New Style of Contact Balls

I picked up some new contact juggling balls a bit ago. I found them mentioned on the Ministry of Manipulation.

They are much heavier and harder than a standard stage ball (to me, it seems like someone just made a stage ball with walls an inch thick).

I like them a lot, they have much more mass, and are easier to roll than the lighter stage balls. In terms of danger to nearby objects, they are somewhere between a stage ball (which will hardly break anything) and an acrylic, which will break most anything you bounce it off of. I wouldn’t want to drop the new one on a bare foot, but it’s much easier on things it bounces off of than an acrylic. But I also don’t wince if I drop it on concrete, unlike my acrylic.

Definitely a sticky surface, only for one ball contact.

I got mine from firetoys.co.uk, expensive to get shipped to the US, but quick.

Recommended.

Walking While Juggling

I’m doing more walking to work these days, and since that’s a great time to juggle, I’ve been walking while juggling more.

The first time I tried walking while juggling, I kept my eyes focused on the balls, just as I do when juggling in place. It turns out there are disadvantages to not looking where you are going.

The second time I was looking through the balls at where I was going.

Today I tried to look through the balls, but be aware of them. Sort of watching them with my peripheral vision. This give me more awareness of their trajectory, while still watching where I am going.

I’m also enjoying that more people say “hello” when you are juggling. When walking down the street normally, people tend to ignore each other, but when juggling, you have their attention, and can say “hi”.

At The Nomadic Juggling Festival

I’m at the nomadic juggling festival in San Luis Obispo, CA, today. Nice venue, the weather is lovely here. Mostly club jugglers here, although I took a ball spinning workshop. I’d never tried spinning before. Since the last thing I need now is yet another hobby that requires hours of practice, I’m unlikely to become a ball spinner.

The local TV station, KSBY was there this afternoon, there was video on the six o’clock news, and a brief article here

I only saw two unicycles, and about half a dozen contact jugglers, although there is at least one more contract juggler than there was yesterday.

Precision

I’m trying to work on the accuracy of my tosses. I was reading a book last night that talked about efficient learning strategies, and it talked about focusing on specific aspects of the process. Ideally these are aspects  that are measurable, which is hard with juggling, so I just focused on finding specific aspects of the juggling process that I thought could use some work.

The aspects need to relate to how you do something, not goals like “100 tosses in a row” which say nothing about how to get there.

So, as I juggled on my way to work today (I walk), I decided to focus on where the ball is in my right hand when I throw. I chose this because is stands to reason that the toss is less likely to be consistent if the position I’m throwing from is not consistent. I noticed that I was not very consistent here, sometimes I was tossing from the palm, sometimes from the fingers. I decided to go for tossing from the  palm of the hand, the part right at the base of the middle two fingers. If anyone’s a better juggler than me, and knows where is the ‘correct’ place to toss from, I’d like to know.

I don’t know if my overall juggling improved, I’ll need to find someway to measure that. But I did succeed in making the toss position in my right hand much more consistent.

I did a similar thing yesterday with my contact juggling. My left elbow stall had not been working nearly as well as my right. I stopped and analyzed it, instead of just practicing, and found that the muscles were slightly different on that arm, and a slightly different hand position produced a more stable balance point. A useful result for only a few minutes of effort.
We’ll see how much improvement this method produces.

Nomadic Juggling Festival

The Nomadic Juggling Festival will be held Nov 9-11, 2007, in San Luis Obispo, CA, USA.

Given how much I enjoyed the Berkeley Juggling Festival, and how much I like San Luis Obispo, I think I’m going.

Static vs Dynamic Balance

Definitions first.

Static balance is when you have a place where the ball will naturally rest (e.g. the palm of your hand), and you don’t need to do anything to keep it there. Dynamic balance is when you need do constantly adjust to keep the ball where you want it, for example on the top of your head (not on a flat spot, or indentation).

I’ve been working on rolling to the static spot on my outer elbow, and I’ve gotten reasonably (50%) good at it. But one side effect is I’ve gotten MUCH better at dynamic balance on my arms. If I miss the spot on my elbow by an inch or two, I can roll it back to where I want it to go.

I’ve also gotten much better at just rolling the ball up to my shoulder, and back to my hand, even though I haven’t been practicing that.

Berkeley Juggling Festival

I went to the Berkeley Juggling Festival on Saturday. I wish I’d had more time, I had a blast. Contact juggling class from Greg Maldonado. I got to see Vova Galchenko juggle, too, which was astonishing. I’ll try to get some pictures up.

I picked up a copy of Multiball Contact by Drew Batchelor. I haven’t done any multiball yet, I’ll have to get a few more acrylics. But right now I plan on continuing to practice single ball for a while. There’s only so much practice time in a day.

One of the things Greg talked about in the class was tossing the ball to a rest point (e.g. an elbow). I’d never tried, but I was actually able to do it, both to the inside of the elbow, and to the outside of the elbow. It surprised me that I could almost immediately, as I hadn’t tried tossing to a resting place before. One more trick. One more trick which I now need to practice a thousand times, as I can do it occasionally now, not consistently.

Two hands

I’m starting to work on two handed contact juggling. I can do a butterfly with two hands/two balls at once, but I can’t do much beyond that.

I’m working on doing two elbow stalls simultaneously, but right now that just means dropping. As an intermediate step, I’m just trying to keep one ball balanced on the back of my hand, while I do moves with the other hand. That’s still challenging, but I’ve only been trying for two days

How do other people start learning to do things two handed? Particularly two different tricks at the same time.

Juggling without looking

I’m trying to get out of the habit of staring at my juggling balls while I juggle. It’s harder. I can do some contact juggling with my eyes closed, but not everything. And I’m working on looking through the cascade while juggling (this way I can watch TV while juggling!).

I did find some discussion here and, of course, there are some videos on youtube. I find it kind of peaceful to contact juggle in a pitch dark room.

Berkeley Juggling Festival

Ok, the Portland Juggling Festival is coming up first, but I’m going to the Berkeley Juggling & Unicycling festival

I’ve never been to a Juggling Festival before, but am looking forward to it. I hope to pick up some new toys. I want to get started on multi-ball contact, but I’ve only got one acrylic sphere so far.