How crazy is it that I’ve been teaching people how to juggle for over 24 years? You might not know me yet, but I’ve been teaching people how to juggle since I learned when I was 8 years old. Once I learned how, I just had to tell everyone and show everyone what I learned.

So how long does it take to learn to juggle 4 balls? To be perfectly honest, it really depends on your level of juggling at this point. If you’re extremely comfortable with juggling 3 balls, it will take you less time. If you’re an absolute noobie it will take you a long time. On average though, I’d estimate it will take you around 3-5 hours of practice time to be able to juggle 4 balls.

Why do I say it will take around 3-5 hours of practice time? Well, it’s not going to be easy. The pattern of juggling 4 is drastically different from the pattern of juggling 3.

You are probably comfortable with juggling 3 balls at this point and want to be able to prove to yourself (or your spouse/friends) that you can juggle 4 balls next.

After all… most people can juggle 3 balls, but not everyone can juggle 4 balls. We both know you’re capable of juggling 4, so this should help you with getting it.

The “secret” behind juggling 4 balls is that the balls don’t cross in the pattern.

Here’s a video showing you How To Juggle 4 Balls.

Why Does It Take So Long To Learn To Juggle 4 Balls?

The reason it takes so long is that you are most likely going to have a problem with your non-dominant hand when you are juggling. If you are right-handed, your right-hand is probably going to be pretty comfortable with juggling 2 balls in the hand.

However, if you’re anything like me, your other hand is going to struggle a bit… by a “bit” I mean it’s going to be pretty bad. You’ll probably drop a lot with your weaker hand. If that’s the case, don’t worry you are not alone.

The idea is that you are going to need to practice 2 balls in each hand until you are extremely comfortable with it. I like to tell people to count to 50 throws in each hand before they start to attempt to juggle 4 balls.

Why do I do that? It’s because if you can’t consistently make 50 throws (without dropping) in each hand, when you are only doing one hand at a time, you won’t be able to combine it. When you combine both hands, chaos ensures haha.

Basically what happens if you try to juggle 4 too quickly is that the pattern gets out of wack and you’ll struggle to keep the pattern up. The balls will collide in the air and your focus will be all over the place.

By practicing with each hand separately, you’ll be able to identify problems in your pattern and work on correcting them. If you film yourself doing this, you’ll be able to see which throw it is that messes up the pattern. Many times it’s one of the first few throws that goes either too high, too low or it goes out in front of you. When that happens, the full pattern falls apart.

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

This was something I learned back in high school when I was playing sports. The idea makes a lot of sense with juggling if you think about it. If you are going to be practicing something or developing a new skill set, it’s best to make sure you are doing it right.

When you do something right the first time, and you continue to practice it the correct way, you get better quicker. It will be more work at the beginning, because you’ll want to stop if you mess up the pattern, but the discipline to do that now means later on down the road you’ll have faster improvement.

This is why above I mentioned that you should be able to juggle 2 balls in each hand for 50 throws before you attempt to juggle 4 balls simultaneously. When you are good and comfortable with each hand, it becomes so much easier to put the hands together.

It’s not easy, but you can do it!

While it may take you less time than the 3-5 hours of juggling 4 balls to really “get it” and have the pattern down, the reason I said it takes that much time is because you’ll need to practice. You will likely get a little frustrated and need to take breaks while learning.

It will also take time for the pattern to really click while you’re doing it. Many times you’ll get 10-15 throws into the pattern and you’ll mess up. To really get going with a solid pattern and being able to juggle 4 balls 50-100 times it’ll just be a lot of repetition and practice.

After all, if it was easy, everyone would do it!

If you haven’t checked out my video course yet, I go into details with step-by-step video trainings for everything I know how to do with juggling.

Click here to get a copy of the juggling course.