9 juggling balls??

i went to the circus yesterday, and saw a guy juggling 9 balls, can anyone on here juggle that many balls, or more?? and how long did it take people to learn to juggle however many balls they can juggle?? it was so amazing since i can't even juggle 3 balls yet!

lol

well juggling 3 is something most people seem to be able to pick up within about 30 minutes of practise, given a decent teacher.

juggling 4 probably wont happen straight away after you get three, its significantly harder, but most people can learn it with a bit of effort.

juggling five is *much* harder, most people take years to get a solid five ball pattern.

most people that take their juggling seriously dont seem to ever be able to run seven - I think it takes years and years of hard practice.

I believe running nine is like the twilight zone of juggling - it takes a special kind of person a lifetime of hardcore practice.

To put it in perspective - running nine is something you might see if you are really lucky at a big juggling convention.

Im actually very surprised you saw it in a circus. Which one was it?

BTW - I can juggle 3 in my sleep, four with no real difficulty, and I'm still working on running 5. I've flashed 6 a couple of times. I've been juggling (with vvarious levels of intensity) for about 7 years. I'm progressing slowly with it.

ps I dont think there is anyone in the world that can juggle more than nine in a continuous pattern.

that is true. No one that we know of anyway!

I heard once -

You can pick up 3 (balls) in an hour,
4 balls in a day
5 balls in a month
6 balls in a year
Don't even think of trying 7 balls...

In reality 3 is achievable in an hour, and 4 balls in theory is possible in a day, given that you practce hard enough. I've been practising seven balls for about 4 years now and it's still not quite there like my 5 balls is. I can run 7 for a few cycles, and have the occasional long run (50 catches plus). ie about once or twice per practice session

Indeed, 9 balls just to throw up and catch all nine will take a few years. So good luck - most people will take a year or so to get comfortable wth 5 balls. 7 is really hard work and nine is *REALLY* hard work.

an old mate of mine who lives in Sydney called tom was getting 9 when i talked to him about a year ago - i think his record was 2 cycles or something like that.

i think he'd been juggling for about 5-6 years - but had work extremely hard over that time - i dont think i've ever seen anyone pick it up as fast as him!

to be honest although massive numbers is impressive - his 5 ball tricks were the most entertaining as he could play and improvise with a whole stack of tricks as opposed to just trying to keep them all in the air.

yup ed, toms 9ball was looking alright at sjc, not sure how many times he got through it though

http://www.jugglingdb.com/records/record.php?prop=b&number=9

9ballers are few and far between. A few people have qualified it, but asking them to repeat that, or do it in performance, and I doubt you'll see anything past a flash. Anthony Gatto holds the record, 300 catches, noone else is anywhere near close.

I'd agree dentrasi, watching someone with a plethora 5b tricks is far interesting than a qualify of 9b.

it was at the Moscow State Circus, it took him 2 attempts to do it, but he managed to keep 9 balls going for about a minute and a half, i was completely amazed! the rest of his tricks were really good aswell.

I learnt 3 balls in about 10 minutes and 4 balls in a day... then kinda startd to diversify a little and haven't really concentrated on 5 balls, must get off m ass and do so. I can do some 5 ball multiplexes and tricks just not the cascade.

got 3 in 1 hand though just can't put the 2 hands together to do 6

=O 10 minutes?! christ! i admit i haven't spent hours on end practising, but i was trying for AGES and still haven't managed to do it! *jealousy*

I've seen Thomas Dietz qualify nine on stage.

Was a funny ending to his act. qualified nine, and then deliberately (you could tell it was deliberate) messed it up and fell over... He even completed his whole routine without a single drop. I was amazed. He won first prize for technical ability. not surprised TBH.

After he won the prize, in the final show he went nuts with his act, doing stupidly crazy double pirouettes and even seven clubs tricks. was awesome to watch.

Looking forward to seeing what changes he's made to his act after the advice he was given at SOLyCIRCO...

I htink Bluecat can flash nine... not sure about being able to qualify it... Rob?

i've seen bluecat flash 8!... no doubt nine has been flashed too.

nope, i wasn't wrong in the count, twas 9 balls, and was for 1.5 mins (give or take a few seconds)

i think it maybe felt like 1.5 mins, but sit down now and wait in silence for that long, was it really like that?

