The Guy in the video is a comedian named Chris Bliss and the video was tape on the tonight show. I'll bet you he has better reaction and faster hands than 90% of us. He is one cool cat!
I have been meaning to post a thread on this subject for quit some time so here it goes.
What does this have to do with your Uechi or MA? A LOT! In a self defense situation, sparing or practice, etc how much better do you think you could be if you could react faster and think 3 or 4 steps ahead of you opponent? Juggling is just 1 of many drills I would like to go over that can enhance your reaction, speed, thinking ability and many other useful tools we aspire to have.
Juggling forces the brain out of it's comfort zone. We all know that it works on eye hand coordination but it goes beyond that. As long as you're always trying new tricks or adding something to you juggling it will challenge your brain. They say we use less than 1% of this great piece of equipment in our head. Well juggling is a great way to fire off new synapses and starting increasing that percent. Juggling just so happens to work on our reaction and thinking ability. There was a study done on a variety of people that learned to juggle and juggled everyday. The out come was similar for all. Whether the people were VP's at large business that started to make better decisions, or athletes who outsmarted their opponent and had better reaction juggling increased their productivity.
Thinking ability in Uechi and MAs is critical right. Juggling is a great way to practice improve your thinking ability.
Here is the key. Find someone or a book to teach you how to juggle. A good book is Juggling for the complete Klutz
http://www.klutz.com/catalog/product.ph ... 8100&cat=1
Then as you learn to juggle don't settle. Force yourself to learn new tricks. If you need ideas let me know. After you think that you have mastered all the tricks we have to continue to challenge our brain. So we are going to make the brain do 2 tasks at once. This is where you can be creative. As you Juggle add some other task i.e. have someone call out numbers to you and add/multiply them up, walk through an obstacle course of cones, dribble a soccer ball with your feet. Just keep forcing your brain to work. Then if you want to move on try three tasks. Juggle, add and dribble the ball.
Don't get overwhelmed and be a quitter if you don't get it right away. The first time we learned to tie our shoes it didn't come easy but we stuck with it (or maybe you didn't and your still wearing slip ons or Velcro. nothing wrong with that either)
My point is the first time you do something it is harder each time after that you will get better. Was san-chin easy the fist time? After 5 years I'm still working on it. So stick with it and no saying I don't have time or I work in and office. Everyone has 2 minutes in a day to improve themselves.
I'll post some more reaction and thinking drills in the days to come.
Great people in our society work on all the little details to get ahead and soon all those little details add up to a big part leaving those who skip the little details in the dust.
Let me hear your feedback and progress!
