George Strain Terry Jones - long post. Bengt Magnusson Barton - warm-up exercises and plan. Rick Moll Jerry Kalke - half shower. Allen Knutson Roger W C Hansen - a bit on four balls, to break the monotony. Peter Olin - a planned approach. Steve Joyce - success! Phillip San Miguel - opinions.
George Strain
For what it is worth I'd like to offer my pet 5 ball lesson. OneVERY useful pattern I found for learning 5 rings and 5 clubs andsolidifying my 5 balls (I learned it after I could already do 5 ballsOK) is a 4 ball pattern which simulates 5, one hand at a time. Thispattern may have been mentioned before but I think it is definitelyworth working on. Start with 3 balls in one hand and 1 in the other.Start with the hand that has 3 balls. Make 2 quick throws both withthis hand to the other hand. When these balls come down make 2 quickthrows with the other hand and so on. Try it, it's much easier than5. However, it makes you get used to starting with 3 in one hand, itforces each hand to do pretty much the same thing it would have to for5 at the same speed, but it has the added advantage of letting youconcentrate on one hand at a time. The pattern will have a rhythm of"Right, Right, Left, Left, Right, Right, Left, Left." Note thatsometimes you will be just holding a ball in one hand while the otherhand does the work. This pattern can also be done with 5 balls tohelp learn 7.
A useful tip for 5 balls if you're just trying to learn the flash isto get together with someone who already does five, and flash it backand forth with them. This will let you get used to throwing all fiveand catching all five, but not at the same time.
Terry Jones
Here's a tome I wrote a few weeks ago when there was lots ofdiscussion about learning 5. I'm in the same boat myself. the stuffbelow is the result of probably 8 months or so of thinking about5.
While we're all chatting about learning 5, I thought I'd add my 5balls worth, which hopefully will be interesting to the people outthere who are currently tackling 5 (as I am). The first time I triedto throw 5 into the air was last May I guess. Just to throw them andhave them cross over without collision seemed like a fairly difficulttask. Keeping track of which one had gone up first and was(occasionally) coming down first was also initially non-trivial - atleast if you wanted the other balls to land somewhere in a circlewhose radius was less than about ten feet.
A pretty inauspicious beginning. had I not seen other peoplejuggling 5 effortlessly, I probably would never have continued -- it'ssomething I would have thought just wasn't meant to be done. WrongWrong Wrong. I had always felt that I learned to do new things asquickly as the next person, and prior to learning 5, the longest I hadspent on trying to learn anything had been a couple of months (inlearning 4 balls).
I should add that I disagree with the 2n catches means you're an nball juggler stuff that has been going around here lately. I don'tconsider myself an n ball juggler until I can pretty much do n ballsindefinitely. At this stage I'd say I'm a 4 ball juggler, but not a5, even though I have done over 100 throws with 5 balls several times.the complete control just isn't there.
Back to the subject. 4 balls had seemed a very slow thing to learn(to get reasonably good - as opposed to getting 8 throws). Thelearning curve for 5 has been exponentially slower though. you have toderive what satisfaction and encouragement you can from the tinieststeps at first (especially if you're trying it alone and haven'tpeople to encourage and teach you). The first time I threw up 5 ballsand then managed to catch and throw up number 6, it seemed like I hadtaken my first real step, but what a tiny one. Progressing at thisrate isn't terribly inspiring. What kept me going was the idea thatother people had learned it. It was possible, so I had to be able tolearn it too.
Over a few months I progressed to the stage where I could get off upto about ten throws (I always count throws :-)). things that I foundhelpful as practices were:
- just doing 5 throws and letting them land. As I said above, it'snot easy to do the 5 throws collision-free. try and throw to the sameheight with each ball. Concentrate on making them cross nicely.Listen to the rhythm as they fall - it should be even and the ballsshould fall in two groups. Working on this really was a help to me.Plus, you can do it slowly. eventually you'll reach a point where youcan do it faster and faster, until the first ball comes down past anempty hand (one that has done 2 throws since the first ball went up).
- throwing up the five, letting the first two land and going into athree ball cascade with the last 3 balls that come down.
Of course there's always straight out trying to do 5 ball cascadetoo.
Last fall I moved to Bloomington and came into contact with steveRagatz and a few other people here who could either do 5 or wereworking on it. Then things began to pick up. I practised three hoursa day for a few weeks! I got lots of tips on things to try. I don'tknow which ones were useful in particular since I did them all, buthere are some of them.
