[HN Gopher] Library of Juggling
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Library of Juggling
Author : Tomte
Score : 111 points
Date : 2024-03-05 09:34 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (libraryofjuggling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (libraryofjuggling.com)
| willguest wrote:
| Juggling is such an underrated activity. Not only is it
| rhymthmical which, like walking, is quite soothing for the body,
| but it also promotes cross-hemisphere communication in the brain.
|
| Our hands get a lot of neural real-estate (see grotesque
| homunculi) so, unlike walking, activities targeting their
| communication have significant potential for shaping neural
| patterns.
|
| Apparently Einstein had an above-normal number of connections in
| the corpus callosum. I reckon he was an ambitious juggler.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| *violinist, but same thing
| lukas099 wrote:
| I think it's correctly rated. There are other activities which
| have the benefits you stated, but spark more joy in humans,
| such as piano-playing.
|
| I'm glad that people juggle, but I'm also glad that more people
| play piano.
| FabHK wrote:
| It also has a meditative component if you practice for an
| extended period.
| okwhateverdude wrote:
| I picked up juggling after doing a management training class that
| included a one hour lesson with a professional juggler. I had
| never tried before then and couldn't quite make it work within
| that one hour group lesson. But they gave us a set of balls to
| take home and over a weekend I got the juggling to click.
|
| For me the trick was to stop thinking about it and to just let
| go. Our built-in parabolic trajectory prediction is magical, just
| need to throw the balls consistently enough for that prediction
| to become automatic.
|
| I just fuck around with three balls and it is mostly to help me
| keep sanity if I am working somewhere with shit CI that takes
| forever. I was aware that there was a proper pedagogy and
| nomenclature, but never bothered to learn it. Really surprised to
| see my "repertoire" is all of the Level 2 and some Level 3 listed
| on this site.
| couchand wrote:
| > For me the trick was to stop thinking about it and to just
| let go.
|
| Indeed. From "Juggling for the Complete Klutz" by Cassidy and
| Rimbeaux:
|
| > Step 1: The Drop
|
| > Throw all three bags into the air and, making no effort to
| catch any of them, let them all hit the ground. This is an
| example of The Drop. I do it all the time and so will you, but
| it'sgood to familiarize yourself with the moves early on.
|
| > Practice the drop until the novelty wears off.
|
| Learning to juggle is really about learning to fail, repeatedly
| and publicly, and still have a smile on your face.
| vikingerik wrote:
| The advanced version: it's not necessary to let them hit the
| ground. Stand over a bed or couch, so to pick them up, at
| least you only have to bend down to waist level.
|
| My favorite version: juggle while standing in a swimming
| pool! Use an object that floats, like wiffle balls, and a
| missed catch just stays there floating right in front of you.
| couchand wrote:
| Have you tried juggling upside-down underwater with the
| floatables? Basically impossible, lots of fun.
| okwhateverdude wrote:
| > The advanced version: it's not necessary to let them hit
| the ground. Stand over a bed or couch, so to pick them up,
| at least you only have to bend down to waist level.
|
| lol, this is exactly what I did when I started because of
| the annoyance of bending down. Then I incorporated it into
| a fitness goal and did proper squats to pick them up. Now,
| I mostly will just pause and reset if I have a weird catch
| to avoid the next throw that would end up on the floor.
|
| > My favorite version: juggle while standing in a swimming
| pool! Use an object that floats, like wiffle balls, and a
| missed catch just stays there floating right in front of
| you.
|
| This is a great idea. Next time I go swimming I'll have to
| bring some balls that float.
| FabHK wrote:
| Somehow that reminds me of the secret of learning to fly in
| the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is (IIRC) to fall
| to the ground and miss.
