Beginning Staff Juggling?

Hi All,

well I've got three short sticks, and I can juggling 3 clubs competently, but I'm not sure what the go is with learning to juggle three sticks. Can anyone give me tips and tricks for learning;

1) How you start
2) What patterns you learn first
3) What are ideal sticks to learn on
4) What skills I should concentrate on when practising juggling with clubs that transfer well?

Thanks,

J

Looks like the trick would be to be able to juggle 3 clubs flat in a wall plane.

But thats just me throwing something out there... never attempted it.

well - when I got that trick (wall plane 3 clubs inside, 3 clubs outside alternating) and I still couldn't do the juggling sticks thing, I thought I should ask here!

There seems to be something wierd about the catches.

Seems for me that continous wallplane reverse cascade is easiest. But most people start with wallplane inside cascade continuously. It's all just higher, slower and heavier than with clubs.

Once you can do the inside cascade, then's there is differenciating between the antti cascade (which is kinda just the way you throw clubs but with more arm movement, cos the staffs require a lot of backswing) and the 'french' cascade, which is pretty and has a flourish after you catch each staff.

I don't know if ima or antti has any tutorials on the utube.

Some people also juggle staffs in the same plane as clubs. But this looks not as cool as wallplane stuff. But is much easier, and could be good for a quick motivation fix.

It's that or learn shower first, which is probably not a good way to go.

Ok following Megs advice, I've managed to get about 10 throws of 3 sticks in a antti cascade.

Shower is a bit beyond me at the mo tho.

MCP - Is the flourish after the catch in the french cascade an 'actual' juggling flourish ala catching the club wrong way round and flourishing it to bring it right way round again like you do with club juggling, or is it a catch and a figure of 8, ala baton twirling?

cheers for your help!

Well I think / thought / assumed that a flourish in club juggling was anything you did with the club in your hand that was spinny and not a throw...

Tommy would know this better but he's not about, I believe in the french cascade, you catch the staff offcenter, at your shoulder, it's a direction changing catch, and you do a figure of eight as you bring it down from the shoulder back into throwing position.

Does that help?

also for shower: learn it with both hands, otherwise shoulder problems. Nobody likes weird shoulder problems. Not seb or tim or antti or anyone.

Oh yeah, the antti cascade also has swinging with both arms, I think to avoid burny stillness of the staffs, which seems out of character with antti's normal methods...

I don't know if Meg's referring to me or Tommi (rubberheart) in the above post but if it's me then you should know I'm ALWAYS on HoP when I should be revising for exams

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the original staff juggling thread or the advanced staff juggling thread for reference, though I understand that this thread is focused on beginning staff juggling

Anyway, this video for a nice example of both the antti and french cascades (by a french person no less):

Kev et Had en Vacances

The Antti cascade is at 1:48 and the french cascade is at 1:56 though both examples are a bit brief (I couldn't think of a better online example).

@Pyrolific: In answer to your question, the flourish is not the 'standard' club flourish that I know (demonstrated in this club flourish video). Instead, it's pretty much as MCP said but here's the same explanation with more words:

Catch the staff off centre from the part of the handle that's nearest to the middle of your body (palm up) at shoulder height. You stop the staff with the catch, then the thumbside goes down and behind you. The pinky side follows to complete a half figure-of-eight behind the back and, when the thumbside comes to the front of the body for the next beat, you throw it up and towards the opposite side of your body. Catch it with the opposite hand, palm up and at shoulder height (stopping the staff) and repeat

Hope that helps.

Very helpful! Thanks, people!

mmm Meg, I don't know if I really want to develop weird shoulder injuries...Caps already gives me that a bit - but I really want to be able to move around a lot with staff juggling, and I figure shower is an easier pattern to move than cascade.

J

so i'm going to disagree with meg for the first time ever and say that wheel plane is not necessarily less impressive/cool than wall - you should learn a club cascade with continuous reverse chops; a beautiful pattern with staffs.

also i would recommend if you want to move around, a cascade (wheel or wall) is much, much easier than shower, and yes, shower will end up hurting you.

good luck

^^^mmm good points. I dont want to hurt myself.

