How To Juggle

Step 1: Have a breakdown

Like buying an expensive new sports car, no one learns to juggle just because they think it seems fun. It is necessarily performative; there’s no reason to do it if you can’t say to someone (even only yourself) “Look what I can do”. Juggling’s need for an audience makes it, like magic (and the sports car), impressive technically and yet universally uncool.

If you’re considering learning to juggle, you’re probably already in crisis. If you’re not, consider bookmarking this page and coming back to it when you are. Examples of good crises are feeling disconnected from your child because you’ve been focusing too much on work and wanting to impress them with a childish skill. Or you’ve just graduated from high school and realized you spent 4 years forgetting trig functions and conjugations and you don’t have any skills, at least nothing compared to everyone posting in the new college facebook group you just joined. Learning to juggle could be a good way to deal with grief and vengeful feeling after a breakup, but you do run the risk of becoming an evil juggler.

Step 2: Acquire implements

Depending on the duration of your crisis, you may need to act fast before it passes you by. It’s likely that you have adequate juggling props lying around somewhere. There’s no need to order juggling balls because the only thing more embarrassing than owning juggling balls is owning them and not knowing how to juggle.

You’re looking for 3 objects that are easy to hold, throw, and catch. Bonus points if dropping them could be dangerous and/or messy. That’s an incentive to try hard to catch them and learn faster before someone realizes what you’re doing with their precious snow globe. Good examples include tea candles (unlit), sticks of deodorant, or some small throw pillows. It may be tempting to use food (apples, potatoes, eggs). If you do, I only encourage you to practice over a hot stove so as to avoid food waste when you drop them.

Step 3: Think about how to juggle

The most common pitfall of the potential juggler is to look up a video on how to juggle then get sucked down a rabbit hole of amazing people videos. You must not succumb no matter how strong the temptation. Even reading this post is borderline. (Don’t worry though. I won’t tell you how to juggle).

The issue here is not only that you’re wasting time. You’re also fooling yourself into thinking you’re making progress towards juggling while merely being entertained.

Odd but true fact: although not many people know how to juggle, almost everyone knows how to learn to juggle. If you’re older than 19, you’ve probably been told how at some point. Just cast your mind back. Even if you haven’t, it’s pretty simple. Imagine someone juggling, then start with the smallest building block of that and build up from there. My one tip is that the path of the balls should lie in the vertical plane parallel to your body about a forearm’s length in front of you, and they should peak at about eye level.

If somehow you’ve never seen someone juggle, first of all, I commend you for trying to learn something that you don’t even know what it is. You (and only you!) have my permission and blessing to go watch juggling videos and be amazed.

Step 4: Just do it

Now that you have your implements and a plan, you’re ready to start. Depending on how naturally coordinated you are, it will probably take 1-5 hours to learn. I recommend dividing that time up across days based on how long you can stand dropping balls at one time. Let’s say it takes you 3 hours (of course you won’t know how long until you do it). You could spend 3 hours and learn in one day while (or instead of) watching The Wolf of Wall Street. You could also do half an hour every day for a week, 20 minutes for 10 days, or 1 minute for 180 days. My condolences if your identity crisis lasts half a year.

Step 5: Keep juggling

I once talked to a juggler who said the correct answer to “How many balls can you juggle?” is “More than you” because that question is almost always asked by non-jugglers. While unimaginably rude (goodness knows jugglers are in no position to be spurning potential friends), his point was that the essence of juggling was trying to find the most difficult way of doing something simple—holding objects—and there are many more ways to make holding objects difficult aside from holding more of them. Caring solely about quantity is a fundamental misunderstanding of the art (and instead of educating people, you should insult them).

I know I’m being my own attractive nuisance by even including this. Iff you’ve mastered the 3-ball cascade and want to keep dropping things, Library of Juggling is a good resource. Good patterns to work towards next are 441 and Mills Mess (all the names are either number (siteswap) or ridiculous), but there are many options. Happy juggling!