- three ball chase. this is hard. I think it was described earlierin this group. 3 in the right hand, then toss right right right leftleft left right right right... etc.
- cascade 3 with one extra ball held in each hand. Then, throw thethree a bit higher and then the other two too. Catch and hold thefirst two that come down and go back into a 3 ball cascade with thelast three that come down, sort of like the 2nd thing above, but youcan do this one time and again without having to pick up balls.You're going to be picking up a LOT of balls.
- four ball + crossing patterns. These I find quite awkward, butthey seem very beneficial. Every throw goes across, just like with 5balls. I found that with these patterns I had to do the same throw asfor 5, but the rhythm is slower so you have more chance to think aboutgetting the throw right and to look at yourself as you do the trick --to feel things that are wrong, to see them as they go wrong. For along time it will be very hard to pinpoint just what it is that causesa 5 ball cascade pattern to become disrupted. With 4 balls it'seasier to spot the problem when it happens.
- cascade 3 and then throw them all into the air so your hands arefree underneath (flash). While they're up there you may clapunderneath (maybe several times) if you feel so inclined. Do theinitial cascade low and fast and then throw high at the same speed.This was described to me as 3 balls at a 5 ball speed and (once youthrow them high) at a 5 ball height. I like this one, it's pretty. doit starting with either hand (of course!).
- showering three balls. I was pretty bad at this when I got hereand soon figured that if I couldn't do this pretty well, I had nobusiness trying for 5. Do it both ways. Most people I know find itincredibly hard when they first try it the "wrong" way. I sure ashell did -- 3 throws maximum for a while. It's a good workout foryour bad arm - work on it until you can do it indefinitely! It'll doyou good.
- short runs. Steve encouraged me to do small runs (ten throwssay) and to strive for quality in them. The theory here is that ifyou go on as long as you can, then you're just practising, andtherefore learning, bad habits. I agree with this to a certainextent. If you can do perfect tens, then continuing is just a matterof stringing them together -- in theory anyway. I also feel that it'simportant to push yourself into situations where things go wrong --learning how to recover is important too.
There are probably other things that don't come to mind. During allof this I was pretty single-minded. Whenever I juggled, I regardedwhatever I was doing -- no matter what, as practice for 5 balls. Evenif I was just cascading 3 for fun, I would think about 5.
The mental side of things seems very important too. Here are a fewmore thoughts about the process. you think a lot when you try to learnfive -- at least I did (and do) -- What am I doing wrong? Why doesthat always happen? etc.
- I agree that variation is incredibly important. There are (atleast) two variations that I mean. One is variation within 5balls and the other is variation of practice things. By within 5balls, I basically mean height and width when trying to cascade5. I find that if I am having trouble, things might be easier ifI try throwing the balls a foot higher or so. Up to about 2 feetover my head I guess. I'll do this for a while, and then try tothrow them at about eye-level. Then I move again, to 6 inches orso above eye level. All this moving about seems to help me a lot.Suddenly I find it much easier at some height. If things aren'tworking, try changing height for a while. Similarly with width.
- variation of routine is good too. If you're not gettinganywhere, give it a break. In the process of learning 5 balls I havelearned at least a dozen new other 3 and 4 balls tricks, 3 clubs, 4rings, and some diabolo. Try learning to shower 4 - that seems prettyunrelated to 5 and is fun. Try 3 in one hand. Once again, all thewhile that I do these other things, I have 5 balls in the back of mymind. Everything becomes a practice, in some way, for 5.
- after a while, I found that thinking about doing 5, andconcentrating etc while I did it just seemed to be a hindrance. Ijuggled 5 best when I was relaxed and just watching the balls peakbeautifully threading their way in and amongst themselves at the topof the arcs. No analysis, nothing like that. Just lovely lovelypatterns. Sounds almost mystical I guess :-) Now I'm always bestlike that. Some days it all seems too simple. Unfortunately thisonly happens to me rarely.
- watch someone who knows how to do it doing it. Whenever someoneat practice here started doing five (or more), I'd always stopwhatever I was doing and just watch. Seeing someone else effortlesslytossing five up is inspiring and makes what you're trying to do looklike such an easy thing. I fully agree with the person who said thatthey couldn't do 5 until one day they watched someone at a workshop &then suddenly could do it. Every time I watched someone else do itwell, I'd go back to it thinking "it's not THAT hard after all" andfor a while (alas all too brief) I'd do 5 with beauty and grace beforereverting to clumsy "f*ck this is hard" mode.
