Juggling Made Easy

Juggling is good for you: it improves your hand-eye coordination, builds your focus, refreshes your mind, and makes you happy. Juggling helps you make friends with young kids instantly. It’s also an impressive tool to stop a two year old from crying. I have been juggling for over fifteen years now. If you don’t know how to juggle, you are missing something in your life. So, go and get three tennis balls or three juggling balls, and get ready.

To learn how to juggle, you need to know two things:

1. How to throw a ball in one hand and catch it on the other. To be precise, if you throw the ball from your right hand, you should be able to catch it on your left, and if you throw from your left, you should catch it on your right. If you can’t do this with little or no effort, then practice doing it until you perfect it.

2. The concept of two step rhythm. As in the men in uniform do while marching – “Left-right, left-right, left-right....” Notice that both left and right come at regular intervals.

Figure 1. The Trajectory

Assuming that you are comfortable with throwing, catching, and with the concept of rhythm, let’s jump onto juggling. Figure 1 shows the overall trajectory of the balls. If the figure scares you, don’t worry, you will know what it is very soon. Just follow these steps:

Step 1: Hold two balls in your right hand, one ball in your left. Say “One” aloud and toss one of the two balls from your right hand up in the air. The ball should take the trajectory as shown in Figure 2 – it goes up from inside and comes down from outside.

Figure 2. Step 1 - how to start.

Step 2: Wait for the ball in air to descend. Now you need to catch the ball on your left hand, but you already have a ball in that hand. Free up your hand by tossing the ball in your left hand high in air. Shout, “Two” while you do that. The trajectory follows Figure 3. Bring your left hand inwards and toss the ball, then you take your left hand outwards and catch the descending ball. Throwing from inside and catching outside avoids mid-air collision.

Figure 3. Step 2 - Throw from your left

Step 3: This is a mirror image of Step 2. Wait for the ball to descend. Just before you are about to catch the ball, bring your right hand inwards, shout “One” and toss the ball that’s in your right hand high.

Figure 4. Step 3 - Throw from your right

Step 4: Repeat Step 2. Shout “Two” and toss the ball that’s in your left hand; catch the ball on your left.

As you can see, you are building a two step rhythm – one-two, one-two, one-two. Also note that

1. You call the numbers only when you toss the ball, and not while catching it.

2. There are only two steps, even though you have three balls.

3. Contrary to what you see in cartoons and clip arts, only one ball is in air at a time. As you gain more control over tossing and catching, you will probably have all the three balls in air for a fraction of a second in each cycle. This is gives the viewers an impressing that all three balls are in air.

Isn't the whole thing so easy? Have fun!