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Difficulty: 5 - Advanced Trick
Siteswap: ?
Prerequisite Skills: Cascade
Watch Video - WMV - 0.9 MB
Popcorn Balls is something I made up using a little trick I used to do when I played baseball. I remember sitting in the dugout between innings, being bored, and doing all kinds of goofy tricks with the baseballs (that's how I started a lot of my juggling). This is the trick where you use the inside of your elbow to pop the ball back up into your hand. When you add it to a Cascade pattern, it make a very awkward (but cool) looking juggling pattern.
Instructions:
First practice the elbow pop with just one ball. Hold the ball up in your hand with your palm facing you and your elbow bent at a right angle. Now, let that ball drop down towards the inside of your elbow. Before the ball hits your arm, quickly extend (straighten) your arm. This will cause the inside of your elbow to go up, and hit the falling ball. The ball will then fly into the air. Then you catch it. This will take a lot of practice to get the timing right.
Watch Video - WMV - 0.7 MB
Now that you've that down, you'll need to add it into your juggling pattern. Start by just doing with one arm, every once in a while. While juggling the cascade pattern, catch one of the balls and hold it out with your elbow at a right angle. Then when you're about to catch a ball in that hand again, do your elbow pop thing. That ball should then fly over to the other hand, and your elbow pop arm is now extended, ready to catch the incoming ball. Then resume juggling your cascade pattern.
The hard part about this trick is getting the ball to fly out consistently with the same height and direction. It's a bit of a crap shoot as to where the ball will end up going when it hits off your elbow. Doing this trick once out of a cascade is not that difficult. But, to run this trick on every throw not only requires an accurate elbow pop trajectory, but it also needs some pretty fast hand speed to recover all the catches and prepare for the next hit.
Variations:
Triple Bump - Here's another trick I made up that uses the Popcorn Ball elbow pop. I just use the back of my hand, my elbow, and then the inside of my elbow (in succession) to hit a ball back to the other hand. I think this trick looks pretty cool, and it always surprises the spectators.
Watch Video - WMV - 0.7 MB
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