The next two essays in this series will outline the approach and mechanics of two seemingly very different bullwhip training and practice techniques, and how they fit/deviate from the Circle Model.
Because these techniques are not my own, I feel that I should clarify a number of things about these two essays. These are NOT “Which is better?” posts, nor are they critical of either of these systems. I have studied them fairly extensively over the last 13 years, and within the last 6 years, I’ve had the opportunity to train directly under the martial artists who developed them. It will be rather analytical in my discussion of both of them, but only to make clear the goals, purpose, and resulting design of each.
Also, understand that the following posts are only my INTERPRETATION of the work of the respective developers. I do not speak for them, only for myself, (unless I give an actual quote, in which case I will denote that.) I have spoken to both Anthony DeLongis and Ron Lew about this series, and they are supportive and interested in reading my analysis and interpretation, but they have had no direct input on them except where I have specified.
With that disclaimer in place, on to my discussion of DeLongis Rolling Loop!
First of all, let’s define exactly what DeLongis Rolling Loop was developed for and why. Anthony DeLongis is a weapons specialist, trainer, fightmaster, and performer of stunt work, dramatic violence, and stage combat. When he’s not performing himself, it’s his job to make other actors and performers appear to be skilled and confident combatants both in hand-to-hand and with any number of weapons, (I’m not going to go through the laundry list of different weapons, the projects he’s worked on, or the people he’s trained...If you’ve visited this website about bullwhips and are bothering to read this blog, chances are you know who the hell he is. If you want to know more, just visit his website or check out his IMDB page of credits.)
The goal of dramatic violence and stage combat is to create the illusion of chaotic, spontaneous danger and conflict in a safe, predictable, rehearsed and repeatable manner.
Anyone who has worked in theater knows that’s easier said than done. Things go wrong and actors miss their cues and forget their lines and blocking. That’s bad enough when that just happens with dialog, and the actors have to ad lib their way through the rough spot and either hope the audience doesn’t notice OR brings the audience along with them and make it part of the show...because failing to do so is figuratively “Dying” on stage. When one puts weapons and action in the mix, those things that go wrong can cause actors to LITERALLY die on stage.
So, effective stage combat is about building as many safety factors into the training, choreography, rehearsal, and performance as one can. For armed “combat”, form and structure are used in such a way that the threat of injury with the weapon is kept as minimal as possible. The fight is choreographed so that every “attack” is prepared for, and the “defense” is there to intercept it. The actual force behind blows is kept low and “fights” are structured in such a way that while it looks like the weapon is aimed at the opponent, it’s actually aimed at where the opponent's weapon should intercept and block it.
But things happen in live theater and when the cameras are rolling that cannot be anticipated. Mistakes happen. For this reason, weapons for dramatic violence are made as safe as they possibly can be. For example, swords and bladed weapons have no sharp edges or points and are often crafted from aluminum to reduce their mass while still maintaining the appearance of heavy steel. They are also often made of foam or rubber for film and television scenes where the clang of metal against metal can be added in editing.
I’ve stated ALL of that above to talk about how fightmasters for stage and screen build in multiple layers of safety for their performers. Using bullwhips for dramatic violence presents some daunting challenges to the performer, trainer, and fightmaster. You can fake swords and still end up with passable staged violence. It’s harder to fake a bullwhip. If you swing a sword at someone, when you stop your arm, the blade stops. When you swing a bullwhip at someone, it keeps going and will either hit or wrap around them. There’s problem one.
The factor that makes bullwhips so dangerous is that rapid acceleration to 800MPH. The tip of a whip travelling at that speed can slice through flesh, break small bones, and cause excruciating pain. It does that through the structure and the physics involved that were discussed in Part One and Two of this series. Unfortunately, removing those factors that make the bullwhip dangerous only make it marginally safer, (if at all,) because when you remove all of that acceleration and amplification of energy, you also remove consistency and predictability.
Back in Part Two of this series, I stated that a well-made whip will behave consistently every time. The converse of that is also true: A poorly made whip, (one that exhibits little taper or structure,) will behave inconsistently. Over the years, I’ve seen people attempt to reduce the danger level of working with a whip by using lightweight, poorly made whips that don’t crack easily and even tying a streamer to the fall in the place of a popper on a well made whip so that drag from air friction slowed the tip down and kept it from going supersonic. The trade off for both of those methods is that the whip becomes more difficult to work with, and behaves unpredictably because of those very same physics principles that make it work in the first place.
There’s problem two: The things that produce the danger in working with whips are the EXACT same things that produce the safety.
