Most people can't juggle one ball

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jTGbKKGqs5EdyYoRc/most-people-can-t-juggle-one-ball

by surprisetalk • 3 months ago

507 171 3 months ago

comboy• 3 months ago

To be fair, I can do 3 balls effortlessly, but I can't do 1 ball like it is in this description, I just have a lot of error correction, enough to do it pretty much indefinitely. But I cannot reliably throw it accurately to the other hand.

Our software stack is the opposite of that.

vunderba10• 3 months ago

Longtime juggler here.

Outside of more complicated tricks like the claw and other specialized patterns, the most common juggling patterns (such as the cascade [1]) don’t rely as much on pure handeye coordination as they do on maintaining a consistent, even toss. The key is throwing each ball so it rises and falls in a predictable arc, so it lands approximately in the same spot where your other hand is waiting to catch it.

When I teach complete beginners, I actually start with a set of special handkerchiefs. They fall more slowly than balls, which gives learners more time to react and makes it much easier to see and follow the path of each object through the air.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_(juggling)

justonceokay• 3 months ago

Every time I got better at dancing I got better at juggling too. In my folk psychology, juggling is a partially-attached extension of your hands, so it’s just weird dancing.

If you think of it like 3 jobs you have to do simultaneously everything falls apart. Internalizing the three balls as a single process that you are participating in makes it a lot more manageable.

Of course the only way to get there is some 10s of hours of practice

vunderba10• 3 months ago

Yeah I could see that. I think that because dance is so heavily reliant on proprioceptive abilities, it makes sense that there would be some overlap with juggling.

empiricus• 3 months ago

A long time ago (pre-internet) I heard a normal person can learn to juggle in 1 day. It took me 2 days, but I learned to juggle 3 balls. But soon I realized what you said, the need for a consistent toss. Not sure of the reason, but I always make some errors with physical movements, they are never perfect. Even with typing, no matter how much I exercise, I cannot get bellow ~3% errors. Wondering if this is some kind of genetic effect, and how many ppl have similar issues.

P-Nuts• 3 months ago

I haven’t tried juggling for decades but I did manage to teach myself basic three-ball juggling when I was at university (any excuse to avoid revising!)

I think it took me a couple of weeks though. I’m a bit malcoordinated for that sort of thing in general. I think you’re right that there’s some sort of natural aptitude that not everybody has. Fortunately basic juggling is just about easy enough that almost any idiot can do it.

PyWoody• 3 months ago

I, too, make unpreventable physical errors all the friggin time.

For instance, I attempted to upvote your comment but initially downvoted it. Sigh.

lores• 3 months ago

If you are on the spectrum at all, you have a high-to-very-high chance of being more clumsy than average due to differences in sensory processing.

pstuart• 3 months ago

Any recommendations for youtube lessons?

irishcoffee2• 3 months ago

Practice against a wall with tennis balls, it’ll take a day.

nickcw6• 3 months ago

I love Taylor Tries

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGV8mtb7t-4PuziHauottOfqp...

Great teaching style and a fantastic juggler

pessimizer• 3 months ago

https://archive.org/details/Juggling-Step-By-Step-1987

nickcw6• 3 months ago

My favourite technique is after the initial two ball crosses was for me to stand in for their left (or non dominant) hand.

You stand slightly behind your pupil and get them to put their left hand behind their back and you put your left hand about where theirs should be. You give them one ball in their right hand and then you start the pattern with two balls.

Most people are amazed to find themselves juggling at this point. Yes, you are correcting their mistakes but it gives a real feeling of juggling for them. Most people manage 10 catches quite easily at this point.

Once they have the hang of that swap sides. This one is harder, don't do it too long before setting them off on 3 and they can practice themselves from here on.

I have taught 100s of people to juggle like that :-)

vunderba10• 3 months ago

That's a neat approach! It's not really the same, but it kind of reminds me of an interview they did with Michael Moschen (the guy who performed the contact juggling scene in Jim Henson’s movie Labyrinth). He talked about how difficult it was because he had to thread his arms underneath David Bowie’s, so he couldn’t actually see the acrylic ball while he was doing the contact juggling.

QuantumGood• 3 months ago

Some of us had a juggling party at a lake. All amateurs, i.e. few could manage much with clubs. An international juggling award winner (don't remember more than that) found out, joined us, and had a number of us partner juggling flaming torches pretty quickly, and kept pushing us into more and more techniques. The quality of the coach matters!

delichon• 3 months ago

I wonder if juggling positive buoyancy balloons upside down would develop skills transferable to right side up. You can make those as slow as you want. When jugglers juggle balls against the floor I guess they don't start from scratch.

vunderba10• 3 months ago

Lol. I’ve juggled non-buoyant, air filled balloons but because of their elasticity they don’t exactly settle into your hand when they land.

