The Juggling Equipment Blog

In my last entry I discussed the juggling club that finds itself in Levanger, Norway, and how marvellous it is that the members of this group can get together and practice not only during the weekly meetings, but also on other occasions – giving the members not only a much stronger social tie to each other, but also a much greater chance to practice more and get better.

One of the results of this is that linked to the social network that has been developed, we are inspiring and motivating each other in many ways that I am sure several other juggling clubs may be lacking. We aren’t directly competitive, but all of the members enjoy accomplishing new things that they can show off to the others – for support and feedback. And one of the things that have come of this, is a very high skill level. I am the only member to have done seven balls for more than three hundred and fifty catches, but that doesn’t mean that the rest isn’t gaining on me – currently there are four members except for myself that are running seven balls for more than fifty catches, and two of these have broken a hundred – one is also working on 966, 3 up 4 up and 5 up 360s with 7. The success in this is limited, but the skill is still visible.

In addition to this, we have six members running five clubs for over fifty catches – four of these above a hundred, and two of these again for more than two hundred catches. Not only does this display an amazing level of skill considering there are 23 regular attendees and so many are working on such a high level, but all of the members but two(myself and Frode, who is 31) are below 16 years of age – of which the two most talented are only 13.

Does your club have a high technical drive and motivational tendencies like this? Do you compete against each other like we do? It’s interesting to see that the different juggling clubs around the world have so many different cultures in them; some are purely social and some are almost only technical, and some are a mix – like ours. But we have no members that exclude themselves from the community, no, everybody is a part of the social scene, hanging out and chatting – and all are a part of the technically motivated group where we practice to get better.

How do you want your group to be? Is there anything you can do to motivate your fellow members to change anything?

Here is the second part of the Happy Oree Friends stuff. THIS was the first part.

in this part i will review in depth the making of the 5 last videos in my Happy Oree Friends series. You can learn a bit more about how i came to make each video and some of the extra bit of information that will let you enjoy the videos even more.

I am currently working on a large scale video, with Big surprises – it will be IMO the best juggling video I have ever made. But you will have to wait a while longer. Stay tuned to our blog – news will be posted here first!

Enjoy.

Read the rest of this entry →

In this post I would like to take the oppurtunity to tell you a little bit about my juggling club.

The club in Levanger, Norway, has no formal list of member, but still there are quite a bit of attendants. Every week, twenty-one jugglers ranging from age 11 to 19 attend the club, sticking around for between one and fifteen hours, depending on the time they have at their disposal.

The reason for the fifteen hours in question, is not that we stay in the gym for that long. It might also seem incredible that all 21 are there every week, but the reason is that I am employed by the county’s cultural department to coach these youngsters in juggling. They have one hour of coaching every week for which I am paid, and it is at this time that everyone comes to the gym. Not all of them at once though; they are in two groups numbering 10 and 11 that are coached one hour each. Each group that is, not person.

Now – this school owns a gym which we use, but these two hours are not the only ones we spend there. It so happens that I have the keys for the gym, and so when I have time and it is available, I will go there to juggle, calling as many as I can to come with me. We are rarely more than ten jugglers when they don’t “have to” be there, but still I would say we have an astounding oppurtunity for practice, probably very unique.

Now, what I would like to know is what YOUR juggling club looks like. To whoever reads this – how many are you, and how often and for how long do you meet up to juggle? Please leave a comment; discussing this later on might be interesting!

That’s it for now, take care!

So I was looking for any good video recently and didn’t find anything extraordinary…
Suddenly a strange idea came up to my mind – searching “Juggling Equipment” on YouTube.
The first result was, obviously, Chris Bliss, but the second one (and the more interesting one) was Luke Burrage’s video.

Luke explains how to pack your “average” juggling show equipment into two suitcases. Interesting and useful in deed.

Here before you is the second part of the adventures of the “Le Botrio” trio in Israel and Palestine during the Israeli Juggling Convention of 2009.

If you haven’t read the first part you should do so first – first part of the story.

If you read the first part already skip to page 159 – or just read on.

Read the rest of this entry →

I thought it would be nice to make this kind of post with all the small details and silly stuff about this videos series…
It got quite long so I made 2 parts for your convenience….
Enjoy.

General Background:

The idea of making this series came up  to my mind, unsurprisingly, while watching the opening intro theme of “Happy Tree Friends“. I looked at it and something looked strange… I thought to myself:  “if I will only change one letter it can sound like Happy Ori Friends!! yes!!! hahahaha…..”… yeah…. satisfied from another pun, happily I went to take a shower.
After finishing me and Avner’s juggling videos series I was constantly thinking what I’d like to make next.
I always had the hopes and aspirations of making juggling videos with other jugglers.
As I was showering I had that enlightenment – I should make videos with other jugglers and call it “Happy Oree Friends”!!

Read the rest of this entry →

Circus trap is a Polish project founded by the European union (if I remember correctly).

It is sort of a youth-circus-workshops camp that brings together about 20 something young people who are into the art of circus from eastern Europe (and Israel) for 10 days of workshops and fun.
More technical stuff you can find here.

