I learned to juggle this week and I love it. Yesterday I could only do about 5 circulations but then today it just clicked and I can now juggle pretty much as long as I want. I also got taught how to throw one ball under the leg and had a quick (unsuccessful) try at juggling clubs. I also tried juggling various combinations of objects which I’m now pretty much addicted to. Today I’ve juggled:
…oh yeh, I almost forgot the one I did after a concert tonight…a water bottle, a drum stick, and a small piece of chocolate. That one only lasted about 2 circulations though.
I love it all!
Juggling the glove with the other things was really strange and with the different sized balls, I kept throwing some higher than others which made it fun.
I’m now joining a juggling group on Monday nights…yet another obsession for Andrew.
Next on the list is making a set of clubs. Rockley, one of my unicycling buddies, made some really good ones out of softdrink bottles and doweling and tape. I’ve also discovered that I love balancing things on my head. I’ve done a bit of unicycling and juggling which is good fun.
Andrew, juggling is a great hobby. I haven’t been juggling too much lately but I can still catch most of things I clumsily drop from a table before they hit ground. Try finding some videos of different tricks and start practicing them. It really helps on your throwing accuracy. And better accuracy means you can throw even higher, and that means your on your way to five balls. I couldn’t really practice it while I was juggling, because the ceiling was too low for it. And outside the balls get really dirty and sometimes wet, and that ruins everything. You can’t get decent grip. Though I learned to do a five ball flash, quite fast. If I remember right I could get around 10 catches with five balls.
Four balls is fairly easy. Five balls is impossible. For me, anyway.
Four and five are completely different, but three and five are closely related in the pattern that the balls follow. Four balls is just juggling two balls in each hand at the same time.
there are four ball cascade patterns too, but the easiest way to do four, is in fact to do two in each hand, no crossing.
congratulations on learning to juggle, it’s a lifetime of entertainment and when you start clubs and club passing, it’s also a great workout.
once you have a solid cascade pattern with clubs, you can do other stuff too, besides standard passing, you can do runarounds, back to back passing, side to side passing, passing while standing on shoulders, feed patterns, 7, 8, and 9 club passing, the possibilities are endless…
and then there’s always the ‘danger props’ like torches, machetes, and rubber chickens
five balls is just lots of practice. use beanbags (because they don’t roll) and practice while standing in front of a bed (so you don’t have to bend over so far to pick up drops)
an excellent juggling program for the computer is Joe Pass. It’s got solo juggling as well as passing, and the animation is variable so you can really slow stuff down to see how to do it.
Just for the record and at the risk of seeming nitpicky, there is, in fact, no such thing as a cascade with even numbers of objects. There are lots of crossing patterns for even numbers of objects, but not the cascade as done with odd numbers of objects.
As for how hard it is to learn 4 and 5 balls. I’ve seen it written that on a difficulty scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is easy, learning 3 balls is a 2, learning 4 is a 6, and learning 5 is about a 30. It took me 6 months to get to the point where I sucked at juggling a 5 ball cascade. I still do.
Is there anyone else who Juggles, and Unicycles, but doent do them at the same time?
For some reason I will not take the time to learn how to do this, although I’m sure I could get it in a matter of minutes if I tried.
Since I started to be facinated by Trials and Muni I made the decision that I wont juggle on my unicycle. My explination to people is that its for the respect of riding as a sport and not just another trick to do while juggling. It doesnt seem to help my cause to get unicycling legitimized as a sport, but I do get more challenges and bets that I cant do it every time I go out and ride…
I don’t juggle on my unicycle. I tried it when I first learned to ride, so I can do it quite well now, but now I only do MUni and trials. That doesn’t call for much juggling.
I think I’m quite good at five balls now, too. I can get five tosses! zero catches, though.
This strikes me as being akin to proving your respect for women and that you don’t see them as just “objects” by not making love with them. Except to the most extreme views you do both yourself and them a disservice.
I don’t know if I follow you there all the way. Juggling on a unicycle is defiantly a trick like wheel walking, or any other trick (sex?). Not doing this trick doesn’t really hurt me as a performer, or those fine women you speak of as an audience. Perhaps in the fact that I’m reducing the number of tricks I can do. Refusing to do the trick is more due to social expectations that assume because I can unicycle, and juggle well that I should do both at the same time. People don’t assume because you’re a man that you are going to exploit women for sex. At least this doesn’t happen to me often at all.
I find it similar to the If/then Clown statement: If you unicycle then you’re a clown. And I think you know how I feel on that one. So by recognizing and not conforming to the hegemony of the public I rebel against the social norms in a way.
Yes it’s a selfish goal and while I make it out to be a great ordeal, is rather petty and could go without it and just learn to juggle on my unicycle. But at this point I would still rather break the ideology that a unicycle is a prop for which you juggle on.
Based on a few conversations with casual onlookers it seems to me that people don’t really see people who juggle/unicycle as clowns worthy of contempt. I think they basically see unicycling as hard, and juggling as hard, and the people that do them as amazing. People that can do both at once they see as simply incredibly talented – way beyond the norm.
There are some unicyclists that are militantly anti-clown/unijuggling, and it seems that it may be them wanting to seem incredibly talented too without having the automatic requirement to juggle.
Certainly advanced juggling and advanced unicycling each take just as much talent as simultaneously unicyling and juggling.
However, the most talent may be required by the act of not resenting another artist’s admirers.
Not you at all, Chex. I’m just making a general statement, that’s all. It’s hard for me personally not to resent other people’s admirers, though in different arenas. I just thought that I had a partial handle on why this curiously strong tendency to say “I don’t juggle, and I’m proud of it” exists. There are other aspects to it as well, such as the ones you mentioned, “I resist being classified with a stereotype”, and “What I’m doing requires a lot of skill, why bring up something unrelated?”, and “Your view of unicycling is limited, let me help educate you.”
I’d like to pull-off Sofa’s clown trick too on some gnarly forest path, but I simply don’t have the full set of skills yet to make it really good.
I wish I could break through that barrier. I think I’ve done 12 catches once so far. Mostly, I’m lucky if I do 3. I have a set of 3 purple Koosh balls that are neat for learning. They don’t roll, and they’re a nice size for me. I also practice with lacrosse balls, actual juggling balls, and a couple of other kinds too. I’m lousy with all of them.
Anyway. If you want to practice riding and juggling, the USA, Inc. has developed a skill progression that combines the two skills. Just let me know if you’d like to see it. Several excellent riders/jugglers have provided suggestions. It’s not final yet, but it would give you some ideas for what to try.
I perform as a juggler 2/3 times each week, from 1999.
Ive started as juggler, and only in 2001 Ive tried a unicycle. I think that this passage is normal, cause normally if a person has a uni, he IS a juggler (in Italy).
In my shows I do uni, idling, wheel walk, jump the rope and other tricks, and at the end we jump on the giraffe and on the walking globe and we pass 6/7 torches.
But this is only a part of my uni-passion…
In facts I do muni rides everytime I can , completely alone (or with buddies), without audience (and if I meet nobody Im happier...), cause in this case Im doing uni FOR ME, ONLY FOR MY PLEASURE, cause I love it, and it`s the same sensation that I feel when I do trial, freestyle, or when I practice 5 balls or 5 clubs.
I like juggling (for me), I like uni (for me), I like to show my skills juggling on the uni (for the audience and for my wallet)…