- try flashing 7 balls. You'll have to move fast. Just try it forten minutes or so. You will never learn to do 7 just by flashing (Idon't imagine), but when you go back to 5 after ten minutes of trying7, everything will suddenly seem very s-l-o-w. 5 is only as fast asyou perceive it to be, and your perception of speed is always relativeto other things.
- along the same lines, try to think of 5 as "just being 3". I dothis. Just juggle (once you can go for a while) and while they're upthere, think to yourself "it's just like 3 balls". The secret is thatthat's the truth; you just have to remember it and do nice throws.One bad throw and it very very quickly becomes extremely unlike 3.This reasoning is pretty theoretical of course, since by it, 7 wouldbe just like three too. so would 11. Steve told me the day herealised he had reached "5 ball nirvana" was the day he was doing 5and thought it was 3. or that it felt like three. something like that.
- try to keep some idea of what it is that makes your runs end. Doyou lose it more because the balls collide in the air or because youare dropping them? Do you end up with the plane the balls are in (ifthey're in one) perpendicular to the direction they started in? Tryto think about what might be causing it and think of a 3 or 4 ballpractice that might help. (In my case, my left (bad) hand tends tothrow forward too much -- practising a 4 ball crossing pattern seemedvery helpful for that, you can see the bad thing happening - with 5you don't get to see too much).
Bengt Magnusson
About five balls: You seem to be doing the right thing. 10- 15min/day for months and months is perfectly normal for five balls. Ittook me about one month, but that was at 30-40 min/day. The learningcurve is extremely nonlinear, with several sudden steps and longplateaus. Just keep at it, and don't give up!
A few training tips to keep you going (and not dying from boredom):juggle four balls, and then throw a few of them into the five pattern;finish by resuming the four ball juggle. This is how you do that: Findout about site-swaps, and juggle the 552, 5551, and 55550 from a fourball fountain. The 552 means: juggle four in the fountain, then sendtwo balls (right-left) up high and across. Then pause for a beat,before you resume the four cascade. It will go like: right highacross, left high across,
FOUNTAIN!
right pause (i.e. holds on to the ball), left hand normal fourfountain throw, etc. One hand will end up doing two throws in arow. Run it starting with both the left and the right hand. The pointbehind this is that the two balls that go high and across are thrownexactly as if you were juggling five. If every throw was like that,you'd be doing five! The advantage here is that you are only actuallyusing four balls, which you (presumably) know how to juggle. You cantherefore concentrate on the two five ball throws. It's like jugglingfour and a half balls, which gives you a half-way point to conquer.
The 5551 is a little harder; it's like juggling 4.75 balls. Yousend three balls up high and across (starting with a normal four ballfountain): left high across, right high across, left high across. Thenyou pass the fourth ball from the right hand directly across to theleft, like the little low throw in a shower. As soon as the left handgets that ball, it resumes a normal four ball fountain. Again, runthis with both hands as the starter. The + 55550 is almost there,like 4.9 balls or so. It's really five with a hole. You juggle yourfour ball fountain, and then send all four up high and across. Afterthat, one hand will be empty for one beat, and then you resume thefour fountain again. It goes like right high across, left high across,right high across, left high across, right empty, leftnormal... Again, one hand gets to go twice in a row.
All of these tricks can be done continuously, i.e., you can keepdoing it instead of resuming the four fountain after just one cycle:552 552 552 552..., 5551 5551 5551..., and 55550 55550 55550.... Goodluck with five balls, and don't give up! It's a really hard trick, andit will require a lot of work, but everyone can learn it if they justtry.
Barton
somebody got me talking about five-ball juggling, and I'm not likelyto stop! Tim asked: "when can I say that I can juggle five-balls" (orsomething to that effect. My answer is: "whenever you feel like youcan juggle five-balls". It took me a month to learn how to juggle 3balls for one five minute run. I've been juggling five-balls for fouryears now, and I have only had one run of over five minutes.Therefore I would have to say that the ratio of difficulty betweenfive-balls and three is about 50:1. This is why I see myself jugglingseven in not less than ten years. I wouldn't be surprised if I couldget fourteen throws within half a year, if I practised constantly, butto actually try to learn the art of seven ball juggling is notsomething that I see in my near future. Anyway, I am actually verycontent juggling five. Here are some of the steps that I took on theway to becoming a solid five-ball juggler.
- Practice a lot. I can talk a lot about things that you can do toinspire yourself, but they won't do any good if you don't practice.