In my juggling routine, one of the things I do is transition to lying on my back face up while continuing to juggle. I’m throwing the balls straight up above my head while lying perfectly flat, which feels pretty weird. So I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to be physically upside down while juggling.

analog31• 3 months ago

When I learned to juggle (which I've forgotten), it was with beanbags, because they don't bounce away when you drop them.

mark-r3• 3 months ago

But where's the fun in that? Chasing the balls is half the challenge!

Seriously, knowing the balls are going to roll away if you drop them gives you some incentive to do it right. I think I used tennis balls early on.

c22• 3 months ago

I taught myself next to a bed so I didn't have to bend over to pick them up.

pdpi• 3 months ago

The way I taught myself to juggle was something I don't see very often in guides, but I think works quite well — I taught myself to juggle two balls in one hand, until I could do it with both hands, and then three ball juggling with two hands was just doing the exact same thing, but crossing.

stevage3• 3 months ago

Yeah I have wondered about that as a method. You can even just go two balls in one hand, then switch to the other side and back, and that's almost the 3 ball pattern.

sjrd• 3 months ago

Oh waw, I had totally forgotten about the handkerchiefs. But this is indeed how I was first thaught juggling when I was a kid. Thanks for the trip down the memory lane!

AirMax98• 3 months ago

I’m very amazed by this site linked in the Wikipedia: https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/3balltricks/Cascade.htm...

Supposedly from 2014, but looks a fair bit older.

orangesilk• 3 months ago

could you please link the beginner handkerchiefs?

vunderba10• 3 months ago

The ones I have are pretty old, and I got them from a local store that doesn’t exist anymore. They’re kind of slightly weighted, for lack of a better term almost like a foxtail toy.

You could probably just use standard juggling scarves and get much of the same effect. Renegade Juggling is probably one of the better places to buy juggling equipment.

https://renegadejuggling.com/products/juggling-scarf-23-inch...

scarecrw• 3 months ago

I learned using plastic bags. Probably not as uniform in their motion as handkerchiefs, but worked to get the pattern down before moving to balls.

stevage3• 3 months ago

Yeah I never really mastered a consistent throw - it's just not how my brain works. I got as a pretty shakey 4 ball shower and that was it.

nickm12• 3 months ago

It's been a while since I taught anyone to juggle, but I generally disrecommended scarf juggling. It's fine if you want some quick validation, but the hand movements are so different from balls/bags that I don't think the skills are transferable.

I prefer the method described in the original post. Just start with one ball and get that right, then two, then three. It's a bit like the Karate Kid, though. Students don't find it as satisfying because they want to jump ahead before they've got the movement down.

vunderba10• 3 months ago

The scarves I use, as I mentioned in another thread, are actually weighted. They fall more like a traditional ball, just significantly slower. I’ve found that this works pretty well for teaching, but of course everyone learns differently.

wkjagt7• 3 months ago

It's crazy how much you don't actually need to look at your hands. I learned juggling a long time ago, and I remember discovering this. It feels like you become good at predicting from the top of the arc where you need to place your hand so that it intersects with the arc. I was surprised to see that as I got better, I also started catching the balls where the throw was a little off and I had to extend my arm to catch it, but still without actually looking at my hands. And at some point it becomes automatic and fast.

There was this one time when I was grocery shopping (I had been practicing a lot at that point), and someone accidentally pushed a jar off a shelf, and I caught it without looking or even thinking. I felt a little bit like a super hero with super reflexes :-)

vunderba10• 3 months ago

Definitely true! A good way to practice and make sure you’re working on throw consistency rather than pure reflexes is to juggle while watching a TV show. It’s even better if it’s something like subbed anime, so you have to read the subtitles while you juggle.

kakacik• 3 months ago

I learned myself juggling out of boredom when I was kid. Just tennis balls or similar stuff I found. In early 90s, no info anywhere, just started.

2 balls with 2 hands, 2 balls with 1 hand and finally 3 with 2 hands. Didnt push it further, we had too low ceiling for bigger throws that 4 balls would require, and juggling 2 balls in each hand was... tricky to keep up for longer.

Consistency of the toss is exactly how I could keep up, if 1 went off I lost it usually within few throws. Unless I did it on purpose. Recently showed it to my kids, obviously rusty but still had the moves.