| thom wrote:
| I've been teaching my kids juggling recently and it's really
| rewarding. I initially got into circus skills in the 90s when my
| family would regularly visit Mushy Pea in Manchester, a shop
| which inspired quite a few kids in the region, I suspect. There
| was a carpark outside our house when we were growing up and I
| could be spotted most weekends riding my unicycle round and round
| for hours. I was never great at anything, but it's one of those
| skills that has a fantastic ratio of impressing people to actual
| effort and skill (Rubik's Cube is another). Eventually I could
| juggle four balls, clubs, knives and rings and I've never really
| forgotten the muscle memory. I think it's brilliant with kids
| because they can see, with even a single ball, how quickly it's
| possible to improve with practice - it pays back quite quickly in
| a way that many other hobbies really don't. But once a kid knows
| practice does actually make perfect, it's a lesson they can take
| to all other walks of life, even when it takes much longer to
| notice yourself getting good.
|
| Sad to discover from this site that my Mills' Mess is only a
| Half-Mess though. Going to have to work to rectify that!
| bschne wrote:
| This reminded me of this guy I was friends with starting in
| kindergarten, really smart kid, everyone kind of thought he would
| go on to study physics or something. Then sometime around 14 or
| so he started juggling and got so obsessed he would constantly
| practice during every break and even on the train to/from school.
| I think he's working as a circus artist now? Always kind of
| fascinated how you could get so absorbed in a topic, especially
| given my own propensity for rapidly cycling interests.
| Prcmaker wrote:
| Heh, to some extent, this is what I did. School was easy (low
| standard of eduction), school life was boring (team sports or
| nothing), so I found something that interested me. I learned to
| juggle, amongst other things. Got decent, then learned to
| perform.
|
| I performed most friday and saturday night in late highschool,
| assorted gigs I got through contacts or from audience members.
| Graduated school, worked long enough to build some savings and
| buy a flight to Europe, and hit the road with a backpack.
|
| I stuck with it on my return for a while, but ended up leaving
| it for 'normal' career.
| lambda wrote:
| Funny thing is, Anthony Gatto was brought up in a circus
| family and went on to become the world's best technical
| juggler (based on endurance at high numbers, incredibly
| difficult technical tricks, and overall consistency rather
| than just a few one-off record attempts), but eventually got
| bored of juggling and decided to quit and start a business
| doing concrete countertop installation.
|
| I did a bunch of juggling in college, and several of my
| friends went on to do circus arts professionally. Generally
| they went into more acrobatics oriented arts than juggling;
| seems like juggling itself is not quite as interesting to
| audiences as it is to the jugglers.
| Prcmaker wrote:
| I remember learning about Gattos shift of career. He was
| someone me and my friends would watch with admiration. When
| we learned he'd stopped, we were disappointed, but didn't
| question it.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| I don't question any career change (done it 4 times
| myself) but I do find it interesting when someone moves
| from working with their passion (and you have to be
| passionate to get world-class at anything) to what is
| almost certainly just a paycheck gig.
|
| I mean, he could be passionate about concrete benchtops,
| but what are the chances?
| Prcmaker wrote:
| Your passion can also be soul destroying, or body
| destroying. Friends who have left the industry often site
| career-ending injuries, or that they were on track for a
| permanent disability.
| Prcmaker wrote:
| Oh, and to tour other point, I noticed a gap between
| juggling and juggling performance. There's an article
| elsewhere in this post on Gatto, that sums up quite well
| how audience perception of difficulty is quite limited.
| This impacts a juggling performance severely, but has no
| impact on someone who likes to juggle. I suppose the same
| could be said of a lot of things though, without a
| technical eye, a lot of Olympic competitions are
| impressive, but I can't tell good from better.
| xnorswap wrote:
| I was taught the juggling notation site-swap around 25 years ago,
| and it's one of those things that sticks with you despite the
| fact that I don't have the coordination to juggle.
