Juggler's Workshop

 

Silly But Fun Passing Patterns

 

Here are some fun passing patterns. Some of you may find them silly, but that's left as an optional exercise for the reader. 

 

Odd 1-Count Bounce Passing

In recent years, people have been doing more ball passing by bouncing balls to their partners. The 1-count patterns with an odd number of balls are particularly popular, as they avoid any question of whether or not to bounce the self and allow all the throws to take equal amounts of time. With the relatively long time between the throw and catch of a bounced ball, bounce passing makes it possible to pass more balls with less physical effort (except when chasing stray balls) than you might be able to in the air. Each toss only goes a few inches above the throwing hand and then falls, only to bounce up to the other person, who catches it on the way up. (This is the "lift" bounce.)

 

Now odd 1-counts, whether for balls, clubs or whatever, have one person throwing straight and one person diagonally (see Fig. 1). Either the straight or the diagonal person can start, but the second juggler starts 1/2 count after the first. This means that the four hands are throwing at four different times in sequence, the times all being separated by 1/2 count. The first pass should of course come from the person with more balls (from the hand with more balls, if any) and should be thrown to the hand with fewer balls (if any, else to either hand).  If the person who starts has an even number of balls, the second person should start by throwing to the first hand that threw. But if thefirst person has an odd number of balls, the second person responds by throwing to the hand that didn't make the first throw.

 

You can bounce pass a mere 5 balls this way, in a very slow pattern. You can, however, throw sooner than you have to and thus speed up the pattern to make it a little more interesting. If you throw each ball as soon as you get it, you might find the 5-ball pattern feels more like a 13-ball pattern.

 

Of course, you can also bounce pass 7, 9, 11, 13 or more balls in exactly the same way, except that the pattern speeds up as you add balls. Start with a small number and see how many you can work up to or how fast you can go by throwing before you need to.

 

Most bounce passers stand something like 5 or 6 feet apart, but experiment with different distances. You may find it fun to stand a long way apart and let the balls bounce more than once, for instance. Or see how close you can stand and still bounce the balls between you.

 

Odd 1-Count Half-Bounce Passing

What's a half-bounce, you say? Good question. This pattern is a hybrid between passing entirely in the air and entirely by bouncing. Stephane Saux and I have played around with this pattern with an odd number of balls recently at the San Francisco jugglers meeting.

 

As in the Odd 1-Count Bounce Passing described above, one person throws straight and one diagonally (Fig. 1). But one juggler bounces the passes from both hands to the other person, while the second juggler passes from both hands without bouncing, throwing the balls up nice and high. It's probably a little easier if the bounces are thrown diagonally, but try out the other version with the bounces going straight. Of course each of you will want to try throwing the bounces as well as the high throws. The half-bounce start is just as de­scribed above in odd 1-count ball bouncing.

 

An interesting effect in this half-bounce pattern is that the bouncer has to look up to see incoming high throws, but the high-pass thrower has to look down to see incoming bouncing balls. This makes it difficult to see where your own passes are going. Nevertheless I found that if you're the bouncer, you can see your outgoing passes a little if you try to keep your focus from going up too high. This is helpful for keeping the throws under control.

 

There is a tendency here for the non­bounce passer to make throws that are too

low, since that juggler is looking down at balls bouncing up. So make sure the non-bounced passes are thrown reasonably high, higher than it feels like they should be. The speed of this pattern is largely determined by the height of those high throws, so if they are low, you'll end up having to juggle noticeably faster. This should be no surprise.

 

If you're really adventurous, instead of having all the bounce throws coming from one person, you could have each person throwing bounce passes with one hand and non-bounce passes with the other. This ought to be thoroughly confusing, silly and lots of fun, if not impossible because of having to look alternately up for high passes and down for bounce passes.

 

Now on to some club passing patterns. 

 

3-Count Double Line

This is a relatively simple four person line with no dropbacks. Start by having two jugglers face each other. Now add one juggler behind each of first two so that you end up with four jugglers in a line, all facing the middle of the line (see Fig. 2). This is a common formation, but not so common in this formation is the 3-count, which adds some balance to the passing. 

 

Each person passes a 3-count with the second person to the front. That is, in Fig. 2, jugglers A and C are passing with each other, as are Band D. Everyone has to pass around someone (either B or C). The two separate 3-counts should be kept exactly in sync so that at any time, there are two clubs being passed on each side of the line, and those two clubs travel in parallel, almost like two connected railroad cars. If you're one of the inside people (B or C), be sure not to grab the first club that comes by - it's for the juggler behind you! The outside people have to rock from side to side a little in order to pass around the inside people and to catch the in­coming clubs. The inside jugglers should not move side to side if they want to avoid getting hit!