Juggling Clubs

After a few years of working hard at juggling beanbags, I've finally become addicted to juggling clubs. It's much harder to practise indoors and there's a near-constant risk of seriously injuring one of my children. Now that I'm dropping less and learning some tricks, I'm really starting to like the clubs thing. And the kids are learning that my immediate vicinity is "the danger zone."

One day, I will learn to do this (or maybe not):



It's funny to watch Anthony Gatto do this in practice after seeing Cirque to Soleil, where a drumroll leads into a short run of maybe 14 catches of seven clubs like it's a huge deal for him.

Anthony Gatto backstage at Cirque

Now that I see this, I think Anthony Gatto could run a decent 100m joggling race with nine balls.

Cirque du Soleil's Kooza: a short review

Kooza was a magical mix of everything that can be good about a circus.

The clowns were actually funny, the live music was right on cue and filled the tent good vibes, the costumes were over the top but not freakish, the acrobats performed impossible stunts and the juggler was ... Anthony Gatto!

My kids were enthralled. Both girls sat through the entire two-hour-long performance with boogled eyes. The show was a seamless mix of stunts, artistic beauty, magic, laughs, lights and sounds. The closest thing to a dull moment was the magic act by the Pickpocket, who's routine seemed to plod compared to the zing of the other performers.

The highlight of my night was of course seeing my juggling idol perform live. Anthony was dressed in a suit of tiny mirrors and looked like a disco ball. His routine went straight into five balls with another ball bouncing on his head, progressed into clubs and culminated in a good run of nine rings and then seven rings put around the neck while he bounced a ball on his head. He dropped one thing: a beach ball that he was tossing on top of a metal post he had balanced on his chin.

These tricks might be easy for Anthony, but the audience was obviously flabbergasted to see someone juggle seven clubs, and frankly so was I; it was the first time I've seen someone do this in person. I liked how compact his act was – he jumped straight from one thing to the next and moved around the stage with ease while doing tricks. You could tell he was a joggler.

The only disappointment was not seeing the act that got rave reviews: the guy who stacks chairs on top of each other and then climbs to the top and does gymnastics.

But I was blown away by the "Wheel of Death," a giant metal contraption that consists of two human-sized hamster wheels that rotate is a big circle around a centre point by the momentum of the guys inside, or sometimes outside, the wheels. These guys had no safety nets and performed truly death-defying leaps, bounds and somersaults as the wheels spun around at a ridiculous pace.

If you're considering going to see Kooza, I have one word for you: go.

Kooza craziness

A full review will follow shortly, but for now let me just say that the Kooza Cirque du Soleil show did not disappoint. And neither did Anthony Gatto.

Cottage country update

Here a quick update from the cottage holiday:

• One great long joggle completes: 22 miles. When I got home, Lauryn (my two-year-old) asked me: "Did you have any drops?" I did have many drops, but I was doing a lot of tricks and looking around at the beautiful Precambrian Shield rock formations, so I had an excuse.
• One great hard interval run through rolling hills. The run was about 10 miles and I did 6 x 1 mile at GB (gut-busting) pace.
• One great day of marathon juggling. I had a nice patch of grass, three clubs, seven beanbags and several hours to burn. My back was killing me the next day, but it was the best juggling session ever. I pulled off a run of 14 catches with seven balls; I started to solidify my 3-up, three-ball pirouettes and the five-ball synronous and asynchronous half showers. It's so nice to juggle without a ceiling.
• Enough butter tarts, pie and beer to get me through the next four or five marathons.
• The whole family's really looking forward to seeing 'Kooza' next weekend. Anthony Gatto's routines don't look that hard by his standards, but it'll be such an experience just to see him in action.

"Juggling Show"

I took the day off from running and instead did some cross-training at home. The kids and I often do a thing called "Juggling Show," which involves me juggling and jumping around to music while the kids dress up as ballerinas and jump around and sometimes try to juggle. This was followed by an intense strength-training workout, including push-ups with a four-year-old girl sitting on my back.

I read an article recently about Anthony Gatto's practise methods. According to this write-up, Gatto practises 1-2 hours a day and during that time only spends about a minute working on any particular trick. He switches around continually between different props and numbers. This avoids the frustration of trying and failing one thing over and over, and that one minute per day per trick eventually leads you to mastery of many, many tricks. I've been following this training method and it does seem to work.

The Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon just announced that CBC Country Canada and cbcsports.ca will broadcast the race LIVE on Sept. 30, so if they happen to film me, it would likely be the first-ever live TV coverage of a joggling marathon.

Joggling with 7 clubs?

We have Kooza tickets. The whole family will be going to the new Cirque du Soleil show on September 1 in Toronto. I haven't seen the Cirque since my parents took me to the original show when I was about 12. Funny, this was around the same time I read about joggling in the Guinness Book.

As I mentioned before, juggler extraordinaire Anthony Gatto performs in Kooza and there's a bit of a spoiler on YouTube of his act, which he did at a press conference.

I know that Gatto has done some joggling at the IJA festivals in the past, and Barry Goldmeier joked about it being harder for him to joggle with three beanbags than with seven. This got me thinking ... Could Anthony joggle with seven clubs? Or with nine rings? Now that I would pay to see.

Joggling with clubs

I've been spending more time lately working on my clubs juggling. Dianne bought me a set of five Renegade clubs for Christmas, but I haven't had much time to use them because of the risk of dropping them on my kids' heads.


Zach told me he joggled with clubs when he appeared on ESPN last year because they wanted something more flashy than beanbags. Now that my clubs juggling is coming along, maybe it's time to give clubs joggling a whirl?

The guy you see juggling the clubs in the above photo is Anthony Gatto, and I just read that he is performing in the upcoming Cirque du Soleil show, Kooza. It's coming to Toronto in August and Gatto alone will be worth the admission. I'm going to book tickets.

For those of you not familiar with Gatto, watch this: