Hey everbody I play kendama for more or less 2 years now, but just did it occasionally in holidays for example, what means, my progress was really slow compared to people who play a lot. Since a couple of month, I kinda feel addicted to it and obviously ran into juggles. Right now, after a long period of trying it, i can do juggle to big cup quit consistently and juggle to spike maybe 1 time out of 15. Now i'm going for multiple juggles. My question here is, how is your individual juggling style, and how did you manage to do multiple juggles. Some people i saw, they keep the ken on the right side, and the tama on the left. Other people do the opposite. How do you do it and why? Thanks for your advise!
Hey! so when I learned to juggle it was about 15 years before I picked up a dama. So I learned with tennis balls. That's how I recommend figuring it out. The main thing I've learned about jugs is that you don't throw the next piece (ken or tama) until the first piece has hit it's highest point and starts to fall. It's all about height and timing. I also recommend learning with a hella long string because that helps with the frequent tangles. Also! dont be like me and learn them all weird. Try to learn with the ken consistently on the outside of your body (left if you're left or right if you're righty), or learn with one in front of the other. This will help if you ever start practicing insta lighthouses in your juggle lines. I hope I didn't overload with info, and I hope it helps! Happy slaying.
Definitly practice with tennis balls (as Dillon Johns stated) first. If you can't multiple juggle balls then trying to juggle kendama with the added effort of flipping the ken is going to be very tough. Practicing with extremely long string and/or no string at all is the best way to learn. This way when you mess up you know that it is completely your fault and not the string's. After you learn how to control each juggle you will be able to return to a more all-around-play-style friendly(aka shorter) string. You will know how to keep your juggles condensed and timed. Practice practice practice! It took me months to finally get them down. DM me on any other social media with a clip of you doing a few juggle attempts and I can give you specific tips. This is open to anyone. Dama on!
Thanks for the good advises. I used to juggle with 3 or 4 tenniskindaballs, so i have this juggle motion in mind. What happens, when i try to do multiple juggles with the kendama is, that i'm too slow to catch an throw the ken wihle the tama is coming down... Should i focus on throwing the tama higher or on getting faster, whats your experience?
I have been playing for a little bit over a year and I can get at most 20 juggles. it took a lot of practice and I focus on the ball the whole time I'm juggling. I just happened to lace 10 juggles to spike. I am still having a big problem tracking the hole when I'm going for multiple juggles to spike so I still have a lot of work to do.