Now that we have covered the design of the whip and the physics under which it operates, we can get into the real meat of whip artistry. The following is a simplified outline of the Mach One “Circle Model” that I have been developing for the last 15 years.
I have found that the Circle Model applies to every type of whip artistry style that I have encountered; martial arts, stunt work/dramatic violence, Wild West shows, Fetish/BDSM, dance/performance art, and competitive two-handed Australian style whip cracking. It also works incredibly well as a jumping-off point for any and all of these different styles, as I will cover in Part Four in an explanation of Anthony DeLongis’s “Rolling Loop” method of bullwhip artistry, and in Part five’s discussion of Ron Lew’s “Tibetan Wave” bullwhip martial art form.
But, the model is not perfect, and nor do I consider it to be all-inclusive. The Mach One “Circle” model is just that - a model. It presents a simplified set of rules to achieve the theoretical "Ideal Crack”. The “Ideal Crack” does not exist, and may or may not be something that you even aspire to, (I certainly don’t, and as I’m the guy who defined it, you shouldn’t either.) It is really just a means to rapidly learn how to crack a whip smoothly and effortlessly in all angles, alignments, and directions, and a “checklist” of potential questions to ask yourself if you’re having problems with a particular trick, routine, or crack. The “Rules” are there as a guideline to rapidly build skill and keep the new student from hitting themselves. Once you have learned the rules, you can easily break them, (and I will outline several instances of how and why later in this essay, and in the next as well.)
So, that said let me give the basic tenants of the Mach One “Circle” Model and define the characteristics of an ideal crack:
This description is a little confusing, but let me try to explain it this way. The potential reach, arc, and movement of the whip, at its most rudimentary, can be visualized as circular, (hence the name of the model.) The radius of the circle is defined by the length of the whip plus the length of the artist’s arm up to his shoulder where the shoulder is the origin point of the circle.
I often advise beginners to whip cracking to make sure they have a clear amount of workspace, and to define their boundaries by standing in place and making a full 360- degree turn on their heels, allowing the whip to stretch out and draw a circle like one would with a compass, and also swing the whip in a vertical arc to make sure they have clear space overhead to work. If the whip doesn’t snag, drag, or strike anything in that process, then you are probably safe to crack the whip there.
To illustrate this, let me apply the “Circle Model” to the vertical compound crack, the basic “Circus Crack” that is usually the very first thing that every new whip cracker learns. In this crack, the whip is lifted in a straight line by the dominant arm, and travels in an arc overhead to stretch out behind the whip artist. Then, the whip artist lowers his arm, extending it forward, (in a “Compound motion like lifting and dropping an ax or a hammer as though chopping wood or driving in a nail.) The whip, seemingly trying to catch up to the hand, forms a circular loop behind the handle, and that loop rolls down the whip in a wave of energy until the whip cracks.
Below is a very short slow-motion section of video of my friend and mentor, Senior Grand Master Ron Lew demonstrating this crack. This video is taken from the first lesson on the “Tibetan Wave: The Filipino Fighting Whip” training video that Master Lew and I produced together in 2019.
I have found that the Circle Model applies to every type of whip artistry style that I have encountered; martial arts, stunt work/dramatic violence, Wild West shows, Fetish/BDSM, dance/performance art, and competitive two-handed Australian style whip cracking. It also works incredibly well as a jumping-off point for any and all of these different styles, as I will cover in Part Four in an explanation of Anthony DeLongis’s “Rolling Loop” method of bullwhip artistry, and in Part five’s discussion of Ron Lew’s “Tibetan Wave” bullwhip martial art form.
But, the model is not perfect, and nor do I consider it to be all-inclusive. The Mach One “Circle” model is just that - a model. It presents a simplified set of rules to achieve the theoretical "Ideal Crack”. The “Ideal Crack” does not exist, and may or may not be something that you even aspire to, (I certainly don’t, and as I’m the guy who defined it, you shouldn’t either.) It is really just a means to rapidly learn how to crack a whip smoothly and effortlessly in all angles, alignments, and directions, and a “checklist” of potential questions to ask yourself if you’re having problems with a particular trick, routine, or crack. The “Rules” are there as a guideline to rapidly build skill and keep the new student from hitting themselves. Once you have learned the rules, you can easily break them, (and I will outline several instances of how and why later in this essay, and in the next as well.)
So, that said let me give the basic tenants of the Mach One “Circle” Model and define the characteristics of an ideal crack:
- The Ideal Crack uses a minimum amount of effort to deliver the maximum payload of energy to the target.
- The Ideal Crack can be described in simple terms as the length of the whip traveling in an arcing movement of 360-degrees within a 2-dimensional plane.
- The 360-degrees of the crack can be divided into two 180-degree phases; The “Load Phase” and the “Throw Phase”.
- The “Load Phase” is the first half of the crack in which kinetic energy is imparted to the whip through the arm of the whip artist and the thong begins to stretch out. Energy is loaded into the whip in the opposite direction that the whip will crack.