There are a number of safety factors that the experienced whip performer can build into his act to create the illusion of danger. I discussed this in Part Two in the section discussing the law of Conservation of Energy: Once the whip has transduced the kinetic energy of the wave into acoustic energy...making the loud bang of the crack...the whip is for the most part de energized, and the danger is greatly reduced. Hence the old trick of a whip performer throwing the whip and the tip obliterates a target held by their assistant with an explosive strike, then the whip performer seemingly does the exact same thing, the whip produces a loud explosion, but the last length of the whip that had just moments ago sliced dramatically through the target elegantly wraps around the assistant’s still outstretched hand.
That trick of placement has been used in entertainment since the days of the travelling Wild West Show, and made its way into the realm of the Hollywood Stuntman soon after. Douglas Fairbanks famously added the whip into Zorro mythos when he was looking for something new to impress audiences. He felt as though he had explored all there was to explore in dramatic action with a sword in his films “The Mark of Zorro” (1920), “The Three Musketeers” (1921), and “The Thief of Bagdad” (1924). He was searching for a new and dynamic weapon to really embody the flamboyant character he wanted to portray in his next Zorro film, and found it when he met Australian athlete and actor, Rex “Snowy” Baker who taught him how to use a fine Australian stockwhip.
The action that resulted in Fairbanks’ 1925 film “Don Q, Son of Zorro” used these same illusions of danger with those same safety guidelines, and those same tricks of cutting targets from people’s hands, wrapping limbs, using angles and motion to make it look like the opponent was struck with the whip when they were safely outside of striking distance that had been used in those Wild West travelling shows since the late 19th century.
While special effects, photography methods, and editing technology of Hollywood became more refined, dramatic violence techniques for the whip remained relatively unchanged through the 1980’s. Not only was Indiana Jones an homage to those same Douglas Fairbanks films, and all of the westerns and Republic Pictures serials they inspired, but the techniques that Harrison Ford was using as Indiana Jones varied very little from the techniques that Douglas Fairbanks was using as Don Cesar de la Vega in “Don Q.”.
One of the key things that Rolling Loop addresses is that it is a REPRESENTATIONAL type of performance rather than a PRESENTATIONAL type of performance.
Presentational performance is the style of performance in which there is no “Fourth Wall” and the performers are assumed to be aware of the audience and typically directly address and interact with them. Dance, magic acts, juggling, etc. are this type of performance.
Representational performance is what people are used to in dramatic television and film, where there is a distinct “Fourth Wall.” The performers are portraying characters that are unaware and do not interact with the audience, (with few, usually comedic acceptions.)
The traditional conventions of whip cracking for entertainment were developed during the Wild West Show days of the 19th century. They were meant to be performed before a live audience in an interactive arena venue, where the whip had to be loud and flashy, there was typically room for the whip to stretch out, and the setup and performance for each trick was in a relatively controlled environment.
In this type of performance, using more force with the whip produces a louder crack, (often necessary for big arenas packed with lots of people,) and in the cases of travelling shows, the default way of dealing with odd terrain and a variety of obstacles was to put more force down the whip. If the whip is energized with more force behind it, then by the Law of Inertia it will take more outside force to move the whip off of its straight-line trajectory.
Typically, dramatic violence with a whip in movies and television is staged using photographic techniques so the whip is actually out of the danger range of the other performers or the action is expressed in the edit.
The iconic opening scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, (appearing in the link above,) is done in this way. We actually see very little of the whips motion: We begin with a close up of the bad guy with a look of determination on his face. We cut to a close up of his hip as he draws his revolver from a holster and cocks it. We cut to a reverse angle close up of the back of Indiana’s head as he reacts to the sound of the gun being cocked. There’s then a rapid series of shots consisting of a Medium shot of the bad guy bringing the gun to bear on Indy, a close up of Indy’s hip as he turns to draw the whip, a wide shot of Indy continuing the action of his turn where he pulls the whip from his belt and swings it over his head, a close up of his his hand, whip held high over his head, back to the wide shot with him swinging it down toward the bad guy. Close up of the bad guy’s hand as he drops the gun with the sound of the whip crack, (you don’t even see the end of the whip come into frame,) back to the wide shot of Indy following through with the whip following the crack, and then cut back to the reverse angle where we see the bad guy clutching his hand in shocked pain and run away…
I point ALL of this out because we remember all of that as a smooth fluid action, but it’s all broken down into smaller elements that were shot separately to create the illusion of violence. The whip actually never came anywhere near the actor playing the bad guy.
Other films and movies that feature whips use the exact same trick: Shot of the person cracking the whip, cut to reaction shot of the person who was hit with a slash in their clothing and a red streak of blood on their skin, cut back to a shot of the guy with the whip. The whip fights between Burt Lancaster and Walter Matthau in "The Kentuckian", the training scenes between Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas in the “The Mask of Zorro”, just about all the action scenes from Lash LaRue and Whip Wilson’s serial westerns...they ALL follow this method. The list goes on and on.