Our Israeli delegation was led by Aaron Tobiass. He knew the organizers and was our contact guy (and did quite a good job I must say). Alongside him and me there was also our leading female juggler – Neta Oren.

I must say that neither I, nor Aaron&Neta, didn’t really have a clue about what’s going to happen there. We assumed it would be like a long juggling convention in which all the jugglers teach each other juggling stuff all day, but still, nothing for sure…
Ohh well.. we took the chance and took off  to the unknown and landed in the best country in the world (and a part of our origins) – Poland!

We knew that it’s going to be a lot of training, and so it was. Our train from Warsaw to Iława took about 4 hours. That could have been fun if we could have slept in those fancy train compartments.  Of course, we had to be the nice tourists, so we stood or sat somehow in the middle of the passage, right on the way to the toilets so that people can wake us up every time they feel their bladder is calling for help.

Aaron reflecting

After that exhausting training session we finally arrived at our (surprisingly correct) station.
waiting for us there were the two organizers – Aneta and Michał.

After a short ride we got to a place somewhere in the middle of nowhere called “Kacze Bagno”, which can be translated as “a small duck’s lake”. The place itself looked somewhat like a larger version of FarmVille. There was the big house in the middle of that ranch – it had all the rooms where we slept and practiced, showers and toilets, and kitchen. Outside there were just big fields, some of grass/jugglers, and some with other crops.
As we were isolated, with no connection to any internet/civilization anywhere around, we played a bit volley club, did a group introduction, got the next 9 days’ time table and went to sleep.

One problematic issue was that there wasn’t really  one common language for everyone. I guess it should have been English but about half of the campers couldn’t speak it or had difficulties, which didn’t make things easier…

The sleeping/training hall

Our daily schedule went like this:
8:45 – Warming up
9:30 – Breakfast
10:30-13:30 – Workshop (part 1)
14:00 – Lunch
16:00-18:30 – Workshop (part 2)
19:00 – Supper
21:00 – Country night

Being more detailed:
Warm-ups – Neta told me they were fun.
Breakfast, lunch and supper – The food in general was very good! long live the cooking lady!
Workshops – As if the basic language barrier wasn’t enough, almost none of the workshops’ leaders could speak English… Only the translation consumed about a half of the workshops’ time, I guess that was quite mentally exhausting…. More about the workshops on the next part.
Country night – Almost every night each group had to make some kind of exhibition about their country. Most of the time it included learning common words, traditional food and alcoholic drinks, and general explanations about each country’s culture and stuff.
Luckily, we were chosen to open the first “country night”, and so began our Israeli night.
To be honest, we weren’t prepared at all for preparing such an event, but, we had our advantages since it was the first night and no one really knew anything about Israel. After resolving some unclear issues it was time for happy time which included our unique dish – Bamba and our national dance – Hora, which was led by Neta.

Some other issues before this post ends -
The weather was pretty much perfect all along the way, I started my quest for internet, all the other campers were really nice and kind, and lastly, there were some creepy flies traps which I would name as “x-flies”.
Stay tuned for more adventures on the next part of circus trap.. part… trap…. it’s a palindrome…!!!

Imagine yourself doing a juggling show in front of large audience. 45 minutes of juggling and laughter going by quickly and everyone in the crowd seems to have lots of fun.

And then the show is over and…..

no one is clapping, in fact they all go away silently and a minute after the show is over it seems there never was a show in the first place.

Now imagine yourself writing a post. 45 minutes of writing and editing, checking links and rechecking information.

and then the post is over and….

no one is commenting.

When i perform, there is sometimes a DJ or an MC around who asks the crowd to cheer for the juggler. I don’t like that. I think that the performance has to be good enough so that the crowd will want to cheer. The cheers and claps of the audience motivate us to improve, train and work on new shows.

So why am I asking you to comment? shouldn’t I understand that you want better posts? well, I don’t think so. Commenting is a bit different then clapping, it’s more like the persons coming to you at the end of the show to start a conversation about a juggler they once saw 20 years ago… But since we don’t have a clap/like button for the posts, actually I just did some research and some work and now we do have a like button! use it!

OK, that changes all doesn’t it, let’s delete this post and get on with our life. we’ll, no, we still need your comments and thoughts and 30 second input in our work, it makes us happy to have you involved in our blog project, and who know, maybe you will even write a whole post one day for us?

Like! and comment!!!

Hello everyone, and welcome to another blog entry! Today what seems to concern me is something that I have experienced during my time as a juggler, and I would like to share it with all of you.

You see, juggling is almost in every case where it is presented to an audience, mistaken for something that it is not. Or, something that it might not be anyway, or is not, in the first instance. What juggling is, is a physically oriented way of throwing and catching things. What it is mistaken for, is entertainment. Because juggling is not entertainment. It can indeed be very entertaining, but it is not that in itself.

So what is the problem here? Well, the thing is that very many jugglers today tend to work on their technique for perfecting hard, challening and technical tricks. But what we all seem to forget about, at least many of us, is to work on our show skills! Now why would I say this? Because I am some WJF (see some online debate to understand what I mean by this) hater? No, not at all. I am simply explaining to you that when you juggle, in some way, you are very likely to be asked by someone in some way, to perform for an audience, at some point.

