Fall quarter is over

Now that my classes are done until January I have some time to focus on my one things. At the top of my list are juggling, research China's ethnic minorities, and study Spanish.

I was playing around with my contact juggling ball last night and it was feeling really smooth. I actually did a roll with the ball going up my right arm, behind my neck, and down my other arm. Kind of like Aladdin does with an apple in the Disney movie. It felt really cool. I also finally practiced juggling again today. Crab Catches and five ball cascade are feeling better than ever, although my continuous back-crosses were not so hot today. Machine/Robot feels really sharp, so maybe I will take that off my practice list soon. I think I will remove the weave/tornado combination too, since it is pretty boring. I also tried a few Oli-style toss-and-turns, which felt pretty nice. Maybe I will review a video of his soon and try to glean some more moves from it. I plan to spend the next part of the day reading about ethnicity in China, so it won't be so physical.

Sporadic, but with Improvement

My practices are becoming less organized. I used to have a list of eight or ten moves that I wanted to get, and I would just work through my list, practicing each move for five or ten minutes, or until I got bored with it. When I got through the list, that was the end or my training. However, since Erika's not-dad gave us the advice on how to train juggling moves, I have focused more on a few moves that I really want to be able to do (Chinese crab catches, continuous back crosses, and five balls), while not practicing other at all (tornado, weave, flash three balls 180). I feel that I am making more and more progress with these fewer moves that I am working on. Five ball cascade was feeling REALLY good yesterday, with me consistently pulling off five catches, and occasionally pulling of seven tosses and seven catches. That in itself is nothing super amazing, but I was feeling really relaxed doing it, which felt nice. Crab catches weren't so good yesterday, but back crosses have been feeling better. I have gotten four in a row sometimes, and I am consistently getting three in a row. If I practice a lot during December, I just might have some of these new moves my Christmastime.

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.