- The “Throw Phase” is the second half of the crack in which the wave of kinetic energy imparted to the whip during the load phase begins to roll down the length of the whip in the exact opposite direction that the energy was “loaded” in. This wave increases in speed through the principles discussed in Part Two of this essay series until the tip of the whip accelerates past the sound barrier, and the kinetic energy is transduced into the acoustic energy of the crack.
- There are two types of Ideal Crack, and all typical whip cracks, tricks, and routines are composed of these two cracks in different directions, angles, planes, and combinations. These two types of Ideal Crack are the Compound Crack and the Elliptical Crack.
- The Compound Crack is so called because one performs a back and forth compound motion with their arm to generate the crack, similar to throwing a dart, hammering in a nail, or chopping wood. The whip moves the 180-degrees of the Load Phase, then reverses direction and follows the SAME PATH for the Throw Phase into the crack, like a windshield wiper traces its path back and forth in an oscillating pattern. The Wild West Arts “Circus Crack” and “Cattleman’s Crack” are this type of crack.
- The Elliptical Crack forms a full loop in a 360-degree path, but for the whip to extend into the crack, it moves in more of an elongated elliptical or egg shape. This type of movement with a baton or eskrima in Filipino Martial Arts is referred to as a Redondo, and in Historic European swordplay, this is typically referred to as a moulinette. The optimum way to perform this crack is to allow the whip to move in an arc from the floor, and when it is stretched out, the arm somewhat pushes the whip forward, where it rolls out in a “U” shape into the crack. The Wild West Arts “Overhand Flick” and “Sidearm Crack” are this type of crack.
This description is a little confusing, but let me try to explain it this way. The potential reach, arc, and movement of the whip, at its most rudimentary, can be visualized as circular, (hence the name of the model.) The radius of the circle is defined by the length of the whip plus the length of the artist’s arm up to his shoulder where the shoulder is the origin point of the circle.
I often advise beginners to whip cracking to make sure they have a clear amount of workspace, and to define their boundaries by standing in place and making a full 360- degree turn on their heels, allowing the whip to stretch out and draw a circle like one would with a compass, and also swing the whip in a vertical arc to make sure they have clear space overhead to work. If the whip doesn’t snag, drag, or strike anything in that process, then you are probably safe to crack the whip there.
To illustrate this, let me apply the “Circle Model” to the vertical compound crack, the basic “Circus Crack” that is usually the very first thing that every new whip cracker learns. In this crack, the whip is lifted in a straight line by the dominant arm, and travels in an arc overhead to stretch out behind the whip artist. Then, the whip artist lowers his arm, extending it forward, (in a “Compound motion like lifting and dropping an ax or a hammer as though chopping wood or driving in a nail.) The whip, seemingly trying to catch up to the hand, forms a circular loop behind the handle, and that loop rolls down the whip in a wave of energy until the whip cracks.
Below is a very short slow-motion section of video of my friend and mentor, Senior Grand Master Ron Lew demonstrating this crack. This video is taken from the first lesson on the “Tibetan Wave: The Filipino Fighting Whip” training video that Master Lew and I produced together in 2019.
As can be seen in this video, the whip moves through two 180-degree phases. In the Load Phase, Master Lew raises the whip, and it stretches out, swinging in an arc behind his back. Note that the whip travels slightly past the point that it would be stretched out DIRECTLY behind him and run parallel to the ground. At that point, Master Lew begins to straighten his arm like he’s throwing a dart. The loop forms in the thong and rolls out into the crack.
Note that the whip cracks while the whip is still angled slightly upward and at the point of the crack the whip is not yet parallel to the ground. If you draw a straight line between the tip of the whip at the point in time where the whip has straightened out and Master Lew’s shoulder, you can continue that line on past the shoulder, and it will show you roughly where the whip had straightened out behind him and the tip of the whip just intersects the line at the point that he begins to move the whip forward into the Throw phase of the crack.
With both of these types of crack, the whip stretches out and begins the Throw Phase when the tip of the whip is 180-degrees from where we desire the whip to crack. So, if one wants the whip to crack directly in front of them, the whip has to stretch out directly behind them before they move the whip forward. Likewise, if one wants to crack the whip toward the right, the whip has to first stretch out toward the left.
When I teach whip-cracking, I encourage students to always visualize a target in front of them that they want the whip to extend toward. Even if it’s not an actual target that you are trying to hit, visualize something near shoulder height. If you have a problem with this, find something out of range for the whip to “aim at” like a mark on a wall, a knot on a tree, etc, JUST to get into the practice of putting the tip of the whip where you want it.
Note that the whip cracks while the whip is still angled slightly upward and at the point of the crack the whip is not yet parallel to the ground. If you draw a straight line between the tip of the whip at the point in time where the whip has straightened out and Master Lew’s shoulder, you can continue that line on past the shoulder, and it will show you roughly where the whip had straightened out behind him and the tip of the whip just intersects the line at the point that he begins to move the whip forward into the Throw phase of the crack.
