Warming Up by Steven Ragatz

Visualization and Juggling by Steven Ragatz

Numbers Training by Steven Ragatz

Throw height and rate by Steven Ragatz

I attended a circus school that was led by a Moscow circus fellow for a short time. Apart from being yelled at across the studio to keep my elbows in, he too forced me to learn to bounce a ball on my head, though he never said why. At the time, I was lucky to get five or six bounces, but because it was interjected into my must-learn-trick list, I continued to work on it long after the school experience. After several years, I did figure it out. I never used it in any show for ten years, even though I would practice it every time I trained, out of habit I guess. Then, when I was working with Pat McGuire in the circus, Pat brought to the act his incredible head rolls that he performed solo. We needed something for me to do to counter that trick. "Well," says I, "I can bounce a ball on my head." Lo and behold, all those years of working that stupid trick paid off and a bevy of head bouncing variations were included into the act as my solo. It turned out to be a high point and my salvation.

Equilibristic skills are a fundamental building block for the juggler's vocabulary. Balancing, and bouncing, on various parts of the body surely increase one's physical awareness as well as provide useful elements for combination tricks. The lesson here is that there is no training that doesn't influence the juggler's overall skills. My arguments are for structured, cross training.

Steven Ragatz