For those who do five balls, or might otherwise be in the know,

1. How easy does it get? Like, Mills Mess was very challenging to learn, but now that I've learned it, it's very easy to do. Does that ever happen with 5 balls -- it's extremely hard to learn, but once you get it down, it's no sweat?

2. Do you lose it? That is, once you learn five, if you stop doing it for a while, do you lose your ability? And if so, does it come back?

I've been wondering.

I would rate 5 balls as a pretty difficult trick. To me it always separates the casual juggler from a serious juggler, because it takes that kind of discipline to learn it. However, once you "get it down", it's no sweat. To me that's kind of what the expression "got it down" means... that you have the trick "down" meaning that you can do it whenever and for as long as you'd like (within reason). This also typically means that the ability stays with you even without practice. It might get a little rusty, but you never totally lose it. That is my experience with it. Hope that helps, at least partially, answer your questions.
Al aka Steve

That's exactly what I wanted to know. Thank you for taking the time!

I agree completely with the above.

I have found in some instances I've found that taking a break from working on a move actually helps in the learning process. This happened to me when learning 5 clubs. I was working on this for ages with limited success, left it for a few months, came back to it and found that I was getting better runs than I did before. I don't know why, but the same happened to me with the unicycle.

Is this something others have found?

Something I found really helped me are the DVDs put out by Jason Garfield. Whether you like his style or not he's a very good teacher and his points on "proper form" really helped me get past sticking points I had before.

I've actually applied his methods of teaching in my own workshops and have found I'm getting more kids learning 3 objects quicker than I did before. So seems to work.

Theory & Practice of Juggling is the first one, there's also a book, and Etudes For Juggling is for more advanced stuff. Well worth getting both if you're interested in numbers.

Hope this helps

Hi there,

In reply to the original post, I agree with what Steve has said. 5 balls takes a while to learn and get right, and it is a hard trick to learn, but once learnt it becomes hard in a different kind of way. It is still physically demanding, and will tire you more than 3 balls will (obviously), but you kind of get to the stage where you are watching the pattern rather than thinking how to create it.

Once you've learnt 5 balls, you can go several months (and probably even years) without ever juggling it and still pick it up again later - although you may be a little rusty and you certainly won't be able to do it as long as you once could.

I know this is somewhat repeating what others have said, but I just thought you might like a few opinions to see that this really is the general case!

Hope this helps!

Take care

Mark

I spoke to a juggler who gave it up for over a decade, and was back to juggling 5 balls within a month or two. I don't think its something you forget, once you learn it. And it does get easier as you practice.

I'm enjoying reading all of your experiences and opinions. Much appreciated.

Roslyn, thanks for bringing Jason Garfield's DVDs to my attention. I'm familiar with his work, but I wasn't familiar with his instructional DVDs, and it never crossed my mind that there could be any value in turning to a DVD for help. Now I'm thinking that going over proper form and the fundamentals will be a benefit.

It certainly helped me.

My own thinking is if you can do it with proper form then you can take it and have fun with it.

Kind of like the unicyclist who looks like they're gonna fall off, yet in reality they're more stable that most sat on the ground.

Good foundations and all that

You buy them from the WJF website. http://www.thewjf.com I think it is. Google will certainly point you in the right direction.

Good luck and please keep us posted on your progress.

One of the big motivations for me while I was learning was when another juggler said to me
"Well...once you've cracked five balls,you've got it for life"
Just hearing that short phrase was probably the thing that kept me going most of all.Now many years down the line I really believe it to be true.
However it brings in to question what we accept as being 'Mastery' I think you can call yourself a 5 ball juggler when you can pick up 5 and be fairly sure of getting 20 catches and then finish cleanly by catching them all but I wouldn't really say you have cracked it by then.If you practise regularly after that stage and keep pushing yourself you start getting in to a higher level of really being able to see them as individual balls.The exciting and fascinating and rewarding part about all this is that once you have passed the 20 -30 throw stage its all so much more fun to practise.So you'll find yourself doing it purely for the pleasure and it won't seem you have to keep on motivating yourself.
You can do it..

I just got my first set of Dube Stage balls 5 total! I can only juggle 3 right now working on 4. Everyones comments here give beginners like me the motivation to keep going past the 3 ball tricks. Thanks guys!

When juggling for pleasure, as apposed to juggling in a show, I tend to do mainly 3 ball stuff. I like numbers don't get me wrong, but there's something about 3ball tricks that you don't get with higher numbers.

Maybe it's my skill level letting me down, but juggling with 3 allows for much more improv compared to higher numbers. As I said, this could be because my skill level is too low to jam with 5+.

I agree with the above comments. Juggling 5 balls is like riding a bicycle. The basic 5 ball cascade is indeed a tough trick to learn, but once mastered it pretty much stays with you, even if you don't juggle for awhile...