nervousness Archives

Hands Too Small for Sleight of Hand Card Tricks?

Do you have tiny hands? Are you finding it difficult to perform sleight of hand because of this? The truth is, the size of your hands doesn’t matter at all, it’s a myth. Everyone finds learning complex sleights like the pass or card palming, tricky at first. It’s very easy to blame the difficulty on something (anything) other than your commitment to practice.
There are loads of world renowned magicians who have small hands and have not let it stop them:

Jay Sankey

The truth is, the size of your hands doesn’t matter at all, it’s a myth. Everyone finds learning complex sleights like the pass or card palming, tricky at first. It’s very easy to blame the difficulty on something (anything) other than your commitment to practice.

Let’s look at a few ways that you can overcome having hands too small for sleight of hand magic.

Small hands = more practice.
If you think have have hands too small for sleight of hand magic, think again.. The simply truth is that you need to put more work into your practice. All the established magicians with hand or arm disabilities or small hands tend to agree that more practice is the answer. Slow things down and work on the move you want to master. It may take you longer than someone with larger hands, but every technique IS achievable. Focus more attention to the details of your angles and pacing.

You have infinite choices
There is no reason why any move or sleight should be set in stone. That’s a common misunderstanding people new to magic tend to make. They think that just because a move has been in print, it has a ‘correct’ way to be performed. This simply isn’t the case. Each move you learn should be adapted and developed to your own style and abilities. The goal is not perfection of method, but rather perfection of the effect.

‘It’s not cheating to change and adapt moves’

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“I know the Thumb Cut is difficult for short-thumbed people like me. Skip it if you have too many problems. In fact, one of the reasons I invented the L Cut and Extension Cut was that I found it easier with my stubby thumb…” – Cestkowski’s Encyclopedia of Playing Card flourishes

When you are trying to palm playing cards, try using different palms to see which one is more suitable for you. Change around any of the moves in the magic trick to fit you better. The goal is to fool people with the trick, not pass an examine on how closely you followed the method used by the first person to publish it’s instructions.

Having trouble doing a classic palm with small hands? Switch to a tenkai palm instead and just watch your angles. Need to perform card to wallet? Use a mercury card fold

Choose your coins.
For your coin magic, you shouldn’t have a problem. One of the great features of coin magic tricks is that you can use whichever coins you feel most comfortable using. Experiment with moving down from dollars to half dollars. If you need a smaller coin that’s good to palm, the UK 2p coin has a great squared edge that makes it one of the easiest coins to classic palm.

Bridge size bicycle playing cards
Another popular option for your card work is to use Bridge Size Bicycle Playing Cards. These are narrower than poker size and can be much easier to palm. If you prefer to use these, you may have to adapt any card gimmicks that you use to be in bridge size, as most card gimmicks are supplied in poker size card stock.

Misdirection and audience management.
One of the most common problems faced by magicians with smaller hands is a playing card poking out when they try to palm a card. If this happens to you, just use your most powerful weapon: Misdirection.  Make sure you talk to your spectator and wait for the moment that you have their eye contact before executing the move. Use offbeat moments when you need to do a card magic pass. One of the rules of magic is that a larger action covers a smaller action. Bring your hands up from your waist to your chest during the off beat moment during the pass. If your spectators eyes are not on your hands, it doesn’t matter how much of a flash you make when you do a move. Focus on controlling the audience’s attention and you will be delighted by the results.

DO THIS: Stop using the excuse of having hands too small for sleight of hand magic. Make a commitment to revisit the magic tricks you have previously dismissed as not suitable, and see how you can adapt them. Practice and rehearse palming and your pass like crazy and study all you can on misdirection. If you increase your effort, and change your frame of mind, you will quickly discover that you don’t have a disadvantage after all.

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Do you have any tips for people who think they have hands too small for sleight of hand tricks? Let us know how you get on in the comments section below:

Doing Magic Tricks with Shaky Hands

by Merchant of Magic 1 Comment

‘I’m struggling with my hands shaking when I do sleight of hand magic. What can I do to help?.

If you find that your hands start to shake when you are performing a trick, don’t worry, you are not alone at all. It’s a common problem that beginners face when learning how to do magic tricks. Assuming you are healthy, and it’s not a medical issue, those shakes come from three sources:

Nervousness
Hand Tension
Concentration

It’s OK to be a bit scared.

It really doesn’t matter how much you practice your magic tricks in private. The moment you try to perform it for a spectator, it’s going to be a bit scary. Suddenly the smooth flow that you have when you run through it on your own is gone, and you feel like you’re taking an exam rather than doing card tricks.