Damn, I had so much free time as a kid its surreal now.

comrade12343• 3 months ago

I taught myself in junior high to juggle three balls with two hands and two balls with one hand. It's not a huge accomplishment but what amazes me is that I can go years without trying it and when an opportunity comes up I can just do it again, within just a couple of tries. Those neuronal connections just never go away.

nickcw6• 3 months ago

Learn to juggle two balls with the other hand and you are half way to 4 (which is two in each hand out of sync)

comrade12343• 3 months ago

I may try that. I can do two balls in either hand already. I just never tried doing it in both hands at once.

Strangely even though I'm right-handed I feel more comfortable juggling two in my left hand. I also bat and golf left-handed so sometimes I wonder if my parents forced right-handedness was on me.

NiloCK2• 3 months ago

Out of curiosity - can you juggle four balls?

I can, but I wouldn't describe having two two-ball capable hands as being half-way there. If forced to put a number on it, something like 20% is the best I could do.

throwyawayyyy• 3 months ago

Same! Every so often I remember that I can juggle, and spend a minute or two juggling, and feel better for it. And then I forget for weeks or months.

(I taught myself while procrastinating from exam revision, many years ago. I started with a large bag of oranges. Just enough of an incentive not to drop them, no real harm when they did hit the floor.)

bpoyner• 3 months ago

I taught myself to juggle in a weird way. I had 3 lightweight plastic cubes, laid down on the bed, and began tossing them directly over my head (my hands on either side of my head). I think it gave me a good sense of where each cube was at all times.Once I got good at juggling supine, I just transitioned to sitting up straight.

RaftPeople• 3 months ago

I taught myself in junior high

I had a class in junior high where we had time each day to mess around with juggling.

I got good at the balls and then got pretty good at the bowling pins things (not as heavy but same shape).

I could do 5 pins for a decent amount of time. It felt really good when I was in the groove of the flow, the arc, the spin and the sequence.

I tried 7 pins and was pretty excited to get a cycle or two successfully.

yathern• 3 months ago

Another mistake is completely ignoring the ball and staring into the distance. I'm not entirely sure why, but I've seen it a bunch more with *rats* than anywhere else. In any case, I would recommend you just casually glance up at the ball as it reaches the top of its arc

Is 'rats' a juggling jargon I'm unfamiliar with? Or do rats stare into the distance often?

mlyle• 3 months ago

Rationalists. It's lesswrong slang.

downboots• 3 months ago

So much for juggling rats

zahlman• 3 months ago

TFA is posted in/for a community where "rats" is slang for the community members.

FrameworkFred• 3 months ago

I derailed after this sentence. I searched for more uses of "rats" in the article, then looked in the HN comments to see if it was a bit of jargon that I was unaware of. I read "Lessons from the art of juggling" years ago, but despite the primer, I couldn't get past the unanswerable question of whether I was, in fact, a "rat".

dvh• 3 months ago

Just today I improved my record to 18 minutes. Btw, I noticed my juggling is completely subconscious, I don't move my hands voluntarily where the ball is, the hands move on its own.

bgun• 3 months ago

A little disappointed that the writer never attempts to address the title of the post, which is either a) why most people can't juggle a single ball, or b) how the author even knows this to be true, aside from some limited anecdata.

My (admittedly limited) juggling experience would indicate something closer to "Anyone can juggle", or that your average person, particularly young people, can learn to juggle one, two, or even three balls with an afternoon of practice, but I suppose that makes for a worse title.

krisoft• 3 months ago

"Anyone can juggle"

Technically this is not incompatible with the title. Just uses “can” in a different sense. The title would be using “can” in the “has the skill already”, while you use “can” in the “able to acquire the skill” sense.

It is not hard to imagine that most people when asked the question “can you juggle?” would answer in the negative. That’s what the article’s title describes. And then if those people, given sufficient motivation can learn to juggle that leads to your sentence. And they both can be true at the same time.

I agree that it would be nice to provide source for the claim though.

Dylan16807• 3 months ago

I would say no to currently being able to juggle, but that's because I don't consider one ball to count as juggling.

If you specifically asked if I could juggle one ball, I'd say sure. And I just checked, one ball goes fine. And I've never practiced juggling. I'm pretty skeptical about that ability being the minority.

