Richard Kohut

Richard Kohut Jr. (born December 10, 1987) is an American juggler from Sewaren, New Jersey. He is the creator of the juggling podcast Jugglers On Juggling. His nickname is Reeses and online alias is Reeses2150.
== ADHD ==
Back in 1993, Richard Kohut was diagnosed with Hyperactivity Disorder Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, otherwise known as ADHD. He was put onto a prescription of Ritalin, and continued to use it until 1999. At that point, his parents decided to see whether he could be weened off of it, as it was starting to cause side effects such as headaches. He was also re-tested to see if there was a bad diagnosis back in 1993, and was again found to have ADHD. The attempts were only slightly successful, and he was put onto a new subscription of Aderol, and continued to take that until 2003. In 2003, he decided on his own to try and go without Aderol, or any other type of drug, and try to live life with his ADHD for the first time since first grade.
The primary symptoms of ADHD that Richard has shown are distractability, difficulty with concentration and focus, short term memory loss, procrastination, problems organizing ideas and belongings, and some impulsivity. He has not shown any signs of tardiness or weak planning and execution. He has learned to suppress his hyperactivity, procrastination, and the difficulty with organization, however, he it still heavily affected by bad short term memory problems, distractions, and by an inability to focus.
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== Juggling history ==
Richard began juggling back in July of 2004. After switching high schools and finding a new group of friends to be a part of, he developed a rivalry with one of them. That person happened to know how to juggle three balls. This was also a time when Rich was idolizing Adam Savage from Mythbusters, and envied his ability to juggle. Therefore, he decided someday during July that he would learn to juggle himself, and he stayed awake and entire night reviewing footage from Mythbusters and Youtube, and using them to help him learn to juggle on his own.
A while passed while he developed the ability to do some tricks on his own, and eventually was able to juggle 5 balls before he even thought to learn another prop. His usual ball choice was a tennis ball, and while learning 5, a set of dog-toy tennis balls which were harder and didn't bounce. He also experimented with a tennis racket and two tennis balls and came up with a short routine that he has never actually performed. This is all before April 2006.
He then found the WJF and began doing research into its history and watching videos from the website. He began learning proper technique from there and corrected numerous problems from his form and posture that had developed over the past two years. His abilities suddenly shot up from barely being able to qualify 5 balls on a good run to running a cascade for 15 catches every time. It was then that he recorded his first juggling video, Three Ball Basics, during free time he had in his shop class. A set of 3 ball tricks that he was experimenting with at the time, including bouncing tennis balls off a nearby wall.
left|thumb|200px|Rich Kohut juggling 5 rings in a cascadeHe first decided to learn with another prop somewhere in May of 2006, when he ordered a set of Duncan juggling clubs. He made a video shortly afterwards, Trickery + 1, which had a set of very basic 3 club moves, two balls in one hand tricks, and part of the tennis racket routine. Very shortly thereafter, he found a set of ring Frisbees at the Shoprite where he was working, and began practicing rings.
During August of 2006, he went to his first juggling convention, WJF 3 in Las Vegas. While there, he tried cigar boxes for the first time, and instantly fell in love with them. He began recording video for a music montage barely 3 hours after the first time he picked up a set of boxes. He later at the convention got signatures from his favorite jugglers of the time (Jason Garfield, Vova Galchenko, Wes Peden, Thomas Dietz, Toby Walker, and Joe Showers) and watched some of the shows in Vegas. When he arrived home, he immediately bought a set of three beard cigar boxes, trained with them for a while longer, and then made another video, Tri-BX.
In early October 2006, he produced a short video to the intro music for the podcast, Diggnation, and emailed it to the podcast in an attempt to be featured. They accepted and showed the video and email on episode #66 of the podcast. To this day he is still the only person to have a video sent in through email featured on the podcast, and is now known as "the juggling guy" among Diggnation fans. The original juggling video, and a snippet from episode 66
Since then, he has attended a juggling convention about once every four months, including Philly Fest 06, WJF 4, Big Red Juggle Fest 2007, and Juggle This 2008. He has also joined the Carmine Street Irregulars and goes to a meeting at least once a month. He has also produced a steady stream of juggling videos and tutorials on his YouTube channel from the beginning of 2007 to the present.
Richard participated in the following WJF competitions:http://www.thewjf.com/allevents.php
*Beginners in 2007 - 3rd place
*Intermediate Rings in 2008 - 4th place
*Intermediate Rings in 2010 - 3rd place
*Intermediate Rings in 2011 - 2nd place
== Jugglers On Juggling ==
The second major podcast placed on iTunes with juggling as it's main focus. Conceptualized by Richard Kohut and started by Richard Kohut and Marty McCrory. The first episode was released on April 9th, 2007, and used the original "Season 1" format. This format was an audio-only episode featuring Richard Kohut and at least one other guest host every week, and the subject of the podcast was of discussing two juggling videos and three topics, one from Rec.juggling, Juggling Talk, and the WJF Forums. Season 1 lasted from episodes 1 through 29.
The most popular episode of the podcast so far has been episode 14. Before WJF 4, Richard emailed back and forth with WJF president Jason Garfield to get permission to record episode 14 as a video episode from within the convention. He agreed, and a total of 4 guest hosts (Sky King, David McGaughty, Laura Ernst, and Arash Farhang) and numerous interviewees were shown on the final episode. It has received over 1200 views on youtube alone, and has been downloaded from Juggling.tv over 400 times. The episode following it was a review episode of the IJA and WJF conventions featuring Matt Hall.
Season 2 was only three episodes, yet each episode was completely different. The general format of season 2 episodes was a video episode of only one topic or subject for the entire episode, and usually were only hosted by Richard Kohut. They were much more of an experiment by Rich to find out the best format for future episodes of the podcast. The three episodes from season 2 focused on Peden Tricks Sweden, a review of the year 2007, and the Juggle This convention 2008.
Season 3 was the next iteration of the show, and was produced by Richard alone. The first episode released on September 1st 2008, and received so much ridicule on Rec.juggling, that he threw away all the recorded episodes he had made for the 3rd season and is in the process of re-recording each episode. The second episode was a major success, and then the season slowly died down afterwards and the podcast was ended.
"JoJ Behind The Scenes" was a short series of comic strips started by "Taxman" on Bitstrips.com, and shortly afterwords by Taxman and Richard. The comic only lasted for 9 strips, but inspired the comic strip The Jugglers Crib.
Jugglers On Juggling is also commonly accepted as the inspiration behind one of the most popular juggling podcasts, Extreme Juggling Podcast. Created by Issac Awesome.
Currently the show has been revitalized in a format similar to the first season. Starting in January of 2011, the show has returned to an audio show featuring Richard and a co-host discussing the news, a popular video, a classic video, main topic, and convention for that week, with occasional special episodes filmed at conventions that Richard attends.
== References ==
Category:jugglers
Category:performers