With both of these types of crack, the whip stretches out and begins the Throw Phase when the tip of the whip is 180-degrees from where we desire the whip to crack. So, if one wants the whip to crack directly in front of them, the whip has to stretch out directly behind them before they move the whip forward. Likewise, if one wants to crack the whip toward the right, the whip has to first stretch out toward the left.
When I teach whip-cracking, I encourage students to always visualize a target in front of them that they want the whip to extend toward. Even if it’s not an actual target that you are trying to hit, visualize something near shoulder height. If you have a problem with this, find something out of range for the whip to “aim at” like a mark on a wall, a knot on a tree, etc, JUST to get into the practice of putting the tip of the whip where you want it.
As a corollary to this, I also ask new students to try to get the whip to crack directly in front of them so that when it is at full extension, the whip is parallel to the ground. I use this “180-Degree Rule” as a means to fine-tune and troubleshoot this process. If the whip is cracking higher than shoulder level, then the 180-degree point, (where the “Load” phase transitions to the “Throw” phase,) is lower than shoulder level, so the whip cracker is hesitating too long before beginning the Throw Phase. If the whip cracks below shoulder level or is being driven into the ground, then the whip cracker is not letting the whip stretch out far enough behind them, and they need to wait slightly longer. Once the whip student has learned this, they can easily place the crack at any height or angle that they wish. I use this same method in trouble-shooting my own work.
I have covered the part of the description of the Ideal Crack as a 360-degree arc, but I haven’t touched on it traveling in what you could call a 2-dimensional plane. To demonstrate what I’m talking about, watch the following video.
I have covered the part of the description of the Ideal Crack as a 360-degree arc, but I haven’t touched on it traveling in what you could call a 2-dimensional plane. To demonstrate what I’m talking about, watch the following video.
This is a slow-motion video of Master Lew performing the exact same crack as before, but now we are looking at it from the front. So, you’re seeing the compound crack moving through its 180-degree Load and 180-degree Throw phases, and you can see from this angle that the whip travels in a relatively straight line through its entire motion. A lot of new whip crackers struggle to keep the whip IN that straight line, but in truth that struggle typically does nothing but pull the whip OUT of the straight line. As I discussed in Part One of this series in the section about inertia, by the very nature of the physics involved, the whip will travel in a straight line. When the whip has been energized, it takes a good amount of “external force” to shift its path. When the whip is moving, gravity can’t overcome the inertia, and performing this same crack in an overhead horizontal plane is no different from performing it in a vertical plane.
In fact, both elliptical and compound cracks can be performed at almost every angle on both the dominant, non-dominant sides of the body as well as overhead and in a front plane. Once the whip artist learns how to work with these angles smoothly and evenly, then one can begin to perform complex combos, volleys, and routines.
In fact, both elliptical and compound cracks can be performed at almost every angle on both the dominant, non-dominant sides of the body as well as overhead and in a front plane. Once the whip artist learns how to work with these angles smoothly and evenly, then one can begin to perform complex combos, volleys, and routines.
Anthony DeLongis demonstrates this in the first couple minutes of this video from Black Belt Magazine, demonstrating it as the 8 major angles of attack from the Inosanto martial arts system, but you can easily subdivide those angles into more specific angles. Ron Lew’s Tibetan Wave system presents this as a clock face where the vertical descending compound crack is 12-o’clock. 2 o’clock and 11 o’clock would be a descending diagonal on either side of the body, 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock would be horizontal “sidearm” cracks to either side of the body, etc.
I often do a practice drill related to this where I change up the exercise of angle exploration that Anthony demonstrates, (which mirrors a Filipino stick drill, and also a European saber and longsword cutting drill,) and just go as far around the circle as I smoothly as I can with elliptical cracks: starting vertical with 12 o’clock, then to forehand descending diagonals at 1 and 2 o’clock...horizontal forehand at 3 o’clock...forehand ascending diagonals at 4 and 5 o’clock, and vertical ascending “underhand flick” at 6 o’clock, and then back up the opposite side of the clock face using the backhand swing across my body for 7 to 11 o’clock.
One of the biggest challenges to exploring all these directions and angles is safety. When one is learning to crack a whip, they will invariably end up hitting themselves. Minimizing the risk by long pants and eye protection is a great way to start, and I recommend wearing eye protection when practicing or when working on a new trick or technique even for seasoned whip performers, because you may end up with a welt or even a cool “Indiana Jones” scar on your skin from a mishap. Those heal. Losing an eye is something else entirely.
I have seen some teachers even recommend wearing a leather jacket and a motorcycle helmet when learning. This is ludicrous and completely unnecessary. All this teaches students is to be afraid of the whip. In my experience, both with students and in learning myself, it is that fear of hitting yourself that invariably causes you to hit yourself. Once one hits themselves, they try to get out of the whips way, often bending themselves out of proper musculoskeletal alignment, and as we have mentioned, that misalignment is mirrored and amplified by the whip. That misalignment makes the whip behave unpredictably, increasing the possibility of hitting yourself. Also when you anticipate being hit, you involuntarily tense up or even flinch. That tension, once again, is reflected and amplified by the whip. So, in trying not to hit yourself, you increase the odds of hitting yourself in an ever-intensifying and frustrating feedback loop.
The trick to keeping yourself safe is keeping yourself outside of that cracking plane. The DeLongis Rolling Loop method addresses this in a number of ways, (which will be discussed in the next section,) but the primary safety factor is the “railroad tracks” analogy. Anthony’s “railroad tracks” operate under the same principles as the flat planes of the circle model. In Rolling Loop, you learn to keep anything you don’t want the whip to hit, inside and outside of the line of the railroad track, (including yourself.) Anything you want to strike or wrap, you put on the railroad track. This holds true for all planes and all angles. If you are doing a Compound type of crack in any plane, and you don’t hit yourself in the Load Phase of the crack, but then you DO hit yourself in the Throw Phase, you have pulled the whip out of alignment somewhere.
That brings us to the next major aspect of exploring all of those planes and angles. Along the way, one will invariably want to begin building combinations of multiple cracks flowing into one another. This is the foundation of two-handed cracking routines, as well as single whip drills. Most of the difficulties I see with people learning combinations is that they are rushing into the next move before completing the one the whip is still in the process of performing.
As I discussed in Part Two, the Law of Inertia states that an object in motion will continue that motion IN A STRAIGHT LINE unless acted upon by some outside force. While the whip is rolling into the crack, it continues to accelerate. Any outside force will naturally decelerate the velocity of the whip, just like a car will slow down around a curve. This is why race car drivers have to “accelerate” into curves; they need to apply more energy to maintain the speed they were keeping on the straightaway of the track. Trying to change any plane or any angle before the whip has cracked, and is naturally decelerated due to transduction of the kinetic energy to sound and shock drag, will result in rapid deceleration and unpredictable behavior. Therefore if one does this, then the attempted multiple-crack routine will fall apart, and the whip cracker will invariably hit themselves with the whip.
This is one of many characteristics that makes the whip an incredible training tool for other weapons. In cutting drills with knives and swords in both Eastern and Western martial arts, “Breaking your structure” or rolling your wrist, (and therefore the edge of the blade,) during a cut is typically bad form and can lead to problems.
In both traditional Japanese Martial Arts that train in Tamishigiri, and in modern Historical European Martial Arts training, cutting tightly rolled tatami mats is a way of evaluating proper technique in maintaining cutting angles through the cut.
The whip trains the same process through each crack, as if one rolls their wrist or deviates from that precise plane the artist began the movement in BEFORE the whip has completed it’s motion and cracked, then the whip will not crack efficiently and move predictably.
If one looks at the angles that Anthony DeLongis is demonstrating in the video posted above, you can see that every angle and plane that Anthony transitions to is performed AFTER the whip has cracked. He uses that audio and tactile feedback from the whip as his cue to change direction and flow into the load phase of the next crack in the sequence. He doesn’t break/adjust his angle or structure until the whip has completed its motion, and is just following through.
That is not to say that changing the plane of the whip between the load and throw phase doesn’t have its purposes. There is a great routine by my old friend Chris “The Whip Guy” Camp where he cuts a target out of the mouth of someone facing away from him, literally making the whip snake out away from him before “turning a corner” and cutting the target. I was blown away when I first saw it, and it took a number of times seeing him perform the trick to figure out how he did it, (once or twice during performances when I stood in as his assistant and held the target he cut in my teeth.) Without giving the secret away, I can tell you that it’s done through a very controlled and rehearsed violation of the “180-degree rule” in the Circle Model.
Ron Lew’s Tibetan Wave bullwhip technique also operates outside the Circle Model by using the off-hand to change the flow and trajectory of an already energized and in-motion bullwhip, which I will discuss in greater detail in Part Five of this series.
One final thing I want to touch on that I will expand a bit on in my discussion of Rolling Loop and Tibetan Wave in Parts Four and Five is alignment. In Part One’s discussion of the construction and anatomy of a well-made bullwhip, I explained that a whip has a dorsal side and a ventral side, and can be held in either a pronated or supinated orientation when cracking. That orientation should definitionally apply only to the vertical cracking plane that is a right angle to the ground, but we’re going to expand that discussion of orientation to all the angles we’ve discussed. Once the whip is in motion, the angle of the whip makes no difference in the mechanics of the crack, so what holds true for the vertical plane holds equally true for the horizontal and diagonal planes on both sides of the body.