I can do reverse chops with clubs, haven't tried it with sticks yet.

Awesome thread,
it’s great to have another staff juggler out there and also online!

Tommy (irinus) and meg have both described the flat cascade variations perfectly, if you are planning to juggle staffs with fire i think the flat plain is best because of where you hold the staffs,
if you aren't then like the cat says the wheel plane has lots of potential, and is also easier to learn.

personally i think the french cascade is much nicer than antti's cascade as it makes the direction change of each catch/throw look great.

the shower wont nessisarliy destroy your shoulder (ask Josh, Tim chown, Imakakode, Koothor,) it destroyed mine because i was an idiot, didn't warm up, didn't listen to my body, and did lots of other silly things!
i totally agree with meg however that you should learn the shower in both directions as this will definitely be better for your body and also open up more avenues for future tricks. it’s the same throw as the revrse flat reverse cascade for example
if you want to learn the shower my strong recommendation is to work on the two staff shower until you can do it in all of the variations below
small(height) and fast/slow spins
medium(height) and fast/slow spins
big(height) and fast/slow spins

i would also work on
2-ups from a small shower,
then continuous 2-ups from a small shower,
then continuous 2-ups from a start,
then the above with a hand clap where the third staff will go!!!!!!

another tip for when you get to three staffs is to hold the spare staffs in your catching hand(see daylight video below) this will put less strain on your throwing shoulder, it makes starting slightly harder but means you never have more than one staff in your throwing hand.
(its your throwing shoulder that has the most potential to get hurt/injured)

also regarding the shower there are two main variations, there is the RHD shower which involves spinning the staff during the pass from catching hand to throwing hand(meg & tommy please help describe this better ta, x).when done properly the rhd shower is gorgeous but very hard to do.
the other method which is my version(as far as I'm aware) involves passing the staff over from caught hand to to throwing hand without any spins similar to the usual club juggling style for a flat shower.
This video shows both variations of the shower with two staffs fairly well,

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123519965984155103&ei=BTnRSYjmHdSI-Aaoy8XSAg&q=tim+marston

Personally i would recommend learning my version first as it is easier to learn, once you have good control of the juggling you can try to add the RHD spins , but this makes life a lots harder.
Finally, my website video page has 3sexy (expensive!) fire vids,
My solo video has the French cascade with fire, you should be able to see the forced figure of 8, and the others have some of my and Tim clown trying to do the cascade in time and failing(close but yet so far!!!)
http://www.jugglinginferno.com/video.asp
one more fire video with 2&3staff showers and some doubles footwork, there is lots of potential to convert 3 club footwork patterns to staffs which i am currently working on...watch this space
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeKKOyAKH8w
Good luck dude

also use lightwiegth staffs tp help prevent injury and white tape to help you see at night

For the benefit of someone who's not so familiar with the juggling lingo:

The 3-staff shower has the siteswap 51. In the RHD 3-staff shower (which I can't do yet):

5= An 'outside throw' from the throwing hand (which is thrown in the same way as a reverse cascade throw but higher and a little more across the body).

1= The catching hand catches the stick palm up from the medial half (i.e. the half nearest the body) of the staff. This hand then does a 'snake' which is where you allow the staff to continue spinning round so that it comes into the crook of your hand (as if you were going to let go and do a wristwrap) before passing to the throwing hand.

I realise there' still some jargon in there but it's hopefully more manageable now

if you dont know what a shower is, would you know what a 51 is???
im pretty sure a shower could be a 41? and possibly a 31??

A 2 staff shower is 31. 41 doesn't work - remember that even numbers stay in the same hand while odd numbers change hands. 41 would end up with everything in the same hand.

But bleh, doesn't really matter, I don't think siteswap is a good tool for describing staff juggly patterns. I quite like the look of Reuben's 3-object notation (http://blog.reubenjuggler.com/2008/09/pattern-notation.html), it should be fairly simple to add additional information about planes, spin, contact etc. But for now we all seem to be sticking to the easier to describe patterns anyway...

hey wwffj
i didn't know about even numbers, i thought the numbers were just the height, thanks man,
i also agree i personally think names are better than numbers, but we should keep on thread really......

