Juggling - my favorite way to exercise
In one blog, I rambled about the many benefits of juggling. To summarize:
Juggling is fun and impressive
Juggling is a great way to meditate or relax
Juggling literally makes your brain grow
Juggling is a cheap, easy hobby
Juggling is a great way to exercise (your body and mind)
People love to exercise in different ways. Some people do yoga (or acroyoga--if they have fit friends and no trust issues), lift weights, ride bikes, hike, or even run (I 100% admire runners, but if you ever see me running, send help; I'm running from something--not a joke ). These are all great ways to exercise, but I don't think most people even consider juggling when they're thinking about ways to exercise. This is probably because most people haven't even tried juggling, so it's very easy to assume it requires little or no physical effort.
It does.
Think about a juggling club... sorry, back up. Think about a bowling pin; now realize that a juggling club is a completely different object, used for juggling, but it has a roughly similar shape. Now, think about a juggling club. A juggling club weighs close to half a pound, so to throw it up and into the other hand only requires a small amount of effort. But when a person is juggling, he or she is throwing that half-pound club into the air around two hundred times per minute. This doesn't even account for any fancy stuff that can be added to a basic three club juggle:
Spinning
High throws
Very fast throws
Under the leg throws (which feels like jogging in place, while juggling)
Behind the back throws (includes lots of head movement)
Walking/jogging and juggling at the same time
So much can be added to a basic juggling pattern, but no matter what tricks are being done, the juggler is still throwing hundreds of clubs per minute, which becomes a pretty substantial workout.
Let me show you how I know juggling is real exercise.
Occasionally, I do walkaround juggling performances--a performance in which I roam around at some event, juggling clubs and interacting with guests, to help give the event a fun, unique atmosphere. Because juggling is such a workout, I try to limit these types of performances to two hours. But hey, money talks, so from time to time, I'll do walkaround gigs for up to four hours--then I go home and eat pizza in the bathtub.
To demonstrate how much exercise juggling can be, I've attached some graphs of my active calorie burn and exercise minutes (recorded via Apple Watch) during one four-hour walkaround juggling performance.
This graph displays how many calories I burned from activity (this is usually around 500 on an average day).
This one shows how many minutes I was exercising, determined by my movement and heart rate.
Can you tell when I was juggling?
As you can see from these graphs, it's clear that the time I spent juggling is when I was burning the most calories and doing the most exercise. So, in case the other benefits just aren't enough, maybe you'd like to pick up juggling simply because it's a fun, easy, relaxing way to do some real exercise.
If you're ready to learn, feel free to watch my How To Juggle video tutorial! If you want more personal instruction, get in touch with me; I'd be happy to help you learn how to juggle so you can have fun while you exercise your brain and body!
