A February juggling session

Since the Spring Festival break, which was great for my juggling, I have hardly practiced at all. However, last night at juggling club was great. Not only were there a good number of people there (including some cute girls), my practice felt pretty good. I had some good runs with my penguin catches, Gus showed me a fun and goofy looking variation on some basics (involving arm 'juggles,' 'circles' and 'pumps'), and my four ball fountain is coming along very nicely. It was great to juggle to good music again as well. I listened to a lot of Seeed and it felt great to juggle while and moving my body to the music. I tend to do a lot a little dance-like moves when I drop or when I am in between practicing moves, which adds what feels like a wonderful smoothness, playfulness and flow to my practice.

Juggling Practice

I am amazed at being able to see and feel progress over the course of just a few days. Amazing what practicing every day will do, huh? Especially today, my 5 ball cascade was feeling better. I am clearly still a long ways away from having it solid, but it feels really good to be able to see such progress. My 4 ball shower is coming along really nicely too, as I am regularly getting between 10 and 20 catches in a single run.

The cross hand machine that Gus showed me is improving too. I still can't get more than two or three really sloppy cycles in a row, but that is two or three more than I had a few weeks ago. It is a really fun move that looks really cool, so I am excited for getting that move clean and neat someday.

On the downside, by back tosses are pretty horrid at the moment, and I don't know why. Shoulder tosses are getting better though, so maybe with some more practice I can add that to the group of moves that I can comfortably do.

How I am going to use my vacation

I officially am off from work for just over a week for Spring Festival. I am not gonna be doing any traveling, so I am gonna try and spend some time every day juggling. Today went well, and it was my first time using the JuggleFit app for tracking progress in juggling moves, and I think that I will try to continue to use it. It makes for an easy and convenient way to keep track of how many tosses I am able to achieve with certain moves.

As far as specific moves, my 4-ball cascade is making good progress, and although my backcrosses weren't feeling so good today, I did some playing around and experimenting with a few little miscellaneous things. I starting working on rolling the ball on my left arm. I have been able to roll it along my right arm for ages, but it isn't a skill that I had practiced ambidextrously, so that will be a nice addition to my repertoire. The cross-arm-catch robot that Gus showed me (whom I believe he learned from Komei Aoki) is coming along nicely. During this week I want to keep working on those moves, as well as improving my claw.