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March 28, 2024, 05:23:25 PM

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Juggling

Started by A Passing Turk Slipper, March 15, 2005, 12:43:03 AM

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A Passing Turk Slipper

Does anyone here juggle? Juggling and various other types of object manipulation has been a big hobby of mine for many years now. I started juggling about seven years ago and its always been a great source of enjoyment for me. Though I do various other circussy style things like hat manipulation, devil stick, ball spinning, unicycling etc juggling has always been the main thing for me. It may sound a bit boring but there are thousands of tricks and things to learn, and many different types of juggling. Catching a trick for the first time is one of the most satisfying things immaginable, there's nothing like practising for ages at something then finally managing it. I get asked to do little shows for charity events and stuff and they are always brilliant fun to do, sometimes I get paid to do shows, sometimes I don't but I really don't mind either way as it's always a right laugh and good fun. So does anyone here juggle or do any skill hobbies at all? Or is this thread going to sink? If there are any jugglers, what are your records/favourite props/favourite jugglers etc? Or just any thoughts at all. If you don't juggle, go and buy some beanbags now and start learning. Honestly, you won't regret it - it's relaxing, addictive and generally just fun. I might post some pictures of me showing off tommorow if I can get some decent ones taken, or if anyone cares. I'm really going to cry if no one replies to this thread, I've been thinking of making it for a while, there must be someone out of 3000+ members who shares my hobby. Also, no circus related comments, just because I juggle I don't want to 'join the circus'. I hope I don't find out what the internet equivilant of humming that fucking circus tune is.

foxprorawks

I'd love to be able to juggle.  I can juggle two objects, but that's it.

How long did it take you to learn?

Saw a guy recently in the Leidersplein in Amsterdam - great juggler. His trademark was juggling normally, throwing one ball about 40-50 feet above him, looking around as if nothing was happening and then catching the ball in the back of his neck perfectly. Saw him do it about 5 times without missing. Amazing.

Goldentony

i havent juggled for a while, but, last time i checked could juggle about 5 balls at once. was never any good with clubs, only ever managed 3.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: "A Passing Turk Slipper"I'm really going to cry if no one replies to this thread, I've been thinking of making it for a while, there must be someone out of 3000+ members who shares my hobby.
If it's any consolation, the last time someone started a Juggling thread (which was YEARS ago, so don't worry about that) it got loads of replies if I remember correctly.

Mind you all the jugglers may have since left in some sort of "so long and thanks for all the balls" exodus or something.

Christ what a pointless post.  Sorry about that, but if I delete it now it'll just look weirder.

Dusty Gozongas

Juggling is a beautiful art. Some of my best friends are jugglers (although I'm ashamed to say none of them are dark skinned).

Some general advice to jugglers:

1) We do appreciate your juggling skills.  We love you as a friend too.
2) We say we love your glowinthedark balls because we love you.
3) The faces you pull. You're concentrating. We realise this.
4) Yep. We still can't spin a cushion on our middle finger yet. YOU can. Still. Yep.
5) Indeed, your new balls are soft and heavy unlike the silk handkerchiefs.
6) I'm sure we both still have uses for No. 5
7) Practice in front of a mirror rather than in front of friends at a ratio of 2000:1
8) Don't bring your own balls to the party. I don't bring my own cards. She leaves her vibrator at home.
9) We do appreciate your juggling skills.  We love you as a friend too.

Neville Chamberlain

I can juggle three balls no problem and I can also do four balls, although this is essentially just juggling two balls in both hands simultaneously. I read someone that you cannot "cascade" an even number of balls, i.e., make them cross between hands like you can with an odd amount of balls. Is this true? I'd love to be able to juggle five balls, but I can't get beyond four no matter how much I try. I can do loads of tricks with three balls, my favourite one being juggling as though I'm completely out of control.

Can't do many other tricks beyond jugling, except the old Basil Fawlty ice cube off elbow into *plop* drink.

slim

Isn't hencole a juggler? I thought he said it helped him quit smoking or something like that?

I can only juggle three round objects, and that's not for long. It's something that I've always admired the dexterity required to do, but have been unwilling to commit the time to learn.

Ron Seal

I can juggle a little bit, nothing fancy three balls at a time. I learned how when I was off work for a week while my girlfriend and all mymates were at college. With nothing better to do, I thought fuck it i'll learn to juggle.
For those of you who've never tried it, I'd recommend it highly as it's extremely relaxing once you get the hang of it.

butnut

I'm bloody impressed by anyone who can do any more than 3 balls (ho ho). I've tried 4 off and on for years but never got it going that well. I have no idea how you'd do 5 or more. I can also do 3 clubs well, and have my brother to thanks for doing fireclubs too, which is fun.

One of the little tricks I like to do is as I throw each ball up, to rip them like a leg-break (a spinner's delivery in cricket), so that they're spinning in a vaguely exciting way. Also do a a kind of 'backhand' release is fun, but that's the limit of my small repotoire.

(Yeah, I remember Hencole saying something about juggling before.)

A Passing Turk Slipper

Quote from: "foxprorawks"How long did it take you to learn?
It'll probably only take you a couple of hours or so to learn to do 3 consistently, then every time you add a ball it will take longer to learn. Four doesn't take that long to learn really if you can do 3 well but five takes a bit more practice, as does 6. It takes a long time to be able to juggle 7+, most jugglers kind of give up at 5 because 6 isn't that much fun and takes ages and it's not easy to immediately skip up to 7.
Oh, and Jim, no, you don't really juggle even numbers in a cascade. You can kind of do it by, say, juggling four but moving your hands as if you're juggling five (like one of the balls is invisible) but that just looks stupid and crap if you ask me. It does feel like five is going to be impossible before you can do it and it is a big step up from 4 but if you put in ten minutes practise every night I assure you you'll be juggling five fine in a few months or so. It's just practise really, when you can do 5 it is really cool, it looks and feels great. Just practise throwing five up then catching them all, then when you can do that go for slightly longer runs untill you can get 10-15 catches consistently and work from there.

Anyone can learn to juggle it just takes a few hours of constantly dropping balls on the floor. If you can beat that before the frustration gets the better of you then you'll be well away.

I can juggle three, but usually make a bit of a hash of 4. Juggling an even number uses a different technique than juggling an odd number, which is probably why I make a hash of 4.

My party trick is to throw under the legs and also throwing from behind my back. At the moment I'm working on throwing one up high, spinning 360, then catching it and carry on juggling.

I can juggle three, tried four but I end up hitting myself on the face with one.  Took me a while to learn as I got really frustrated with dropping them, but working my way to four now, and next, five, then the world!

Neville Chamberlain

*bump*

A Passing Turk Slipper: went out juggling for an hour or so in the park last night in my efforts to do five balls, and I can proudly announce a major hurdle was, um, hurdled: 5 throws and 5 catches :-)))

I'm well chuffed about that! I realised my main problem before was that I didn't have a clue what ball was what once they'd left my hand, and also the fact I was throwing them all over the place didn't help either. Realising this wasn't getting me anywhere, I dumped two balls and just juggled continuous 3-ball flashes to get used to controlling the balls at that height and rhythm. Then, when I immediately added two balls, a vague structure started to appear and I was able to catch them all properly! God knows how I'm going to continue that sequence though! Practise and loads more practise! The problem is, I don't have a garden and the ceiling in my flat's too low so the only time I can practise is when the weather's nice and I can pop down the park. Basically, I need to get it cracked by the end of the summer before the weather goes all shit again (or I move to a flat with higher ceilings!).

Oh, and there's something wrong with my Mill's Mess too, which is quite distressing! I actually suspected there was something wrong with the way I was doing it! Basically, I seem to be physically dragging one ball across my body from the left to right/right to left, and I can't resist the temptation to do this either. Then, when I really concentrate on not doing this, I lapse into what is essentially the reverse cascade and lose the rhythm with the crossing/uncrossing of the hands. No matter how many descriptions I read, I'm sure it's my fourth throw that I'm cocking up. I wish I could understand those notation things I've found on the net. I really ought to make the effort I suppose! Fortunately, whatever it is I'm doing actually looks quite cool too, so that's some consolation I suppose!