The ONLY way to fix this problem is to become relaxed doing the trick in front of people. The more you do this, the less anxiety you will feel. If you are just starting out, you probably won’t have a large audience of spectators to practice on. Your family and friends are not ideal for this type of training as you need experience with total strangers.

DO THIS: Get out and perform to a large number of total strangers: Look through your local newspaper of what’s on’ websites and find a local charity event or festival. Contact the organiser and ask if you can attend for free to perform some walk-around magic tricks. Many events will be very open to receiving free entertainment, so you should find this quite easy to set up.

Avoid doing this in bars and just on the streets. Bar’s and clubs have their own social dynamics and are not so good for cutting your teeth as a beginner. Street magic requires a license, but more importantly the spectators are very wary, busy and generally not there to be entertained by someone stopping them on the streets. You want to choose a location, where the spectators are already open to being entertained by a performer. You want to focus on performing the tricks for people happy to stop and watch them, and not have to deal with selling the idea of stopping and watching first.

Check out this information on reducing nervousness when performing magic tricks

Relax your hands.

Learning a new magic trick means that you have to concentrate on every move. Your focus is on the technique just as much, if not more, than the performance of it. Once you add a total stranger staring at you while you perform, the tension you will feel increases considerably. You may look relaxed and happy, but tension builds up in your hands, and can express itself, through shaking.

DO THIS: Before you start the magic trick, shake your hands around and stretch out your fingers. Now try to remember to keep a relaxed grip on the props as you hold them. Imagine they are made of glass, and just need a delicate touch. Being aware of tension building in your hands, will greatly reduce any hand shaking that may occur.

When is the magic trick ready to perform?
Before you perform a trick to spectators, make sure you fully understand it. If you rush into performing it before the moves have become fully ingrained, you will be at a disadvantage. You need to be able to forget about the moves, and just enjoy the performance and interaction with the spectator. This comes from practice and rehearsal of the magic trick over and over. If you find you freeze when you start performing, or get shaky, it’s a sign, that more work has to be done, running through the whole trick as a routine from start to finish.

DO THIS: Don’t practice just the moves in silence. Once you learn the moves, push your practice to the next stage, and run through the whole trick in full with the patter, as if you were doing it to a spectator. Don’t stop to adjust a move or the set up of the props, just go through the whole routine. The more you do this, the less thinking you will need to do, when you perform the magic trick live. Concentration on the process, creates an inner dialogue of self doubt, which builds tension. Familiarity comes from repetition, and that will help solve this problem.

Best wishes

Dominic Reyes

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3 Danger Signs For Successful Magicians

by Merchant of Magic Leave a Comment

You leave the group with applause and congratulations ringing in your ears. As you pack up, the client comes over and thanks you from the bottom of their heart for doing such a great job and tells you that everyone is talking about it. You feel great, and head home, knowing you did a great job.

That’s a dangerous thing to get used too.

1) Working alone, surrounded by people.

Successful Magicians working in a lonely business. They travel from gig to gig day after day, and although they perform for hundreds of people, they are separate from them. Even on large events with multiple magicians, they meet at the start while everyone sets up, then divide the room or tables and get to work. At the end, they will all met up, and motivated by the excitement and adrenaline of the evening, joke and discussed magic while the close up cases are packed. Then it’s on the road again and so it goes on. After a while, they can start to work within their own bubble, isolated from real criticism of their act or performance.

2) Believing your spectators feedback

If you are not careful, you can fall into the trap of believing all the praise you receive from your audience. You entertained them, and they loved it, but they only saw you that single time. They can’t give you feedback on anything other than that single performance. If you are starting to take shortcuts, cutting corners or just becoming too familiar and bored with your routines, they can’t pick up on that until it’s so bad, you give a terrible show. Never think that because the show went well, it means you gave as good a performance as you have in the past. You need to be introspective and critical of your own performance to guard against this.

3) Losing the fear.

Do you find you still get a little nervous before a gig?

Despite working for years, many performers still get a panicky or tense feeling before a new gig starts. That’s stage fright. It’s perfectly normal, and unless it becomes unmanageable, it is actually one of your best friends. As you go on from great performance to great performance, you can lose the fear that something may go wrong. That can cause you to stop being introspective and lessen the desire to perfect your existing material. If you find you no longer get that feeling, it may be a warning sign that you need to spend some time checking that you are still giving your work the same energy and attention to detail that you did earlier in your magic career.

Do This:

Try to get any performing video footage you can of your routines each time it’s recorded at an event. Look back on a few of these over time and see if the energy you had when you first started performing is still there.
Take your spectators praise with a pinch of salt, keep being critical of your own performance.
Look out for losing your fear of performing and view it as a possible warning sign.

Being aware of the danger of success is vital as your career in magic develops and you become successful magicians. You are only as good as your last performance, so make sure it’s consistently the best it can be.