So I also want more explanation of the title.

jvert• 3 months ago

Long, long, (long) ago I used to teach people to juggle at the local Renaissance Fair. I would say I could get almost everyone to flash 3 in less than 30 minutes. Most people walked away having at least 5-6 successful throws. The only people who really couldn't learn are those who don't like to fail and won't even try. Learning to juggle is repeated failure and you have to be willing to persist. Learning 5 clubs (very briefly) took me many years of repeated failure.

jamses• 3 months ago

I tried and failed to learn to juggle three balls many times, I've just got terrible coordination. But one day I stood over a bed and just threw them in the air and listened to the rhythm of the "thuds" as the missed balls hit the mattress. As soon as I'd got that down it was like a switch clicked and my hands knew "when" to be ready for the catch, rather than trying to follow the balls to catch them. I never managed four, so mileage may vary with this technique, but it was a very surprising lightbulb moment.

kuboble2• 3 months ago

I had a friend who had absolutely terrible coordination.

I would bet against him being able to learn three balls.

But he was very dedicated. Long story short. After many years he could comfortably juggle 6 (six!) balls.

It looked wobbly, he still looked like a person without coordination, but the balls somehow stayed in the air.

alemwjsl2• 3 months ago

I wonder if his coordination in other areas has improved as a side effect?

jfengel• 3 months ago

Four is just two in each hand. Learning to do that one hand at a time is a nice addition to a three ball cascade. You hold the third in your other hand, and it's a good source of jokes.

You can do four-out-of-five, which is a five ball cascade with a missing beat (just as how you learned two-out-of-three while learning initially). Unfortunately it's very hard and still doesn't impress people.

Dilettante_• 3 months ago

Didn't expect this to actually be about juggling, but I'm not complaining

_the_inflator• 3 months ago

Juggling is so much fun! I use 3 balls and felt like it was easy, when you know where to start and simply follow the process step by step.

Memory Masters draw me to it, and I found some super normal niche Streamers showing what to do.

Juggling is some sort of meditation.

Enjoy!

yenko2• 3 months ago

Thanks for posting this. You reminded me I have three juggling balls collecting dust behind my monitor. I forgot how fun it is! As others have said I'm surprised the muscle memory is still there even after a few years without trying.

mark-r3• 3 months ago

I wonder if I got Alzheimer's so bad that I couldn't remember my kids names, would I still be able to juggle? And would it be therapeutic in any way?

yenko2• 3 months ago

In a couple of people I have known, some physical capabilities remained long after their memory was gone. There was also this woman who wrote about her husband Alzheimer's. He could still play tennis and golf while not being able to do much more basic tasks like picking an outfit for the day. I don't know if it was therapeutic but she said he gave him a lot of joy.

instig007• 3 months ago

Just juggling with balls in the air gets boring very quickly, and the added numbers don't make it much different. Learning statics and flows from contact juggling, but performing them with standard juggling balls is so much more fun. And then you discover statics with hoops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF6UuPsw2i4

febusravenga• 3 months ago

I can only juggle 3, but I prefer clubs. Balls are so boring they are so small and not spectacular. Clubs on the other hand, man they are rotating. Once, twice, treetimes, backwards. I believe that if someone stuck at this basic level of juggling 3 balls, he should try clubs - at least for me it's pure satisfaction watching these rotating in various variants before.

philiplu• 3 months ago

Learning club juggling was fun. That led to partner club juggling as well as flaming clubs. Got a nice video of me juggling flames and overrotating a club so I catch the flaming end. Whoops.

masfuerte2• 3 months ago

Many years ago one Saturday morning I happened upon a juggling shop. I could already do three balls so I asked if I could try the clubs. After about an hour of failing the shop owner said something like "some people never get it". So of course I bought a set. After 12 hours that day and 12 hours the next I got the hang of it. They are harder to learn than balls but still doable for an unsporty person like me. And, as you say, very satisfying.

jimbokun• 3 months ago

That shop owner was a good salesman.

throwaway2904• 3 months ago

Where is juggling shop a thing?

CalChris• 3 months ago

You can also pass clubs. In fact, at my local juggling meetup (Castro Valley BART), it really breaks into two groups: passers and numbers. Passers get together and pass. It's quite social. Someone explains a group pattern and they work through it. OTOH, numbers jugglers can juggle 5 or more clubs+balls. They segregate themselves off and really only talk to each other. We're in the same place but numbers only talk to other numbers.

latkin2• 3 months ago

I would agree that the proper next step after getting comfortable with 3 balls is to learn 3 clubs, not 4 balls. It's much easier to go 3 balls -> 3 clubs than 3 balls -> 4 balls. So many fun things to do with clubs, and of course once you learn clubs you have learned torches/knives which never fail to impress.

globular-toast3• 3 months ago

Clubs do indeed look great. I like juggling with random objects. It's quite hard, especially if different sizes/weights but it looks really cool IMO because it's so unexpected and doesn't need any special equipment. Plus you can do it anywhere.

par• 3 months ago

I assumed most software eng from the early aughts can all juggle.

odie5533• 3 months ago

Is it time to get good at darts yet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3eotWyZv5c

_dain_• 3 months ago

The other's in Albert Hall

pfdietz• 3 months ago

I thought the second line was about Goering.

