Kae:Wishful Thinking
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[edit] Wishful Thinking
Most of the moves I could think of on the arms have been done before by people – it is difficult to think of any which have not been done. This is, I believe, simply because people practice with the arms more than with the body – not because the body is more difficult to use. With practice, I believe you could use any part of the body to perform almost any contact juggling move – one South African contact juggler (Hi Matte!) told of his belly-dancer girlfriend who could use her stomach to launch a ball right up the body to the shoulders. Another contact juggler told of his time playing with balls on his ankles, and successfully butterflying from one side to another. A lot of arm work depends on the forearm and backarm. Not much work seems to have been done on the more extreme positions, though – butterflying between outside and inside of biceps, rolling to a balance on the outside elbow so the hand is reaching behind the head (some interesting moves could be done like that – think contact juggling with your hands held behind the head), contact juggling with the hands behind the back, etc. Beyond the arms, we have the chest – as Mistress Meghan says, girls can have an advantage here. The chest, I’m sure, could be trained to handle two balls at a time – showering, “palm”spinning, rolling from chest to back of neck and back again. Below the chest is the waist, which our bellydancing anecdote shows can be used effectively. Try learning to butterfly from one side of the waist to the other. You can balance in the small of the back, then possibly bring the ball right around the body and back again (would look good while lying down, or breakdancing if you feel really adventurous). The legs can be treated like the arms – albeit very limited arms. The balls can be balanced or rolled between the knees and waist. Try rolling a ball right down from the knee to the waist, then pass to the opposite leg and down to it’s knee, then hop the ball back to the original knee. The feet and ankles are similar to the palm, cradle, and wrist. You could balance on the inside and outside of the ankles, you can balance on the top and sole of the feet. You can toss from one foot to the other. All the points I have mentioned here can be linked. With a bit of flexibility and perseverance, you should find it possible to roll a ball from any point of the body to any other point. =Enrico Rastelli=, about a hundred years before this book was published, wore a green velvet suit, and rolled coloured billiard balls all over his body into pockets sown into it. This was before contact juggling was given the attention of hundreds of creative minds. Think what is possible now.
[edit] Creating New Moves
The best way to create new moves is to have to learn contact juggling from scratch with no references. Up until recently, most contact jugglers developed their skills in isolation, which explains the huge amount of diversity and new moves, which are always turning up. If you have learned everything in this book from beginning to end, then it is likely that you also have a few moves in mind that you're wondering why I didn't put in – develop those moves and release them to the community, as most likely they're moves that a lot of people overlooked. Or, you could develop them in secret and stun the world in a few years when you unleash your crazy ninja ball skills on the world. When I am thinking of new moves, it is usually from my history – coming from many different hobbies to contact juggling allows me to take moves I already knew from other disciplines, and adapt them to the contact-juggling world. An idea that could give some amazing new moves turned up recently (2001) on the contactjuggling.org website – there is a kind of dance related to break dancing which some people call "liquid hand dancing", or “liquid popping” – where the hands and arms are used to create mesmerizing fluid movements. If that could be combined with contact juggling – and I'm sure it could – it would yield some pretty impressive moves. Also, there are the “body popping” and “break dancing” dance-forms. They have great potential as well. Think also of rhythmic gymnastics. Although the ball moves in that art are relatively simple compared with CJ, it looks stunning. Never isolate yourself to such an extent that you will not look at any other art for fear of making your CJ more “impure”. Remember – Allah loves variety! I’m sure YHWH does as well.Practicing, and Conditioning In order for you to consistently perform your routines without fault, it is important that you take care of your body. As CJ contains a lot of precise movements, it is more difficult to regulate your diet and exercise.
[edit] Exercise
is a definite must. This does not mean that you should be getting up every day at 6am to run around the town. You should choose your own exercise, and make sure it fits your goals. If you go without exercising your arms for a while, then try to spin a 4-stack for a few minutes, you’ll find that it hurts. This will affect you most if you are a busker, or performing several times a night. Perhaps the best exercise a juggler can get is to juggle regularly – write up a list of moves you need to practice, and practice them regularly, trying to beat, or at least equal, your “records” each time. Personally, I have a list of moves I want to practice, and write down how many times in a row I get the move right. Each time I go through the list again, I try to beat my last record at the first try. If I don’t beat it, then I try to equal the record on subsequent tries (if I haven’t beaten it on the first try, I haven’t beaten it). This method will tell you soon what your strengths and weaknesses are, but there are flaws as well – if you are trying to beat your records all the time, then eventually, you will reach a point where you have a few days of practice to do before you reach the end of your long list of practice moves.
[edit] Moderate.
Decide a point at which you have achieved “perfection” in a move (whatever that is), and put it into a routine.
Take note of the effects of anything you eat or drink. Coffee can make you shake slightly and lose focus, making it difficult to perform slow or involved movements. Alcohol can severely disrupt your control, causing ridiculous amounts of embarrassment as you fail even the simplest moves (don’t I know it…). You don’t have to give these things up – just be aware of these things so you can be careful of your diet in case you are doing a show on a specific date. If you are on a special diet, you should be aware of any deficiencies in it. As a vegetarian, I become aware I have left something out of my diet when I lack the strength to carry out a practice routine despite exercising regularly. Carefully watching your diet can give advance warning of such potential problems.
[edit] Practicing
other forms of manipulation is good for conditioning your body for contact juggling as well – martial arts teach you precise movements, reflexes, and timing; skateboarding, acrobatics and BMX teach spatial awareness; magic, yoyo and toss juggling teach you to become more aware of the motions of the objects you are manipulating. In fact, even giving up the practice for a few days can help sometimes. When I was learning the 5 ball cascade in toss juggling, for example, I’d practice for hours each day, and never get more than 10 or 11 catches. I gave up one day and went back to regular juggling. Next week, I tried it again, and got 14 catches. While I was “resting” from the practice, my subconscious was working out the necessary movements.
Two very good practice hints other CJers give are to practice blindfolded and to practice sitting down. When you practice blindfolded (or with your eyes shut), you are learning to perform the moves based on feeling rather than sight. This is important for when you decide to go onto multi-ball CJing. In multi-ball CJing, it is difficult to watch all the balls at the same time, so it is a great idea to have a subconscious feel for the move, so even if you don’t like closing your eyes, practice while watching TV or reading a book, etc. When you practice sitting down, you are forcing yourself to take command of the ball; the ball does not lead you around the room – you lead it around your body. A note on the sitting position – it is probably best for you to sit on your heels, with the toes crossed. If you sit cross-legged, you are inviting damage to your shins, and if you sit on a chair, then when a ball drops, it will roll further away from you.
[edit] Always warm up
before moving onto your more difficult moves. Start with basic one-ball moves before getting complex. This is for several reasons: If you go from a cold-start to a complex run, you are inviting tendon and muscular damage. You need to give your body time to adapt to 1 ball before moving to 2 or more. This is true of even the most experienced CJers – you will find yourself dropping if you don’t allow the body time to re-introduce itself to the feeling. If you never practice with lower numbers of balls, you will be skipping out on practicing the basic moves necessary for multi-ball work.
