Juggling Stimulates the Mind

Juggling is a fantastic skill (not a talent!) that most anybody can learn with a little time and practice. Ask anyone who knows how to juggle and they will almost certainly harp on about its many benefits, ranging from improved motor skills, patience, and rewards! Let’s take a closer look at some of the GREAT reasons to learn how to juggle:

• Cognitive Benefits - To succeed in juggling, students must understand a pattern, set targets for their throws, and work on the rhythm and timing of their throws.
• Many Educational Benefits can be found in the book: Teaching Elementary Physical Education by Robert P. Pangrazi.
• A Great Break in the Daily Routine - During extensive academic work periods (such as daily lunch breaks from work/studies), physically active study (such as juggling) can help students return to their work/studies feeling refreshed and more productive. Kinesthetic and physically active learners will love to learn juggling especially! If you introduce juggling breaks/intervals into your regular studies/school day, then you will see these types of learners improve academically!
• Appreciation of the Arts - Once you have seen how easy juggling is to learn the basics, then you begin to see how many hundreds of thousands of tricks are out there for you to master. Any time you see someone juggling, you then begin to appreciate the amount of time and effort they will have put into achieving such a routine! If students work on putting together a show at the end of their workshop, they begin getting a small glimpse of what it is like to work in the entertainment industry.
• Imagination and Creativity - Once you get involved with juggling, you can let your imagination run wild and experiment with the tricks you have learned. You may end up inventing a new trick, or even just a different way of achieving a trick just by imagining different patterns and different routines that may be possible!
• It's Good for your Brain - Studies have shown that people who challenge their brains and use them for complex tasks throughout their life have a reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.
• Helps Dyslexia - It has long been thought that juggling can help disabilities such as dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, and hyperactivity. This is through the knock-on effect of all the other benefits such as improved concentration, problem solving, etc.
• Improves Student Behavior - Schools with juggling programmers tend to report quite satisfactorily that student behavior has improved amongst the pupils who tend to create the most trouble.
• Problem Solving - Students learn to break each juggling trick down into its small component parts, learn each of the parts, and then learn how to combine each part to form the trick. If they get stuck at any particular point in juggling, they can guarantee that someone more experienced will be able to offer advice to help further.
• Juggling can Boost Brain Power - Learning to juggle can cause changes in the brain, scientists have found. Using brain scans, the researchers showed that in 12 people who had learnt to juggle, certain brain areas had grown.  But three months later, during which time people stopped juggling, the brain had gone back to its normal size. To read more on this amazing discovery, please visit the article on the BBC News Website.

Steps of Learning to Juggle:

Start with just one ball.  Practice throwing the ball with a flight-path from the inside/near the middle of the body towards the opposite exterior.

Now take a second ball and learn to throw it correctly from just before receiving the first ball.  The ball trajectory should form the letter 'M'.  Common mistakes:
1. The first ball is not sufficiently thrown to the outside. 
2. The balls are thrown to different heights or not high enough.
3. The hands should rest at the level of the hips, not of the shoulders. Keep your upper arm tucked in near the body.

Then try with three balls. Be sure to master the first two steps. Start with just one rotation to avoid chasing the balls. Stop by catching all three balls. 

You’re ready to juggle! And teach others! As proud as you might be of teaching yourself to juggle, imagine the self-adulation from teaching a group of youngsters… Just Go For It!