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Difficulty: 3 - Intermediate Trick
Siteswap: 3
Prerequisite Skills: 3-Ball Chops, Club Cascade
Watch Video - WMV - 0.6 MB
If Mills Mess is considered the quintessential 3-Ball trick, then I would say Chops are the quintessential trick for clubs. Watch any street performer or circus juggler, and you're sure to see him doing Chops somewhere in his routine.
Instructions:
Chops may look simple, but it's not that easy to learn. I had a bit of trouble with chops for a while. I would suggest that you first learn to do Chops with balls. Once you've got the basic pattern down, then you can start to practice with clubs.
Start out by practicing an under-arm throw with one club out of three. That under-arm throw allows your other hand to come down with a club in it, to make the chopping motion. For example, use your right hand to throw under your left arm. To get your left arm out of the way of the upcoming club, make the chop motion with the club in that hand. Then when that left club is at the bottom of the chop motion, throw it up from right there. So, you will be throwing from a low position, and catching them from a high position.
Chops takes a lot of practice to get good and consistent. Keep practicing, and eventually you'll get it down. After you've got a decent chop, you can start to try different ways of exaggerating the chop. One of my friends really chops hard and fast. I mean if you got in the way of his chops, you could really get injured. While another friend of my uses the knobs of his clubs to make nice flowing chops with a large sweeping motion.
Variations:
You can do chops with double spins to give you more height to the pattern and more time to perfect or exaggerate your chop motion.
You can add chops almost anywhere that the basic cascade is used. I like to add chops to club passing while doing a 4-count pass.
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