Go Retire Psychiatrist

I’ve been working on that shower juggling pattern for a number of years now, off and on. Here just lately I think I’ve been making minor improvements. I can do more throws and on a good day, I can do 10—sort of. It’s more ordinary juggling!

I’ve picked up bits and pieces of wisdom and advice on how to make progress.

There are a number of components in this shower juggle pattern. One thing is to remember to keep your eye on the ball. It’s counterintuitive, because my tendency to try to look at the whole picture actually interferes with success. If you pay attention to where I focus my gaze, it’s always on the ball coming from my right hand.

Another thing is that if I don’t hold my arms a certain distance from my body (not too far and not too close), I’ll drop balls. It’s the pane of glass metaphor. If you hold your arms too close, the balls hit you in the face; too far and you end up chasing them. It’s more like the pain of glass.

The hardest part for me is passing the ball horizontally from my left hand to the right, which then has to be tossed in an overthrow. Almost all the time, my pattern ends up looking like a fairly flatter version of the half-shower. It should go straight horizontally from left hand to right hand.

And that overthrow can’t be too low or too high or you drop everything. And if it’s not an overthrow, you end up throwing it straight up—which causes the ball to drop vertically and not over to your left hand.

When I’m in the flow,

I do 10 throws,

All in a row

When I’m out,

The game’s in doubt,

And zero is the count

My usual average is 4-5 throws. It’s been that way since I started practicing the shower 3 years ago. If you want a decent tutorial about it, you can visit websites of experts like Juggling Gym and Taylor Tries.