Yet another contact juggling thread.

Seriously though - what do you mean by a cradle?

your hand is palm down and your fingertips and and wrist are higher than your knuckles and the ball is resting in the 'cradle'

is that right??

Ahhh - back of the hand!!! <mutters about southerners and spade's a spade...>

I would've said back of the hand:
but then I went here looking for lessons. Suddenly the CJers I know seemed to make a whole lot more sense!
before that I thought a cradle was
a) something a baby sleeps in
b)some sort of yoyo move (not sure about that one)

Are you up doing work as well Mr Lazy?

I was then and still am (allegedgly) doing work

Ok then, some terminology:

Cradle = Back of the Hand
Catching hand = the hand that you are trying to pass the ball to
Pitching Hand = The hand that is passing to the catching hand
Stall = when the ball stops dead and balances anywhere on your body
Smooth = A place on your body in which a ball can't be reliably held
Control position = A place on the body where a ball can be caught and held still. EG. Palm, cradle
Wall plane = The vertical plane in front of your body where certain tricks are supposed to stay.

Hope that helps you guys understand me....

Thanks

Do you want start posting some funky moves?!! I've just started CJ this week, but I'm practicing lots

Cool

cradle is used instead of 'back of the hand' because there is more than one way to hold on the back of the hand - how many fingers are you using and how far back on your fingers does the ball sit?

for example, i'm learning the outside transfer bit of 'the cage' (the cage, for those that don't know, is a trick in which all your fingertips are touching and your hands describe a 'cage' that the ball rolls over and through).

loves the circus suggested that i learn a move called 'the prayer' first which will help loads with learning how to transferring the weight from back of hand to back of hand smoothly.
the actual holds in these two moves however are very different - one uses a cradle to hold the ball on the back of the hand and the other uses a fork.

a spade is a spade.

but a spade is not a shovel, although they do look very similar


cole. x

my ball is here yippeeee

practice
practice
practice

*runs off to CJ.org*

Thinking about it, the cage will help you learn prayer... my bad, sorry.

I use the two finger cradle in cages. When your hands do the bear claw shape, if you can, bend your fingers back slighly at the knuckles, This will give the ball a good strong control position to sit before you pass it back to the other hand. in other words, instead of your hands making a perfectly rounded arch, make it a bit more square. Hope this makes sense...

seeing as all this stuff is being posted about moves, I thought I may as well post a link to this site
although its already been posted in another forum, so that people can see what the prayer move is (and it has some other cool moves on it)

The prayer on that site is really a prayer windsreen wiper. To see a REALLY good prayer, go here to Mot's Video thread and watch the contact juggling one. The difference being that prayer butterfy is much more fluid.

"...funky moves..." Star pointing - this is an adaptation of the butterfly. Start with the ball in the cradle. With your butterfly hand extend the arm fully so that it points diagonally up and isolate the ball on the palm of your hand with your trigger finger pointing up. After a while try to isolate the ball on the tips of your three middle fingers.

thanks for that... I'm still working on what I think is the one handed butterfly (left hand is a bit shoddy)... although I can roll it round my body about 1 time in 6

Do you mean isolate, or stall as in tripod? To isolate is to make the ball appear as if still, while your hand/arm/body/panda is moving around it.

Lazy angel, how are you coming on? Have you got your butterfly smooth yet? I wouldn't worry about learning chestrolls just yet, and arm rolls, you wanna make sure your butterfly is good first.

Cool move: Butterfly transfer walk.When doing the butterfly, execute a palm-back pass. Immediately as the ball has transferred to your cradle, bring the palm-up hand down to catch the ball in a back-back transfer. Instead of continuing with the butterfly at this point, bring the pitching/throwing hand to the fingertips of the catching hand of the back-back and execute a back-palm transfer. Try and get this both ways, so that the ball looks like it's rolling in a half-pipe made up of only your hands.

To recap: a series of transfers, palm-back-back-palm, then reverse the direction of the ball and repeat. Simple, eh?

Firepoise, what do you mean by 'roll it around your body'? Where does the ball travel?

It took me a day of solid practicing with my left to get it to butterfly to any standard, and it's still not as natural as it could be... Fear not. practice makes perfect.