This is where Anthony and the Rolling Loop technique come into the picture. So, let’s just take a short look at Rolling Loop in action for comparison. This is a different video than the Black Belt Magazine video we looked at in Part Three.
Because these techniques are not my own, I feel that I should clarify a number of things about these two essays. These are NOT “Which is better?” posts, nor are they critical of either of these systems. I have studied them fairly extensively over the last 13 years, and within the last 6 years, I’ve had the opportunity to train directly under the martial artists who developed them. It will be rather analytical in my discussion of both of them, but only to make clear the goals, purpose, and resulting design of each.
Also, understand that the following posts are only my INTERPRETATION of the work of the respective developers. I do not speak for them, only for myself, (unless I give an actual quote, in which case I will denote that.) I have spoken to both Anthony DeLongis and Ron Lew about this series, and they are supportive and interested in reading my analysis and interpretation, but they have had no direct input on them except where I have specified.
With that disclaimer in place, on to my discussion of DeLongis Rolling Loop!
First of all, let’s define exactly what DeLongis Rolling Loop was developed for and why. Anthony DeLongis is a weapons specialist, trainer, fightmaster, and performer of stunt work, dramatic violence, and stage combat. When he’s not performing himself, it’s his job to make other actors and performers appear to be skilled and confident combatants both in hand-to-hand and with any number of weapons, (I’m not going to go through the laundry list of different weapons, the projects he’s worked on, or the people he’s trained...If you’ve visited this website about bullwhips and are bothering to read this blog, chances are you know who the hell he is. If you want to know more, just visit his website or check out his IMDB page of credits.)
The goal of dramatic violence and stage combat is to create the illusion of chaotic, spontaneous danger and conflict in a safe, predictable, rehearsed and repeatable manner.
Anyone who has worked in theater knows that’s easier said than done. Things go wrong and actors miss their cues and forget their lines and blocking. That’s bad enough when that just happens with dialog, and the actors have to ad lib their way through the rough spot and either hope the audience doesn’t notice OR brings the audience along with them and make it part of the show...because failing to do so is figuratively “Dying” on stage. When one puts weapons and action in the mix, those things that go wrong can cause actors to LITERALLY die on stage.
So, effective stage combat is about building as many safety factors into the training, choreography, rehearsal, and performance as one can. For armed “combat”, form and structure are used in such a way that the threat of injury with the weapon is kept as minimal as possible. The fight is choreographed so that every “attack” is prepared for, and the “defense” is there to intercept it. The actual force behind blows is kept low and “fights” are structured in such a way that while it looks like the weapon is aimed at the opponent, it’s actually aimed at where the opponent's weapon should intercept and block it.
But things happen in live theater and when the cameras are rolling that cannot be anticipated. Mistakes happen. For this reason, weapons for dramatic violence are made as safe as they possibly can be. For example, swords and bladed weapons have no sharp edges or points and are often crafted from aluminum to reduce their mass while still maintaining the appearance of heavy steel. They are also often made of foam or rubber for film and television scenes where the clang of metal against metal can be added in editing.
I’ve stated ALL of that above to talk about how fightmasters for stage and screen build in multiple layers of safety for their performers. Using bullwhips for dramatic violence presents some daunting challenges to the performer, trainer, and fightmaster. You can fake swords and still end up with passable staged violence. It’s harder to fake a bullwhip. If you swing a sword at someone, when you stop your arm, the blade stops. When you swing a bullwhip at someone, it keeps going and will either hit or wrap around them. There’s problem one.
The factor that makes bullwhips so dangerous is that rapid acceleration to 800MPH. The tip of a whip travelling at that speed can slice through flesh, break small bones, and cause excruciating pain. It does that through the structure and the physics involved that were discussed in Part One and Two of this series. Unfortunately, removing those factors that make the bullwhip dangerous only make it marginally safer, (if at all,) because when you remove all of that acceleration and amplification of energy, you also remove consistency and predictability.
Back in Part Two of this series, I stated that a well-made whip will behave consistently every time. The converse of that is also true: A poorly made whip, (one that exhibits little taper or structure,) will behave inconsistently. Over the years, I’ve seen people attempt to reduce the danger level of working with a whip by using lightweight, poorly made whips that don’t crack easily and even tying a streamer to the fall in the place of a popper on a well made whip so that drag from air friction slowed the tip down and kept it from going supersonic. The trade off for both of those methods is that the whip becomes more difficult to work with, and behaves unpredictably because of those very same physics principles that make it work in the first place.
There’s problem two: The things that produce the danger in working with whips are the EXACT same things that produce the safety.
