Advanced Rings

Tricks and Numbers Outline

Drills and Training:

Work a pattern to its optimal form, elbows at sides, relaxed shoulders, power from arms and wrists, smooth non-hand-banging catches. The better your form is, the less your rings wobble.

Learning Odd Number Patterns

5:

• Work your 3 ring shower in both directions, eventually switching directions without stopping
• 3 ring chase in a 5 pattern, this will get your height consistent (SS: 53 or 35)
• Build on the chase with patterns such as 55253

7: (drills are your friend)

• Shower with 4 rings, build up until you can switch directions
• 4 ring chase in a 7 pattern and height (SS: 70 or 07)
• Learn to hold 4 in one hand, finger exercises
• Releasing 4 rings drills
• Building up from 7 to 14 catches

9: (exercise is your friend, drills are a necessity)

• Holding 5 in one hand, finger exercises, release drills
• Protecting your fingers (wrapping fingers)
• Shower 5 rings, yes, in both directions too.
• 5 ring chase
• Drills to build from 7 to 19 catches

Learning Even Number Patterns

6, 8, 10:

• Always inside to outside circles
• Fight to keep your elbows in at your sides, see the rubber band trick
• Relax shoulders, the more they move, the harder it is to bring the next throw back to center
• Stack your runs, 2 catches at a time
• Work in off sync and on sync, switching to isolate problems and correct them
• The hardest part of 6, 8, 10 for most people is throwing 3, 4, 5 in their subordinate hand
• Find a position that works for you, hand exaggerated outward all the way to hands close to the body
• Practice one side at a time in combination with the whole pattern (both hands). Switch back and forth for best results

Hit a wall with your numbers?

For evens bang out one side at a time to double the number of catches you get on that number. (ie; If the most you get with 20 catches with 6 rings and have been stuck there for a while, hammer out each side until you get 40 catches each.) For odd numbers, run the shower on both sides to double your best run. (stuck at 20 catches with 7, run a 4 rings shower for 40 catches on each side)

Tricks with Numbers:

(This workshop is more focused on tricks with 6 or more, but will cover certain key 5 ring tricks)

Q. What can a workshop teach you that you can’t get from watching a trick on video?

A. How to practice!

Learning 5 ring tricks:

My first tricks were whatever I saw Ignatov do in the ‘80s, but I didn’t know how to learn them.

Break it down into bite size pieces.

Ie.; reverse flat shower, juggle a SS:53 (4 ring pattern), then throw the ‘5’ over the top in a flat throw. Pay attention to how your other hand catches the overhand throw, either palm toward you or hand up facing out (harder). Switch and work on the other side.

Same technique for overhead, or one hand overhead, or backcross, or even pancakes. If it’s too hard with 4 rings, drop down to 3 or even 2 until you iron out the wrinkles. Keep the same pattern of one hand throwing in a 5 ring pattern so that you learn the height and speed you’ll need when you put it all together.

Others (listed for purely academic reasons):

Most site swaps are left out, since they tend to be better when you add some flair to some of the throws, otherwise they tend to blend together. Pirouettes (360’s) are a special case. See Jason Garfield’s training for that.

Learning 6 ring tricks:

The most important part of 6 ring tricks is getting to the point where you can come in and out of async and on sync patterns comfortably. To get there practice longer and longer runs where you switch your timing between the 2 rhythms several times. When you can do that half a dozen times in a single run, you’re ready for more!

My first 6 ring trick: (8,8)(4,4)

Wrong trick, too soon. Finger buster.

Better, 855, or what I knew as “throw one high to the side”. High right side throw (can be thrown up the middle) followed by 2 throws in a 5 ring pattern, then back into 6 rings. This trick is done in async.

Easier first trick:

If you practiced on to off sync and back again, then putting a ring around your neck and taking it off will be easy for you. Essentially you’re moving from 5 to 6 rings and back again. It looks better to have one hand place the ring, then the other take it off and throw it back. (more going on for the viewer) Practice by putting one on your neck, then start with 2 in one hand, throw them high, maybe just above your 6 ring height, pulling the one off and continuing to juggle 3 in one hand. Then do that in reverse.

Half shower, the not impossible way:

Learn onsync, then onsync crossing with staggered throws (one slightly higher) This resembles triple doubles with 6 clubs.  Once you have onsync staggered down you can throw 1 over top as in a flat half shower. Then 2, then 4, etc. Pay close attention to your catches, hand in or out. Stay consistent. Once you’ve learned it this way you can go directly into the pattern from an onsync pattern. Hint: Kulakov does this with pancakes! His practice is the same as this technique.

On Sync flat reverse: Probably the prettiest 6 ring trick

You can move gradually from the half shower, to making both hands throw an overhead flat throw, one higher than the other, to the full trick where both sides throw the same height in full sync. One hand should naturally throw slightly in front so they don’t collide. Throws must be even and not wobble to keep them from sliding off of each other.

Overhead Throws:

This one may make you go back to just 1 ring, practicing throwing it overhead by your ear straight up.  Build up to 3 in each hand, throwing just 1 at a time, finally bring that into the full 6 ring async pattern. Slightly easier, onsync with one hand overhead. Careful not to give yourself a black eye! (speaking from experience)

Outside Flats:

Like onsync flat reverse, but throws are straight up from the side of the body, and rings are facing the audience. Looks great when combined with the reverse.