Well, I'll work on it. My Charlie Dancey book should hopefully be arriving today
:-)

A Passing Turk Slipper

Good job on the five balls! Catching a trick for the first time is the most satisfying thing ever. If you keep trying those five ball flashes untill you have it really consistent, resisting the temptation to try and carry on the pattern, you should find the juggle a lot easier once you give it a few goes. After practising that flash for a while you should get much more used to having all five balls in the air, and you'll get steadily better at controlling the pattern, the pattern taking longer and longer to descend into the inevitable scramble of catches and throws that most early runs quickly turn into. Low ceilings can be a bit of a pain, my ceilings are pretty low too and so most of my trousers have worn knees from kneeling so much when juggling. Practising five while kneeling in you house might help you actually, it will make sure your throws aren't too big. When people learn a new numbers they have a tendency to throw too high, when you're doing five you don't want to be doing big huge throws as that is obviously much harder to control, juggling inside will probably help this.
The best way to learn a trick like Mill's Mess is just to download a video clip and watch it repeatedly, practising tiny sections untill you get better. The Dancey book has a huge section on mill's mess, if you start learning from scratch with these instructions (rather than the probably less detailed ones you've read on the web) instead of trying to correct any specific parts of the pattern you can already do it might work better.
Keep us posted on how helpful the encyclopedia is, it's got a nice little story in the back of it as well which is fun.

SweetRosalyn

I tried to learn juggling once... I went along to the uni society, they got me started and were very patient with me. Several hours later, when I *still* hadn't come close to mastering it I told them that I was going to leave.  And I wasn't going to come back.  They didn't seem terribly upset.

I also tried poi.  I hit myself in the head multiple times.  I don't think circus skills are my sort of thing...

Neville Chamberlain

I've got that Charlie Dancey book! I've only had a skim through it, but it looks fantastic. The 5-ball juggling section is of particular interest to me at the moment. Did a bit more 5-ball practice last night. Unfortunately, I didn't make 5 throws / 5 catches, but I'm gradually making sense of the mess in front of me!

hencole

Yey. i love juggling. Been teaching myself for about 9 months now. Can do 4 ball tricks and multiplexes, but haven't yet plucked up the courage to do 5 without multiplexing. Need to practise outside more as ceiling eight stops me practising. Just started club juggling, but have had to slow that down as I threw a double spin straight into my eyeball 2 weeks ago and scrapped my cornea making me blind for 5 days. So I'm a bit nervous doing it as it was it the most painful thing ever. So for now I'm sticking to the balls and rings. Glastonbury was good as you get to teach new tricks to strangers and vice versa.

http://www.free-dome.org/orr/PassingPage/Simulators/JavaMaster/home.htm

Above link is a good java juggling programme which helps you learn a lot of tricks.

Only three ball trick I'm struggling with is Rubensteins as I've never seen anyone do it in real life. Any tips Turks slipper?

A Passing Turk Slipper

Heh, nice one. Have you heard of Jason Garfield? A lot of jugglers don't like him but God knows why, I think he's hilarious and he's probably my favourite juggler. His persona is just this sarcastic boasting misanthrope. His website is great (www.jasongarfield.com), you can download his full IJA shows. Click on the timeline link then go to 2000 and click on the picture. Watching that show really gives you an idea of his character, in that show he ran 4 minutes over the time limit and didn't win as a result. He's slightly bitter about it. In his 2002 IJA show which is hilarious and definitely worth watching he takes the piss out of various jugglers, juggling cliches etc, he won the competition that year and deservedly so.  One thing that I laughed for ages at is that he came 5th place in some competition  which made him quit juggling for six years, he refers on his website to these years as 'the Van Damme years' because he spent this time making movies with his friends which largely consisted of Jean Claude Van Damme style fight sequences, he says that  "Jason, and his other actors, seemed to be the only ones who got enjoyment out of watching these "movies"". They are actually quite impressive but anyway, juggling. On his site he's got loads of videos which are really good. One of them is six in one hand, this is the only world record which I seriously think I could equal. It's my main juggling ambition to equal a juggling world record and I can basically do a 5 ball flash in one hand, six can't be that harder. I'll need to buy some tiny beanbags to do it with though. Anyway, check out his site.
Edit: Sorry, that was in response to Jim

hencole

Anyone seen Indian Juggling? Saw a couple of acts at Glasto and now I want to get all the toys. Basically they have a variety of props from spinning tops to 6kg balls etc. and do a lot of it in time to music. Most impressive it was too and highly recommended.

