My favourite technique is after the initial two ball crosses was for me to stand in for their left (or non dominant) hand.

You stand slightly behind your pupil and get them to put their left hand behind their back and you put your left hand about where theirs should be. You give them one ball in their right hand and then you start the pattern with two balls.

Most people are amazed to find themselves juggling at this point. Yes, you are correcting their mistakes but it gives a real feeling of juggling for them. Most people manage 10 catches quite easily at this point.

Once they have the hang of that swap sides. This one is harder, don't do it too long before setting them off on 3 and they can practice themselves from here on.

I have taught 100s of people to juggle like that :-)

A long time ago (pre-internet) I heard a normal person can learn to juggle in 1 day. It took me 2 days, but I learned to juggle 3 balls. But soon I realized what you said, the need for a consistent toss. Not sure of the reason, but I always make some errors with physical movements, they are never perfect. Even with typing, no matter how much I exercise, I cannot get bellow ~3% errors. Wondering if this is some kind of genetic effect, and how many ppl have similar issues.

The way I taught myself to juggle was something I don't see very often in guides, but I think works quite well — I taught myself to juggle two balls in one hand, until I could do it with both hands, and then three ball juggling with two hands was just doing the exact same thing, but crossing.

I’m very amazed by this site linked in the Wikipedia: https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/3balltricks/Cascade.htm...

Supposedly from 2014, but looks a fair bit older.

When I learned to juggle (which I've forgotten), it was with beanbags, because they don't bounce away when you drop them.

Yeah I never really mastered a consistent throw - it's just not how my brain works. I got as a pretty shakey 4 ball shower and that was it.

Every time I got better at dancing I got better at juggling too. In my folk psychology, juggling is a partially-attached extension of your hands, so it’s just weird dancing.

If you think of it like 3 jobs you have to do simultaneously everything falls apart. Internalizing the three balls as a single process that you are participating in makes it a lot more manageable.

Of course the only way to get there is some 10s of hours of practice

Oh waw, I had totally forgotten about the handkerchiefs. But this is indeed how I was first thaught juggling when I was a kid. Thanks for the trip down the memory lane!

I wonder if juggling positive buoyancy balloons upside down would develop skills transferable to right side up. You can make those as slow as you want. When jugglers juggle balls against the floor I guess they don't start from scratch.

could you please link the beginner handkerchiefs?

Any recommendations for youtube lessons?

I had a friend who had absolutely terrible coordination.

I would bet against him being able to learn three balls.

But he was very dedicated. Long story short. After many years he could comfortably juggle 6 (six!) balls.

It looked wobbly, he still looked like a person without coordination, but the balls somehow stayed in the air.

Four is just two in each hand. Learning to do that one hand at a time is a nice addition to a three ball cascade. You hold the third in your other hand, and it's a good source of jokes.

You can do four-out-of-five, which is a five ball cascade with a missing beat (just as how you learned two-out-of-three while learning initially). Unfortunately it's very hard and still doesn't impress people.

Learn to juggle two balls with the other hand and you are half way to 4 (which is two in each hand out of sync)

Many years ago one Saturday morning I happened upon a juggling shop. I could already do three balls so I asked if I could try the clubs. After about an hour of failing the shop owner said something like "some people never get it". So of course I bought a set. After 12 hours that day and 12 hours the next I got the hang of it. They are harder to learn than balls but still doable for an unsporty person like me. And, as you say, very satisfying.

You can also pass clubs. In fact, at my local juggling meetup (Castro Valley BART), it really breaks into two groups: passers and numbers. Passers get together and pass. It's quite social. Someone explains a group pattern and they work through it. OTOH, numbers jugglers can juggle 5 or more clubs+balls. They segregate themselves off and really only talk to each other. We're in the same place but numbers only talk to other numbers.

Learning club juggling was fun. That led to partner club juggling as well as flaming clubs. Got a nice video of me juggling flames and overrotating a club so I catch the flaming end. Whoops.

I wonder if I got Alzheimer's so bad that I couldn't remember my kids names, would I still be able to juggle? And would it be therapeutic in any way?

I made a 2d game like this once for, of all things, Palm Pilot. You could tap for the apex of each ball throw.

Rationalists. It's lesswrong slang.

TFA is posted in/for a community where "rats" is slang for the community members.

Long, long, (long) ago I used to teach people to juggle at the local Renaissance Fair. I would say I could get almost everyone to flash 3 in less than 30 minutes. Most people walked away having at least 5-6 successful throws. The only people who really couldn't learn are those who don't like to fail and won't even try. Learning to juggle is repeated failure and you have to be willing to persist. Learning 5 clubs (very briefly) took me many years of repeated failure.

> "Anyone can juggle"

Technically this is not incompatible with the title. Just uses “can” in a different sense. The title would be using “can” in the “has the skill already”, while you use “can” in the “able to acquire the skill” sense.

It is not hard to imagine that most people when asked the question “can you juggle?” would answer in the negative. That’s what the article’s title describes. And then if those people, given sufficient motivation can learn to juggle that leads to your sentence. And they both can be true at the same time.

I agree that it would be nice to provide source for the claim though.

I thought the second line was about Goering.

HN guidelines say "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on-topic for HN

lol. Thank you for the laugh.