Teaching Juggling

Teach Juggling Fast With This One Weird Trick

I’ve recently started teaching juggling with a new approach which seems to be very effective, often getting someone competently juggling in only a single session. Because I want more people to learn how to juggle I’ll now explain it in the hopes that others start using this approach to good effect as well.

The problem with learning juggling (and with going to higher numbers) is that it’s too big of a leap. What you want are ‘stepping stones’: patterns which are within what the student can do or close to it but challenging enough that they’re getting useful feedback and improving from trying to do them. Ideally you’d have a low gravity chamber for people to juggle in while practicing and gradually increase the gravity level until it was Earth normal. Sadly physics doesn’t allow for that. Maybe having people roll balls up an angled board and gradually increasing the angle until it was vertical and removing it completely would work well, but I haven’t tried that.

The difficult of a juggling pattern has to do with the ratio of balls to hands. Since the vast majority of people only have two hand and their feet are fairly useless for juggling increasing the number of hands is not an option. If you go down from 3 to 2 balls it’s no longer juggling, it’s just holding balls, and since there’s on integer between 2 and 3 [citation needed] there’s no easier pattern available.

But there’s a loophole! You can do pattern which the beginner does in collaboration with an expert. This allows for a lower ratio of balls to hands by adding more hands, allows the beginner to only use one hand, and averages out the skill of the jugglers to be between the expert and the beginner which allows for harder patterns than the beginner could do alone. Not only does this allow for stepping stone patterns but it’s very good motivationally because beginners can participate in a legitimate juggling pattern right off the bat.

The first pattern to do is four balls and three hands with the beginner doing one of the three hands. It’s best to start with throwing a single ball through its orbit to get a feel for what the throws are. (This applies to all the later patterns as well so pretend I repeat the advice about starting with one ball for each one). To make later patterns easier the student should make inside throws. They should stand face to face with the teacher and throw from their right hand to the teacher’s right hand, which then throws to the teacher’s left hand, and finally the student’s right hand. It’s easiest to start with the student holding two balls and they initiate the pattern. Also gets the used to starting with two which they’ll eventually have to do when juggling by themselves. After they get the hang of their right hand you can switch to their left hand, where the ball goes from the student’s left hand to the the teacher’s left hand, then the teacher’s right hand, and finally back to the student’s left hand. For left handed students the other order should be used.

The next pattern up is five balls and four hands, which is an even lower ratio of balls to hands but does require the student use both hands. The student should do the inside throw half of the pattern because inside throws are what they’ll need to do for juggling by themselves. The pattern is that balls go from the student’s right hand to the teacher’s right hand, then the student’s left hand, then the teacher’s left hand, and finally back to the student’s right hand. It’s easiest to start with the student having two balls in their right and and one in their left and initiating the first throw. (Or starting with two in their left and one in their right if they’re left handed.)

Almost at the end is pair juggling with three balls and two hands where the student does the right hand and the teacher does the left, then the mirror image pattern where the student does the left hand and the teacher does the right. Finally the student has mastered all the elements which need to be put together and they’re ready to try full-blown juggling by themselves. The build-up patterns have covered the elements of it enough that some people with no athletic backgrounds can manage to get in good runs after less than an hour of training.