A Passing Turk Slipper

Quote from: "hencole"Only three ball trick I'm struggling with is Rubensteins as I've never seen anyone do it in real life. Any tips Turks slipper?
http://www.juggling.org/animations/rr01.mpg - That's the video I learnt it from. I just watched that video a shit load of times and practised it step by step. I'll try and find another link that helped me, it showed how to start learning the trick using just two balls, ah, here it is - http://www.bogleg.com/jag/ruben.html That site helped me a lot also. It's definitely worth working on the pattern by going through the steps described there, it makes learning it a lot easier than just watching people doing it. If you combine learning it via those steps and also watching videos of people doing it you should get the pattern soon enough.
That injury sounds nasty hencole. I'm pretty much just a ball juggler myself, most people my standard with balls can do lots of club tricks and at least 5 clubs but because I don't have a local juggling club, a house with high ceilings and I live in Scotland (meaning bad weather) I don't really get the chance to juggle clubs that often and can only do 4. I want to learn five but I need to buy another club first which will cost like 30 quid or something. I use Radical Fish clubs, which are excellent, I'd highly recommend them. I don't really juggle rings for the same reason. Rings are hell outside because of wind and inside they break stuff. Anyway, I'm not sure if I've seen any indian Juggling, I'll have to check it out. Juggling is just great, I love doing numbers but cool 3 ball tricks can be just as satisfying. A trick I'm currently working on is the box with inverted throws that go over the pattern, it's quite hard but looks cool. I've mastered juggling with one hand making all the throws and catches from behind my back (not side juggling, though that is great fun to doas well and really impressive to non jugglers) and I'm loving doing that at the moment, really satisfying. Do you guys go to any juggling clubs? I've been to the edinburgh one a couple of times but it's an hours journey away so can't go all the time.

hencole

Yeah I pretty much have given up with rings too, for wind and height reasons!

The box is one of my favourites though I'm not sure what you mean by an inverted throw over (is that with an extra ball?) Trying a 4 ball box varient at the moment, but again the ceiling gets in the way. I've never been to a juggling club and I haven't checked to see if there any in my area. Might give it a go some time as I wouldn't mind getting some passing practise in. I prefer tricks to numbers, but I think thats because it takes more effort to move up in the numbers than it does to learn a hell of a lot of tricks in the same time.

A Passing Turk Slipper

The inverted box style thing is quite hard to explain, it doesn't help that there's some video of some guy trying to do it on the web and he's not really doing it properly. In the pattern I'm talking about the ball that goes from hand to hand gets thrown over the other two balls rather than under. If you check out this site of amazing videos and click on the '3 balls box tricks' (2.8MB) and he does it I think, at least that's a trick I'm learning now even if it isn't called the inverted box.

Neville Chamberlain

Thanks for the links and stuff, Mr. Slipper! Blimey, I've just watched that 6-ball Mill's Mess - what a nutter! Have you ever seen anyone do a 7-ball Mill's Mess? 8 balls? 9? It's all theoretically possible I suppose!

Unfortunately, I'm away all weekend so I won't be doing any juggling but I can't wait to get stuck into that book. According to the book, I discovered that the thing I do when I'm trying to do the Mill's Mess has actually got a name (forgotten what) and is no less complex so I'm quite chuffed in a way!

hencole

Sounds like a fake Mills. There are so many varients though and a lot of sites don't show the proper one. When I first thought I'd got it, I found I'd been doing the wrong one for 2 months. Boston mess is the one I can't do yet.

Neville Chamberlain

You're right, Hencole, it's a Fake Mill's Mess that I'm doing. It's cool, but it's not the real thing!

A Passing Turk Slipper

Quote from: "hencole"Sounds like a fake Mills. There are so many varients though and a lot of sites don't show the proper one. When I first thought I'd got it, I found I'd been doing the wrong one for 2 months. Boston mess is the one I can't do yet.
Ooh, Boston Mess is lovely. There's also a pattern called 'the cherrypicker' or something which is the Boston mess but with claw catches on one hand, it doesn't look as nice as the proper Boston Mess though if you ask me.

Tre

Can't juggle - did got to a circus skills thing once - but couldn never get the hang of all the balls - plate spinning I can do!
xx

Neville Chamberlain

I can now juggle 5 balls!!!!!!!!

It's better than sex!

A Passing Turk Slipper

How is everyone's juggling going then? This is just a shameful bump so I can boast about the fact I flashed 9 for the first time last week. I was trying for nearly two hours then finally got it and I was so bloody pleased with myself, was grinning about it for days after. It will be a while before I get ten though, I reckon I'll get 6 in one hand first and that will be cool seen as no one has ever done seven before to my knowledge. I know flashes ultimately mean nothing, but still. Que loads of jokes about me exposing myself.