Drupon• 3 months ago

Is there anything HN related involved here other than autism?

flexagoon• 3 months ago

HN guidelines say "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on-topic for HN

comrade12343• 3 months ago

lol. Thank you for the laugh.

SV_BubbleTime• 3 months ago

I’m there will you. I always laugh about how autism and SSRIs are not for discussion here. It’s too on the nose.

altacc2• 3 months ago

Go to a juggling club and you'll find that a Venn diagram of juggler, nerd & technology has a lot of overlap.

wkjagt7• 3 months ago

For real? I am a juggling nerd, but didn't know that was a thing. I gotta go find my people now.

wkjagt7• 3 months ago

Why autism?

alemwjsl2• 3 months ago

The first HN submission ever that got me to put down my device and go outside, and probably going to get me hooked.

jubuff• 3 months ago

Profoundly disagree with the author on skipping 6. It helped so much with my 7.

I do agree on clubs though. They were as big of a revelation as siteswap when I learned them and I'd highly recommend trying. Most juggling clubs(accumulations of people, not object) have loaner clubs and nice people willing to share theirs as well as teach.

ivanjermakov• 3 months ago

Worst thing about juggling is that you get a very good instinct to catch falling stuff, even if it's sharp and pointy.

chrisweekly4• 3 months ago

"A falling knife has no handle."

pizzafeelsright2• 3 months ago

Knives are surprisingly fun to juggle. Due to my pain tolerance (or stupidity) I would throw knives up, catch them by the blade (pinching) or using a soft hands, where I match their falling speed, catch them on a finger tip while it remains vertical. Also, I would find myself spinning a folding blade end over end, and catching by the handle, based upon the rotations (minus one because you flip from the sharp end).

matznerd• 3 months ago

I thought this post was going to be a metaphor about how most people can barely handle 1 project, while some people need to multiple projects for it to feel natural...

efilife• 3 months ago

I really hoped it wouldn't. Too played out

yboris• 3 months ago

I've wanted to code a VR game for juggling but never found time for it.

Feels like it would be super-easy-to-code and probably would be lucrative. Implement "slow down time" so people can practice juggling in slow motion, add some other features like catch radius and bias towards consistent height of throws and you've got a great game!

stevage3• 3 months ago

I made a 2d game like this once for, of all things, Palm Pilot. You could tap for the apex of each ball throw.

lamplightdev• 3 months ago

I learnt to juggle with the help of this book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/777103.The_Complete_J..., all sorts of tips and tricks in there

ipince• 3 months ago

When I'm bored, I just whip out my balls and start having a play. And people watch, and sometimes join in.

Nice.

(I'm sure the author did this intentionally)

boogieknite2• 3 months ago

definitely did. lots of schweddy balls style humor

sriram_malhar2• 3 months ago

Many of you might know of Noisebridge, a beloved hackerspace in San Francisco. They had (have?) a juggling workshop every saturday called "Juggling with Judy", taught by Judy Pinelli, founder of the famed Pickle Family Circus (and a huge influence on Cirque Du Soleil).

I had no idea how famous or influential she was. She first taught us how to make our own juggling balls: snip the ends of a balloon, fill with enough rice to feel comfortable in the hand, then wrap that with another balloon to seal the rice in, then snip the ends of the second balloon.

Then she went through the usual sequence: throw a ball, er, balloon, from one hand to the next, then practice with two and so on. By the end of that 2 hour session, we had got the essentials.

The remarkable thing about this workshop was that Judy was at an advanced stage of multiple sclerosis at that point. She was pretty much completely immobile from the neck down, and couldn't even see our hands properly from her wheelchair. She could only see the arc of the ball, but that was sufficient information for her to tell us how we could improve. "Pull your elbow in". "Focus on the left hand, the right will follow".

After the 2 hour workshop, she'd go to Golden Gate park to teach juggling. All for free. I feel extraordinarily privileged. She's been my polestar in life.

flawn• 3 months ago

Noisebridge is awesome. This illustrates beautifully what humans can be capable of.

rhblake• 3 months ago

Great story, thanks for sharing. Just a minor correction: it's Judy Finelli, not Pinelli.

sriram_malhar2• 3 months ago

Uh, dayumm. I don't know how I got that wrong.

throwaway2904• 3 months ago

what means "snip the ends of a balloon"? when I think of balloons they are pretty large spheres for juggling

classic9592• 3 months ago

If a balloon is made of a thin neck and a round body, you're chopping the neck off near the bottom of the neck. You're then left with a round rubber pouch for the contents (rice). Use two balloons in opposite directions so the closed end of the outer layer covers the opening of the inner layer.

