Playing With Your New Rola-Bola

First get real comfortable with the normal rola bola action. When you are able to hold your upper body still and let your legs swing back and forth from hips, then you should be able to add juggling, with almost the same proficiency as on the ground. Here are some tricks for rola bola, in approximate order of difficulty. Be careful! I've gotten hurt (minorly) on some of these.

• Juggle.
• Pass.
• Pick up a club from the ground in front of you.
• Jump off, just as someone jumps on. (Start facing the same way, moving forward, then vary this.)
• Gradually move your feet toward each other (by hopping or sliding them). Can you get them to meet in the middle? (This is a dangerous one.)
• Turn your feet so that they're pointing to one end of the board. Surf! Can you flatten your back foot and put equal weight on it? (This is a quarter-turn.)
• Jump quarter-turn.
• Jump half-turn.
• Replace the roller with a lacrosse ball. Now you have freedom of movement in the entire horizontal plane. Use your heels and toes to control it. When you get this without the board touching the ground, it looks like you're hovering!
• Replace the lacrosse ball with a bowling ball.
• Regular rola bola on one foot. The foot should be perpendicular to the roller for maximum control. You can start with the other foot on the ground and press up into it, or you can start in the quarter-turn and roll into it.
• Walk the plank. Start as above with the foot at the back, and keep placing the next foot in front as you your weight forward.
• Double rola bola. Get a second roller and place it under the first one, pointing perpendicular to the first. This is similar to the bowling ball. Use help to begin!

• Add more rollers. These are not placed horizontally (which would add more instability), but are pointing up and down, and used as "spacers" between the regular rollers. You could add up to three more this way.
• Jump full turn.
• Handstand. Do not try this until you have tremendous arm strength, and are very comfortable pressing to handstand on the floor. Press up, don't kick up. I came down on my head once, practicing this.