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Lawful Juggler vs Chaotic Juggler
Jun. 29th, 2018 04:12 pmI feel like I've been stalled on five clubs this year, so I poked around online to see if I could find advice. There was a bunch!
The first link I found had two articles from the old Usenet rec.juggling, two different long-time posters (I recognized the names) with their advice for learning five. The first fellow said, okay starting off you have to decide off the bat whether you just want to be able to do it for a few rounds to say you can do it, or if you want to be good at it. And if the latter, you have to follow a route that's fairly tedious but will pay off in the end. First, you have to be rock-solid with four clubs, like regularly getting runs of 100 right-hand throws. Then he suggests a sequence of 4-club patterns to get solid with, getting each one to the 100-right-hand-throws level before moving on to the next, all before you even pick up five clubs again...
The second guy said it's probably useful to learn four clubs before five, although he actually went straight on to five clubs from three because he just really loves the cascade pattern. But he went on to give some advice from when he was learning seven clubs...
I guess the lesson is that people are different and there's no one right way. A lot of people all over the internet suggested drilling lots of different fewer-than-5-club site-swap patterns that have 5s in them, like 51 (three club shower), 53 (four club half shower), 552 (one site called this a "four club chase"-- it has a weird rhythm, but I did spend a lot of time on that pattern with balls before learning 5 balls), 5551 (I'd heard this recommended before, but I certainly never learned it before 5 balls and can barely do it with balls now), or 55514 (I'm sure this looks very cool). Also that catching 3 clubs in one hand is totally possible and the secret to learning it is just drill it a lot. That last bit's pretty helpful actually.
Well, ok, so adding lots of weird site-swap patterns to my club practice. And ball practice, because I'll probably have an easier time doing e.g. 5551 or 55514 if I can do them with balls first.
The first link I found had two articles from the old Usenet rec.juggling, two different long-time posters (I recognized the names) with their advice for learning five. The first fellow said, okay starting off you have to decide off the bat whether you just want to be able to do it for a few rounds to say you can do it, or if you want to be good at it. And if the latter, you have to follow a route that's fairly tedious but will pay off in the end. First, you have to be rock-solid with four clubs, like regularly getting runs of 100 right-hand throws. Then he suggests a sequence of 4-club patterns to get solid with, getting each one to the 100-right-hand-throws level before moving on to the next, all before you even pick up five clubs again...
The second guy said it's probably useful to learn four clubs before five, although he actually went straight on to five clubs from three because he just really loves the cascade pattern. But he went on to give some advice from when he was learning seven clubs...
I guess the lesson is that people are different and there's no one right way. A lot of people all over the internet suggested drilling lots of different fewer-than-5-club site-swap patterns that have 5s in them, like 51 (three club shower), 53 (four club half shower), 552 (one site called this a "four club chase"-- it has a weird rhythm, but I did spend a lot of time on that pattern with balls before learning 5 balls), 5551 (I'd heard this recommended before, but I certainly never learned it before 5 balls and can barely do it with balls now), or 55514 (I'm sure this looks very cool). Also that catching 3 clubs in one hand is totally possible and the secret to learning it is just drill it a lot. That last bit's pretty helpful actually.
Well, ok, so adding lots of weird site-swap patterns to my club practice. And ball practice, because I'll probably have an easier time doing e.g. 5551 or 55514 if I can do them with balls first.
