10 year old Around the World (inside) & two other juggling/freestyle tricks for beginners

Because it is so hot this week, we can do only juggling (kick ups) and shooting outside right now. We are doing dribbling, passing, and futsal (obviously) indoors. We decided that it was a perfect time to film some freestyle tricks. Brendan doesn't do much freestyling at all because he spends most of his time doing traditional football training, but he's pretty good for 10. He is doing beginning toe-down juggling here (as opposed to advanced, toe-up speed juggling with backspin or freestyle juggling with toe up + no backspin). I took the advice of Hassan Ayari's dad, a wheelchair racer from Tunisia who did pretty well after I retired, and didn't start Brendan on advanced speed juggling until he mastered toe-down juggling. Hassan mastered juggling really early. There were YouTube videos of him doing 500 at age 5. There are even videos of him juggling on a stool. We focused more on futsal skills with Brendan than Hassan's dad, but Brendan did well with juggling. By age 10, he could do 3k with toe-down and no backspin.

The first time that he ever tried toe up + backspin was at a Grand Canyon University (GCU) camp. Diego Walsh, a former MLS player (Columbus Crew, Kansas City Wizards, and Real Salt Lake) who was awesome with the kids at both the Winter and Summer GCU camps, showed him how to do the more advanced juggling. Brendan got 178 the first time that he tried. Within a a couple of weeks, he had both styles of juggling down pretty well.

I had always taught toe-up juggling before toe-down juggling to my former players. After having used this style of juggling progression, seeing how easy Brendan mastered both styles of juggling by age 10 while continuing to do many other activities, I now prefer teaching toe-down juggling first. It seems much harder to go from toe-up juggling to toe-down juggling. Indeed, some players seem completely unable to learn toe-down juggling after having mastered toe-up juggling.

We are making a video with several kids doing the different types of juggling. We're just really busy with music and physical training right now. One of my paralyzed Navy SEAL friends, Carlos Moleda, who just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in a handcycle, inspired them to train really hard to get stronger. We're going be hard-pressed for time between that training and their music practice. We'll release videos slowly over the year as we get the time.