Athletes who can solve complex motor problems succeed more. Sure the motor patterns are somewhat specific so the less your sport looks like juggling the less directly beneficial it will be. Specific for cricketers, not so specific for curling or ironman.

If this specificity argument is true why then can we say that:

Every athlete should learn to juggle!

I remember a challenge my father, Brian Smith, set for the Parramatta Eels (Australian NRL) one off-season. ‘Make sure you can juggle by the time you come back!’

To get good at solving complex problems you have to go through failure!

Only athletes who can accept ‘failure’ as part of the process to becoming the best, can be the best.

Athletes who ‘play it safe’ are taking the biggest risk of all!

Picture this, a kid learning a new skill. In the first few hours of practicing something new people tell him ‘you’re not talented’, or ‘you should have learned that when you were younger.’

The reality is you haven’t spent enough time getting good at what you want to be good at. I’ve read lots of mainstream skill development books: Bounce, Outliers, Talent is Over-Rated, Talent Code, Mastery, and recently The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman. From these books it’s clear that to become great at anything takes a long time and quality practice!

Learn to juggle today – it’s a 1-60 minute skill!

At workshops I will sometimes give people 3 balls and say go! No instruction. 2 minutes later I ask them to use 1 word to describe their experience. Most of them say: frustrating, challenging, difficult, annoying.

When the reality is, within 2 minutes of instruction and 5 minutes of practice, most of the attendees are well on their way to juggling!

Once you can get 4 consecutive throws from the same hand without an error you can consider yourself to be juggling.

Applying the juggling principle.

Learning to fail helped me get selected for the Australian indoor hockey squad.

As a young hockey player 10-16, it was all about the team. My teams consistently over-achieved and I worked hard to get the most out of every member. Sometimes a little too hard, beyond the level that others were wanting to be helped. But still I wasn’t making the representative teams, while more “selfish” players who couldn’t read the play or do as much for their teammates were wearing state and national colours.

When I started playing in Sydney and making some state teams I got the chance to meet Brent Livermore, Mick Mcann and Jamie Dwyer. You may or may not have heard of these guys, but to me, in my late teens, these guys were super-stars. What I saw is that they worked very hard on individual skills and that they were much more skilful on the ball than I was.

Be more selfish to contribute more.

Over the next 2 years I worked hard on everything I was bad at:

  • Goal shooting
  • Drag flicks
  • Dribbling
  • Beating players 1v1
  • Stealing the ball aggressively (rather than just blocking and channeling)

The result?

I went from not making state teams to being a key player. We won the national u21 championships and I felt like I wasn’t too far from making the Australian u21’s team. I may have been deluded, but at least in my own self-image I had reached a much higher level. I was also drag flicking on short-corners for club, state and even german club teams rather than being the ‘trapper’ who stopped the ball for the ‘drag flicker.’

How did I get there?

By doing what I wasn’t good at over and over.

Get good at dealing with failure to be the best!

Juggling teaches you to fail, and keep getting better.

Kobe Bryant is the 4th highest all-time points scorer in the NBA. He has also missed the most shots in NBA history. Even the best players have to accept failure to be the best.

Reasons to juggle everyday:

  • Improve the right and left brain connection
  • It’s fun!
  • You can always progress
  • It allows you to be creative in developing new moves
  • If you’re juggling everyday then your juggling improves every day!
  • You will inspire other people to juggle and therefore overcome self limitation
  • Improved self-belief
  • Improved hand-eye co-ordination
  • It’s a great way to take a break from desk / digital work
  • Portable
  • Sharpens concentration and focus
  • May prevent Alzheimer’s (according to nature – journal)
  • Prevents ageing!
  • Keep joints young and avoid falls through better co-ordination

Makes your brain grow

Changes in white matter from juggling – a loss of white matter is one of the key risk factors to memory loss and Alzheimer’s

Be a life-long learner and contribute to creating a better world by joining ichoosemovement

Not surprisingly there are a bunch of juggling videos on Ted – youtube for people with a growth mindset.

Read original article at realmovementproject.com