Think of it this way. I mentioned in Part One that a whip has a “Spine” structure like a human being, and it bends more comfortably toward its ventral axis than its dorsal axis, (like we can bend over easier than we can bend backward, as I discussed in curling fingers toward the palm vs. bending them backward.) We CAN look at whips as having a spine, and like all vertebrate creatures, it is bilaterally symmetrical, meaning one side of the spinal column is a mirror image of the other, just like our structure...Two arms, two legs, two eyes, ears, and nostrils, etc. The whip structure is obviously not as complicated as that, but it is nonetheless symmetrical. That line of symmetry runs right along the center of the dorsal surface, and the 2-dimensional plane that the whip is cracking in bisects the whip along its line of symmetry.
To put this more simply, In both Tibetan Wave and Rolling Loop the flow and motion of the whip angles is analogous to a knife or sword blade, and just like the angle and orientation of the cutting edge of the blade should be aligned to the angle and orientation the blade is cutting in, so too should the dorsal or ventral axis of the whip be aligned to that plane and angle of motion. After all, there is little use to striking your opponent or target with the flat of the blade. Think of those dorsal and ventral bisecting lines of the whip to be the true edge and false edge of a sword.
Also, please note that when I refer to pronation and supination, I am referring ONLY to the orientation of the whip, not the orientation of the hand holding it. The body mechanics utilized are identical regardless if the whip itself is pronated or supinated. The only time we really switch our hand from a pronated to a supinated orientation, (regardless if the whip is pronated or supinated,) is in cracking the whip on the non-dominant hand side of the body, (i.e. working in planes on the opposite side of the body as the hand holding the whip). Anthony demonstrates this in the above video with the horizontal plane and diagonal descending and ascending he does where he performs them with the whip on the left side of his body. Rolling Loop uses the terms forehead and backhand for this, and just like in tennis, the forehand cracks occur on the dominant side of the body with the hand in a pronated orientation, and the backhand cracks occur on the non-dominant side of the body with the hand in supinated orientation.
I mentioned back in Part One that one of the major points of divergence between DeLongis Rolling Loop and Ron Lew’s Tibetan Wave system is that each one solely utilized a single orientation, (Rolling Loop the supinated “curve up” orientation, and Tibetan Wave the pronated “curve down”.) I personally use and teach both, and have for about 15 years now, and am at a point that I transition smoothly between a pronated grip and a supinated grip between cracks as easily as I change angles and planes. In fact, I do a whip drill similar to the “Round the clock” exercise I mentioned earlier where I work through all the angles of attack that Anthony demonstrates in the video above...where there are in essence 4 separate cracks per angle, (a compound pronated, an elliptical pronated, a compound supinated, and an elliptical supinated.) and try to continually increase the smoothness between the angles and the grip orientation.
I am not the only person to switch back and forth, and while I’m the only person I know to devote as much time to the even transition between the two, I doubt I’m alone in this practice. But why switch at all? Why favor one over the other? When should one use one over the other? And why exactly does Rolling Loop exclusively uses one and Tibetan Wave the other? That last question I’ll answer in greater detail in Part Four and Five and the remainder of this essay will discuss my approach to the pronated and supinated orientation.
I started my exploration of the bullwhip using a predominantly Wild West Arts technique. That’s what I first learned and the people I was learning from used an entirely pronated orientation. The attitude toward using the supinated orientation was that “Damned upside down thing DeLongis does!” and there was also a common misconception in circulation that using a whip in that orientation broke down the transition zone on a bullwhip. So I listened to those “authorities” and avoided experimenting with it, even though it seemed completely counterintuitive to me. The whip seemed to be under less tension in the supinated “Rolling Loop” orientation, and as we talked about in terms of structure, using the whip the way I was taught seemed to be like bending your fingers backward. It seemed to me that would break down that inner structure more than Rolling Loop.
So, I once again went to the authorities and asked a couple fine whipmakers whose opinions I hold in high regard. My suspicions were confirmed that it didn’t matter what orientation one used. It wouldn’t hurt the whip, and it didn’t make a difference which way I used it.
But there is obviously a qualitative and quantitative difference that is significant enough that DeLongis Rolling Loop exclusively uses one and Lew’s Tibetan Wave exclusively uses the other, and again, all that goes back to the structure discussed in Part One.
Just a refresher, the strands on the ventral side of the whip INSIDE the curve behave similarly to the flexor tendons in the hand, and the strands on the dorsal side of the whip behaving similarly to the extensor tendons.
Try this analogy: extend your arm directly out in front of your body so that it is parallel to the ground and relax your hand. If the hand is oriented in a pronated position and relaxed, the tips of the fingers curl under toward the ground. If you rotate your forearm so that the hand is supinated, the fingertips generally point ahead of you.
A whip will follow this same pattern so that if you consider your “target” to be out in front of you, cracking the whip in a dorsal-side-up pronated orientation will result in the whip passing through the target to reach a point of rest, as the “flexor” strands of the underside of the whip have a natural state that is curled under. Pronated cracks tend toward a “Slashing” type of motion.
