppose the best place to begin is where I left off in my last post. In that post I began a short dialogue on my renewed practice with three ball patterns. The main thrust of this "back to basics" movement as I suppose you could call it ties into the concept of deconstructionist training. 

My goal in incorporating some newer, faster three ball patterns is to work on my speed and timing with a number I am very comfortable with in the hope that I will be able to isolate training on hand speed and out of pattern throws. 

To put it bluntly this has been a success. My day to day three ball practice is a bit sporadic content-wise. I have been using three to warm up (something I should have been doing all along really) and doing a mostly freestyle but–and this is the important part–highly focused run through my tricks. 

Working on claw catches has been tons of fun, they feel really good and I have the idea that they are one of the coolest-looking things that I do. I’ve almost gotten to the point where i can throw a three ball flash and catch everything with claws on the way down. It is a bit sloppy but after a few tries I can nail it and I think when it is just a tad bit cleaner it will be very captivating. 

423 is still a work in progress, although the progress is there, however slow it may seem. 

The work with three has been really fun and i think the biggest affect it has had is on my club juggling. 

I’ve gotten fairly good with doubles, although i still need a pretty lengthy warmup to really get a pattern going and i am pretty much at the mercy of the elements if it starts to get windy. 

I did, however, make what i consider to be a phenomenal breakthrough Sunday.  I was juggling at a boat race while i waited for my camera battery to recharge and doing some casual club juggling. I started focusing on working out a smoother under-arm throw and found to my delight that I made very nice progress. The smoother the throws became the better able I found myself able to pick out the subtle shift in the patterns rhythm the throw created. This feeling grew until i suddenly realized something. 

"This feels like mills mess!" i thought to myself. Now, this is not that surprising because mills mess is, after all, an entirely underarm pattern. But once again it all came down to space. Making the one underarm throw, and getting it right, i began to become aware of my other, stationary arm. I could feel the space in the pattern to do something more with my other arm. 

I’d only seen mills mess with clubs once and briefly in a youtube video, but I am good enough at the pattern with balls to have a pretty good idea what to do. 

Now comes the astonishing part. 

On my first try i nailed it. I got about five catches and only broke the pattern out of disbelief. A few more runs and I was up to around fifteen catches. It was shocking. I have never experienced such immediate success in attempting something new. I could scarcely contain my excitement as I spent the next 20 or so minuets working with the clubs. 

I have loved mills mess since i first learned it with balls and now that i can actually pull it off with clubs i am so pleased i hardly know what to do with myself! I finally stopped when I figured my camera held a decent charge (also i cracked the nail on my thumb on a bad toss!)

Moving back to balls, I am still working on cleaning up my four fountain. At this point I could really go on to five, but I think I am going to keep working at four and try and pick up a few tricks. I tried a few claw catches and saw a bit of success, so I may begin to explore that soon. 

Other than that I haven’t had much time to work on anything too exciting. I am anxiously awaiting warmer weather and the opportunity to become a sweaty mess while juggling in the hot sun. During the summer months my loft turns into a hotbox and i can totally soak myself in about 20 minutes with the exerballs. 

It is nice, but not quite the same as juggling outside, barefoot and barechested, feet squirming in the grass, sweat soaking my shorts, sun at my back, balls in my hands. 

Just a few short months away. 

So many things to wait for, and all the time in the world to do it. 

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.