Headbounce tutorial!
Hey friends!
I wrote a little blog post that talks about fundamental headbounce technique. Curious to hear if you have any thoughts on the matter that I may have missed ("adding the juggle" will come in a later article.)
https://thomwall.com/lets-bounce-ball-heads/
Hope you dig it!
-Thom
Let’s close that third eyeball up and bounce a ball on it.
Hahahaha!
I learnt to bounce a ball on my head for ~20 bounces a while ago, but I dismissed going further as, "not worth the effort". Then I was pretty much entirely put off by hearing an anecdote of an amazing head bouncer that performed at one of the Israeli Juggling Conventions, he was doing lots of amazing things like bouncing a rugby ball consistently but someone who spoke to him said that he could barely string a sentence together. I believe there have been studies on the long term damage caused to football (soccer) players from header training. While I do love juggling, I'm not willing to risk (further) brain damage.
Spare a thought for the Chinese pot jugglers who catch those very large ceramic pots on their heads.
Back in the day, I knew some people who had trained with a Chinese troupe - the pot juggler was affectionately known as Lumpy because of the callouses on his head. Part of his training regime was to stand with his head pushing against the corner of a wall to make/maintain a groove for catching the pot on its edge, like this: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tk09cW4HR08/hqdefault.jpg
From all accounts he was a very sweet guy, but definitely not the sharpest tool in the box...
Part of his training regime was to stand with his head pushing against the corner of a wall to make/maintain a groove
Holy crap!
I used to think I was dedicated because I used to put a lot of hours in... Definitely not willing to mutilate myself for my craft.
If you take away the brain-damage aspect, it could probably be argued that it's not so far removed from weight-training to increase strength/stamina.
Although, when you stop weight training your muscles return to their 'normal' size. I'm not so sure about a groove in the skull...
Daniel Simu - - Vorredner #
Oof! I had never heard of that, but a quick google confirms that there is football heading research suggesting negative effects indeed. Now the impact of a headbouncing ball is much less than that of a football, especially of a light one, but the repetetion probably much higher. I wonder if there is a way to reasonably predict the effect of low impact high repetition brain shakes?
Relevant programme from the BBC: Alan Shearer: Demntia, Football and Me, available on iPlayer. Alan Shearer has agreed to donate his brain to medical research once he's finished using it.