There are a number of safety factors that the experienced whip performer can build into his act to create the illusion of danger. I discussed this in Part Two in the section discussing the law of Conservation of Energy: Once the whip has transduced the kinetic energy of the wave into acoustic energy...making the loud bang of the crack...the whip is for the most part de energized, and the danger is greatly reduced. Hence the old trick of a whip performer throwing the whip and the tip obliterates a target held by their assistant with an explosive strike, then the whip performer seemingly does the exact same thing, the whip produces a loud explosion, but the last length of the whip that had just moments ago sliced dramatically through the target elegantly wraps around the assistant’s still outstretched hand.
That trick of placement has been used in entertainment since the days of the travelling Wild West Show, and made its way into the realm of the Hollywood Stuntman soon after. Douglas Fairbanks famously added the whip into Zorro mythos when he was looking for something new to impress audiences. He felt as though he had explored all there was to explore in dramatic action with a sword in his films “The Mark of Zorro” (1920), “The Three Musketeers” (1921), and “The Thief of Bagdad” (1924). He was searching for a new and dynamic weapon to really embody the flamboyant character he wanted to portray in his next Zorro film, and found it when he met Australian athlete and actor, Rex “Snowy” Baker who taught him how to use a fine Australian stockwhip.
The action that resulted in Fairbanks’ 1925 film “Don Q, Son of Zorro” used these same illusions of danger with those same safety guidelines, and those same tricks of cutting targets from people’s hands, wrapping limbs, using angles and motion to make it look like the opponent was struck with the whip when they were safely outside of striking distance that had been used in those Wild West travelling shows since the late 19th century.
While special effects, photography methods, and editing technology of Hollywood became more refined, dramatic violence techniques for the whip remained relatively unchanged through the 1980’s. Not only was Indiana Jones an homage to those same Douglas Fairbanks films, and all of the westerns and Republic Pictures serials they inspired, but the techniques that Harrison Ford was using as Indiana Jones varied very little from the techniques that Douglas Fairbanks was using as Don Cesar de la Vega in “Don Q.”.
One of the key things that Rolling Loop addresses is that it is a REPRESENTATIONAL type of performance rather than a PRESENTATIONAL type of performance.
Presentational performance is the style of performance in which there is no “Fourth Wall” and the performers are assumed to be aware of the audience and typically directly address and interact with them. Dance, magic acts, juggling, etc. are this type of performance.
Representational performance is what people are used to in dramatic television and film, where there is a distinct “Fourth Wall.” The performers are portraying characters that are unaware and do not interact with the audience, (with few, usually comedic acceptions.)
The traditional conventions of whip cracking for entertainment were developed during the Wild West Show days of the 19th century. They were meant to be performed before a live audience in an interactive arena venue, where the whip had to be loud and flashy, there was typically room for the whip to stretch out, and the setup and performance for each trick was in a relatively controlled environment.
In this type of performance, using more force with the whip produces a louder crack, (often necessary for big arenas packed with lots of people,) and in the cases of travelling shows, the default way of dealing with odd terrain and a variety of obstacles was to put more force down the whip. If the whip is energized with more force behind it, then by the Law of Inertia it will take more outside force to move the whip off of its straight-line trajectory.
Typically, dramatic violence with a whip in movies and television is staged using photographic techniques so the whip is actually out of the danger range of the other performers or the action is expressed in the edit.
The iconic opening scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, (appearing in the link above,) is done in this way. We actually see very little of the whips motion: We begin with a close up of the bad guy with a look of determination on his face. We cut to a close up of his hip as he draws his revolver from a holster and cocks it. We cut to a reverse angle close up of the back of Indiana’s head as he reacts to the sound of the gun being cocked. There’s then a rapid series of shots consisting of a Medium shot of the bad guy bringing the gun to bear on Indy, a close up of Indy’s hip as he turns to draw the whip, a wide shot of Indy continuing the action of his turn where he pulls the whip from his belt and swings it over his head, a close up of his his hand, whip held high over his head, back to the wide shot with him swinging it down toward the bad guy. Close up of the bad guy’s hand as he drops the gun with the sound of the whip crack, (you don’t even see the end of the whip come into frame,) back to the wide shot of Indy following through with the whip following the crack, and then cut back to the reverse angle where we see the bad guy clutching his hand in shocked pain and run away…
I point ALL of this out because we remember all of that as a smooth fluid action, but it’s all broken down into smaller elements that were shot separately to create the illusion of violence. The whip actually never came anywhere near the actor playing the bad guy.
Other films and movies that feature whips use the exact same trick: Shot of the person cracking the whip, cut to reaction shot of the person who was hit with a slash in their clothing and a red streak of blood on their skin, cut back to a shot of the guy with the whip. The whip fights between Burt Lancaster and Walter Matthau in "The Kentuckian", the training scenes between Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas in the “The Mask of Zorro”, just about all the action scenes from Lash LaRue and Whip Wilson’s serial westerns...they ALL follow this method. The list goes on and on.
