Throwing high and throwing low

There has been a trend during the past few years to find all kinds of variations of patterns where you combine very high throws with very low throws. Some of the most difficult variations of these involve throwing at the same time with both hands, the other hand throwing high, the other one low.

I guess we have to blame Jay Gilligan for really starting the trend with his 1995 IJA club routine. Remember the 3 club pattern where he throws at the same time with both hands, other hand doing a crossing double in the front, while the other hand does a single spin trebla back to the same hand. Then repeating the same thing from the other side. So it’s a synchronous pattern, with a crossing high throw and a low self throw. If you haven’t tried this before, try the basic rhythm with three balls first. Take two into your right hand, one into your left. Throw a high throw (like if you did one throw from a seven ball cascade) from the right, crossing it to the other side and exactly at the same time make a low throw (like one throw from a very low four ball pattern) from your left. As soon as this low throw comes back to your left hand do the same thing to the other side.

You have two main difficulties in this pattern. One is to be able to throw to different directions at the same time, the other is to be able to use a different amount of force on two simultaneous throws. To get the pattern working you need a vast difference in the heights of the two throws. As you try to throw higher with your other hand, you’ll most likely end up adding force to the other throw as well… This pattern is even more difficult with clubs, using single and double spins, as you have to do a slow, lofty double spin without using your wrist at all, while doing a low wristy single spin on the other side. Single-triple would be cheating, for then you wouldn’t have to worry about the wrist vs. arm aspect. Single-single anyone?

That is the popular basic pattern with three. It works in reverse as well: with a crossing low throw, and high self throw made at the same time.

The site-swaps for these patterns are: (6x,4)(2,0)(4,6x)(0,2) for the more common one and (6,4x)(0,2)(4x,6)(2,0) for the reverse version. Even from the two’s and zero’s in the notation you can see the space they have for you to mess with.

These two simple (?) patterns have a lot of interesting variations with the two throws done in different ways. You could try the following possibilities with balls:

For the high throw:

Throw from the outside of the pattern, shoulder throw, reverse shoulder throw, back cross…

For the low throw:

Under the arm throw, under the arm catch, shoulder throw, reverse shoulder throw, back cross, reverse back cross (either under or over the opposite arm), over the head, penguin catch, blind behind the back, catch behind your head, bounces…

With clubs (besides all those mentioned above):

Low throw: Albert, Trebla, reverse spin (can do this with single-single continuously :-), flat, helicopter spin (this is nice as a double-double), dip, French chop, thumb roll (with singles as the high throws), floor bounce, wall bounce, double spin…

High throw: Out side, backcross, shoulder throw, helicopter spin, ceiling bounce, flat, single spin…

Now here’s a weird one: do the reverse version making it lower and lower, until you finally end up with… the Box. Then do the more common version (crossing high throws, and low self throws) and make it lower and lower until you end up with…a three ball cascade. So this must mean that the Box is the reverse version of the cascade! Or is it…

If you are happy with synchronised siteswaps (if not, a quick leap into the siteswap FAQ on Allen Knutson’s web page will help: www.juggling.org/help/siteswap/faq.html#gen) you probably already know the answer to this question. So is the box (4,2x)(2x,4) really the reverse version of the cascade 3? Of course the answer is no, but the box is the reverse version of the slow, robotic cascade (4x,2)(2,4x). This shows the important difference between a slowed down and a ‘normally’ timed pattern. We’ll talk more about this in a future article about dwell time.

NUMERICS

We all love 531. With clubs you have a lot of possibilities for variation here: the 3 as a helicopter spin, outside throw, chin or head roll, or everything in a random mix of flat front and behind the back throws. Talking about Jay again, in IJA 1999 he did another interesting high-low pattern: 64203. It reads rather boring on the paper, but if you try it you’ll notice how much time and space you have for weird variations. For start, try an under the arm throw as the 4. One of my favourites with balls is to throw the 4 from under the opposite arm, but instead of catching it over the arm, slap it back and catch it under the opposite arm again (thanks Minh Tam and Niklas!). Another nice one is to throw the 6 crossing behind you, then do the 4  as a behind the head throw, turn very quickly 180 degrees and continue. What you are doing here is a half pirouette under a high and a low throw. (If you do the 4 behind your head from your right, turn left). With clubs I’ve recently been playing with the 6 as a flat front triple, the 4 as a throw and catch behind the back (single spin, just wait there and catch it again) and the 3 as a flat front single. Could work with the 6 and 3 in backcross as well. Have fun…

Some time ago I was trying 441 with higher throws, up to the height 6. When doing the first 4 normally, but the second one up to the height 6, you end up waiting for a long time before you start the sequence again from the other side. You can decrease the wait by throwing these 4 and 6 at the same time: (4,6)(2x,0)(6,4)(0,2x), which is actually a really nice pattern to juggle. The same thing with 531: throw the 5 to height 7, synchronise the throws and you end up with: (6x,4x)(2x,0)(4x,6x)(0,2x). After juggling these patterns for a while, I started to realise that they were actually nothing more but four ball synchronous patterns, with one ball missing! When you write them down, it’s easy to see where to fit the fourth ball, but remember, I had ended up with them by juggling, so you might want to try to solve the problem of adding one ball to each without the use of notation. This leads to what I call ‘ghost ball’ patterns. That’s patterns, which are actually patterns with a higher number of balls, with one or more balls missing, leaving more space and time for… whatever you want to use the space and time for! Please notice, that this does not simply mean just patterns with 0’s, because you can remove balls from multiplex patterns without ending with 0’s. And likewise you can hype up normal patterns to become multiplex patterns…More on this in the future.

The author of this series is Maksim Komaro who is one of the organisers of 5-3-1 Festival of New and Experimental Juggling in Helsinki, Finland. He’s also part of Peapot Video, who recently released praised three ball juggling video 3b Different Ways. Maksim currently works as a full-time teacher for object manipulation for Cirkus Cirkör’s Cirkus Piloterna in Stockholm, Sweden.