Great for juggling balls - nice weight and very grippy.

altacc2• 3 months ago

This is one of the nice things about the juggling community: it's one of the open, sharing communities where people are willing to freely share and teach. It's no cost/low cost entry. The juggling community has been a really important part of my life, so I see it as giving back to teach others.

alexpotato• 3 months ago

She was pretty much completely immobile from the neck down, and couldn't even see our hands properly from her wheelchair. She could only see the arc of the ball, but that was sufficient information for her to tell us how we could improve. "Pull your elbow in". "Focus on the left hand, the right will follow".

I've both been a coach (paintball/martial arts) and been coached (golf) and it really is wild how good your brain can become at seeing the outcome or just a piece of the process and then working backwards to a root cause.

I sometimes make the analogy "in particle physics, you don't actually see the collision. You see the after effects and then figure out what happened by going backwards to what must have occurred."

phkahler• 3 months ago

> I sometimes make the analogy "in particle physics, you don't actually see the collision. You see the after effects and then figure out what happened by going backwards to what must have occurred."

I keep coming back to that. Nobody has ever directly seen direct the force carrying particles, only their effects (indirect evidence). The models make excellent predictions, but I still feel like they're "wrong" in some sense.

CobrastanJorji• 3 months ago

My favorite version of diagnosing a root cause from an outcome was "Car Talk" on NPR, where somebody would call into the Tappet Brothers's show and imitate the weird sound that the car was making, and then the brothers would diagnose a very specific car problem based on the secondhand impersonation of a weird noise. I have no idea how accurate their diagnoses actually were, but it always seemed like a tremendously impressive trick.

frays• 3 months ago

Great story about juggling, thanks.

mettamage• 3 months ago

Noisebridge! I went there as a tourist! I visited SF (I'm from Amsterdam), saw Noisebridge and felt right at home :)

kobieps• 3 months ago

I'm currently learning the fountain pattern and it's cool to know that it should only take about a month. After that though...

eagsalazar2• 3 months ago

Several years ago we had a juggling "craze" at my otherwise very stodgy corporate office. We all juggled constantly on every little break and several of us got pretty good at it. By the end a few of us were doing harder 3-ball tricks like mills mess and passing balls back and forth to each other. It was super fun. Honestly while specific tips can help, I think it mainly comes down to persistence and getting ideas from others, youtube, etc. Some ideas will click, some won't. Doing it with friends everyday helps too. It just takes time to get a really consistent throw dialed in, especially under pressure, but once you do 3-ball gets quite easy and then you can focus more on goofing around and trying new things.

__mharrison__• 3 months ago

My high school AP calculus teacher required everyone in the class to learn to juggle (3 balls) by the end of year to pass the class.

Seemed annoying then.

Seems radical now.

fouc• 3 months ago

Lol, he's probably not technically allowed to set that as a requirement in most places I would guess. Funny side quest to offer though.

latkin2• 3 months ago

This takes me back to my teenage juggling glory days. Truly the golden years in hindsight.

I grew up in Silicon Valley in the late 80s/90s and learned to juggle, as many people did back then, from the book "Juggling for the Complete Klutz." As a kid I devoured almost every Klutz Press book.

A product of Stanford people, Klutz had a small brick and mortar store in Palo Alto. It sold all of their books, of course, but also juggling equipment, magic props, and random fun stuff like rubber chickens and fake corpse legs you could hang out the trunk of your car. Absolute paradise for ~12 year old me.

But the best part was that they ran a weekly juggling club out on the back deck area. Just show up and play. I learned a lot from all of the kind folks who turned out for that. My mom would drop me off every week, and I'd run out there excited to show the older guys what I learned that week. I wasn't a prodigy or anything but I was decent. Got to the point where I was juggling 4 clubs and I could hang with the club passers if they kept the pattern tame (and were skilled enough to catch my slop). Of course I also got proficient at other juggling-adjacent stuff like yo-yo, devil sticks, contact juggling... Just pure joy, really a cherished memory.

I was at the shop enough that my friend and I ended up being recruited to model for the 1998 edition of the Klutz Yo Yo book. There are 2 photos of me in there, I think. I was pissed that my friend was more photogenic and they ended up using way more of his photos than mine.

globular-toast3• 3 months ago

I really enjoyed learning to juggle. My mum randomly brought a juggling book back from a second hand shop. It probably sat on a shelf for a year until one day my brother and I picked it up for some reason. It also goes to show how important it is to have access to lots of books. You never know when one might catch your interest.

