ies SO CR ETM ACM MAHL ©LOFTUS 1995 YT-0001 * Made in ChinaLesson 1- Getting Started If you will practice over a bed or sofa, at first, you will save yourself a lot of bending and chasing that would result a from dropping the balls to the : floor. ‘ The first step in mastering the art of juggling is to familiarize yourself with your (A) | (B) new set of juggling balls. (A) Begin by tossing one ball from your right hand, into the air, to a height of about three feet — catching it with the same hand as it descends. (B) Follow the same procedure with your left hand. oe (C) Practice tossing one ball up fa sy into the air, and catching it with the Q ‘ opposite hand, continuing to pass Y 8 it back and forth from hand to \ hand ‘ Practice the above, varying the § height of the toss from about one & foot to four feet - until you have learned to catch the ball easily without dropping it. (C) Learn to focus your eyes upward. when juggling balls in the air. Your span of vision should take in the general area in which the balls are traveling. Never allow your eyes to follow either the balls,or your hands. This requires practice, but you will soon understand the importance of concentrating your visual attention upon the juggling operation as a whole, and not upon any one part of it. Do not start the next lesson until you are very sure you can handle one ball easily. tLesson 2-Juggling 2 Balls with 1 Hand / (A) As your next step, take two balls in your right hand. Toss one of them up into the air about three feet. As it is dropping, toss the other ball into the air, catching the first one (now dropping) with the same hand. Remember that in this lesson, one hand must not help the other. 4 This is a good place to begin practicing proper technique in handling your juggling balls, that will help you later on when you get into fast juggling. You can understand that if you were to (A) grip tightly each ball as it fell into your hand, it would be difficult to send the ball off into the air again without wasting precious time and energy. Neither does one come up under that descending ball with a hand flattened, and with a batting motion. Rather, consider the ease with which the ball could just drop into a hand slightly cupped, and the quick recovery that is possible by a more relaxed return made possible by this particular catch. In juggling more than one ball with one hand, it will be easier for you to consider the balls traveling in a circular motion, outward. Or, in other words, balls being juggled by your right hand,will follow a circular path, slightly to the right. Those being juggled with the left hand will follow a circular path slightly to the left. (B) Follow step A, perfecting the process with your left hand. Continue your practice of the above steps until you can continue tossing and catching the two balls with either hand, smoothly and without dropping. As you progress, you will find that it is possible to decrease the height of your toss. Soon, you will be juggling two balls with one hand, and tossing the balls a foot or less into the air. You will also wish to perfect the art of juggling with one hand. Then without stopping, transfer the juggling act to the other hand, smoothly. It is a matter of simply substituting one hand (B) for the other and changing the direction of the balls accordingly. Dp / ' ! ' t 1 1 ' ' 1 ' ' 1 ‘ \ ‘ ‘=p.Lesson 3 -Juggling 3 Balls with 2 Hands Having thoroughly mastered lessons 1 and 2 you are now ready to juggle three balls with two hands. And here’s where the real fun of juggling begins for you! This is an important lesson, too, in view of the fact that you will use this 4 three-ball juggling in a great many of your trick routines later on. (A) Begin by arching just one ball RIGHT (A) LEFT upward and over from hand to hand, tossing it about three feet into the air at first. Practice well until you can decrease the height of the toss to about a foot or less. When you begin to juggle.three balls at once, this is the path each ball will follow — up and over from hand to hand in on arch as in Figure A. Now, you are ready to start with three balls. Place two balls in your right hand, and one in your left. Try to imagine that these balls will travel, one at a time, through the air, in quick sucession back and forth from hand to hand. One ball will be tossed to the left hand from the right. Before catching the ball first tossed, in your left hand, you will have to toss the ball in that hand to the right hand. You will toss the ball left in your right hand to the left, before catching the second ball. This gets the three balls in motion, and you will have to practice this routine, keeping three balls moving between your two hands, without dropping any of them. Try starting this routine with two balls in your left hand and one in the right hand. (B) You will wish to learn juggling three balls “cart-wheel” ae fashion, also. Begin just as you did in Ss step A. But visualize the balls going ‘ round and round in a circle instead of up, over, and back and forth from hand to hand. Start by tossing the two balls from your right hand, one at a time, to the left as before, but each time a ball is passed across from the left hand to the right, rather than tossed up and over. (See illustration B.) You may reverse this cart-wheel by starting with two balls in the left hand and one in the right, and allowing the balls to go around in a RIGHT (B) LEFT clockwise direction