/Arvid Andersson
March 28, 1999.

Stupidly hard juggling tricks.

These are some tricks that I have thought of, but aren't good enough to try. I put them here so that maybe someone else out there can make a use of them. I just ask you that if you learn one of these tricks, please email me and tell me all about it!

The four armed juggler:

Imagine that you had four arms. What amazing juggling you could do! Eight balls would be nothing, just two in each hand! A double Mills' Mess? No sweat! And I can't even imagine what the box would look like...

My idea is that one juggler, who is very confident in juggling with his eyes shut, stands behind another juggler and sticks his arms out under the front juggler's. The blind juggler juggles his cascade, or whatever he is capable of, while the front juggler does a more spectacular show, stealing from and placing balls in the blind jugglers hands.

The result is sort of a passing & stealing pattern, and with some practice and a good routine, it could look pretty good. Especially if they would wear a coat with an extra pair of arms...

Ball on ball bouncing:

When the subject of deliberate collisions in juggling patterns came up on the rec.juggling a while ago, I got this idea of bouncing one ball on top of a running juggling pattern. I tried it too, it's very hard, maybe even impossible. But impossible things are performed every day, so sooner or later, I will be able to do this.

A plastic soccer ball is pretty big, therefore visible for an audience and easy to hit. A big beachball is even easier. (but still very, very hard to keep in the air!) Try to keep it in the air by throwing beanbags at it from underneath. Very old and soft beanbags are the best ones to use.

If you can keep it in the air, then you can start practicing keeping it in the air by throwing cascade throws at it...

/Arvid Andersson