InfiniteLoup• 3 months ago

Reading this thread makes me wonder if I'm the only one who really tried to learn to juggle, only to fail even after a whole month of brute-forcing it, while my partner at the time, who started at my suggestion, managed it after 30 minutes! That was 15 years ago...

bmacho2• 3 months ago

2 months of daily practice and counting. I feel that it should be very easy, so any day now

ColinWright• 3 months ago

People say "Practice makes perfect" ... they're wrong.

Practice make permanent.

You need to practise the right thing, and that's where you will benefit from good quality feedback.

Learning on your own is hard.

neuroelectron• 3 months ago

Juggling rats?

wkjagt7• 3 months ago

Slang for rationalists, apparently, according to another comment.

oneeyedpigeon• 3 months ago

DO NOT JUST PASS THE SECOND BALL BETWEEN YOUR HANDS. This is a common thing, as people are regularly taught it

People are really regularly taught it? Who's doing that teaching?

I suspect a different cause: cartoons. Especially in older animation, juggling was typically presented in the 'circle' style, which is probably where people tended to pick up the misconception. I guess that animation is a lot easier to produce.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAPkX11Bfu8

arcticfox• 3 months ago

In my experience they're not taught it, it's instinctive. The easiest way to get a free hand seems to be to hand a ball over to your other hand directly. It makes sense too, it's counterintuitive that it's much easier to throw the ball up and over back.

robotguy• 3 months ago

I grew up in the boonies back in the 80's. The only real contact I had with juggling was probably cartoons like described above. I really wanted to learn though and would walk around the woods for hours trying to juggle oak galls in that "circle style" only able to keep it up for a few seconds at a time.

My first day at college, before classes started, I was in the dorms. Everyone was getting to know each other, and I saw someone juggling the right way. It instantly clicked. All the hand-eye practice the 'wrong' way actually helped. That's why I always tell people that the first thing I learned in college was how to juggle.

jigglyblob• 3 months ago

Tim Kelly's 3 ball juggling is still my favourite of all time. You won't regret watching him. I've literally never seen anyone juggle this well. Always been such an inspiration: https://youtu.be/q37vo62psGA?si=r_Kh4RWl7HTAu4Mq

cft• 3 months ago

I went to school with a math genius who participated in international math Olympiads. Curiously he had no problem juggling multiple balls - and nobody taught him.

wkjagt7• 3 months ago

Juggling has a very special place in my heart. I met my wife through juggling. We were both staying at a youth hostel in Ireland, and the owner introduced us to each other because she'd seen us both juggling, and said we should juggle together. She was way better than me. She juggled with clubs, burning torches and knives, so yeah, life was never the same after that.

1dom• 3 months ago

Juggling is something I've done on and off all my life and every time I ever see any writing about it, it doesn't at all capture how juggling fits with me. Every time I read about it, I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I know I'm not, but I thought I'd share my views in case it helps someone want to pickup juggling in a different way.

Most writing on juggling talks about moves and repetition. You'll see the same terminology and approaches everwhere, site swap notation, cascades, messes, 1 hand, 2 hand, claws etc.

This can sometimes give the impression that when you're juggling, you're basically doing a move, or repeating a motion, or following a script, like being able to perform the specific move is the skill and achievement itself, but it's really, really not.

I think it's better to think of the balls as instruments. When you're reading and learning about juggling moves like cascades and messes and clawing, you're reading about chords on that instrument. If all you know is how to play individual chords, and the names of the chords and theoretical and technical ways to represent the chords, you're missing the point of knowing how to play an instrument.

Most of the time when I'm juggling, I'm in the same creative and expressive mindset and headspace as I am if I'm soloing on drums. Every move is a different move between a bunch of different moves based on wherever my mood takes me. It feels good and allegedly look impressive too.

I've tried to learn keyboard/piano so, so, so many times and it just doesn't stick with me, I struggle to retain the theory, I can't get the intuition, I never find myself in the zone after years and years of attempts and lessons. Drumming was the opposite though, I felt comfortable on it within months of having my kit with very, very little theoretical background. I consider myself a theoretical person, but juggling - like drumming - seems to be one of those few things for me where the theory makes it worse/harder/less intuitive/less fun for me.

tnel77• 3 months ago

This made me chuckle:

>TLDR: A complete guide to juggling, from zero to siteswap notation, by someone who juggles in nightclubs.
>by someone who juggles in nightclubs.