|
| What really impressed me at the time was the ability to take
| something as complex and time-dependent as juggling and reduce it
| to a simple notion of numbers such as "53444", and that another
| juggler could take that string of numbers and produce a
| meaningful juggle from it. I seem to remember that even numbers
| implied a same-hand throw and sticking to odd numbers would mean
| only cross-hand throws, but my memory is a bit foggy on the
| details.
|
| That a seemingly complex juggle could be reduced by abstraction
| to just a couple of numbers was mind-blowing ( To be fair, I was
| ~12 at the time. ).
|
| In addition there was software which could then take any such
| string and reproduce the juggle, and that was even cooler. I
| definitely spent the next few weeks playing around with different
| patterns in that software. One of the other fascinating things
| was trying to plug random numbers in, they'd seldom come out as
| anything particularly interesting. You'd end up with a lot of
| patterns where balls were same-hand juggled to different heights.
|
| I learned quickly that I was less interested by the juggling and
| more interested in the mathematics which let you reduce it down
| to a small sequence, and that random data rarely holds genuinely
| interesting patterns even if they first appear so.
| couchand wrote:
| The mathematics of siteswap are fascinating. The linked article
| points to the canonical Internet source for siteswap
| information: http://www.siteswap.org/
|
| There you will find many articles on the subject and several
| varieties of the software you described to visualize or verify
| patterns.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Site-swap notation is in terms of "beats". The number is how
| many beats will elapse for that throw before it lands. The
| beats alternate hands, so any odd number means that ball is
| scheduled to land in the opposite hand. The standard cascade is
| 333, meaning each ball thrown will land three beats later, and
| in the opposite hand.
|
| The constraint on a useful site-swap number is this: you can't
| have two balls scheduled to land on the same beat, which would
| mean arriving at the same hand at the same time. Or more
| generally a ball can't land when that hand is otherwise
| occupied.
|
| Advanced jugglers can do that stuff physically (catch
| simultaneously or in an occupied hand), but it's not the purest
| version of juggling. More generally, advanced jugglers can do
| many positional and timing variations including simultaneous
| catches or throws, that aren't covered by the standard basic
| site-swap notation. There are extensions to the notation, like
| using parentheses around two numbers to show two throws
| occuring at the same time, and if the numbers are different
| they will land at different times.
| FabHK wrote:
| > Advanced jugglers can do that stuff physically (catch
| simultaneously or in an occupied hand)
|
| aka "multiplex".
| Prcmaker wrote:
| I've fond memories of getting very deep in finding new
| siteswaps, through the night and into dawn, many nights across
| Europe in 2008. I'd keep a notebook going and email friends
| back home once a week or so, just with a dot point list of
| numbers.
| munificent wrote:
| Siteswap notation is _really_ cool. At the same time, it 's
| important to also realize that it's a distillation of juggling
| that deliberately sacrifices capturing much of the performance
| information inherent in actually throwing balls in the air to
| impress an audience.
|
| Very much like how sheet music doesn't capture the nuance and
| expressiveness of a performance. It's a useful tool, but being
| able to read sheet music does not a musician make.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| This reminds me of one of the more memorable pieces I've read
| over the last decade or so, an article in the now-defunct
| Grantland blog about Anthony Gatto [0]. Worth a read even if you
| aren't into juggling at all.
|
| 0: https://grantland.com/features/anthony-gatto-juggling-
| cirque...
| Prcmaker wrote:
| That was a walk down memory lane, thanks. A lot of names and
| places I'd thought I'd forgotten. In my teen years, what Gatto
| had been up to was a frequent point of conversation with a few
| of my friends.
|
| I'd never compare myself with Gatto, we were in different
| leagues altogether, he was big time, I toured one year. The
| hard work that went into it, and the return on that time, makes
| a normal job look pretty great. Mad respect to the people that
| keep it up.
| nickcw wrote:
| For those of you who aren't jugglers here are some interesting
| patterns to look at:
|
| Mill's Mess. Once you've mastered this, you've mastered 3 balls!