- Change your routine a lot. Don't practice in just one way. Ifyou do, you will get stuck in a rut. I have seen a lot of people tryto learn five-ball juggling by standing in one place for hours on end,picking up the juggling balls after they drop them, and trying again.I admire their dedication to their practice, but I don't think thatthey are doing themselves any favours. Making five-ball jugglingboring is a recipe for failure.
So: put on some music. Find another person who is working on Five,and have a five-ball juggle-off. Get a stopwatch and time yourself.Time yourself repeatedly, and make a chart. Chart your performance infive-ball once a month. Go to juggling conventions and watch numbersjugglers and get inspiration from them. - Work on juggling other than five-ball juggling. Learning tojuggle five-balls is frustrating, and if you practice five-ballexclusively, you will become a frustrated juggler. Also remember thatfive-ball juggling is intimately related to three-ball juggling. Ifyou let your three-ball slide while practising five, you won't getanywhere.
- Warm up before you juggle five. Five-ball juggling requires arelaxed body. I have seen countless jugglers defeating themselveswith five because they had their shoulders hunched.
Here's the five-ball practice that I recommend:
- Stretch out. Work your neck around. To stretch out your arms,take a broomstick, hold it in back of you with both hands, and thenstretch up. If you have any favourite stretches to loosen you up, usethem.
- Work on three-ball patterns. Start with a regular cascade, thendo half reverse on both sides, and then work into a reverse. Work onshowering from both hands. Throw behind the back and under the legthrows. If you can do Mills' Mess, do it now.
- Do an endurance run with three balls. This shouldn't go so longthat your arms are absolutely exhausted, but you should have a goodfeeling at the end of your run of how your arms move while you juggle.This run is like a dry run for five-balls. You should probably jugglefor 5 - 10 minutes straight, but don't worry if you drop sooner.
- Now you are ready to juggle five-balls. Work on some variationof the theme of: Stand in one place and juggle. As I said earlier:Stand in one place, juggle, and listen to music. Or something! It isbetter not to do this part all in one chunk. Even variations on thetheme of standing in one place and juggling will get tiring after 20minutes. It is far better to break this up into four five minutechunks, each slightly different. Your ego will of course tell youdifferently, but five-ball juggling is not necessarily the best sportfor those of large ego (think humble).
- If possible, try to end your five-ball workout on a high note, orfailing that, a happy note.
- Give yourself a breather after juggling five-balls, and then pickup three clubs, or something else that interests you. I have alwaysfound that one-ball manipulation is a low stress variation of jugglingthat I enjoy after putting five up in the air. Remember thatfive-balls is not all that there is to life. In fact, the more thatyou can forget about five-balls at this point, the better you feelabout juggling as a whole, because five-balls carries with it a highfrustration level.
Rick Moll
...It sounds like you have the pattern down pat, but need to beable to recover a slightly broken pattern. Once you learn to do that,run-length is limited more by muscular endurance. I hope to be doingat least one run of 1000 catches every day by convention time.
In my experience, numbers pattern irregularities tend to be of threetypes:
1) Pattern gets too narrow or too wide.To fix a too narrow pattern, make the throws slightly lower as youalso make them wider. Conversely, to fix a too wide pattern, raise ita bit.2) As the result of a too-low or too-high throw, two balls in thepattern have come too close together.To fix this, you need to bring your hand up, to catch the first oneearly, make a very quick throw, and then bring your hand down to catchthe second one lower than normal. This will only come with many hoursof practice. Usually I don't know that this problem came up until Ifeel one of my hands make the correction.3) Pattern gets pushed over to the right or the left.The fix for this is very anti-intuitive in that it seems that you haveto make the problem worse in order to make it better. For example,suppose the pattern shifts to the right. You should move the righthand (only) farther to the right, stabilize the pattern, and then movethe whole thing back to the left. Warning: The above advice is notall that useful on the intellectual level. It's the hands that haveto "know". One of the best ways to practice the above is to learn"one under the leg" with five balls. It's not really that hard if youare comfortable with it on three, and it's more interesting than justpracticing the basic pattern.Oh, no! I've caught myself being pompous and long-winded, but it'stoo late!
