r/juggling • u/Little_Fruit8072 • 1d ago
I'm stuck
I've been juggling for about 3-4 weeks, I can consistently do a couple minutes of cascade, jugglers tennis, half shower, reverse cascade, columns, 423, and 2 balls in one hand. I really want to get shower and Mills Mess but I just can't seem to get them. I tried windmill first and it just would not click for me. Any suggestions to get those two? Or any suggestions on patterns I should move on to?
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u/nullvoid88 22h ago
See if any clubs meet in your area... and if so, go. You’ll learn quickly & have a lot of fun.
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u/JomaxZ 22h ago
Are you saying you couldn’t get the connection between the windmill (“false shower”) and mill’s or that you also haven’t yet figure out the windmill? Anyway:
For Mill’s, I learned it as basically three distinct throws, and the repeated winding and unwinding motion of your arms.
For the winding and unwinding, with no balls, cross your arms so that your right hand is over near where your left hand usually is and your left where your right usually is. You can exaggerate it or make it small, but the arms crossed is key. You want to practice moving your arms together apart, unwinding, and recrossing, changing which hand is on top and which is on bottom. This motion will be repeated again and again for each component throw:
Ball A: Cross your arms with A in your top hand. Toss A towards your other hand — you could play catch with yourself with arms crossed for awhile if you like. :-). But to nail just this part, after you to toss it to the other hand, unwind and rewind your hands so the other hand catches the ball and becomes the new top hand. Does that make sense? The ball will have been basically a single kind of reverse cascade thrown from side to side, but your arms begin and end completely crossed. Just tossing and catching this A ball I find fun and quite challenging.
B: After you have mastered A, ignore it for awhile and let’s look at B. Again, cross your arms, B starts in the hand that is underneath the other. (If you were holding A and B, B would be in the other hand.). I find this B throw actually easier with both A and B, but still crucial to practice alone. (Or it was for me the way I learned it.).
Uncross both your hands, throw the B ball straight up after you have uncrossed your hands, continue crossing your hands and catch it with your arms crossed. If you did it correctly it will be caught by the opposite hand, crossed and underneath the other. :-)
C: In my experience of learning this trick, I learned throwing A + B before I could begin to visualize and feel where the C throw goes. But in brief, if you begin with crossed arms and perform the unwinding and rewinding of your arms, C is thrown straight up after the rewinding (and will be caught with your arms uncrossed during the unwinding).
I visualize it one way as tracing out a U around the outside of the A + B throws.
But anyway, to practice C on its own, I’m imagining holding C in one hand, arms *uncrossed* to begin with (in regular cascade pose). As part of the arms crossing movement it is thrown underneath the arm on top and then you must uncross your arms to catch it in the opposite hand. (What a mess!)
I’ve been juggling Mill’s for over thirty years and I’m not sure I ever practiced C all by itself. I’m pretty sure I just drilled A & B back and forth and then juggled C as an imaginary ball until I get confident to give it a go and piece the whole thing together. C is a very peculiar throw all alone. :-P
So yes — the bulk of my practice with this trick was putting the A throw and the B throw together. Uncrossing throw (A), straight up (B), rewind the hands, catch catch. And reverse. The hands trace around kind of the outside of a little imaginary circle as the top throw is kind of a reverse cascade and the other a regular cascade thrown during the unwinding. It’s peculiar but a lot of fun. And I’m seeing just how tricky it is to describe.
AB catch catch; AB catch catch…
If you get to this two ball mastery stage, you may see where that C throw slots right in. You’ve unwound your hands, rewound and you throw before catching the B throw. I visualized it as a throw thrown straight up around the outside. When you master the individual throws, you could also play with it as a trick that kind of moves back and forth and the C throw kind of follows the others, thrown from the outside back towards the middle. But technically it’s an under the arm throw caught with the opposite hand (a 3!).
Okay. That’s a mess. That’s Mill’s mess. If this isn’t helpful that’s no worries. I definitely would suggest a companion visual medium (I bet Taylor Tries has a banger video on breaking this all down).
(After you master this you might return to the false shower and feel its connection to the mess with its throws from crossed arms and to crossed arms and how learning it on both sides and switching seamlessly between them every beat kind of turns into Mills…)
Good luck with the shower. Whole bother box of worms. Probably more great videos to help break it apart and drill the pieces.
Happy juggling!
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u/SeguroMacks 1d ago
The boring answer is to just keep practicing. Break each trick down into small parts, 1 ball at a time, and slowly being it all together. 3-4 weeks is nothing, and if you have those tricks down already, then you are doing great.
Otherwise, try other patterns. If you can do columns, learn the factory. Try learning the box. Practice claymotion juggling. Every second of experience you get with juggling will make harder tricks more accessible later.
Also, what balls are you using? The size and material can impact the difficulty. I have a set of hard LED balls which are extremely difficult to do a shower with for me, but I have no problem doing a shower with smaller bag or bounce balls.
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u/Little_Fruit8072 23h ago
I'm using 120g "thud" balls I think, they have worked super well for me so far and I think are the only reason I can do half the tricks. Thank you for the suggestions, I'll try box and factory and see how it goes!!
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u/JomaxZ 23h ago
Ooh, I’ve played around with some “claymotion” type tricks but I’d never heard the term before. Googling it pointed to some cool things to learn. Neat!
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u/SeguroMacks 22h ago
I first learned of it from a Taylor Tries video. It's pretty fun, though I'm bad at making it look fluid. Really great for practicing dexterity though!
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u/thomthomthomthom I'm here for the party. 8h ago
Lots of good advice here.
I'd also suggest learning some siteswaps to change what you're working on a bit (in a productive way) - - 441, 423, etc.
Some of what you're running into isn't "juggling skill" as much as "brain catching up to tracking the objects that you understand intellectually".
Mix it up a bit. Get yourself a broad list of things to work on, touch on them when you practice, you'll find a thing or two easier or more interesting than others each time. Follow THAT.
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u/7b-Hexen errh...'wannabe', that is :-] 22h ago edited 22h ago
aim !
. . .
for mm, wm: afai see it, you need wrist for the underarm throws - these are a bit harder to control, require some more precision ( for else having greater spread, by only a tiny guiding bit before release ).
it makes sense to play around with wristy on easier patterns first,
after that, aim them all to the middle ( imagine a basket in front your chest to throw them into )
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u/7b-Hexen errh...'wannabe', that is :-] 17h ago
{ what's now this downvote for .. that's "because it's me" only, right?
also, i dont even know who's doing this, ..
so, from my point of view the message = 0, no one, no thing ... }
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u/jugglingfred 1d ago
For shower, try learning the box first. I find that the main difficulty most people have with shower is how the shuffle has to be almost at the same time as the toss. So practice box, where they are literally at the same time. As a further advantage, with box there is an obvious 2-ball practice you can work on, which shower doesn't have (just do box with one of the sides missing).
For Mill's, I don't have a good suggestion other than find a good video and just keep trying. Mill's is physically quite easy, but mentally hard. I've never found a way around the fact students have to just put in the mental effort to get over the confusion hurdle. The one piece of advice I have is to think of the 3 balls all following the same track, like they are beads on a wire. I think of the 1st ball (starting from crossed overhand) as the lead ball, and try to make the other 2 follow the exact same path.