Juggler's Workshop

 

Hurries

by Martin Frost

 

And now for something completely different. No longer will we always pass using just the plain ole boring sequence of throws from right, left, right, left,..... Nope, we're

throwing away that basic tenet of juggling that says you almost always maintain an even rhythm of rights and lefts!

 

The Hurry

The hurry is the basic even-rhythm breaker. It's a throw that arrives before it "should" because it's thrown to the "wrong" hand. And that means you have to rush a throw so that you can catch the hurry. If you're like most jugglers, you haven't dealt with hurries much, if at all.

 

Right-to-Right Single

A good example of a hurry is a right-to­right (R-R) single thrown in a simple 2-count passing pattern (see the solid arrow in Fig. 1). This is a diagonal pass in place of a normal straight R-L pass. Usually the R-R would be thrown as a "late" double, giving the receiver ample time to work it into the regular rhythm (by omitting a self). But a R-R single actually arrives one count early (at the time it should have reached the left hand, which would have been quite ready for it). The receiver of the R­R single still omits the self but has to quickly throw another right hand pass in order to be able to catch the R-R. The receiver is thus hurried - or more aptly, the receiver's right hand is hurried.

The result for the receiver of this hurry is two right hand throws in a row, with no left hand throw in between, and that's a common of receiving a hurry - two throws in quick succession by the same hand.

Try the R-R single in a 2-count. It shouldn't be hard for most passers to handle. It's mostly a surprising thing to receive (but now you shouldn't be too surprised!). If you and your partner have trouble with this, try making the R-R single slightly slow

and lofty, compared to a normal single. Of course, if you loft it enough, it ends up taking as long as a double, at which point it is no longer a hurry (though a fun

single to throw). But just loft it as much as needed, which hopefully will be less and less as you and your partner gain experience. Be sure to keep it a single - underturn it if you make it lofty, so it doesn't wind up overspun to spin it less, throw from the knob and don't use any wrist. Actually, avoid overspinning the hurry even if you don't loft it, because an overspun club itself already forces the receiver to hurry a bit in order to catch the club right side up.

 

Left-to-Left Single

Did you try it, the R-R single? Wasn't so bad, was it? Well, now try another very similar hurry: the L-L single in the same 2-count (see the dotted arrow in Fig. 1). This throw would normally be thrown as an "early" double to arrive on time, but it arrives one count early as a single. Again loft the L-L single a bit, at least at first, to reduce the amount of the hurry. Here's some advice to the receiver: Don't panic - just hurry a bit, that's all.

 

More Hurries

Now try a curious combination of the above. In a 2-count, throw a R-R single immediately followed by a L-L single. How many times is the receiver hurried? For more fun, try repeating this combination continuously. The receiver just passes normally (right to left). (If the receiver also does the same combination in response, and if you can keep it going, you get a weird pattern that I call the Half-Count because of its strange rhythm. More on that next year.)

 

You can use the above late R-R and early L­L singles as hurries in any pattern that has straight passes and selves, for instance in a 3­count or a 4-count. Just take any place where you might throw a double and throw a single instead - instant hurry. In theory, you could throw a double in place of a triple to create a hurry the problem is that your partner has to notice the hurry coming, and a hurrying single is much more easily spotted than a hurrying double, which may hit the floor unnoticed (or the end of a finger, ouch).

 

The 3-count is a great pattern for throwing hurries because you can do both the late and the early single from either hand. You can also throw hurries as mentioned above in a 2­count. And the 4-count gives you plenty of time to recover between passes after a hurry. But the 3-count is where the fun is. Here's why.

 

Jim's 3-Count

This particular combination of hurries done in a 3-count was suggested in rec.juggling by Jim Brennan of Lincoln, Neb. (creator of Jim's Jam - see the Fall 1996 Juggler's Workshop). I've named this pattern for him because I was teaching it to lots of people and needed a name, and he rightly deserves the credit for suggesting this as a regular pattern. Its hurries are no longer merely occasional.

 

The basic idea of the pattern is relatively simple, and that makes it straightforward to learn, even though the resulting rhythm will feel rather strange at first. Each juggler really does a 3-count (self, self, pass), but one juggler passes only diagonally (R-R and L-L) whereas the other juggler passes straight (R-L and L.R) - see Fig. 2.

The unusual thing about this pattern, however, is that you don't always alternate R and L hand throws. You don't even alternate R and L passes. So what do you do?

Simple. Do a 3­count with one person throwing only diagonally, but after a pass from one hand, don't assume that the other hand will do the following self. That's the key. Don't assume. That following self in fact is always done by the hand to which your partner's pass is coming (the self empties the hand to catch the pass, as always). This may or may not be the hand that you just passed with; if it is, you've got a hurry to deal with and thus end up doing an immediate self with the hand that just passed.

 

The second self of the 3-count is always normal, from the hand that didn't throw the first self, and the pass after that is also normal, from the hand that did throw the first self. So you always do self-self-pass, alternating hands within each such set of three throws. The only time you might have to hurry, as you can see, is with the first of your two selves.

 

You always throw back to your partner the club your partner just threw to you. So just like in a normaI3-count, you're always passing the same two clubs back and forth. But they don't go back and forth in the same path here. One club actually follows the other around the four hands in a figure eight. Use two conspicuous clubs for the passes so that you can watch them run around the pattern.

 

Remember that this is still a 3-count. You're both always passing at the same time, and then you do two selves, starting with the hand that is receiving a pass. Half the time, the first of those selves is with the same hand that just passed - the result of a hurry. Now just remember whether you're passing diagonals or straights, and relax. I've found that the easiest way to do Jim's 3-Count is to just go with the flow - don't expect particular passes.