Good practice lately

Erika's family came to Kalamazoo today and her not-dad gave Cirque du K a little juggling workshop. It was really neat to see so many circus kids all learning to juggle at once. He didn't really have any advice for me, because his specialty was teaching beginners, but he had good advice about training new moves in general, and I had some good runs with Chinese crab catches, four ball shower, five ball cascade, and continuous back-crosses.

A few days ago I started to put a routine together, but I decided to scrap it since I feel I still can't do enough stuff to make a good looking performance piece.

Three times a week

Circus club's play-times have changed so that now every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday I have an excuse to practice. Today especially, moves were feeling good. I spent some time this afternoon on JuggleWiki, and I found some new moves that I can do, so my repertoire have suddenly increased by three or four moves. My five ball cascade is feeling a lot better, and my crab catches are slowly improving as well. Practice was good today, and I even printed up a sheet with all the moves that I am able to do and all the moves that I am working on. I am also gonna run a tumbling workshop this weekend for circus club kids. Things are going well. :)

Busy with classes...

...Particularly the readings for my political science class, but studying for French and Spanish definitely take up some time too. In fact, today was the first day in the past week that I got to juggle (during circus club's playtime), but it felt really good. Not just that I was happy to juggle again, but I was pleased with unexpected progress. I got three backcrosses in a row, and my five ball cascade was feeling better. The moves are still a long ways from completion of course, but it is nice to see progress. I am gonna try and mimic a Micheal Moschen juggling routine. There is nothing terrible difficult in there, but he does it really nicely.

Practicing more

I have been practice about every other day for the past several days. I just finished an evening practice stint. I am going to start pursuing continuous back crosses more seriously as a goal. Getting that move down would be so sweet. I have basically stopped working on behind the neck catches. It just seems to be too much work for too little pay-off. I also haven't worked on Oli's behind the neck toss at all, and I have rarely even practiced five balls. Chops are getting a bit better though, despite the fact that they still feel really sloppy, and the Chinese crab catches are similar: still really sloppy, but feeling better. I am starting to really get the 3 ball shower from my left side, although 4 ball shower from the right is still gonna take some more work. I should have most of these moves (box, chops, three or four back crosses in a row, Chinese crab catch, my 180 degree quick turn while tossing one ball over my shoulder, columns variations, and the shower stuff) fairly good by the end of this quarter... as long as I keep practicing. 加油！

Also, a just saw a Vicktor Kee video on Youtube. What an excellent juggler: