Newbie would appreciate guidance

I hope this is not an inappropriate place to bring it up, but...

I am your basic klutz, 44 years old, convinced that taking up juggling would be a good idea. I live in a small town. I know of no other jugglers within a four-hour drive (or without a four-hour drive for that matter).

I've got a set of juggling beanbags about 2 1/2". They may not be superior to anything but tennis balls, but at least they are superior to tennis balls.

I took up this calling on Aug. 22 and after 10 days, I've got a decent 3-ball flash with spurts of an actual cascade going on. My original goal was three balls solid by Christmas. This still seems like a reasonable goal. Eventually, I'd like to be able to juggle some 3-ball tricks, a 4-ball shower, maybe rings, and toss 3 or 4 clubs. I figure I've got 20 years or less to get it all done. I don't know how reasonable that is, assuming I remain healthy of course.

My question has to do with practice. I get in a total of about 30-40 minutes a day, sometimes broken up over several sessions. There is more time available, but at this point I don't seem to have the stamina or frustration tolerance to do much more. I've found that practicing over my couch makes picking up dropped balls much less taxing. Here's what practice is like:

* I'm focusing on trying to toss to points in space about a foot in front of my head, in front of each of my eyes (right hand to left eye, left hand to right eye).

* I'm trying hard to pop the balls out of the palms of my hands rather than roll them off my fingers.

* I'm also working to keep my hands down around my waist so that I have my forearms more or less parallel to the ground on catch and release. I seem to want to reach which causes my hands to rise.

* I'm trying to keep my hands moving generally in circles -- catching a little outside my body and making the toss a bit closer to the midline of my body. I don't know how successful I am at this. There doesn't seem to be much lateral motion in my hands.

I'm looking at the balls as they peak and trying to let the catches take care of themselves. If things aren't going well, I will put down a ball or two and work on tossing one ball well for a while, then graduating to a two-ball exchange when I feel the one ball is moving pretty well.

I'm noticing that I do better when the sun is up and before I get tired. My biggest problems at this point have to do with reaching and lunging. I also tend to drop seemingly catchable balls because I just never quite find the handle on them.

I've tried juggling in front of a wall to help with the lunging, but I still make a lot of errant tosses that are too far in front of me, or not far enough/too far across my body. I'm happy to say that I hardly ever mistakenly throw one over my shoulder. I'm guessing these problems will iron themselves out with good old fashioned repetitious practice, but I'm worried about learning bad habits.

My questions would be what things can help my practice be more productive? Is there any way to identify and correct bad habits early? Should I be working on another pattern besides the 3-ball cascade? It seems like working on tossing balls in columns with the right and left hands would be a handy thing to do -- is it too early to start working on that?

Sorry for the length. I'd appreciate any help I can get with this.

Thanks.

--
Mark E. Adams, 2004 -- drop the "dot" to email me.
http://adamslan.shyper.com -*- Mandriva User# 263042

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