This is where Anthony and the Rolling Loop technique come into the picture. So, let’s just take a short look at Rolling Loop in action for comparison. This is a different video than the Black Belt Magazine video we looked at in Part Three.
This is actually an older video...It was uploaded in 2007, so the compression is high and the quality isn’t that great, but the action is superb. If you look at the footage of the takedown from about 2:55, and running until almost the 3 minute mark, (as well as the action from "The Rundown" earlier with the neck wraps on Dwayne Johnson performed by Anthony’s whip student Stuart Wilson,) you’ll see a very different type of action to the traditional forms above. This has a more visceral “Hong Kong” style of flow that requires a very different approach and a very different set of safety parameters to keep performers safe. Something else about that video...The video of Anthony doing the single whip demonstration, the double whip scene from a movie where he’s snuffing candles, and the 2:55 wrap and take down of his opponent - all of that footage was shot about 1993 or 1994. As someone who has worked with the man, I can tell you that Rolling Loop is far more refined, subtle, and effective now than it was even then.
I’ll let Anthony give the short version of this, in this interview from Wasteland Weekend.
I’ll let Anthony give the short version of this, in this interview from Wasteland Weekend.
So that’s the Elevator pitch, but it really doesn’t do much to address exactly how Rolling Loop overcomes many of the complications that whips present in presenting this type of dramatic violence. The general consensus typically is that DeLongis Rolling Loop is mechanically just the traditional Wild West style, but the whip flipped over so it’s held supinated rather than pronated, (see Part 3 for my discussion of how that works,) and that is indeed part of it, but it runs far FAR deeper than that and is far more subtle, more effective, and more innovative.
Let me preface all of this by making the following analogy: Learning to crack a whip is like riding a bicycle, and honestly the physics are very similar because it's ALL about Inertia and Angular Momentum.
When you are learning to ride a bicycle, the first thing you learn is FORWARD. Turning and stopping are pretty problematic at first, but FORWARD you can learn pretty quickly. Additionally, that forward can look pretty smooth and even as long as you keep pedaling. As long as you're continually putting energy into the system, you can keep moving forward.
The minute you stop pedaling, that’s when steering and balance get wonky, that’s the Law of Inertia I was talking about in Part 2. The bike continues in a straight line as long as the energy you’re pushing into it through the pedals is greater than the outside forces acting against it. Those outside forces here are your lack of balance and all the fighting you do with the handlebars at first, (I distinctly remember facing this as a kid learning to ride a bike, all wobbly and zig-zag at first...then get up to the point that I’m in a clear line of sight of the window of the neighbor girl I liked...then pedal like hell to look all smooth and cool as I passed on by the window...and the moment I’m out of sight, back to all wobbly and zig-zagged as I’m breathing hard and rubber-legged with exhaustion for how hard I was peddling.)
Once you get FORWARD smoothly, then you can progress to turning, learn balance so you don’t even have to pedal to stay upright, and if you really spend a lot of time and effort, you can balance on front wheels, back wheels, and can really begin to explore. But it takes a LONG time to get there.
We typically do the same thing with learning whip cracking. We work too hard, we fight against ourselves, and we gain accuracy and can keep the whip straight by putting more energy into the process than is needed, and any balance minimal effort, and fluidity we develop comes out of putting in the time and sweat equity.
So, as we’ve said, we can’t particularly fake a whip like we can with a rubber or foam sword, and an inexperienced performer using a bullwhip on a movie set is about as dangerous as trying to get a performer who has never ridden a motorcyle to hit their mark with it on cue without a spill that damages the bike, the set, and the cast and crew.
Hence the development of DeLongis Rolling Loop and the training method involved.
Learning DeLongis Rolling Loop isn’t like learning to ride a bike so much as it’s like learning to ride a unicycle. You don’t get to go forward until you can keep your balance, learn your structure and can send the whip out with pinpoint accuracy with almost no force behind it at all.
That sounds just about as daunting as it is. For me, DeLongis Rolling Loop had a learning curve that sloped like Mt. Everest. By the time I first worked with Anthony in-person, I had already been working extensively with a bullwhip for over 13 years...As I’ve said quite often, I’ve been lucky enough to learn from some of the most skilled whip performers in North America. I’d been offering training through MACH ONE for two years, and had done some training with Ron Lew in the Tibetan Wave technique we will discuss in-depth in next week’s entry.
Even with ALL OF that, I still struggled with some of what I could see were the core principles of Rolling Loop. I feel some of that was that ALL of that previous experience had to be left at the door to the training space. To use an old Zen saying, I had to “Empty My Cup” before I could fill it with something new, and that’s easier said than done.
