The 10 following tricks are in my opinion the first ones you need to master after you learn the 2 diabolo shuffle. They will either help you learn more difficult tricks or are easy to master and look great.
1. Leg stall
This is the first 2D trick I learned. It’s easy and helpful because it’s a pause in the shuffle, your leg creates a “hill” in the middle of the string and the diabolos are resting on each side of it. With this trick you can “cheat” your way into starting harder tricks like the mini-columns, ping-pong, hover acceleration,…
You don’t need a lot of speed and the diabolos don’t have to be aligned for the trick to work. You can even correct the diabolos’ alignment in this position.
2. Hover acceleration
This is the most basic acceleration, it creates a pause in the shuffle and is the easiest way to correct a diabolo when juggling numbers.
As with 1 diabolo, 2 diabolo tricks require speed. The shuffle gives some spin to both diabolos but it is not the most efficient way to accelerate the diabolos. The hover acceleration will speed up your diabolos faster, although one at a time, and you will you use it all the time.
3. Sprinkler
This trick is easier than it seems. It’s basically a wrap around both diabolos.
For this trick to work you will need decent speed on both diabolos, so you will have to master the acceleration.
The easiest sprinkler to learn is the one where you do an internal wrap with your non-dominant hand and the easiest exit which is also the most impressive is the suicide exit.
4. Sun between the arms
This trick is definitely one of the building blocks for a vast number of harder tricks.
Suns are really a category of tricks and you can do one type after another to create nice combos. It will improve your control of 2D as well.
The sun between the arms is the one to master because it helps with many 2D tricks and it’s a nice way to get your stick back in the right grip position after a stick release trick, see the end of this trick:
5. Grind
This trick is not a building block per say, but it will teach you how to throw one diabolo out of the shuffle and throw it back in.
You can correct your diabolos that way too.
6. Trapeze (stopover)
In this trick one diabolo is in the trapeze position while the other is in the open string.
This is very similar to the 1D trapeze when you do a left one (for righties). The right trapeze is similar to wrapping the diabolo like in the hover acceleration except you wrap around the stick too.
It’s pretty easy to learn and the right trapeze (for righties) will be an easy entry to a lot of tricks : leg orbit, 2 high, magic knots,…
7. Mini columns
In this trick, each diabolo bounces vertically and stays on the same side of the string.
This trick will teach you string control and how to cushion the diabolo allowing you to throw it back any direction you want. It’s helpful to learn several other tricks like the ping-pong and anti shuffle. It will also help you get away with almost failed tricks, by catching a “bad” diabolo and getting back into the shuffle.
8. 2D in one hand
This one is easy and looks cool.
It’s a must know to learn 3 diabolos or to be able to push your glasses up your nose without having to stop the shuffle. It’s not really useful to learn other tricks besides 3low and one-handed suns, but it’s easy to learn and is a definite crowd pleaser!
9. Vortex (external wrap transfer)
This one is a good one to know because the motion of this trick is the base of so many other tricks like fans, anti-suicide, getting out of the right arm stall and so on.
It’s also useful to know, because when you learn the sun or sprinkler it is common to end up with an external wrap when you exit, and the vortex is one way to deal with this issue.
10. 2 high
Being able to throw one diabolo out of the shuffle is really useful for plenty of tricks (feed the sun comes to mind) and learning 2 high will help with that.
But more importantly, it also opens the door to a whole new style of diabolo juggling: hello siteswaps!
