By Jesse Shavel
1. Less is more. If you do something with perfect form correctly, it is often beneficial to move on to something else. This allows your muscle memory to remember how it’s supposed to be done. I can’t tell you how many hours of my life I have spent trying to get a personal best when it comes to an amount of throws. This risks injury and is all-around stupid. It’s training how to do it wrong to feed the ego. If the goal is mastery, technique needs to be the number one goal, and endurance goals should be thrown in the trash. Less is more.
2. Practice should be enjoyed. I have spent countless hours in total frustration, grinding it out, telling myself that I am working hard and getting closer to my goals, while at the same time hating this passion that has taken over my life because of how hard it is to make incremental gains. Ten years in now, and I have observed that I juggle much better when I move slowly, smile, enjoy the process, and put less pressure on myself to reach a personal best endurance run. Less is more, and practice enjoyed and ended on a high note is a far better way to improve quickly than ending on failure or total exhaustion.
3. Have a coach and be part of a community. The majority of my time has been spent juggling alone. This is part of my process, and I do enjoy it in some ways, but if you want to get good fast, surround yourself with people who are better than you and who can teach you. This reminds me—I still need to go to my first-ever juggling festival. I could have reached my skill level in half the time if I had dedicated more time to coaching and community.
4. Do the breakdown drills religiously. I have spent so much time working on big tricks without mastering the individual components of that trick. If you can’t throw one ball, club, ring, or whatever else perfectly 1,000 times in a row, you really have no business trying to juggle seven balls. If you want to master the big tricks with numbers, make the breakdowns feel easy. If it doesn’t feel easy, take a step back—not add more to an already failing pattern.
5. Treat juggling as a full-body exercise that requires training, physical therapy, and a well-rounded approach to movement and body mechanics. For many years, all I did was juggle. I didn’t stretch; I didn’t do strength training, mobility, etc. Juggling requires strength and endurance, and if your muscles aren’t working properly, you’re running the risk of injury. Give time to full-body exercise and learn lots of physical therapy (PT) exercises. Use them before you desperately need them.
6. Train your non-dominant side more than your dominant side. I always spent more time on my dominant side because it felt good to be able to do the trick. The problem with that is that it creates imbalances in your ability on the other side. This becomes hugely problematic with numbers juggling, as even minor imbalances will totally destroy a pattern. In a perfect world as a juggler, you are equally skilled on both sides. It is immensely difficult and frustrating trying to rebalance your body after years and thousands of hours of imbalanced training. If you want longevity and to progress faster, train the non-dominant side more than the dominant side.
These are the things I wish I had known and remembered every day of training. It is still a challenge to remind myself of these things, as it’s easy to fall into old habits. I should probably read this before every training session! Older and wiser now—and still juggling and enjoying it!
Maine-born and Colorado-based, Jesse Shavel (Jesse the Juggler) is a professional juggler, family man, and lifelong juggling lover who shares his passion for the art wherever he goes.
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