I’m not sure if I’d laugh or be amazed at someone juggling at a nightclub. I guess it really depends on how well received the act is by their target audience (aka can a man pick up women via juggling?).

wavemode• 3 months ago

can a man pick up women via juggling

Uhh, no. Regular people don't care the slightest about juggling. It definitely shouldn't be learned for that purpose lol

Mawr• 3 months ago

aka can a man pick up women via juggling?

Sure: "Hey babe, wanna juggle my balls?". Works every time.

jblakey• 3 months ago

I picked up a copy of the Klutz book back in the 1980s. I think it was their first publication, and it got me started. Their YoYo book was also a fun time.

marconey• 3 months ago

I had both of these, and learned to juggle from Klutz

I recently bought a new copy for my son, but it hasn’t clicked for him yet

scotty79• 3 months ago

I sure can't. After few throws I'll drop it. My body just gets bored of doing the same exact thing even just a handful of times. Same problem with exercise. Even zero balls sounds unbearable for more than 15 seconds.

hybirdss• 3 months ago

six balls from zero coordination is just aimbot energy

boogieknite2• 3 months ago

casual 3 ball juggler who usually juggles fruit bc its fun to have a little pressure. might make a mess or ruin perfectly good food. my question:

sometimes when im really grooving ill have a ton of backspin. like a finger roll in basketball. is that bad technique or do pros do that too?

csours• 3 months ago

The fun thing about learning to juggle is that no one can teach you how to juggle, but they can teach you how to teach yourself how to juggle.

gbacon• 3 months ago

Flight instructors say something similar, that we’re just here to keep you from breaking the airplane while you teach yourself to fly.

mmaurizi• 3 months ago

For those who want to find other jugglers to practice with, there are lots of juggling clubs all over: https://dev.juggle.org/events/clubs.php

In my experience most folks go to clubs in order to do pass juggling with others (or because it’s a nice indoor space with high ceilings), but typically folks are very happy to spare some time to help beginners learn

rconti• 3 months ago

Huh. I thought there was going to be something insightful about one ball juggling specifically, but I didn't see it in reading or searching.

I haven't tried just 1 ball, but I find 2 to be a lot harder than 3. (which, I suppose, is why I was expecting something insightful about why it would be difficult to juggle just one ball).

GMoromisato• 3 months ago

Many years ago I saw Penn & Teller and Penn Jillette talked about how juggling flaming sticks or knives isn't that impressive because they are perfectly balanced for juggling.

Instead, he took three large whiskey bottles of different shapes and sizes. On stage, he broke the bottom of each bottle. They came out all sharp, jagged, and uneven. He then proceeded to juggle three of them. I think he got only a few rounds before he was forced to drop them.

I don't think he does that anymore.

dack• 3 months ago

it's a cool article but would immensely help from gifs or videos to go along with the explanation

siskiyou• 3 months ago

I've been juggling for almost 50 years and there's a lot of good stuff in this post. I just want to add a few things from my own approach to juggling and teaching others.

I often tell beginners two things: (1) a big part of learning to juggle is training yourself to suppress the panic reflex, so simply mindless practice solves a lot of problems, and (2) you have much more time to react than you think (yes this is related to #1).

Joining a juggling club is one of the top suggestions I can offer. I juggled 3 balls and practiced various tricks for years before I joined the motley collection of engineering, physics, and math students juggling in the chemistry building at the University of Michigan, and my progress accelerated massively after I had a chance to see what people were doing and get advice from people who could see me. They also pushed me to try things that I wasn't particularly interested in, and that helped a lot even though I don't do most of those things regularly anymore.

Personally I juggle as self-entertainment more than performance, so as time went on I gravitated toward turning errors into repeatable tricks that look good from behind the balls, with no concern about how they look to observers. If you want to look good to observers then you have to approach it differently. I practice controlling ball collisions (hit them intentionally and make them go where you want!) as well as ball slaps and other really fast recoveries that are honestly too fast moving for an observer to grasp but they make my hair stand on end and that's the point. Do something wrong, then do it intentionally, then do it controllably, then repeat it. Occasionally these look cool but mostly it is more like a fidget spinner than a performance.

My ongoing practice for the panic reflex is things like hitting myself in the face with the balls repeatedly. You have to escalate that to keep gaining benefits. I'm winning if I can smash balls in my face repeatedly without blinking. It can be done!

jzemeocala• 3 months ago

"When I'm bored, I just whip out my balls and start having a play. And people watch, and sometimes join in......"

the internet has ruined my mind

Most people can't juggle one ball

Related Stories