I don;t think I will ever get siteswap....

Its not that hard, but its definately easiest to learn at a proper workshop so you can combine watching the juggling with diagrams and someone to quiz.

So yeah, other 'easy' staff juggly moves guys?

Hi guys.

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I take your point. I wanted to describe it with the siteswap to make the ideas transferable to other tricks but you're right, it's a bit much. I guess that with the axioms that...

1) Throws are from alternate hands with each throw taking a beat to execute
2) Even numbers without an x (i.e. 4 not 4x) are to the same hand and odd numbers are to the opposite hand (0 is an empty hand for a beat)
3) The numbers denote the height of the throw which is proportional to the time the object stays in the air and therefore the number of beats (throws) before it is thrown again

... it makes a bit more sense but not much more! I guess directing someone to a link that explains juggling notation a bit such as this:

http://www.juggling.org/help/siteswap/faq.html

or this:



is much easier than fully explaining a shower to my satisfaction which would involve going over many of the same points anyway.

Ok, I'm not getting anywhere with this so I'm going to give up!

Loved the new videos by the way Tim.

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cheers tommy

So, Pyrolific

How's it going?
What are you finding difficult?
Anything you're not sure about?
Which move is progressing at the fastest rate? (My money's on the french cascade but everyone learns differently)

I'm finding it interesting to follow your progress to see whether the order in which tricks are made up correlates with their ease (though this will be confounded by the above advice!).

hehe - antti cascade is coming along quite well - I still cant run it, only getting about 10 catches but its coming along. I'm also working on using multiplexes to start...as I want to be able to work the juggling stuff in with standard short doubles moves.

Havent had a chance to work on the french cascade. I'll give it some time this afternoon tho!

J

ahhh tried the french cascade last night...was a bit like this I can do it with one stick ok...and I think I can do it with two, but when I try to do it with three it hurts my head!

I've got a weekend away at a festival coming up, so I reckon I'm going to really crack on with this stick juggling stuff there.

J

good luck fella, its a great feeling when it clicks, its got a great flow to it!

I would also recommend the half shower as a good beginner pattern. Unlike the inside and reverse cascades you don't have the problem with changing directions which makes the move feel more staff like, but its a much easier and slower pattern than the shower.

And as for preventing injuries, I really injured my shoulder using bad technique. Since I've finally cleaned that up I've had much less problems. Even doing cascades can be really bad for you when you don't watch it.

Warm up really well, and always begin slowly, starting the pattern using just one staff. Really try to focus that your shoulder stays down and that you don't raise your arms and or flick your wrists any more than is absolutely necessary.

There's also tons of preventive muscle building exersizes that help, like pull ups and using a spin ball.

But most importantly just listen to your body; you should get warning signs for when its time to give it a rest.

very wise word val, loving the new video by the way
x

@Val:

I know there's video of you doing a very solid half shower somewhere but I can't seem to find it at the moment.

I was wondering how you make your low throws in the half-shower (the 2x in (4x,2x)). Do you catch the staff from the high throw and do a snake throw or do you catch it, unwrap it by rotating your wrist towards the thumb (so that the pinkyside of the stick can travel under your forearm) and throw normally? i.e. do you use a snake throw for your 2x or not?

More importantly, which one is easier to learn in your opinion?

Um, if Im not mistaken I normally catch the high throw and do a behind the back half of a two beat before throwing it again. I suppose you could snake it instead but I think thats a bit harder. Normally I end up snaking it when trying to go from the shower back into the halfshower, and the snake throw is most often the part that makes the whole pattern go screwy.

hows progress

Hey, I'd like to join tripple convo too.

I'm with tripple from this autumn so abit more then half a year.
Started from shower then reverce cascade but simple cascade went much easier so I guess it's better to start.

Got some questions
How long and heavy staffs you use? I did just add one more to my doubles 1m long about 500-550g weight.
Also, does anyone know or heard of who did 1st start 3 and 4 staffs juggling? It doesn't seem to be one of common tools.
And, where could I learn about all those 31, 41 and so on. Don't understand much in juggler's language for now.

Konstantin