Dogfish Juggling

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

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

(This may be an unedited version)

Out clubbing, juggler’s style. Part two. 

By Luke Eden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

in an ideal world
6 am – 7 am : exerball endurance
6 pm – 7 pm: three clubs / three balls
7 pm – 8 pm: four-ball shower

Well, truthfully it doesn’t really. It has been somewhat gloomy of late around here, and that has certainly cut into my unicycling, although the demands of my work schedule bear a much larger share of the blame. ,br> one somewhat depressing thing I’ve noticed about my juggling is that, since ive started working, i have really had to cut down on my exercise juggling.
ok this term is a bit silly, so let me take a moment to elaborate. i have several sets of props. most often i use beanbags since these are the only props i have four of  (well technically i have a set of homemade balls, but they are very poor and i hate them bitterly). i like the beanbags, they have nice dead-drop and they feel very nice in my hands. they are a very good prop for four, and i even have a spare incase i ever manage to make a stab at 5.
now, i also have a few other props that i only have 3 of–a set of russian balls and clubs. i also have a set of ExerBalls. they are a very nice size, around the diameter of a baseball. they have a very nice rubbery grip and they are filled with lead. each ball weighs about 2.35 pounds, so all told its around 7 pounds when you get all three of them going.
in my younger and more vulnerable days i juggled these quite a lot. at the time they were hands down the nicest prop i had (all the others came later) and i had plenty of time to juggle whenever my little heart desired.
currently, my time is so limited, and i find myself so anxious to improve my juggling abilities, that almost all i have time for are my beanbags. don’t misunderstand me. i love the beanbags. the four ball shower is amazingly fun. pushing myself to make those fast, accurate, throws is exhilarating. but i sincerely and desperately miss the sweaty labor of juggling with my exerballs.
part of it is just motivational. i am usually so drained from work that all i can think of doing is some casual juggling. but oh how i miss the endless hours of endurance runs. the tremble in my arms and the quick gasps as my breath falls into the rythem of the balls.
i just hope things at the paper calm down soon, and i find more time to work in longer, more elaborate practices.

i finished my assignments for the paper’s special section this week. it was a hellatious ride. i spent all day monday gathering information for the special section in addition to the full gamut of sport-related assignments. it was exhausting and i went to bed very early. i woke up at 2 a.m. and wrote the entire sports section. i finished around 10:30, switched over to a-section and special section assignments, worked till 3 and then headed to basketball games. i got home around 10 at night, and headed to bed. more special section work all day wednesday, finished up thursday morning. spent thursday afternoon and friday morning on saturday’s copy. thursday friday and today i had a middle school basketball tournament to cover, and in about 20 minutes i have to head to high school games. so, a bit short on juggling time–although i did get in a bit of casual juggling last night while (how amazing is this) i was at the tattoo shop while my dad got his first work done!

i feel pretty good about my shower, it is coming along nicely and i was able to run four for several catches very comfortably. my head is throbbing a bit, and i have to go soon. so thats all for now. more juggling to come in a pre-juggling festival post.  

Well, that might be putting it a bit strongly, but I have, once again, been remiss in my juggling practice. Things have been unbelievably hectic at the newspaper.  We are doing a special section, so in addition to the normal pressure of deadlines, we have an added level of horror and stress to deal with. But, for better or worse it will all be over this week. I am certainly looking forward to a return to a regular practice schedule. I have to admit that I also went out of town this weekend and, foolishly enough, left all of my balls, beanbags and clubs as well as my unicycle sitting up in the loft–what a silly and irresponsible lad I am.  I’ve got several basketball games to attend tonight, and I think I might just bring a few props along with me to keep me busy during the warmups and whatnot between games. That should be fun.  On a side-note: while I didn’t get much practice done this weekend, I did run into a girl I went out with a few times while I lived in columbus. It was very nice to see her again. We had dinner and she invited me to come back into town. As soon as the week of insanity is over it will be back to four ball endurance runs and more work on getting doubles down for clubs. The daycare thing went passably well, though I didn’t get as much time to refine the whole act as I would have like and the speech and juggling were not as integrated as I originally envisioned things.   Uni-juggling practice has been postponed owing largely to the cold rainy weather we’ve had over the past few weeks, but I still have high hopes. High in the sky hopes.   Sadly, that is all.  – Juggle the world! 

I have several things I’m working on juggling-wise at the moment: 

•Tomorrow (Wednesday) morning I am going to be speaking at a career day for a small daycare center full of 3-4 year olds and I plan to integrate some juggling into the speech. I have a rough idea of what I want to do and how I want to blend the two together, but I have been pretty caught up in working on the 4 ball shower so I’ve not really polished the routine I worked out. 

•I’ve also been trying to improve my unicycle juggling, but it’s still pretty rough going in that department. I really want to get this down before the festival in Atlanta. 

•As I mentioned in my last post work on 4 balls and 3 club doubles continues. 

I feel like I am finally reaching a point where I am making some consistent progress with my four ball shower. It feels a bit trite to write this, since I’ve written about it in my journal and made mention of it on rec.juggling, but I want to get it down here as well so I am going to "grit my teeth and bare it," as they say.  So, I started working with four pretty lackadaisically somewhere in mid-october.  Honestly my progress was pretty terrible. Even after following the WJF practice guide (which is very comprehensive) I just didn’t have the time to do much concentrated practice, and the practice I did get in was pretty shoddy. It’s really only been since 2008 that I’ve found any modicum of success.  I’d been quite busy at work and pretty stressed to boot, so I admittedly slacked off on my juggling–while I had been practicing occasionally it was quite lack-luster and unproductive.  Come 2008 I started picking things up because I (with some degree of foolishness I now feel) resolved to learn a 5-ball cascade by spring.  I’ve set a new goal for myself (since it’s still January I feel like I can do this). Once I began to really practice again I realized how far I had to go with four before I could really even think about adding a fifth ball. At that point I realized I needed to shift my priorities. My new goal is 4 clubs.  This seems like quite a tall order at the moment, and I will need to drastically improve both my 4 ball shower and my 3 club cascade before this can happen.  The biggest thing I need to work on with clubs is mastering (hell achieving competency. . .) the doubles throw.  I think a few more viewings of the 3 / 4 club section on Jason Garfield’s Theory and Practice of Juggling will probably elucidate a few things, but what I really need to do is learn not to be so spastic with my doubles throws. As far as the  4 ball shower goes–practice practice practice. I am finally getting to the point where I can visualize the pattern I am juggling and this seems to be a critical step, especially for four since it gives me a way of focusing on both halves of the patter instead of trying to split my attention and shift it back and forth.  Hopefully I will also be able to improve enough so that I can learn and absorb a lot at the upcoming AJA Groundhogs Day Juggling Festival in February.