/Arvid Andersson
November 13, 1999.

Bouncing ball juggling.

Bouncing balls is great fun, because unlike any other form of juggling, you're not the one working. The balls do it all by themselves! But ball bouncing doesn't have to be slow and easy, it can also be very fast and aggressive. It's also easier to juggle more balls when you are bouncing.

If you haven't yet tried ball bouncing, but want to learn, you'll find instructions here.

If you can already do the lift bounce (the reverse cascade described above), you could try to learn the force bounce. Instead of lifting the balls, letting them fall to the ground and bounce back up, you throw them at the ground. This gives a faster and harder pattern. When throwing from your right hand you should aim in front of your right foot and vice versa, and catch the balls on the way up.

My favorite trick with bouncing balls is Dyer's straights, a fast pattern for three bouncing balls.

If you want to juggle more balls than three, then I'm sure you are happy to hear that it's much easier with bouncing balls than with regular balls. Since you don't use as much force when bounce juggling, it's easier to keep control of the balls.

For four balls the secret is the same as with the regular four ball fountain, the balls don't cross. Instead you juggle two in one hand with both of your hands independently. This is how you juggle two bouncing balls in one hand:

Both balls are juggled in one column. Throw a ball straight up a few inches, then remove your hand and let the ball fall to the ground. When it hits the ground, throw the second ball in the same way. Immediately turn your hand upside down and catch the other ball, otherwise the balls will collide. Keep it going and you're all set!

Five balls is the next step. When you bounce five balls you'll have to be prepared to run a lot, so find a really, really good place to juggle, where the balls have nowhere to disappear.

The basic pattern is the five ball lift bounce. Similar to the three ball pattern, but with more balls. You can't juggle higher, like in normal juggling, so you'll have to juggle a lot faster instead. I don't know about the best way to learn five, but I figure it must be similar to learning the five ball cascade. That is, three ball flashes (throw three balls a little faster, clap your hands while they're bouncing, and catch them all), the snake (three throws from the right, the first one should reach the left hand when the last one is thrown from the right, then the same way back.), the 552, the 55550 and similar excercises. Check out the JIS page for five balls and convert the excercises there to bounce juggling.

That's not how I learned though. I took five balls, threw them all, and tried to catch them. I got more and more catches over time, but I had to run around a lot catching the balls before I finally learned it.

Bounce juggling links.

The bounce page has records, a bounce juggling gallery and a list of ball bouncing 'gods.'

Ram Prasad's bounce juggling FAQ. A good but short guide to ball bouncing.

/Arvid Andersson