Jerry Kalke
A comment on Five ball half shower.Before five ball half shower should even be attempted, you should getreally comfortable with the four ball half shower. Get it goodenough that you can go at least a minute or two without messing up.This will ingrain the higher right lower left (or vice-versa) intoyour brain. You will need this, because you are not going to havemuch time to think about it when doing five.Next, get comfortable doing five in the normal cascade pattern. Thisis no mean feat, but comes to some easier than others. Now if you havetrained well with the four ball half shower (and can keep it undercontrol even if the balls aren't thrown too high (this helps with yourspeed control)) the five ball shower should not be that difficult.Just start normally, meaning three in the right and two in the leftstarting in an async pattern just like the normal cascade. Youshould be able to achieve the five ball half shower before too longafter this. It's no great mystery. All it takes is practice.
Allen Knutson
I have found that the best tricks to learn to work up to 5 areshowering 3 each way, and reversing them continuously, i.e. 5 1 and 52 5 1 2. That's how I learned 7 (with 7 1 and 7 2 7 2 7 1 2). NOTE:you must make the pattern very asynchronous for this to work,i.e. left, right, left, right, or else you're just learning how to do4 in a synchronous half-shower (because you're really doing (4 across,2 across) rather than 5 1).
Roger W. C. Hansen
I thought I would relate an experience I had last month. I wasattending a juggling festival and juggling 4 balls in simpleasynchronous columns. Another juggler came up and complemented me onmy juggling and related that he was having a similar problem to yours.He would juggle 4 balls in columns and the balls in his right handwould move forward and fairly quickly he would loss the pattern anddrop. He demonstrated this for me and asked what he was doingwrong. I could not see anything that he was doing wrong. I told himhow hard I had worked to finally get my 4 ball pattern stable andconsistent and suggested that with more practice and discipline hisproblem would be solved. This was, of coarse, of no immediate value.After a bit of juggling, I recalled the discussion of "stork" jugglingthat was posted a long time ago on the old list server. As I recallthe original posting stated that one way to solve the problem ofbeginning jugglers throwing forward was to have them stand on one legand juggle. The original poster claimed that this helped to keep thethrows in the plane for some mysterious reason. This fellow was stillhaving trouble so feeling somewhat mischievous I told him about it.Incredible as it sounds, it seemed to work for him. He was havingtrouble with his right hand throws going forward, and balancing on hisright foot seemed to straighten them out. Balancing on the left didnothing for him. The only logical explanation that I can think of isthat the throws are bad because of a posture defect and balancingforces a posture correction that affects the throws. I am not sure ifthis method will help every juggler with this problem; however, it isinexpensive to try.
Peter Olin
I started juggling two summers ago. Got 3 quite quickly, although not as quickly as other people that I know. Was comfortable with 4 by Christmas, and had a goal of doing 5 by the following summer... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Try setting your primary goals at bit lower. I learned juggling 3 more than 10 years ago, but couldn't do anythingbut the cascade, reverse cascade and an occasional shower, although atthat time i didn't know that there were names for the jugglingpatterns.I didn't juggle anything for about 8 years or so, except for anoccasional orange cascade at X-mas. Approx. two years ago, I foundrec.juggling and got inspired to start juggling, now that I knew thetheory behind 4-ball juggling (a secret to me for 8+ years). It didn'ttake long before I learned the 4 ball fountain.Next was 5. At that time an impossible task, but the helpfiles atpiggy helped me.Instead of setting my goals at 5 immediately I had the followingsubgoals along the way. And I really recommend them because they areall nice patterns on their own and learning them makes you happy, animportant positive feedback on the way to 5.Don't consider yourself done with any subgoal along the way. Always goback to perfect the individual patterns now and then. I used topractice all these things in sequence at every practice session. Itworked pretty well. My 5 ball cascade is not solid, but that's becauseI only practice it about twice a week.With 3 balls:* Learn showering 3 in both directions. * Work a bit on the snake.* Flash 3. Clap. * Try to continuously flash 3. * Any other nice three ball tricks that keep you happy. (Important!)With 4 balls:* Fountain (as a base for the following site swaps)* 552 - Start with fountain, then throw 552, continue with fountain.Next learn doing 552 continuously.* 5551 - Start with fountain, then throw 5551, continue with fountain.Next learn doing 5551 continuously. In both directions.* 55550 - "Five with a hole". Start with fountain, then throw 55550,continue with fountain. Work on doing 55550 continuously. Thismight actually be a bit harder than 5 due to the weird timing.If you have problems with this one don't worry.With 5 balls:* Flash 5* Learn juggling with 5 in steps. First learn 5 throws. Then learn 6throws. Go on to 7, 8, 9, 10. Then try to juggle as long asyou can. Don't always try to do endurance runs. Set your goalto perhaps 20 throws and make sure that you can do that reallygood, and perhaps with a neck catch as finish.Nothing to it, really. :-)
