JUGHEADS
Youth Juggling Company, LLC
5905 Concord Avenue
Edina, MN 55424
jugheads@comcast.net
or 952.926.0896

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March 2000

“The Progress Process”

The best part of coaching juggling for a living is that I get to continue the learning process every day. It’s a necessary requirement of my job, because when I’m juggling or passing, it motivates more kids do the same. I often state that the art and sport of juggling has an infinite range of skill and expression possibilities, and I try to demontrate that by constantly learning new tricks or going for higher and longer records.

But it isn’t always easy. For instance, I didn’t qualify 5 balls until I’d juggled for six years. It was another 3.5 years until I qualified 7 balls! (“Qualify” indicates at least two catches of every object.) Even with 4 balls or 3 ball tricks like the Mills’ Mess, I have reached plateaus which have lasted months, with seemingly no progress to show for my efforts.

However, I’ve learned to teach myself over the years: “Every workout is valuable;” “Don’t expect to get a record every day;” “Don’t give up or get frustrated too easily.” One of my innovative hereos, Thomas Edison, is the poster boy of not giving up. He took over 10,000 attempts before perfecting the storage battery! Perhaps his most famous quote is, “Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” And that’s what we do at JUGHEADS. We try. We sweat. We try again. We rehearse. We drop. We pick up. We try again. Such is life, and the rewards of achievement are sweet.