777771bx:

Throw 5 rings in a 7 pattern, pass the one remaining behind your back. A personal favorite.

REMEMBER: These tricks will feel hard if you haven’t practiced your onsync to async patterns!

* (8,8)(4,4) and pirouettes are best learned after you have some experience with 8. The throws are high, and therefore a bit more dangerous.

Extra credit: flourish the on sync flat reverse, throw the occasional pancake, throw 4 high & flourish the 2 in your hands, multiplex splits onsync, etc…

Learn 7 ring tricks:

Half shower, flat reverse, and overhead can be broken down into a SS:73 pattern, working one side at a time.

My first site swap was 86. If you can sustain long runs of 50 or more catches, I recommend trying it. 966 is much harder to get the first time, and hard to practice or break down into bite size pieces. Unfortunately 86 doesn’t look like anything but an accident, but for academic purposes it makes for good practice. 966 gets a great response though.

If you’re an (8x,6)(6,8x) fan, try it with rings. Start with 4 and just flash a pair. The 8’s go very high compared to an 8 ring fountain.

Many 7 ring tricks become finishing moves because continuing the run is often the hardest part. 1, 2 or 3 pancake throws, 3 or 4 half shower throws, or the pullover make good finishing moves. I like the arm stack with a flourish to end a run or trick.

Others: multiplex stack (2 in each hand), neck catch or pull-over back into 7. Pirouettes? Watch Dana Tison videos…

8 Ring Tricks:

Seriously?  What can be done with 8?

I practice async into onsync and back to get the pattern more stable and my timing down. Other tricks are (a,a)(a,a)(4,4) which is onsync 2 pair high then 1 pair low. (one round of that is plenty!) Another is 99999991bx which is make 7 tosses in a 9 pattern passing 1 behind your back. (A good finisher, since going back into a pattern is touchy) The half shower is not too bad if you can do it with 7. a77 is also possible. I’ve seen 3 people in my life do a pirouette under 8. I managed to throw a couple pancakes…once…

Better than tricks is to learn a long pole balance or ring spinning on your leg in combination with 8. It’s a real show-stopper and there’s evidence that several performers have done this for decades.

The pull-over is an old stand-by as well. That one at least you can practice one hand at a time!

*I’ve also done over the head, but it gave me a black eye, so that trick is retired for now.

What exercise works? There really is training that works for jugglers!

Absolutely!  First, for the fingers, get a guitar finger exerciser and strengthen those metacarpals.

Second, warm up those shoulders with narrow and wide circles for a minute, switching directions in between.

Workouts:

I’ve done body-for-life training for 9 months and pyramid strength training for 6 months and it only had a marginal effect on my numbers juggling skill. I was stronger, just not a better juggler.

What works? Athletic training. Classic resistance training where you work each muscle only once a week, broken into 3 different sessions Monday, Wednesday, Friday. By work I mean push to failure with lots and lots of reps. Each muscle may have 8 to 10 set each. The other days fill with intense cardio, kickboxing, jumping/plyo, and absolutely don’t forget yoga. Not beginner yoga, do the stuff that makes your eyes water! These kinds of trainings work the fibers you won’t touch with machines because they’re real world muscles.

Essential finger training: Guitar finger exerciser! Also, pick up a grip trainer if you don’t use dumbbells. See band exercise for training to keep your elbows in. (borrowed this one from the Russians)

Anyway, the big experiment is to see what kind of effect the P90X workout would have on my juggling. I have already been a part of my company’s “biggest loser” weight loss competition and finished first, so naturally my juggling skills have improved just from not having to move so much weight around! Oh, and yes, the competition was directed by a dietition, so none of us were on crazy liquid diets.

So, to begin, I have the set of 12 DVDs, my pull-up bar and my power blocks in the TV room and have completed the first 2 weeks of training. I’m very excited about this because I can feel the results right away, unlike with traditional weight lifting where I hope to see an effect on my juggling performance when my arms heal.

I’ll spare everyone a “before” picture. You all know what I look like.

At any rate, I’m in week 3 of 12 and today’s juggling practice was a win all over. 5 club double backcrosses, 9 catches back to a cascade several times. 9 ring runs in the 20’s several times. 7 clubs in the 20’s several times. A bonus 6 club fountain to backcrosses, score! Today felt great. Granted this is one of the only day’s I’ve had to postpone my morning P90X workout until the afternoon, so my arms and shoulders were fresh for juggling, but still it felt good to have some progress.

Every other morning the alarm rings at 5am, the only way I figured out how to fit it all in was to sleep less. Oh, and DVR everything because there’s no time for TV. I’m looking forward to week 4 where there’s no resistance training (rest week) and I can film some of this practice.

Until next time…

This is how 9 rings felt a couple years ago, with 11 catches being what I could count on every time and an occational run. Now yesterday I had between 25 and 30 catches with 9 and that feels like the norm now.

It would be really sweet if 30 catches with 10 became the norm someday. That would be video-worthy.