Practice Areas

Where do you practice? Email me a paragraph or two and I'll put it on this page so we can share our innovations and embarrassments.

Betty is shown trying out the portable bounce cage assembled by Jaye Butler in the Sovereign Center during the IJA Festival at Reading, PA. It's made of PVC piping and netting from a trampoline.

Jared Davis

I went to the hardware store and bought a roll of plastic sheeting (used by painters).  It's 10 feet by 25 feet and it cost $7.  It is fairly durable and mine is yet to tear.  I simply hung the sheeting from the ceiling in the basement and it works great.  Not just for bouncing but for juggling too.

Greg Phillips

At the IJA fest in Reading this year, Jaye Butler had her portable bounce cage (see above) set up at one end of the floor for anyone to use. Lots of people who are much better bouncers than me got lots of good use out of it.

And it got me thinking. I'm a crappy bounce juggler, due to a vicious circle: If you bounce badly, you end up chasing the balls all over the damn place when they caroom off each other, which means practice is no fun, which means you don't practice, which means you stay a crappy bounce juggler forever. Obviously a cage is The Answer[1].

But I wanted something cheap. Jaye's setup is made from PVC plumbing parts and trampoline safety netting. It must have cost at least, well heck, at least US$20. Ain't no way I'm spending that. I could buy almost half a sillie for that!

So I go for a walk in the woods behind my house for inspiration. And pretty soon inspiration strikes, in the form of a fairly long hunk of semi-rigid plastic snow fence (hey, this is Canada!) just lying there amongst the trees. So, I take it home, cut off the ratty ends, use them to patch the holes, wrap the thing into a tube, and fasten it together with some velcro cable ties I had lying around. Total cost: about CDN$0.99 or US$0.61 (for the cable ties). Works like a charm, and rolled up tight it takes up next to no space in the trunk of my car.

[1] "The Answer" to any problem of juggling technique is always more gear. Right?

[editor: Greg Phillips is a member of the Nanaimo Park Jugglers, Ottawa Canada.]
 

Stephen Birmingham

I have discovered that a decent marble shop almost always has a decent size garbage bin, which is filled with... You guessed it MARBLE. In every size and color you might want. I went overboard and built a spare deck onto the house with the extra, but I did manage to keep a few decent size(40pds's or about 18kg depending) chunks for working with. I highly recommend this method for everyone who has a phone book with Marble listed in it. I grabbed about 50 chunks before I stopped. Just a thought for the few jugglers out there who are not willing to pay $75 for a slab of marble.

Lloyd Ramsey

I also got a slab of stone from a stone yard, "dressed" not polished, which was good enough; but it was too small to be stable. On the rug it is useless. Putting it on bare wood flooring did not give a good bounce like concrete, and made a lot of noise. What I finally did was paint (many layers) the concrete door stoop, which is fine for lacrosse balls. It slopes for drainage, but I just adapt to that. For indoors on wood, I use racquetballs filled with water, which bounce quite well enough for my beginner work, and which I strongly recommend especially for younger beginners (see prev. post at rec.juggling).

Matt Bradehorst

Hi, my name's Matt Bradehorst and I'm part of The Great All-American Youth Circus, based in Redlands, CA.....I'm the advanced juggling act trainer and I love being a part of our Circus, which is the oldest community Circus in the world.....Our web site: http://www.ycircus.org   Anyway, my practice area is mainly the Roy Coble SuperGym at the Redlands YMCA.....This gym was built specifically for our Circus and has many unique features that have to be seen to be believed.....It has a floating hardwood floor that is constantly shifting (though we can't feel it) and is much more forgiving when someone falls on it than a floor with the concrete directly under it.....Usually when I practice, I set up a little "bounce area" with at least 1 if not more 6'x 10' foldout mats, which I stand up and form a wall with to keep the balls from getting away and driving me crazy.....I love the gym because it has all the traditional lines and marks on the floor for basketball and such, and they're perfect for practicing many patterns/tricks.....

John Jones

Trying to find the perfect place to bounce can always be a problem. I used to bounce in the garage, though chasing Oddballs behind tools and lawn mowers isn't too fun. I have yet to find one that I lost over a year ago. After about six months of garage bouncing, I discovered that the dog stays in a cage downstairs that is about four feet tall (no roof or cover) and about seven feet by seven feet---perfect. Well, almost perfect, the cage is made with wood and wire and the wire wears the Oddballs after time. A little reconstruction and the cage will be good enough for Sillies. The cage is great for working on numbers because the balls just bounce right back. Well, to make the story short, the dog is outside and the cage is equipped with a table for tunes and brew ( no bud allowed) ....Later---Johnny Bounce

Steve Anderson

I have a wonderful practice space down in my basement. The floor is made of cement which I covered with black tile squares. It has a nice consistent bounce. One cement wall and 3 plastic security fencing sides so no running after balls. Two 100 watt bulbs for good lighting. Of course a stereo and shelves behind the fence for setting my beer and my silicone balls. I have been fortunate to have had very talented jugglers over to check this space out. The only negative is the typically low ceiling in a basement that doesn't allow me to juggle more than four balls up. So converting 5 up to 5 down and back up is brutal. If there are any serious bounce jugglers coming thru Grand Rapids, Mich come check it out.

Isaac Orr

I have no idea who might be interested in such details, but I think my practice area is rather amusing: I dreamed of having a marble slab for bouncing, so my wife got me a big slab of Jericho-Stone (a kind of fake marble--apparently marble costs a horrendous amount of money here in Israel) for my birthday last year. I dug a shallow "grave", poured in some concrete and floated the slab on top. Then I allowed some grass to grow all the way to the edges and now I have a bouncer's dream - it's flat, super smooth and uniformly bouncy, and there's grass growing all the way to its edges so balls missing the slab don't go anywhere (and also can't hit the edges of the slab which are earth level on account of the slab being half buried). So where's the amusing part? Since it's outside I almost never use it (it's either too sunny, too dark, too warm, too cold, etc.) and I almost exclusively bounce on my crappy, uneven and crack filled living room floor! @#$%@#$

Dave Critchfield

I became frustrated trying to learn 7 in the hallway on a hardwood floor. The slats were uneven and the inconsistency was very annoying. I convinced my wife to let me turn the sunroom into The Bounce Palace. I then went to a stone yard and bought a slab of polished granite (4'11" x 3'6" x 1 1/4" thick). I found the right size in the yard so I didn't have to pay extra for them to cut it. This slab is big enough for two of us to stand on and bounce pass. For solo practice, there's plenty of room, even though my pattern tends to walk around a little. This slab is HEAVY. It took 4 of us to wrestle it into place and now it's there to stay. (The stone yard gave us 3 smaller slabs for free which 1 person can carry around for individual practice.) The floor in the sunroom, I mean Bounce Palace, is brick pavers. I got a cheap piece of indoor/outdoor carpeting (thin), put that down, and then the slab is on top of that. The bounce surface is PERFECT. To finish the Palace off, I removed all the wicker furniture to eliminate things that balls could roll under. Got a couple of barstools and stereo speakers (I always listen to music when bouncing.). The only other item in the room is a foosball table--but that's a hobby for a different web page. With the Palace finished, I now can enjoy drinking Guinness with my buddy and bouncing into the evening.

The Bounce Page was established 11-7-99