Anthony’s Rolling Loop system adds a third crack to what I would call the “Ideal Cracks,” (I discussed the two “Ideal Cracks” in the MACH ONE “Circle Model” in the Part Three.) In addition to the “Compound,” (also called “Compound” in Rolling Loop because I stole the term from Anthony,) and “Elliptical” (what Anthony calls “the Windmill” in his training videos and sessions,) of the Circle Model, Rolling Loop adds what Anthony calls a “Basic Forward Throw.”
This, like the others can be performed forehand and backhand and at all angles, (the “Circle Model” once again, borrows heavily from Rolling Loop in this regard. As I mention in Part One, one of the things that I admired about Rolling Loop is that it creates a simplified system for talking about cracking techniques, eliminating all the oddball names like “Fargo Flash” and “Tasmanian Cutback” which are cool and all, but really tell you nothing about how the whip is cracking, in what plane, and on what side of the body.)
HOWEVER, The “Basic Forward” throw is not included in the MACH ONE system at all because it does not follow the 180-Degree Rule, that is essentially the foundation of the circle model.
Let me preface all of this by making the following analogy: Learning to crack a whip is like riding a bicycle, and honestly the physics are very similar because it's ALL about Inertia and Angular Momentum.
When you are learning to ride a bicycle, the first thing you learn is FORWARD. Turning and stopping are pretty problematic at first, but FORWARD you can learn pretty quickly. Additionally, that forward can look pretty smooth and even as long as you keep pedaling. As long as you're continually putting energy into the system, you can keep moving forward.
The minute you stop pedaling, that’s when steering and balance get wonky, that’s the Law of Inertia I was talking about in Part 2. The bike continues in a straight line as long as the energy you’re pushing into it through the pedals is greater than the outside forces acting against it. Those outside forces here are your lack of balance and all the fighting you do with the handlebars at first, (I distinctly remember facing this as a kid learning to ride a bike, all wobbly and zig-zag at first...then get up to the point that I’m in a clear line of sight of the window of the neighbor girl I liked...then pedal like hell to look all smooth and cool as I passed on by the window...and the moment I’m out of sight, back to all wobbly and zig-zagged as I’m breathing hard and rubber-legged with exhaustion for how hard I was peddling.)
Once you get FORWARD smoothly, then you can progress to turning, learn balance so you don’t even have to pedal to stay upright, and if you really spend a lot of time and effort, you can balance on front wheels, back wheels, and can really begin to explore. But it takes a LONG time to get there.
We typically do the same thing with learning whip cracking. We work too hard, we fight against ourselves, and we gain accuracy and can keep the whip straight by putting more energy into the process than is needed, and any balance minimal effort, and fluidity we develop comes out of putting in the time and sweat equity.
So, as we’ve said, we can’t particularly fake a whip like we can with a rubber or foam sword, and an inexperienced performer using a bullwhip on a movie set is about as dangerous as trying to get a performer who has never ridden a motorcyle to hit their mark with it on cue without a spill that damages the bike, the set, and the cast and crew.
Hence the development of DeLongis Rolling Loop and the training method involved.
Learning DeLongis Rolling Loop isn’t like learning to ride a bike so much as it’s like learning to ride a unicycle. You don’t get to go forward until you can keep your balance, learn your structure and can send the whip out with pinpoint accuracy with almost no force behind it at all.
That sounds just about as daunting as it is. For me, DeLongis Rolling Loop had a learning curve that sloped like Mt. Everest. By the time I first worked with Anthony in-person, I had already been working extensively with a bullwhip for over 13 years...As I’ve said quite often, I’ve been lucky enough to learn from some of the most skilled whip performers in North America. I’d been offering training through MACH ONE for two years, and had done some training with Ron Lew in the Tibetan Wave technique we will discuss in-depth in next week’s entry.
Even with ALL OF that, I still struggled with some of what I could see were the core principles of Rolling Loop. I feel some of that was that ALL of that previous experience had to be left at the door to the training space. To use an old Zen saying, I had to “Empty My Cup” before I could fill it with something new, and that’s easier said than done.
Anthony’s Rolling Loop system adds a third crack to what I would call the “Ideal Cracks,” (I discussed the two “Ideal Cracks” in the MACH ONE “Circle Model” in the Part Three.) In addition to the “Compound,” (also called “Compound” in Rolling Loop because I stole the term from Anthony,) and “Elliptical” (what Anthony calls “the Windmill” in his training videos and sessions,) of the Circle Model, Rolling Loop adds what Anthony calls a “Basic Forward Throw.”
This, like the others can be performed forehand and backhand and at all angles, (the “Circle Model” once again, borrows heavily from Rolling Loop in this regard. As I mention in Part One, one of the things that I admired about Rolling Loop is that it creates a simplified system for talking about cracking techniques, eliminating all the oddball names like “Fargo Flash” and “Tasmanian Cutback” which are cool and all, but really tell you nothing about how the whip is cracking, in what plane, and on what side of the body.)
