This is the real life fruit ninja. Slicing fruit while juggling 3 knives.
Jonathan threw the apples (which turned out to be a much more critical component to this record than I though) and I juggled the knives.
The knives have to switch hands left-right-left-right every throw except when an apple is being sliced and then you can have a single throw that lands back in the same hand.
I’ve been a serious juggler since college in 2004 (i.e. 5+ balls and shows for audiences) but it still took me about 1.5 years of casual training and a few weeks of serious preparation to break this record. It also took over 400 pounds of (crab) apples. Once we got got the motion and timing down, it came down to a little luck since an errant apple slice often hits the knife in the air making it impossible to catch.
Jonathan and I had a cadence that every time I caught a knife in my right hand, he’d throw an apple, and I’d slice it. This is the fastest way to execute the record and we didn’t miss a beat. He threw 41 apples in the minute, I missed only one, and sliced the other 40 into 2 pieces each (if it wasn’t completely separated, it didn’t count).
We used the crab apples from Jonathan’s tree so we didn’t waste any food for this record. It would have been easier if we’d used larger apples, but I was able to get my slices precise enough to only miss a single one.
The obvious difficult parts of this record are juggling. I have to execute a double spin left-hand throw to the left hand while using the right to catch the knife, swing back, and slice an apple that’s flying through the air without being able to focus on either. (It’s also frowned upon to catch the knives by the non-handle end…) On top of that, I have to rotate the knife after the catch to hit the apple straight on with the blade instead of just hitting is broadside.
I’m glad Jonathan had a crab apple tree in his yard that yielded over 400 lbs of apples because we had to practice a lot before we could finish a full minute of apple slice juggling with only a single miss.
