Are there good coaches (teachers) in Juggling? I am beginner is Juggling with 7 mo experience and the advice I most freguently got from obviously advanced guys sounds like "Keep practicing" )) I am pretty good coach in Karate (4 degree black belt) and Chess (International Master in Blitz) and to my non-humble opinion advice like "keep doing" is total disaster. Even pretty good tutorials lack extremely important thing, that is transition from preliminary exercises to full patters. Niel's video on 3 b Box is typical example of BAD tutorial because it is very superficial. From the other side Niel's video on "W" pattern is very GOOD )) So I repeat my question : are there GOOD teachers in Jugging World ?
Box is quite difficult trick when you just start with it, so it isn´t easy to describe it and teach it, especially on the video. It is much easier to teach somebody something in real life because you can see mistakes and errors and give advices. When I have workshops, I am able to teach people to juggle at least 3 balls if they really want and try, but it is just because I see how did they try to juggle. If they just write me why I can´t learn it, I have no idea what is their problem. Maybe it would be much better for you to make a video of your box attempts so we could give you better advice)
It is also a question who is a good teacher - because it is not only in the teacher but also a client or student has to try and have a motivation to do it)
what I mean GOOD coaching is helping the client to go through several easy understandable steps as I can explain "Ura-mawashi-geri" that is pretty complicated karate kick. And I am 100% sure I can teach everyone not depending age, sex, or religious affiliation )) I have got the advice here to try 441 and the first preliminary 2b exercise was very useful to improve my juggling "feeling" as a whole. I guess I have my own way in this art ))
I do karate too, so I know^^ Wish you a good luck with the box and glad tvar that my advice helped a little
Mike Moore - - Parent #
Richard Kennison and Yuri (from Russia) come to mind as two legendary juggling coaches.
I'd like to think my tutorial videos are reasonably good. Here's one on siteswap that I made about siteswap: https://youtu.be/rWQXOHn3sw8 It's a little old, and will probably someday get wrecked by Youtube changing how annotations work, but it did teach my non-juggling grandmother siteswap!
The transition from exercises to full pattern is an interesting point. I recall Ivan Pecel's DVD Advanced 4 and 5 Ball Moves pretty much always ending with "and now that you have done it on either side, run it" which often worked okay for me. I can think of some examples when running the pattern introduces problems that flashing did not: with 645 with the 6s as fountains, make sure you keep those 6s rolling out far enough to not cause collisions. What are the problems you're running into in the particular tutorials you're watching? Do you think there are generalizable difficulties across patterns?
Back in 2011 I made a list of attributes of good vs bad tutorials. Finding it now would be a nightmare, but I'll be redoing some of that research because I'm going to be involved in the IJA making some tutorials soon (I hope!). Maybe I'll start a new thread for it.
Mike Moore - - Parent #
"Here's one on siteswap that I made about siteswap"
Great proofreading, Mike! Still a bit drained from the IJA.
Daniel Simu - - Parent #
Of course there are good teachers! But YouTube is not necessarily the best medium for good teaching...
I'm sure I could teach you the box if we met in person... Also I'm a fan of the methodology of Craig Quat, he explains some of it on vimeo and is now training teachers all over Europe.
On a higher level, I have interviewed juggling teachers such as Jay Gilligan, Sakari Mannisto and Gregor Kiock, if you look up Juggle Jabber on YouTube you'll find them. I would say they are good teachers, although they don't really discuss the subject of learning single 3b tricks such as the box...
Craig Quat - good idea running balls. I was doing it on inclined surface, but using lines will be much better for stability. I guess I can build Craig's board myself. Now I am pretty sure I will learn Box and 4 balls stuff in nearest 6 months. Thanks a lot!
There are good teachers out there. I think the best thing is if you can get to a juggling club or juggling conventions and there you will often find very helpful, knowledgeable people who will gladly help out your juggling (and they are usually pretty good).
I think what can lead to huge progress in juggling is to progress as quickly as possible to 5 ball juggling and to learn siteswap notation. With siteswap notation learnt, you will have the ability to put patterns into freely and widely available simulators and watch them in slow-mo at various heights and speeds, hugely helpful. With 5 ball juggling learnt, you will have the fundamentals of juggling down. I don't know what your current juggling level is? But I would advise to try to go through 4 & 5 ball juggling until you are making 100+ catch runs of 5 balls (or around 25+ seconds), at which point, you will have a level of control sufficient for numerous tricks.
I have spent ~10 years teaching circus skills, including juggling and can help you out if I know your level.
Thanks for the comments. I seriously doubt you will teach me, the 67 old guy, who started juggling 7 months ago ))) selfteaching with no juggling club or convention. I am just at the beginning level haveing 3 b cascade, reverse, "W" over 100 catches plus stable 3b cascade in laying down position (because it is good for my old spine) Right shower up to 37 catches. I will be completely satisfied with stable LEFT shower + stable Box )))
If you will be happy with box, then it will not be too hard. It will also be worth learning some other tricks other than just focusing on shower & box, to improve your throwing, catching and understanding of juggling in general. It might be a less painful path to left hand shower and box in that case. Usual beginner tricks are:
441: https://youtu.be/2jmL-T1IdSY <-- This guy does good tutorials. Unfortunately, mostly for the intermediate 3 ball juggler
Two in one hand: https://youtu.be/_LZKSyhj__g?start=216
Tennis: https://youtu.be/XPILocujjqQ
Windmill: https://youtu.be/cSMkfVuV5hM
I think the first two should also fairly directly help your box, whereas tennis and windmill, while improving your overall ability, will not focus as hard on exactly what box and LH shower need. 441 helps you learn the '1' throw in both directions, crucial for box. Two in one hand, particularly in your left hand, will improve your speed & accuracy in the weaker hand perhaps more than anything else you could practice at this stage.
Stephen Meschke - - Parent #
Have you considered a program like this one? Its an affordable way to get high quality coaching advice. Along with instructional videos, Juggling Mastery students are granted access to a private Facebook page, where the instructor (Lauri) is consistantly answering questions and doing live video calls.
Here's an interesting article with interviews with Dan Holzman, Jay Gilligan, Richard Kennison and Paul Arneberg, "Juggling Coaches", by Scott Cain on IJA's juggle.org.
I've attended classes with many great teachers, I'm thinking of Sean Gandini, Jay Gilligan, Wes Peden & Matt Hall in particular. In each case what made them great for me was their individual enthusiasm & their ability to open my eyes to new possibilities & ideas. The teaching in terms of breaking down the mechanics of individual tricks was not important to me.
I would guess that the vast majority of jugglers I know are mostly self taught like me. I think there is an expectation in the juggling world that you should develop your own unique style which shuns rigid coaching. If I want to learn a new trick I will always want to figure it out my own way of doing it partly due to a desire to be unique, partly because I enjoy figuring things out on my own & partly due to simple arrogance. I don't think I'm alone in this which I believe explains why there aren't many juggling coaches to choose from.
Anthony Gatto & Jason Garfield have tried & failed to make a go of the professional juggling coach to hobby jugglers (as opposed to circus school teachers which I think is a different thing entirely) in the style of music/dance/martial arts instructors that exist everywhere. Anthony Trahir seems to be doing ok for himself, as does Lauri Koskinen (who is a new name to me), I wish them both success.
I vaguely recall Erin Stephens(?) who put out a video which was a good example of effective coaching. It showed the juggling of a group of young girls that she had trained, all of whom were very accomplished & had a style that clearly came from one instructor (eg. I recall a particular under the leg catch where the right hand goes inside the right leg & the ball is caught on the outside that many of the girls performed very well).
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