This is a question that will bring about different responses based on who you ask. To me, I personally believe that balls are the easiest thing to juggle.

What Is The Easiest Thing To Juggle?

The easiest thing to juggle is balls. While some people use scarves to learn how, in my experiences teaching 10’s of thousands of people to juggle, balls are the easiest. The reason for this is because you learn the fundamentals that are used on all other juggling movements. Some people prefer to learn with scarves, but the timing is harder to learn in my opinion.

Okay so now if you’re still curious to know more about this, I’ll share with you a little bit more about why juggling balls are the easiest thing to juggle.

In the simplest terms, the weight of actual high quality juggling balls is extremely consistent. The weight of the balls makes a big difference especially when learning, or going above the 3 ball pattern.

If you think about the different weights of a baseball and a basketball, along with the size difference, you know how different each of them flies through the air. If you are trying to juggle these, it gets really difficult.

But when you are working with 3 of the exact same size and weight balls, juggling becomes a bit easier. You know the exact weight of the item and you can judge the flight of the ball relatively easy. It also goes to the same spot (close to the same spot) every time you throw it.

On the other hand, if you try using scarves you’ll have a different experience.

Is juggling scarves easier than juggling balls?

Okay so I have a little theory around why people who teach juggling classes tend to teach people with scarves instead of balls. The first thing is that you can get a 13 pack of juggling scarves for $7.99. So if you have a group of 10 people you are teaching, that’s the cheapest option. It’s also the easiest to carry because scarves don’t take up a lot of space.

On the other hand, to get high-quality juggling balls, you’ll be spending around $7.99 per ball. The Higgins Brothers juggling ball set is a set of 3 for $22.99.

So if you are someone who teaches a group of 10 people how to juggle, it would make more sense to try to teach with scarves, right? Less than $10 bucks to get 13 packs of scarves to teach a group of 10 people. On the other hand, you’d be spending $229.90 for 10 sets of 3 juggling balls.

That right there is why most people teach with scarves. But it is much harder to learn to juggle with scarves.

Recommended read: How Long Does It Take To Learn How To Juggle?

Why is it harder to learn to juggle with scarves?

From my observations and experiences with teaching people to juggle, there is a rhythm that you get into once you start juggling. You do the “throw, throw, throw” and each ball, when it hits your hand, makes a sort of plop, keeping a beat. It’s just like marching and hearing someone on a drum with a basic beat. It’s easy for you to start bobbing your head along with the rhythm.

With scarves, you are doing a lot more of a movement, with less of the feeling of the rhythm. Instead of the ball getting thrown from hand to hand, you are carrying the scarf up to the top of the pattern and letting it fall down.

You then need to move your hand back down to the area to try to catch it. Not to mention that your hands are catching the scarves in an unnatural movement. Think about how you catch a ball when you are just throwing it up and down in the air to yourself.

You throw the ball up, and with your palm to the sky, you catch the ball. With scarves, you are dropping the scarf from the highest part of the pattern and then catching the scarf just like the claw machine at an arcade picks things up.

If you have a ball nearby, I recommend trying to catch the ball that way. It’s a lot harder and less of a natural movement for you.

If you are new to juggling, I think its easiest for you to learn with balls because of this. You’re not having to change much about your natural tendencies for throwing and catching, so it makes learning to juggle easier.

What is the benefit of learning to juggle with balls?

Once you learn the pattern of juggling that you learn when juggling balls, which is known as the cascade pattern, you can juggle most objects.

The cascade pattern is the pattern you most often see when you watch someone juggle 3 balls.

It’s the movement that is most natural for people as well, since we’ve been throwing balls from hand to hand for years. Think about any time you’ve played catch with yourself, you probably throw it from hand-to-hand and sometimes straight up and down, right?

Well the good news is that once you get comfortable with the cascade juggling pattern, you can do the same movements and replace the items you’re juggling.

The same pattern is used when you want to juggle rings, or clubs (the things that look like bowling pins).

If you were to learn how to juggle with scarves, you wouldn’t have learned this style of juggling and it would be a little bit more difficult to juggle other things. You still could learn how to do the others, but it would just take a bit longer.

The whole goal with this post is to let you know the easiest thing to learn how to juggle with is balls. I hope that by reading this, you’ve got a firm grasp on it.

If you’d like a free 15 minute video that teaches you how to juggle, I recorded a video specifically for you. Click here to learn how to juggle.