How to Hold a Juggling Ball

Video Transcript

"All right everybody, now for the core of juggling, the basic throw. And how to hold the ball. Now for most of these demonstrations I'm going to be using these silicone balls. It doesn't need to be one of these, you can use whatever you have. You know if your mom is not looking, go grab some oranges out of the fruit ball. Just don't tell her I told you that. Now, you want to cradle this in your hand, kind of loose. This isn't about a death grip. You just want to have kind of a loose cradle in your hand. This is just kind of so it can roll around like that. Now I am a right handed juggler, but I start a lot of my stuff left handed. So in my case I'm going to start the ball in my left hand. I'm going to hold my arms strait out like this. So I'm going to hold my elbows at my sides and my hands strait out. Almost like I'm holding a tray. Now the basic idea is to throw the ball in an arc about as high as your eye is to the other hand. You are throwing the ball to the hand. You are not bringing your hand up to catch the ball. That's important. So it should look kind of like that. Now, I can see my hands in the path of my ball in my peripheral vision. Even though I am looking right at the camera. I'm going to tell you a little more about that later on. But basically this is the basic throw for juggling. I'm not gripping the ball too hard, I'm just kind of letting it fall into my hand. And my hand naturally cradle around the ball. I'll show you from the side as well, just so you can see kind of what it looks like from a distance from my face kind of stand point. But I'm just looking strait ahead. The arc is about as high as my eyes. Maybe a little higher. If you need to throw a little higher to get yourself some more time, definitely do that. So, I'll come back in a little bit, and I'm going to show you how to correct some of the problems with your throws, initially."