Juggling Tutorial

There are lots of sites on the web that claim to be able to teach you to juggle, and most of them do a good job for a particular audience. At this stage it's not clear that another site is really needed, so Let Us Know.

In the meantime, here's a really terse guide to juggling three balls.

You need to ...

The critical things are:

1. You need to be able to throw a ball accurately every time with either hand.
2. You need to throw at waist height from the centre to a point just outside shoulder width.
3. See point 1.
4. You need to throw consistently high.
5. See point 1.
6. Don't reach up to catch the ball - it will come down.
7. See point 1.
8. Don't rush.
9. See point 1.

The Pattern

The way to juggle three is now this:

1. Take two balls in your right hand and one in your left.
2. Make one of your perfect throws with the right hand and wait till the ball passes its peak and starts to come down.
3. Make one of your perfect throws with the left hand, then use the left to catch the one coming down.
4. As that starts to come down, make one of your perfect throws with the right hand and catch the one coming down.
5. Repeat.

You're aiming for the balls to trace out a McDonalds sign. The balls come from the middle and travel in two arcs, each ball going to the opposite hand.

Making progress

If your throws aren't (nearly) perfect then the pattern will disintegrate. The reasons are:

• Your throws aren't consistently high
• Your throws are forward
• You didn't throw from the middle outwards
• You threw too early
• You threw too late.

Summary

So there it is. Don't practise for more than about five or ten minutes at a time, and re-read this page frequently. And if you learn to juggle then Let Us Know!

Quotation from Tim Berners-Lee