Recently, I posted a video about my progress on learning a card flourish called “The Spring.” I had only logged about 1 hour of practice, all told.  That’s 60 minutes of actual hands-on attempts, all added up over a number of weeks.

Since learning most physical skills like this requires  many hours of practice, I didn’t expect it to be good at this point, which is good. I didn’t disappoint. It was – as the title of the post suggested – pathetic. See it at: My Pathetic Card Spring

What about 2 hours?

So yesterday, I made another video of my progress on this move. It’s better! This is after approximately 2 hours of total practice.

What did I change? Nothing that I’m aware of! Even in the first video, my hands and fingers were in the right places. And I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, at least as described in all the tutorials I’d seen (videos on YouTube) and read (magic books). For someone who likes to connect a cause to a consequence, preferably with data to back it up, this can be frustrating. But truly, the only thing that changed – at least on a conscious level – was the amount of time spent doing it.

I asked about this (regarding another move – the 2-handed fan) on The Magic Cafe forum. And one answer resonated with me as particularly apt. I was told “your hands will learn it before you do.” And as weird as that sounds, it is really what it feels like to me. A more scientific way to say the same thing is that the learning is taking place on an unconscious level. I’m learning more and more that you need to trust this if you want to master these moves!

Anyway, here is a video of what I’m calling my “slightly less pathetic card spring.”

3 weeks ago, I took a video of myself trying to perform a card flourish called a “card spring.” The Spring is where the cards fly – one at a time – from one had to the other very quickly. At the time, I had put in about one hour of total practice on this move.

You can probably guess how well I was able to perform this move 3 weeks ago by the title of this post ;). It was pretty bad. See the video below.

As with most things in magic, one hour of practice is nothing! There are moves for which I have logged hundreds of hours of practice. And I’m still very much a beginner. THAT is what you’re in for if you really want to perform magic. So it is actually no surprise that my performance in the above video is so poor.

But that’s what this site is mainly about – showing progress along the way, at various points along the path to competence (if not mastery) of techniques.

By the way, below is a picture of what a card spring is SUPPOSED to look like. Obviously that isn’t me in the photo:-P.

I’ll report back after at least another hour of practice. Watch this space!

Okay. After adding about 1 more hour of practice, things are starting to look a bit better. It’s still nowhere near acceptable. But the difference is noticeable. Check it out here: My Less Pathetic Card Spring

I’ve been working on my 2-handed fan for months now. Remember I’m still a magic newbie, so a lot of the moves are still going to be rusty. That’s part of what this site is all about – to see how I progress, which hopefully will give you an idea of what things look like – warts and all – as you start from scratch and improve over time.

Well this 2-handed fan has been a tough one for me. It wasn’t until I saw 2 different guys at the local SAM club meeting repeatedly create perfect fans that I knew – really knew in my gut – that it could be done by mere mortals. The only guide I had was Roberto Giobbi doing it in Card College 1. And he’s like the most famous card magician of the 21st century! I needed to know that regular people could do it. And it turns out they can:).

Anyway, today I bought a new deck of cards because as you will find out, practicing a fan for hours on end over many MANY weeks will make your cards old and less “slide-y” pretty fast. I was just going to get a regular old deck of Bicycle cards. But the store had a cool looking “130th Anniversary Edition” deck that had the design from 1885! And they were the same price as the regular cards. So I bought them.

Now I don’t know how much of this is luck, the cards, the learning all coming together, or some combo thereof. But as soon as I tried a 2-handed fan with the new cards, it seemed effortless and looked really good! It still isn’t anywhere near perfect, or even where I want it to be. And it isn’t consistently good either, and consistency is important. But it looks a heck of a lot better today than it has ever looked. Take a peek at the video below. That’s where I am with my 2-handed fan. Note that my 1-handed closing of the fan is only about 75% of the way there. But it’s coming along.