Beginning Rings Workshop Outline
This ring workshop is focused on giving you the most gain for your efforts. Laid out for you here are several throwing and catching positions and techniques that can be mixed together to produce a great variety of patterns and tricks.

Basic throwing hand positions:

1. Standard Cascade / Straight hand position palms facing each other
2. Standard Reverse Cascade / Rings Flat to the audience and palms facing out
3. Inward Flats Cascade / Rings Flat to the audience, but palms turned inward facing yourself
4. Overhead Flats Reverse Cascade / Rings Flat to the audience and palms facing out and over head
5. Overhead Flats Cascade / Rings Flat to the audience and palms out  and upside down with elbows out
6. Overhead Cascade palms facing each other (ring throws off the little finger end of your hand)

Basic catching hand positions:

1. Catching in a standard cascade with palms facing each other
2. Catching with palms facing out at your sides
3. Catching with palms facing in at about shoulder width or closer
4. Catching overhead with palms facing out
5. Catching overhead with palms facing in (almost exclusively for the shower pattern)
6. Overhead palms facing each other

Mixing it up:

Reverse cascade throwing palms out and catching palms out puts you in position to flourish the rings, but reverse cascade throwing palms out and catching palms inward introduces a quick color change and a change in style.

Reverse cascade throwing palm out from one hand and catching overhead palm out in the other becomes a variation on the statue of liberty pattern. The overhead hand can throw from outside or inside the body.

Throw with one hand overhead and the other in a standard cascade. The lower hand throws up higher close to your opposite ear.

Flourish:

The ring that was just caught and not in the air or involved in an exchange is the one that can be given a little style or movement to add life to the pattern.

(For some jugglers, this may be the first time you’ve tried to do a move with the non-throwing hand in a pattern. It can feel a lot like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. Give it time, it can be frustrating but this skill will reward all your juggling.)

The simplest move it to spin the ring one time around all 4 fingers at once, pushing outward from the body in a normal cascade. It is possible to work your way down to 1 finger which is decidedly more difficult, but it appears to moves noticeably more smoothly.

The second easiest position to flourish from is with palms facing out as in a reverse cascade. Again, pushing outward around all 4 fingers is the safest move, but 1 finger has its own look to it that you may prefer. Mixing up inward and outward moving flourishes in both overhead and cascade patterns will give you a lot to work with.

Intermediate flourish: pancake or flutter the ring around the thumb. Push ring outward at a balance point so that it “rolls” around the thumb while your fingers get out of the way. Takes practice, but it’s worth it.

The World of 2 & 1:

Now that you’ve been introduced to all these throwing and catching positions and flourishes, a simple pattern such as throwing 2 rings on sync in a 4 ring pattern followed by 1 ring becomes more interesting (ss: (4,4)(4,0) )

1. Flourish the 2 rings in opposite directions
2. Throw the 1 ring reverse over the 2
3. Throw the 2 rings in a reverse palms out with a flourish
4. Throw 1 ring straight up palm out on one side, then the next throw a reverse cascade to the other side, catching with a flourish and repeating
5. 1 ring thrown overhead palm out in the center, with the 2 on the outside

… and so on and so on…

Shower:

The ring shower looks best if it’s performed with the rings flat to the audience. The catching hand naturally migrates slightly higher than the throwing hand making the exchange between them a little easier. Decide with trial and error if you prefer to be a palm out catcher or a palm in catcher here. It depends on which way makes the exchange between your hands feel most natural. The whole pattern is higher than with balls or clubs.

Ring on Ring Spin:

This may seem hard at first, but with a little practice and aim you’ll have a skill that can add a lot to your routine.  Henry’s rings and absolutes and pure ABS plastic rings spin best, airflights and other thin rings the least.  The faster it spins, the steadier it will be, and the easier it will be to transfer from ring to ring.  For best results, “snap” spin a ring into the air using lots of wrist for the most RPMs. The thrown ring should be perpendicular to the floor. The catching ring should be parallel to the floor and thus perpendicular to the spinning ring. The faster you spin the ring the more you can break this rule, even spin parallel to the floor and catching on top of another, an advanced move.

What looks best? Quick exchanges and passes around the body, arms and legs. Simply catching one ring on another is only interesting to the audience once, the second time pass between rings and mix it up.

Picking up Drops:

Easily the most awkward of the big 3 props to get off the ground, here are 3 tricks to making it look good, and easier on your back.

1. On carpet, pinch down one end so the opposite side sticks up, then slide your other toe under it, swing it back toward you then out and up to a pancake and back in your hand.
2. The wobble ring, watch a ring wobble to a stop and learn the timing of getting your toe under it at just the right point. With practice you’ll get a lot of drops this way.
3. Finally, pinch the 2 ends of a ring on the ground with the edge of your shoes so that you can flip one end over the other and on to one of your feet. This one is the hardest, but after a while you can do it without thinking.

4 Ring Pointers:

• Pinch your elbows to your sides.
• Energy for each toss comes down the forearm, past the wrist and out your fingertips. Thumbs point to the sky then the fingers as you release.
• Inside to outside circles, it’s not a free-for-all.
• The more you use your shoulders, the harder your working, bring them to a relaxed position and fight to keep those elbows from flaring out.
• Switch regularly from on-sync to off-sync throws to pinpoint problems.
• If you’re having trouble reaching 10 catches, practice getting to 8 and STOPPING there several times in a row. Isolate your issues, then go for those 10 catches.

OUCH!

Thin rings hurt your hands more than thick ones. Every millimeter makes a big difference.

Catching while your hand is moving up (banging the ring into your hand) hurts too. Work on cradling the ring as it comes down.

Band-aids are great for covering sensitive areas of your fingers.

Keep those nails trim, a bad break can split them. (Multivitamins keep your nails strong too!)

If Time Allows…

Rings fit nicely over your head for a reason! There are cool things you can do with even 3 rings that are simple to learn involving placing or catching rings around your neck and pulling them off.

Ah, the pancake, how do I love thee?

Wrap-up

Once you have a firm grasp of the basics and all the various ways you can handle throwing and catching rings it will be easier to add different elements to your collection. You will be more prepared for tricks like behind the back or other body throws, head rolls, pancakes and other unique throws.