T

i certainly can't qualify nine. i've flashed it a couple of times, but haven't tried now for, ooh, maybe 2 years. in fact i'm now degraded to a slightly sketchy 7 - qualify most days i try it, but no long runs for ages.

nine is something you only get with a LOT of dedication.

the Moscow state circus doesnt list an act with 9 ball juggling. This guy
http://www.bolshoicircus.ru/cat97en.html juggles 7 footballs which is AMAZING.

check the catalogue: http://www.bolshoicircus.ru/catalog_en.html

Not saying it didn't happen - but its pretty rare for people to come out of nowhere and break a world record in juggling on stage .

just for interest;

records for nine: http://www.jugglingdb.com/records/record.php?prop=b&number=9

I reckon 305 catches on nine would be a lot quicker than 1 minute 30 seconds. note also that no-one else seems to be able to do more than about 60 throws.

You can see why we're a bit sceptical of the nine balls for 1.5 minutes on stage...

unless it was actually Anthony Gatto - in which case i'd be more inclined to believe the story.

hmm.... maybe you're right, it might have just FELT like 1.5 mins, but i am definatly sure that it was quite a long time....

I think Anthony Gatto (some time ago) juggled 9 balls for about three mins. I might be lying about this - i think he did it around the same time he did the video of him doing 7balls for 10 minutes. The 7 video had to be the most boring juggling video I've ever watched!

9 takes such a huge amount of practice just to throw them all up straight...I've got better 5 ball tricks to learn in that time. Having said that if I learnt 9 my 7 would improve no end.


1.5 mins of 7 balls onstage is a huge feat - I remember Jay gilligan at the BJC a few years back did 100 catches of 7 at the public show...and that seemed like a long time. 1.5 mins of nine would certainly be heard in the rec.juggling forums.

PS. when juggling nine you'd be doing about 5-6 catches a second, maybe more.

i have a sturdy-ish 5 ball pattern and i've almost got reverse 5b cascade i can do a little bit of 6b and i've flashed 7 balls once.

just doing a quick experiment, i can do 288 throws of three ball in a minute(measured at 24throws/5seconds), 324 throws of five ball a minute (27 throws/5seconds) so one and a half minutes of 9 ball could be about equaling the record of 300 throws. i highly doubt that someone in a circus would be equaling the world record just in a show.

that said, my record for five ball cascade is 180 throws, which would translate to a little bit over 30 seconds worth of juggling, and i can tell you that 30 seconds seems like minutes on minutes(forearm muscles start to ache), so i could understand your exaggeration

I'm not too sure about people who take their juggling seriously not able to run 7 I for sure can't run 7 yet but I can qualify it, my first qualify was 1 year 4 months after I began seriously practicing I am currently working on solidifying the qualify before I move to more catches. but if you are serious about learning each number and only working balls there's no reason you can't be running 7 in the time it took me to qualify it and oh yes I work on all 3 props. I can cascade 7 for about 20 catches on a good day. 15 almost everyday my 5 balls is at 825 catches. 6 balls is closing in on 60 catches.

pre, are you suggesting that someone could learn to run 7 in less than 1 year 4 months?

by run, I mean a solid pattern - not just qualifying. Qualifying is much harder than flashing, but not even close to running (IMHO).

by serious training do you mean having a life apart from juggling or really...juggling all the time everyday?

I think serious training is practising everyday - but not all day. But then again, I knew I was soft already

I'm more than less suggesting that if someone were to focus on increasing numbers I'm sure they could have qualified it in less than 1 year. there are some people on the WJF and Gatto forum who have made some fast progress and are running 7 balls after not a terribly long time.

no but Gatto is fairly consistant with 10 rings he has a number of 20+ catch runs online 1 or 2 30+ catch runs and he claims to be able to run it for over 60 catches.

What a great thread!

I think pre is quite right in theory, not just from a possibility point of view, but someone who could remain focussed enough on nine would quite likely have the innate ability to pick it up faster as well...

Sure, such a person might be one in a million (ever thought what Muhammed Ali might have been like if he decided to be a juggler instead of a boxer?) all it would take is for that person to stick to it.

I'd envisage juggling 'purist' who only wants to to achieve numbers and isn't interested in learning extra tricks at all...

Persoanally, I have several veyr good shows just using three balls, and I'm much more of a tricks person than a numbers person.

okay, there was an article in the newspaper...

 Written by:

The State circus that came to Bute Park last weekend, the only circus with a 9 ball juggler, left us with a destroyed park

the ONLY 9 ball juggler?? from what you guys have said the paper got it wrong....

To be honest, I think most papers get things wrong about juggling.
I can qualify 7 balls most of the time, and I've been practicing loads for about 2 years, cant imagine how long 9 would take, but I have seem some amazing things from jugglers.