How to Warm up Before Juggling

Although juggling may not seem like a tough work out, it can actually be physically demanding. You can see the effect of this in professional jugglers' bodies, which are usually strong and lean. Because of this, and the amount of time jugglers spend practicing, they often develop overuse injuries like tendonitis. Fortunately, you can prevent most of these with a thorough and relaxing warm up.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Exercise lightly for five minutes or so. You don't need to break a sweat, but a little aerobic activity elevates your heart rate and warms your muscles up.
2. Stretch all of the major muscle groups in your body from your head down. The neck, shoulders, back and arms are particularly important to juggling.
3. Practice some simple relaxation techniques to loosen your body and calm your mind. Yoga and meditation work well, but even just thinking about being relaxed can help.
4. Stand with good posture. Keep your shoulders back, your head high and your arms loose by your sides. Maintaining posture makes your juggling more reliable and gives you greater stamina during practice.
5. Move your hands and arms through some of the basic juggling motions. Pretending to juggle cascades, columns and other patterns without the balls gets the juggling-specific muscles to warm up.
6. Start juggling with an easy pattern, then slowly increase the difficulty of your techniques until you reach the ones you want to practice. This prevents acute injuries to the tendons and ligaments of your arms and hands.