Seymour juggles Two balls!



Now comes the real fun stuff!

If you can juggle TWO balls properly, you're practically a three-ball juggler!
It's true!
The tricky word is PROPERLY, a lot of people get this one wrong... but I trust you, you'll get it if you stick to some basic rules. Rules, rules, rules.... boring... but honest, they're there for a very good reason... honest

Juggling TWO balls is the most important lesson of all, so let's get going!

Seymour?.....

Oh, he's gooood....

And he's paying attention to what he's doing!

Now, the first thing you might notice is that Seymour is NOT LOOKING AT HIS HANDS!!
How can you throw and catch without looking at your hands? Trust me, you can do it

And it's very important, because Seymour is looking, not down, but at the highest point of the juggle (the "peak")

The reason he's doing this, is so he can tell when to throw the next ball
If you watch VERY carefully, you can see exactly what Seymour is doing..

FIRST STEP: hold one ball in each hand
SECOND STEP: throw one ball in the air
THIRD STEP (The real secret to the whole thing): When the first ball reaches the top (the peak), throw the second ball.

That's it!
Well, not really. Of course you'll eventually need to catch the balls, but it is a LOT more important that you throw them properly at the moment.
If you can throw both the balls into the air, and have them land on opposite sides of you, that's brilliant.
When you can do this well, you'll find you'll be able to catch them automatically!

Now there are a few mistakes that beginners often make, and the more you pay attention to these, the easier your three-ball juggling will be:

Number 1: DON'T SCOOP.
     It's important to try to keep both balls in a flat plane in front of you.
That means, try not to let one ball go in front of, or behind the other.
Your hands should only go up and down, not forwards and backwards, this is called SCOOPING, and will make three-ball juggling much more difficult
A neat way of avoiding the old scoop, is to try juggling, with a wall right in front of you, if you hit the wall (or yourself), you KNOW you're doing the wrong thing :)

This is not easy, but you'll get it.

Number 2: Make sure both balls go up to the same height.

     You'll most probably find that one ball will go higher than the other.
You might even notice that one arm throws a bit differently to the other. This is true for most people, unless you're lucky enough to be AMBIDEXTROUS (meaning that both arms can do things equally, even write at the same time! Not me, I'm afraid...)
When you get to three-ball juggling, this will become very important
Feel free to juggle as high or low as you wish, you'll probably find, however, that it's easiest when you throw to just above your head.

Number 3: Make sure you can do it both ways

As you can see, Seymour is throwing the ball from his left hand first (yes it's his LEFT hand, he's facing you silly!)
Now this is OK when you're just getting the hang of it, but don't stick with it for too long.
AS SOON as you can do it starting with one hand, make sure you try it the other way.
Believe me - I taught myself to juggle, and I learnt a LOT of bad habits, this was one of them.
It can be frustrating to stop just when you can do it, and find that it doesn't work the other way, but give it a bit of time. If you stick with doing it one way for too long, you're going to find it even MORE difficult later - true!
In fact, this rule is so important, it's must be an official jugglers rule... let me see...
Yep! here it is...

Jugglers Rule Number TWO: Practise it BOTH WAYS

Whew!

That was a LOT to take in huh?
Yeh, but you don't need to worry about EVERYTHING at once, just try to get the hang of it, and remember that dropping the balls is GOOD, as long as you can throw them properly.
As I said before, it's much easier to catch the balls later, once you can throw well.

Juggling any number of balls, three, four, five, six, seven.... is all based on the same basic rules, however the real trick to juggling more and more and more, is to get those throws just right!

Try to spend some time getting the hang of two balls, Seymour will be back soon, he's got those THREE balls flying like doves, and can't wait to show somebody

Don't forget Juggler's Rule Number 1: When you can do it twenty times, without stopping, you've got the hang of it....

But why stop there? Now it's time to try to juggle three balls.

 

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