Lesson 61: Five Ball Cascade

The five ball cascade is the basic pattern for juggling with five balls, with a simple siteswap 5. Although some five-ball multiplex patterns are easier than the cascade, the cascade is presented first.

Step 1 Siteswap 501 is a two-ball excercise for getting familiar with the required hight of a 5 throw.

Step 2 Siteswap 5511 is a three-ball excercise. Learn both sides separately.

Step 3 Siteswap 5551 is a four-ball excercise. Learn both sides separately.

Step 4 Learn how to start and stop with three balls in the same hand. Ball A is held with thumb, index and middle fingers. Ball B is held in the palm. Ball C is held with middle finger, ring finger and pinky. Throw C-A-B, and then with the other hand, catch A-B-C.

Step 5 Five throws of the cascade. After getting confident with five throws, practice six throws and so on. You will learn faster by making short controlled runs rather than always trying to run as long as possible.

Step 6 Congratulations, you now juggle the five-ball cascade.

There are a number of other excercises for the five-ball cascade, but I do not recommend them, because it is possible to cheat with the rhythm to get a similar but easier pattern, where instead of throwing a 5, you throw 4x. It is difficult to avoid slipping towards that at least a little bit. The patterns above do not have a similar problem and they are therefore the recommended ones. If you do use these, try to keep the asyncronous rhythm as exact as possible. Here is a list:
522 becomes (4x,2)*
52512 becomes (4x,2)(4x,2x)*
50505 becomes (4x,0)(4x,4x)*
552 becomes (4x,4x)
55550 becomes another (4x,4x)

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