– This includes the juggler’s all time favourite… of not warming up at all!
There are many ways to warm into juggling.
Some of us train progressively with props, starting off perhaps with just one prop. Others enjoy jogging, (or joggling), skipping a rope, push and pull up type exercises…
Others like Yoga based exercises and perhaps Feldenkreis or Alexander Technique.
Warming up though, although a valid reason, isn’t just about avoiding injury. It also helps us access our body’s intrinsic intelligence. It’s also about wakening up spacial awareness and presence.
Meaning that our training sessions will become possibly much more effective!
- In my workshops and juggling retreats, we use a number of techniques to help improve the quality of our juggling and training, loosening joints and muscles, improving mobility, increasing the body’s intelligence and of course safeguarding injury.
Here’s a short Qi Gong and Functional Movement sequence that I hope you might find useful as a mind and body warm up before juggling.
This video contains just a few exercises that were filmed during one of my Fluid Juggling Intensive Workshops in Italy… there are many many more exercises but I find these are a good choice to start with. For best results do them will full awareness, at the start you may find them too soft, or not really understand them. Watch in detail how to do them. Listen to your body during and after and don’t do them mechanically. Really be there with the movements with an idea of making them more fluid and effortless.
If you’re serious about maximising benefits try them everyday before training for between one month and a year or so.
Some light stretching after training and perhaps even five or ten minutes laying down in relaxation will further increase benefits to your body, your juggling allowing the brain to elaborate the data and the body to release fatigue.
Love to hear how they go.
Many thanks,
Anthony Trahair
Jugglingisart@pearlsofjugglinggmail-com
Check out my book Pearls of Juggling on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27967634-pearls-of-juggling
Download a Free PDF of the movement chapter and introduction here