Steve Joyce
SUCCESS! Finally, after a few months of working on 5-balls seriously,I am getting some good runs. But more important than that, it'sstarting to just FEEL right, natural, and not awkward. So I thought Iwould pass on a few tips that I learned along the way. Yes I knowthere already is a 5-ball help file and I have read it many times.There is some really good information in there but I found a fewdifferent things that worked for me.When I first started throwing 5 balls up in the air, they just seemedto be all over the place. I had no idea which ball came from whichhand and just caught whatever one was close by. I think a big mistakehere was doing long runs in a 4-ball asynchronous fountain forpractice at this point. It sort of got me stuck in a rut of catchingthrows from the same hand. I knew I had to do something to get usedto crossing throws and still keeping track of more than three objects.So I learned about siteswaps and practiced lots of different ones fromthe 5-ball help file. My experience was rather disappointing. Icouldn't really get long enough runs to get any quality practice timeout of them. I ended up spending most of my time chasing balls aroundthe living room, trying to grab them before the dog. Looking back, Ithink it was the timing that really messed me up. Unless you have agood feel for the 5-ball timing, it is hard to throw fewer balls inthat pattern especially when you add the spaces. The 55500 seemed towork OK for me but I had limited success with 55550, and 552. 5551was a disaster, as was 51.I don't really agree with whoever said you have no business learning 5until you can shower three in both directions. While it may help, Ithink it is really a different trick. Ever notice most of the peoplethat suggest doing these siteswaps to learn 5 can already do 5? Ithink the symmetry in a 5-ball cascade makes it easier in some waysthan than these 5-ball practice patterns (at least for me).At the point when just flashing 5 was still a bit of a struggle, Istarted just throwing 4-balls (crossing in a 5-ball pattern) andcatching them. I did this a lot, starting from the left, then theright and concentrating on perfect arcs, and good rhythm. After somepractice with this, I went back to a standing flash and it came mucheasier. Remember to start from both sides. I found catching theballs rather than trying to go for extra throws was really usefulbecause I didn't have to chase them all over the place. The extrathrows just came naturally, and I added them only when I was readyrather than going until the pattern fell apart (thanks to advice fromSteve Ragatz on practice style). My advice is to find an exerciselike this that works for you; something you can practice every daythat keeps you throwing the balls rather than fishing them out fromunder the couch.I also encourage people to experiment with different props anddifferent throw heights. I started with some small homemade beanbags,then went to some larger hockey balls and found it easier to keeptrack of them. Then I picked up some small hi-bounce balls and foundthem better for getting consistent starts but collisions weredisastrous. I also found having different colors and launching themin the same order helps you to diagnose a problem if it does repeatit*elf (my third throws were always too far forward). Eventually Iwent back to the beanbags and now find them the easiest and can evenrecover from some minor collisions. I tried lots of different heightsand surprisingly settled for just above eye-level (probably because Ihave a ceiling fan!).What's next? Now I think I will go back to the 4-ball siteswaps totry to get my 5-ball pattern more solid. Maybe I'll try a few 5-balltricks. And I think I will buy a few more clubs (How the heck do youstart with three clubs in one hand?!?).
Phillip San Miguel
...I believe that for most people 55550 (4 objects in a 5 objectpattern with one hole) is harder than 5. Even the 3 object chase(55500) is just about as hard as the 5 object cascade. The exceptionto this would be for someone who has excellent timing.I don't think there is anything inherent in site swaps which makesthem bad for practicing 5 -- I think it's that people who already do 5often have this revisionist idea of what the best way to learn is. Sorather than tell you what they did they suggest stuff they thinkshould help. This often includes tricks they've only mastered afterthey got five.An ideal pattern to practice 5 is the 3 object site swap 52512. Youthrow 2 objects in close succession back and forth at a 5 objectheight/speed while holding (the "2's") the other object andtransferring it to the other hand when the first of the other twoobjects arrives. The held object serves to keep the time while youget practice throwing 5's out of both hands. I really use this trickwhen I work on 5 clubs. Usually warming up with it then going intothe chase (55500), which is harder.But it's true, the best practice for 5 is 5. But there are a fewtricks easier than five I find useful to warm up or, earlier on, justto practice a component of 5 before I could hope to throw 5 up.Phil Thomas /Juggling InformationService /ukrthop@prl.philips.co.uk