Now if you are very shy and hate being in front of an audience, simply forget what I am saying and say no thank you. But we all do know that if you want to make some really really easy money with juggling, you should be working on your show skills to some extent. Of course, I am not saying develop a routine and work on it fifteen times a day, but just keep in mind guys, there are more things to this world than what interests you. In all fairness it would be a pretty good idea for most of us to ask other jugglers what tricks to learn that will please an audience (perhaps except for if you are genuinely trying to trick them into thinking you are better than you are, but we can talk about that later) so that you will not have a total failure when you are standing in front of one. This is also very important whenever you want to put together a short street performance, so keep it in mind! Spend some time thinking about how you would like to have some sort of show, what to do in it, and what will please a non-juggling audience!

When you watch Chris Bliss juggling his 3 balls, he seems very frantic in his movements, and I know that if you enjoy the stage and get a lot of adrenaline once there, it’s easy to go into such a frenzy when there. But practice thinking clearly and knowing what you are doing when up there, because if you do try to imitate this 3-baller, you are going to mess up, no question. So do things slowly – no stress! Remember an audience is wowed almost no matter what – but when you relax, take it easy and make it look like you are awake but almost falling asleep at the same time, the whole thing gets much better. An audience appreciates it when you look like you’re so good you hardly have to keep your eyes open.

Those were just my 2 cents of today! Now go juggle!

Hello everyone, and welcome to Sondre’s written tutorial on why it is a good idea to use larger beanbags!

Especially beginner jugglers are probably going to wonder how this could be a good idea, and say to themselves that it makes more sense to use smaller beanbags, because they make everything lighter to run, and they leave more space in the air – this making collisions more rare. But these are not the only factors playing in – here are more important ones:

Muscle efficiency

When you are using larger beanbags, will need to spend a lot less energy working with your triceps to pull your arm back down after a throw. This makes the entire juggle more relaxed, and you will actually save energy from this particular advantage.

Also relevant is the fact that heavier beanbags will “injure” you in a far greater way if you have bad technique and posture, because inefficient muscle movement combined with a great energy requirement is more likely to give you for instance injuries from overloading your muscles over a short period of time. But luckily, your body will compensate on this by itself by making your technique better. You don’t really have to work to do it – all you have to concentrate on here is to try to relax muscles that feel irrelevant to the juggle, and everything will straighten out a whole lot. This is not only my own personal experience, but also confirmed by many other jugglers. This makes inefficient muscle use mostly eliminated, and the result is that you are saving even more energy. This goes especially for your shoulder and neck muscles.

By the way, efficient technique is better for you. If you have a Dietz syndrome (watch his posture in this video) or you are tilting your head or anything else, you are much more likely to develop muscle problems in one way or another. You don’t want that.

Accuracy

You would think that smaller beanbags make your patterns less collision prone because of the added space, but this is not true. Well, in itself it is, but this benefit falls away by great margines because small and also light beanbags have the down side of

1. Being able to land anywhere: If a small beanbag lands on your fingers, or in your palm, or other places in your hand, it will stay there until you throw it – this means your throws will not be the same because your beanbags are launched from various places with less than necessary time to concentrate on how to make the throw.

2. Not filling the hand: This goes together with being able to land anywhere on your hand, but a problem that small beanbags have is that they do not fill your hand: you have to spend some time and energy closing your hand around it. This might seem irrelevant, but it really does matter.

These two points are both eliminated by larger beanbags – and especially beanbags. They don’t bounce out of your hands if your throw would after all happen to be a bit misplaced, and will fit more nicely in your hand since they can be a little bit squishy and your closed hand does not have a perfectly round space inside of it. When you consider all this, larger beanbags will make your juggling more relaxed, your technique better, and your tricks and patterns more consistent – though keep in mind there is a certain upper limit to what there is a point in trying (larger than 3″ (82mm) is basically pointless almost no matter what) – and remember that if you do indeed want to work with as large beanbags as 3″ 185g ones and also do more than just a couple tricks with 7 balls as well as 8-9 and perhps even more balls, you should consider the strength of your biceps and other upper body muscles when you have brought in the efficiency advantages. Maybe 2.75″ (70mm) is better than 3″ – and it absolutely probably is in almost every case. How many jugglers can do 7 ups and db97531s with 3″ beanbags anyway?

Those were the points for now, but they are important to consider. My personal experience is that nothing is heavier to run with 3″ 185g beanbags than with 2.5″ 110g ones, perhaps except for 8+ objects – though if you are using 2.75″ 145g beanbags, it will probably be easier with those if your technique is good. My record with 2.5″ (63mm) beanbags juggling 7 was about 200 catches, but with 3″ ones it is now a bit over 350. I do however believe it could be improved if I switched to 2.75″ ones. I’m not that strong.

However – important to consider is of course what kind of tech-juggler you want to be. The two basic categories based on jugglers we all know are, you could say, Doug Sayers and Matthew Tiffany. If you are still wondering what I mean by this, ask me – perhaps another entry will be written about this and the advantages of SMALLER beanbags.

Sondre