HOWEVER, The “Basic Forward” throw is not included in the MACH ONE system at all because it does not follow the 180-Degree Rule, that is essentially the foundation of the circle model.
As the slate at the beginning of the above video states, it was shot during Anthony’s Bullwhip Master Class at Combat Con in 2019 by our friend, the lovely Ramona Falkowitz. There’s very little footage anywhere of Anthony performing JUST this basic crack. It is not particularly loud or flashy, and while Anthony uses it “behind the scenes” quite often as a method to keep himself, the “Target” talent down range, and the camera person who is set up very close to Anthony to get the shot, he doesn’t often OVERTLY use it directly in demonstrations. But it is a skill like "Finding Middle C" on a piano. You have to know that before you can play Chopin.
Both Ramona and Anthony have agreed to let me use this footage here as a demonstration to what I am describing, (and as an aside, I have a correction to make. Anthony is discussing the whip gaining momentum and retaining energy, and states that the principles of the Conservation of Momentum is Newton’s Second Law. Actually, it’s Newton’s Third Law...and Anthony is only incorrect because he was agreeing with some idiot just out of frame. That idiot is me. So, my apologies. I digress.)
As you can see, the Basic Forward Throw essentially has no Load Phase. The whip doesn’t stretch out in the opposite direction of the crack as I spoke about with the Circle Model, and therefore, there is very little energy loaded INTO the whip as it rolls forward. The whip still breaks the sound barrier, but does not really begin to accelerate to speeds that could cause any serious ballistic damage to something or someone within the threat range until much further along the path to the crack. This is in part due to the supinated orientation of the whip, (described in Part One) and partially due to the lower power.
But what about those other two cracks in Rolling Loop: the Compound and the Windmill? Well, the way that Anthony often describes it, he has ADDED the Basic Forward Throw to the traditional methods, (the Compound and the Elliptical in the Circle Model,) but it is my opinion that Rolling Loop doesn’t have three cracks, it only has one.
As I pointed out in Part 3 of this series, within the Circle Model, a whip travels through a 360-degree arc where 180-degrees consists of a “Load Phase” and 180-degrees of a “Throw Phase” into the crack.
Review the video that I shared of Master Lew demonstrating the vertical compound crack in Part 3, and notice how far back the whip stretches before Ron begins his forward movement.
Both Ramona and Anthony have agreed to let me use this footage here as a demonstration to what I am describing, (and as an aside, I have a correction to make. Anthony is discussing the whip gaining momentum and retaining energy, and states that the principles of the Conservation of Momentum is Newton’s Second Law. Actually, it’s Newton’s Third Law...and Anthony is only incorrect because he was agreeing with some idiot just out of frame. That idiot is me. So, my apologies. I digress.)
As you can see, the Basic Forward Throw essentially has no Load Phase. The whip doesn’t stretch out in the opposite direction of the crack as I spoke about with the Circle Model, and therefore, there is very little energy loaded INTO the whip as it rolls forward. The whip still breaks the sound barrier, but does not really begin to accelerate to speeds that could cause any serious ballistic damage to something or someone within the threat range until much further along the path to the crack. This is in part due to the supinated orientation of the whip, (described in Part One) and partially due to the lower power.
But what about those other two cracks in Rolling Loop: the Compound and the Windmill? Well, the way that Anthony often describes it, he has ADDED the Basic Forward Throw to the traditional methods, (the Compound and the Elliptical in the Circle Model,) but it is my opinion that Rolling Loop doesn’t have three cracks, it only has one.
As I pointed out in Part 3 of this series, within the Circle Model, a whip travels through a 360-degree arc where 180-degrees consists of a “Load Phase” and 180-degrees of a “Throw Phase” into the crack.
Review the video that I shared of Master Lew demonstrating the vertical compound crack in Part 3, and notice how far back the whip stretches before Ron begins his forward movement.
Now, watch Anthony perform what mechanically APPEARS to be the same vertical compound crack toward the beginning of this video, and look at where the thong is stretched out when he begins his forward movement.
In Master Lew’s Vertical Compound above, the whip is stretched out about 180-degrees from where he wants the whip to crack, so it’s almost stretched out parallel to the ground when he begins his forward movement.
In Anthony’s Rolling Loop, there is a delay where the whip has almost curled all the way back down to the ground before he begins the forward movement.
This has two major effects.
The first is that the supinated whip forms the loop directly in front of the handle rather than forming further down the whip as we see in Wild West style, The Circle Model and Tibetan Wave, (this is a key characteristic of Anthony’s Rolling Loop system that makes it FAR more visually appealing in cinema.)
The second is that while the whip remains in motion and is still somewhat energized, it has “dumped” a significant amount of the energy payload that was loaded into it as Anthony swung the whip over his shoulder in the "Load Phase" of that compound crack.
