Ball Juggling Techniques

Juggling is a skill where objects such as balls, bowling pins or rings are thrown and caught in succession. The first known record of juggling is illustrated on a 2nd Millennium B.C.E. Egyptian tomb wall. Court jesters and court musicians were known to juggle in the Middle Ages in Europe and in the 18th century jugglers started performing in modern circuses. Today juggling is performed on stages across America and on cruise ships around the world but it is also a national past time enjoyed by Americans of almost all ages. From juggling balls, rings, or scarves, juggling can be learned without years of practice.

In these free video lessons you’ll learn ball juggling from Adria Moskowitz, a two time national television performer who studied with some of the greats in the entertainment field; people like Cindy Marvell, the first woman to win a gold medal in juggling. Adria demonstrates tricks, techniques, and patterns like the reverse cascade, 3, 4, and 5 ball multiplexing, full shower, half shower, inside and outside Wimpy, and weaving. With a little practice you’ll develop a skill to keep you and your friends entertained for hours.

"Hi! I’m Adria one of the professional jugglers here at expertvillage.com. Right now we’re going to learn what are called one up, two up combos, one up, two up combinations, one up, two up patterns: the name pretty much describes what it does cause jugglers don’t have much of an imagination. We’re going to throw one ball up in the air, followed by two balls up in the air. The basic pattern for the one up, two up pattern is to keep the outside balls parallel, and always in the same hand, but the inside ball travels from hand to hand: that way each hand gets an equal amount of work. As you can see…the outside balls stay in the same hands, the inside ball gets shuffled from hand to hand, this is the initial basis of the one up, two up patterns. This is called cheating: two balls are in the right hand, the left hand is just paralleling the outside ball with the right hand, and the right hand is doing twice as much work by handling the inside ball itself; this is the basis of that, two balls in one hand, going up and down parallel. This is the same pattern, cheating; we call it cheating cause the ball never leaves the left hand. Now anything that one can do with the right hand in juggling can be done with the left hand as well. The same two ball pattern…two up, one up the left hand doing all the work, and again we have the cheating…the right hand parallels the outside ball with the left hand, and the inside ball is just on with the left hand."