Weight training for injury prevention by Steven Ragatz

Warming Up by Steven Ragatz

Visualization and Juggling by Steven Ragatz

Numbers Training by Steven Ragatz

At some point in the training process for any skill, it becomes a mental game. Once you have gotten to a five cascade, you probably have pretty much figured out juggling. After all, it's not rocket surgery. The hands can move X fast and the balls can be thrown Y high and yet you can't do the trick. The brain is what gets in the way.

I often tell myself, and others, that a trick isn't learned until it has moved into the hands. At first, every trick in in the head, that is, you think about the parts and have to deal with each trial reactively. It takes conscious effort. Eventually, through the training process, that "intelligence" is transferred from the head to the hands. For example, if you are a five object juggler, you probably can cascade three while talking to someone, walking around and generally not paying any attention to it - it is a skill that has already transferred to the hands and the pattern no longer requires constant maintenance.

Having to consciously identify parts of the body and adjust tension levels is part of that transition from head to hands. Eventually, you can get the hands to take over and maintain proper position, tension, control, etc., but in the mean time, you have to explicitly tell them to do so.

Many times, I catch myself projecting the difficulty of a trial before I even start. It is a common tendency to do things like:
look up first, just to make sure that the ceiling is there
drop one foot behind
tense
hold my breath
do funky things with my tongue or grid my teeth

Any of these are indicators that I have not really convinced myself that the trial is going to work, let alone be beneficial. Most everyone agrees that the posture of the body reflects the mental state of the individual. But, the converse is also true as the posture of the body influences the mental state. As such, if I take a moment before the trial to align myself correctly, maintain good posture for the trick, relax and exhale on the first throws, I am aiding in creating that mental state of control and a positive image.

Of course, this is a metaphorical concept, as all the control does indeed come from the head, but the imagery is one that has helped me turn a difficult trick into an easy one. The thinking is along the same lines as visualization and mental practice. Any technique that you can do to trick the mind into believing it can accomplish the task is going to aid you.

Even ignorance can be a useful tool. I was at the pool yesterday picking up my daughter. I got there early and was watching the kids dive off the one meter springboard. This one kid would run off the end and try to throw a double tuck. He repeatedly landed a quarter rotation short on his back. He kept getting up, and doing it again and smacking much to the groans of the other kids. Having taught beginning diving before, I finally called him over to the fence and gave him a couple of tips. He was most enthusiastic and attentive. He then got back up on the board and threw his first double! He didn't come out, and he landed on his butt, but that is a great improvement to peeling the skin off of the back!

Anyway, he said that he had learned to do a one and a half just yesterday. He hadn't even learned a proper diving approach yet nor had he ever seen anyone do (or not do) a double. He really didn't have any idea that it should be a difficult trick for him, and hence, saw no reason why he shouldn't be able to just do one.

The experience was a good lesson for both of us.