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Vintage Wisconsin: Students Engaged In Serious Juggling

Students Juggle For Fitness In Turn-Of-The-20th Century Wisconsin

By
University of Wisconsin Digital Collections

In this photo, male students are lined up with juggling clubs in an early 20th century gym class at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. They are certainly ready to celebrate this weekend’s International Juggler’s Day, April 18.

Humans have been juggling for thousands of years. Some of the earliest depictions come from Egypt and China, and the practice continued around the world in a variety of forms. Juggling became an essential part of vaudeville in the U.S. in the 19th century.

It also became a fitness tool. British soldiers stationed in India picked up the practice of club swinging from the locals and brought it back to England. They modified the clubs to look more like modern-day bowling pins and called them “Indian Clubs.”

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Training with these clubs became wildly popular in the mid-19th century as Victorians became obsessed with exercise and the body. School children used Indian or juggling clubs for exercise but also in large, choreographed routines intended for show, not fitness. That may be what the men in the above photo are dressed for as their suits seem a poor choice for exercise gear.

People were so crazy for swinging and tossing clubs that it even became an official sport at the 1904 Olympics.

Many schools added juggling clubs to their gyms. One Appleton school reported in 1908 that allowing students to pick the exercises and equipment, including juggling clubs and bowling, resulted in the discovery of athletic skill that might have gone unnoticed in their student body.

Everyone was encouraged to juggle. “If a girl wants a good posture and a much better figure,” advised drum majorette Betty Atkinson in the Wisconsin State Journal in 1941, “why not take up Indian clubs? She could exercise the arm, shoulder, and chest muscles with them.”

And no surprise, juggling is back as a fitness trend, though with its long history, its really never gone away.