When cracking in a ventral-side-up supinated orientation, the whip extends out to the target, and the “extensor” strands on the underside of the whip have it almost fully extended straight to it’s natural point of rest. Supinated cracks are more of a “Thrusting” type of motion.
Anthony has described his Rolling Loop technique as the only whip training system that can stab. I don’t know if it is the ONLY one, but it’s certainly the only one I’ve yet encountered, (apart from the Circle Model, and as I borrowed it directly from Rolling Loop, that hardly counts.) Also, as an interesting phenomenon in biomechanics and technique, when one is performing a thrust to stab an opponent with a sword, especially in historical European sword techniques, thrusts are typically, (though not always,) performed with the fencers hand in a supinated orientation.
An easy way of looking at it is that pronated cracks hit harder than supinated cracks. This is a somewhat simplified way of looking at it. I will discuss this in greater detail in Part Five when I discuss Tibetan Wave and Ron Lew’s Kung Fu/Tai Chi exploration of Yin/Yang flow of energy along the length of the whip.
In Summary:
As stated earlier, the Circle Model does not exist in a vacuum, and I want to begin to explain how all of these different approaches are connected. Next week, I break down Anthony DeLongis's "Rolling Loop" system of training and approach and how it works to meet the goals it was designed to achieve.
Thanks for reading.
I often do a practice drill related to this where I change up the exercise of angle exploration that Anthony demonstrates, (which mirrors a Filipino stick drill, and also a European saber and longsword cutting drill,) and just go as far around the circle as I smoothly as I can with elliptical cracks: starting vertical with 12 o’clock, then to forehand descending diagonals at 1 and 2 o’clock...horizontal forehand at 3 o’clock...forehand ascending diagonals at 4 and 5 o’clock, and vertical ascending “underhand flick” at 6 o’clock, and then back up the opposite side of the clock face using the backhand swing across my body for 7 to 11 o’clock.
One of the biggest challenges to exploring all these directions and angles is safety. When one is learning to crack a whip, they will invariably end up hitting themselves. Minimizing the risk by long pants and eye protection is a great way to start, and I recommend wearing eye protection when practicing or when working on a new trick or technique even for seasoned whip performers, because you may end up with a welt or even a cool “Indiana Jones” scar on your skin from a mishap. Those heal. Losing an eye is something else entirely.
I have seen some teachers even recommend wearing a leather jacket and a motorcycle helmet when learning. This is ludicrous and completely unnecessary. All this teaches students is to be afraid of the whip. In my experience, both with students and in learning myself, it is that fear of hitting yourself that invariably causes you to hit yourself. Once one hits themselves, they try to get out of the whips way, often bending themselves out of proper musculoskeletal alignment, and as we have mentioned, that misalignment is mirrored and amplified by the whip. That misalignment makes the whip behave unpredictably, increasing the possibility of hitting yourself. Also when you anticipate being hit, you involuntarily tense up or even flinch. That tension, once again, is reflected and amplified by the whip. So, in trying not to hit yourself, you increase the odds of hitting yourself in an ever-intensifying and frustrating feedback loop.
The trick to keeping yourself safe is keeping yourself outside of that cracking plane. The DeLongis Rolling Loop method addresses this in a number of ways, (which will be discussed in the next section,) but the primary safety factor is the “railroad tracks” analogy. Anthony’s “railroad tracks” operate under the same principles as the flat planes of the circle model. In Rolling Loop, you learn to keep anything you don’t want the whip to hit, inside and outside of the line of the railroad track, (including yourself.) Anything you want to strike or wrap, you put on the railroad track. This holds true for all planes and all angles. If you are doing a Compound type of crack in any plane, and you don’t hit yourself in the Load Phase of the crack, but then you DO hit yourself in the Throw Phase, you have pulled the whip out of alignment somewhere.
That brings us to the next major aspect of exploring all of those planes and angles. Along the way, one will invariably want to begin building combinations of multiple cracks flowing into one another. This is the foundation of two-handed cracking routines, as well as single whip drills. Most of the difficulties I see with people learning combinations is that they are rushing into the next move before completing the one the whip is still in the process of performing.
As I discussed in Part Two, the Law of Inertia states that an object in motion will continue that motion IN A STRAIGHT LINE unless acted upon by some outside force. While the whip is rolling into the crack, it continues to accelerate. Any outside force will naturally decelerate the velocity of the whip, just like a car will slow down around a curve. This is why race car drivers have to “accelerate” into curves; they need to apply more energy to maintain the speed they were keeping on the straightaway of the track. Trying to change any plane or any angle before the whip has cracked, and is naturally decelerated due to transduction of the kinetic energy to sound and shock drag, will result in rapid deceleration and unpredictable behavior. Therefore if one does this, then the attempted multiple-crack routine will fall apart, and the whip cracker will invariably hit themselves with the whip.
