Improving your Sleight of Hand

Improving
Slight of
Hand

Contents
Intro
Take a move in isolation
Practice the move slowly
Repeat
Solicit feedback
Discipline
1
2
3
4
5
6

Intro
Sleight of hand is an almost indispensable skill for any magician, but for
those whose work is heavily focussed on card and coin tricks, it is vital.
Unfortunately, there is no quick-fix to acquiring good sleight of hand – you
will simply need to practice until it becomes second nature.
Every skill which requires a complicated set of mechanical actions requires
that these actions be honed through practice. Every genius in crafts and
magic became so through discipline and practice. Just take a look at Da
Vinci’s early anatomical sketches. Just consider Houdini’s early career
spent escaping from thousands of different sets of handcuffs.
The sleight of hand required for a magician to do tricks is perhaps the
ultimate example of this. If your hands are so well practiced in certain
actions that you can perform them effortlessly, without thinking, then you
can concentrate your conscious mind utterly on the business of misdirecting
your subject.
But how, exactly, should one practice sleight of hand?
1

Take a move in
isolation
When learning a specific movement, whatever it may be, do it slowly. Break
it down into its constituent parts and perform them in isolation. Then
combine the parts in order to make the movement seamless. If you notice
that one particular part of the move is flawed or clumsy, then take the move
in isolation and look at it. After all, a methodical approach is the most
efficient.
2

Practice the
move slowly
Practice the move slowly in front of a mirror.
Once you’ve gotten a basic grasp of the move, you can start to do it in front
of a mirror. This is important, since it will give you the perspective of your
prospective audience. Evaluate the move at this stage – if you’re making
mistakes, then you should correct them now, since unlearning a bad habit is
time consuming and irritating.
3

Repeat
Now that you've gotten the mechanics of the move mastered, it’s time for
the fun part – repeat the move until you can do it without thinking about it.
With enough practice, you should be able to do the move when you’re not
even looking at it. You can even do this while you’re doing something else –
perhaps you might watch television while doing it. If you’re able to fully
concentrate your mind on other things, then you've gotten to the stage
where you can begin to incorporate the movement into tricks..
4

Solicit Feedback
Of course, there may be some element of the trick which is flawed that you
haven’t spotted. This is perfectly normal and to be expected. In order to
address this, you should try performing the trick in front of a friend –
preferably a friend who is also a magician. This way, they will be able to
spot things that you cannot and you’ll be able to refine the trick even more.
The feedback may also allow you to work on your presentation. It may be
that you slow or pause your speech during a particularly taxing part of the
sleigh-of-hand. If this is the case, then you will need to work on the bit in
question until the problem has been eliminated. This will be worth it in the
end – after all, a weak link in your chain, whatever it may be, will undermine
the entire routine. You’ll end up dreading it and your performance will suffer
as a result.
5

Discipline
Occasionally, when practicing something you find tedious, your mind will
begin to wander onto other things. You may, for example, start thinking
about what you’re having for dinner, or what you plan to watch on television
later that evening. For this reason, devoting one’s time to practicing this is
not always easy! You need a little self-discipline.
Fortunately, self-discipline is in itself something which can be re-enforced
through repetition. The more committed you are toward practicing the easier
it will become to concentrate on practicing. The psychologist Daniel
Goleman has compared developing focus to lifting weights at the gym. Over
time you, can build the strength of your focus by exercising it. This exercise
consist not in having your mind remain on a specific task, but on returning it
to that task whenever it happens to wander.
When you practice your sleight of hand, your brain will build on the neuralpathways
necessary to perform that sleight of hand more easily. Much of
this will occur when you’re not even practicing – these pathways will even
build as you sleep; what was challenging yesterday might seem laughably
easy tomorrow. For that to happen, however, you need to devote the time to
honing your sleight of hand. The results will be worth it!
6

Thank you!
For all your magic needs