|
| https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/3balltricks/MillsMess.h...
|
| This 5 ball multiplex is a fun one to learn - look like you are
| juggling 5 balls but you are only really juggling 3.
|
| https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/5balltricks/FiveBallSpl...
|
| Here is my favourite 4 ball pattern
|
| https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/4balltricks/552.html
|
| Though the difficulty rating is surely wrong - this is one of the
| tricks you learn on the way to juggling 5 balls and by the time
| you've got to 552 you are almost there.
|
| I used to practice this pattern obsessively - the 3 different
| heights of throws are hard to get right but when you do the
| pattern clicks in and it feels great!
|
| https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/4balltricks/534.html
| Prcmaker wrote:
| Early in my real juggling days, learning mills mess, followed
| by Boston mess was eye opening. I'd self taught a three ball
| cascade and four ball columns a decade beforehand, waiting in a
| hospital ward. Learning those two messes, which for all their
| complexity, are just the same three ball cascade, opened my
| mind up to how much 'movement' could change what you were
| doing, and how it was perceived.
| munificent wrote:
| Boston Mess and Cherry Picker are hard but _very_ satisfying
| patterns once you get them figured out.
|
| There's a level you can reach in juggling where it's like
| you're watching your hands do something that even you don't
| know how they're doing. The muscle memory outpaces your
| perception. It fees like magic.
| lambda wrote:
| > Mill's Mess. Once you've mastered this, you've mastered 3
| balls!
|
| Ugh, no way. There's way more to three ball juggling than just
| Mills Mess (no apostrophe, his name was Steve Mills and it's
| not possessive but just a title).
|
| Mills Mess is the start of learning that there's more to three
| ball juggling than just a couple of over the top throws, not
| the end of it.
| SmokeyHamster wrote:
| >Ugh, no way.
|
| Agreed. After mastering the basic cascade, Mills Mess is a
| great beginner pattern to learn next, but there are way more
| challenging ones. Burke's Barage is another more challenging
| pattern.
| cmgbhm wrote:
| This is one of the classic juggling resources. Lots of fun doing
| juggling and learning club passes.
|
| http://www.kwos.ca/ was a site I did plenty of yo-yo tricks from
| during early career and really helped offset some rsi issues.
|
| Nice to see skill sites and not hear subscribe now.
| imurray wrote:
| It's nice how it breaks down the patterns, and explains
| everything step by step.
|
| If you would like 3D in-browser animations of a subset of passing
| patterns, you could look here: https://passist.org/patterns These
| only have terse generated explanations, because they all follow a
| common theory, which is https://passing.zone/4-handed-siteswap/
|
| There's a community of jugglers who pass clubs who now document
| their new patterns with videos (and notation) at
| https://passing.zone/ rather than making animations.
|
| For another "library" of sorts, here's a rather random assortment
| of (mostly) juggling related documents:
| https://jugglingedge.com/pdf/
| Afton wrote:
| The really fun thing is to realize that juggling is a meta-hobby.
| I started out with juggling balls, a short time on rings, spent a
| long time on clubs, and now spend my time trying to apply some of
| that to juggling hoops. Plus there's kendama, yo-yo, diablo, poi,
| and contact juggling, all of which are also available for
| juggling (I've never seen someone juggle yo-yos, but kendama,
| diablo, and poi, it's all attested).
|
| As someone who has always picked up and put down hobbies,
| juggling has stuck with me because it's easy for me to just shift
| slightly and now have a very different experience even though
| it's all "just juggling".
|
| My history was teaching myself 3-ball cascade, reverse cascade
| and then figuring I was 'done' with juggling. When I went to
| teach my kids in, in an attempt to get them to understand
| "improvement by inches", I discovered that youtube now has slow-
| motion breakdowns of every trick you might ever want to do. I
| picked it back up more than 5 years ago now and still go to
| regular local meetups. (sadly, my kids didn't ever really get
| into it)
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