This is one of many characteristics that makes the whip an incredible training tool for other weapons. In cutting drills with knives and swords in both Eastern and Western martial arts, “Breaking your structure” or rolling your wrist, (and therefore the edge of the blade,) during a cut is typically bad form and can lead to problems.
In both traditional Japanese Martial Arts that train in Tamishigiri, and in modern Historical European Martial Arts training, cutting tightly rolled tatami mats is a way of evaluating proper technique in maintaining cutting angles through the cut.
The whip trains the same process through each crack, as if one rolls their wrist or deviates from that precise plane the artist began the movement in BEFORE the whip has completed it’s motion and cracked, then the whip will not crack efficiently and move predictably.
If one looks at the angles that Anthony DeLongis is demonstrating in the video posted above, you can see that every angle and plane that Anthony transitions to is performed AFTER the whip has cracked. He uses that audio and tactile feedback from the whip as his cue to change direction and flow into the load phase of the next crack in the sequence. He doesn’t break/adjust his angle or structure until the whip has completed its motion, and is just following through.
That is not to say that changing the plane of the whip between the load and throw phase doesn’t have its purposes. There is a great routine by my old friend Chris “The Whip Guy” Camp where he cuts a target out of the mouth of someone facing away from him, literally making the whip snake out away from him before “turning a corner” and cutting the target. I was blown away when I first saw it, and it took a number of times seeing him perform the trick to figure out how he did it, (once or twice during performances when I stood in as his assistant and held the target he cut in my teeth.) Without giving the secret away, I can tell you that it’s done through a very controlled and rehearsed violation of the “180-degree rule” in the Circle Model.
Ron Lew’s Tibetan Wave bullwhip technique also operates outside the Circle Model by using the off-hand to change the flow and trajectory of an already energized and in-motion bullwhip, which I will discuss in greater detail in Part Five of this series.
One final thing I want to touch on that I will expand a bit on in my discussion of Rolling Loop and Tibetan Wave in Parts Four and Five is alignment. In Part One’s discussion of the construction and anatomy of a well-made bullwhip, I explained that a whip has a dorsal side and a ventral side, and can be held in either a pronated or supinated orientation when cracking. That orientation should definitionally apply only to the vertical cracking plane that is a right angle to the ground, but we’re going to expand that discussion of orientation to all the angles we’ve discussed. Once the whip is in motion, the angle of the whip makes no difference in the mechanics of the crack, so what holds true for the vertical plane holds equally true for the horizontal and diagonal planes on both sides of the body.
Think of it this way. I mentioned in Part One that a whip has a “Spine” structure like a human being, and it bends more comfortably toward its ventral axis than its dorsal axis, (like we can bend over easier than we can bend backward, as I discussed in curling fingers toward the palm vs. bending them backward.) We CAN look at whips as having a spine, and like all vertebrate creatures, it is bilaterally symmetrical, meaning one side of the spinal column is a mirror image of the other, just like our structure...Two arms, two legs, two eyes, ears, and nostrils, etc. The whip structure is obviously not as complicated as that, but it is nonetheless symmetrical. That line of symmetry runs right along the center of the dorsal surface, and the 2-dimensional plane that the whip is cracking in bisects the whip along its line of symmetry.
To put this more simply, In both Tibetan Wave and Rolling Loop the flow and motion of the whip angles is analogous to a knife or sword blade, and just like the angle and orientation of the cutting edge of the blade should be aligned to the angle and orientation the blade is cutting in, so too should the dorsal or ventral axis of the whip be aligned to that plane and angle of motion. After all, there is little use to striking your opponent or target with the flat of the blade. Think of those dorsal and ventral bisecting lines of the whip to be the true edge and false edge of a sword.
Also, please note that when I refer to pronation and supination, I am referring ONLY to the orientation of the whip, not the orientation of the hand holding it. The body mechanics utilized are identical regardless if the whip itself is pronated or supinated. The only time we really switch our hand from a pronated to a supinated orientation, (regardless if the whip is pronated or supinated,) is in cracking the whip on the non-dominant hand side of the body, (i.e. working in planes on the opposite side of the body as the hand holding the whip). Anthony demonstrates this in the above video with the horizontal plane and diagonal descending and ascending he does where he performs them with the whip on the left side of his body. Rolling Loop uses the terms forehead and backhand for this, and just like in tennis, the forehand cracks occur on the dominant side of the body with the hand in a pronated orientation, and the backhand cracks occur on the non-dominant side of the body with the hand in supinated orientation.
I mentioned back in Part One that one of the major points of divergence between DeLongis Rolling Loop and Ron Lew’s Tibetan Wave system is that each one solely utilized a single orientation, (Rolling Loop the supinated “curve up” orientation, and Tibetan Wave the pronated “curve down”.) I personally use and teach both, and have for about 15 years now, and am at a point that I transition smoothly between a pronated grip and a supinated grip between cracks as easily as I change angles and planes. In fact, I do a whip drill similar to the “Round the clock” exercise I mentioned earlier where I work through all the angles of attack that Anthony demonstrates in the video above...where there are in essence 4 separate cracks per angle, (a compound pronated, an elliptical pronated, a compound supinated, and an elliptical supinated.) and try to continually increase the smoothness between the angles and the grip orientation.
I am not the only person to switch back and forth, and while I’m the only person I know to devote as much time to the even transition between the two, I doubt I’m alone in this practice. But why switch at all? Why favor one over the other? When should one use one over the other? And why exactly does Rolling Loop exclusively uses one and Tibetan Wave the other? That last question I’ll answer in greater detail in Part Four and Five and the remainder of this essay will discuss my approach to the pronated and supinated orientation.
I started my exploration of the bullwhip using a predominantly Wild West Arts technique. That’s what I first learned and the people I was learning from used an entirely pronated orientation. The attitude toward using the supinated orientation was that “Damned upside down thing DeLongis does!” and there was also a common misconception in circulation that using a whip in that orientation broke down the transition zone on a bullwhip. So I listened to those “authorities” and avoided experimenting with it, even though it seemed completely counterintuitive to me. The whip seemed to be under less tension in the supinated “Rolling Loop” orientation, and as we talked about in terms of structure, using the whip the way I was taught seemed to be like bending your fingers backward. It seemed to me that would break down that inner structure more than Rolling Loop.
So, I once again went to the authorities and asked a couple fine whipmakers whose opinions I hold in high regard. My suspicions were confirmed that it didn’t matter what orientation one used. It wouldn’t hurt the whip, and it didn’t make a difference which way I used it.
But there is obviously a qualitative and quantitative difference that is significant enough that DeLongis Rolling Loop exclusively uses one and Lew’s Tibetan Wave exclusively uses the other, and again, all that goes back to the structure discussed in Part One.
Just a refresher, the strands on the ventral side of the whip INSIDE the curve behave similarly to the flexor tendons in the hand, and the strands on the dorsal side of the whip behaving similarly to the extensor tendons.
Try this analogy: extend your arm directly out in front of your body so that it is parallel to the ground and relax your hand. If the hand is oriented in a pronated position and relaxed, the tips of the fingers curl under toward the ground. If you rotate your forearm so that the hand is supinated, the fingertips generally point ahead of you.
A whip will follow this same pattern so that if you consider your “target” to be out in front of you, cracking the whip in a dorsal-side-up pronated orientation will result in the whip passing through the target to reach a point of rest, as the “flexor” strands of the underside of the whip have a natural state that is curled under. Pronated cracks tend toward a “Slashing” type of motion.
When cracking in a ventral-side-up supinated orientation, the whip extends out to the target, and the “extensor” strands on the underside of the whip have it almost fully extended straight to it’s natural point of rest. Supinated cracks are more of a “Thrusting” type of motion.
Anthony has described his Rolling Loop technique as the only whip training system that can stab. I don’t know if it is the ONLY one, but it’s certainly the only one I’ve yet encountered, (apart from the Circle Model, and as I borrowed it directly from Rolling Loop, that hardly counts.) Also, as an interesting phenomenon in biomechanics and technique, when one is performing a thrust to stab an opponent with a sword, especially in historical European sword techniques, thrusts are typically, (though not always,) performed with the fencers hand in a supinated orientation.
An easy way of looking at it is that pronated cracks hit harder than supinated cracks. This is a somewhat simplified way of looking at it. I will discuss this in greater detail in Part Five when I discuss Tibetan Wave and Ron Lew’s Kung Fu/Tai Chi exploration of Yin/Yang flow of energy along the length of the whip.
In Summary:
- The “Ideal” whip-crack is one that uses minimum effort for maximum output.
- In its simplest form, the ideal whip crack can be described as a 360-degree circular movement through a flat, 2-dimensional plane.
- The 360-degree movement of the whip can be divided into two 180-degree phases: the load phase and the throw phase.
- The Load Phase is the first 180-degrees of the crack in which kinetic energy is imparted to the whip.
- The Throw Phase is the second 180-degrees of the crack in which the kinetic energy loaded into the whip in the throw phase begins to roll down the length of the whip, accelerating into the crack.
- There are two types of crack in the MACH ONE Circle Model: The Compound Crack and the Elliptical Crack
- Compound Cracks use a compound arm motion and the whip travels along the same path during the Throw phase into the crack as it did in the “Load Phase.”
- Elliptical Cracks use an elliptical arm motion and the path of the whip forms a continuous loop.
- The two dimensional plane that the whip can be visualized to travel in can be rotated and moved to almost any area around the body.
- All of these planes can be explored with either type of crack with the whip oriented to either a pronated or supinated alignment along the cracking plane.
As stated earlier, the Circle Model does not exist in a vacuum, and I want to begin to explain how all of these different approaches are connected. Next week, I break down Anthony DeLongis's "Rolling Loop" system of training and approach and how it works to meet the goals it was designed to achieve.
Thanks for reading.