Think of it like this: Imagine you’re holding a bottle of water with no cap on it, and you want to sling water at something ahead of you. If you swing it over your shoulder and immediately swing it forward, the bulk of that water will spray out forward. However, if you hesitate between the “Load” phase swinging it backward and the “Throw” phase of swinging it forward, more water just spills out behind you, and not as much of the water makes it out in front of you.
The same thing is happening here with the whip.
If you watch Anthony performing both compound and windmill cracks, that hesitation really turns that “Compound Crack” and “Windmill” crack into a relatively de-energized “Basic Forward.” The dramatic swing backward and behind in the Compound and Elliptical MOVEMENTS are really not much more than setting up the Basic Forward.
Now, here’s where it all goes sideways…
IF what I’ve stated is valid, and IF DeLongis Rolling Loop reduces the Compound and Elliptical cracks in my Circle Model to just setting up the Basic Forward. AND the Basic Forward doesn’t exist in the Circle Model because it essentially does not follow the 180-degree rule, THEN didn’t I just COMPLETELY invalidate that Circle Model that I spent almost 5000 words describing in tedious detail in Part 3?
I struggled with that thought for a long while after it finally dawned on me how Rolling Loop worked, (and I specifically used a video that Ramona shot of Anthony’s Master Class to demonstrate the Basic Forward Throw in this post because it was one of her videos from that class that featured Anthony working directly WITH me that FINALLY showed me that Anthony’s Compound didn’t follow my 180-degree rule either because it was just a setup for the Basic Forward. So, it was thanks to her for that I experienced that big “AH HA” moment! Thank you for providing that glorious revelation and existential crisis, Ramona!)
As I stated in the Introduction to this series of essays, the purpose of sharing all of this granular tedium on whip cracking and asking for feedback is to improve the Circle Model. Improving it often involves breaking it first. I myself had dashed it upon the rocks a couple times before and completely reimagined it.
I thought I might have to do that yet again, but that’s not really the case. The key difference between the Circle Model and Rolling Loop is a difference in goals.
One of the goals in the Circle Model is to maximize the output with minimal input. That’s what the 180-degree rule is all about. If the motion of the whip can be considered an orbit, then the turning point at that 180-degrees from the crack is the apogee. It is at that point that you’re no longer loading energy into the whip, and if the whip travels past that point, then it starts losing energy. Within the Circle Model, that is where the turn should take place, as that is the optimum point to turn the direction and deliver the maximum payload to the target.
The goals of Rolling Loop are the exact opposite of that. Rolling Loop was developed for stage combat and dramatic violence. The goal is to deliver a minimum payload of energy to the target for the safety of the performer while maintaining the appearance that the whip is moving under significant force.
That additional layer of safety protocol, just DID NOT exist in Hollywood whip work before Anthony.
That additional safety protocol is SO convincing that people who’ve been using whips for years, (like me,) don’t often see it, and it’s something that even seasoned stage combat folks don’t always get.
And that leaves us with two more questions that I want to touch on in this entry:
First, if Rolling Loop was developed by a martial artist for stage combat and simulated violence, then does that mean that Rolling Loop is lacking in actual practical ballistic use in actual martial practice?
Not at all. In fact, it trains a level of skill that if need be would prove just as - if not far more effective than - the more ballistic Wild West approach that the Circle Model was initially based on.
I said earlier that Anthony “dumps” a lot of that energy in the hesitation between the load and the throw phase, but the truth is, he doesn’t have to if he chooses not to. And that’s the key thing here: Choice in how he wants to apply it. He can put as much pressure and power down that whip as he wants to, and can back off of the power while maintaining the same accuracy and precision. That subtlety is astounding.
Since my last training session with Anthony, (and the revelation of what he was doing vs. what I was doing,) I have worked diligently on that Basic Forward Throw to make it as smooth and flowing as I can, and the dynamic range of power in my throws has increased greatly. I have extended the lower range.
On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is the lightest I can throw a whip with accuracy and 10 is full-on loudest/hardest I can go, what was my Level 1 before is now between a 3 and a 4.
As with everything with the whip, once you’ve got doing it lightly, it’s just as easy to add more force behind it. So, not only can I work much more lightly than I ever could before, I now can hit harder and faster with that much more accuracy while using even less effort.
The last question is this: Even though the Basic Forward Throw doesn’t follow the Circle Model’s 180-degree rule, the laws of physics still apply. Since the whip begins de-energized, essentially stretched out toward the ground, then when you push the whip forward into the Throw Phase, why doesn’t it end up going straight up - 180-degrees from the at-rest state it was in when it was stretched out toward the ground?
This has to do with the very short “Load” phase, and where the energy that is actually loaded into the whip comes from.
In the Circle Model, that energy comes from the arm through the mechanical act of raising the whip and stretching it out.
In DeLongis Rolling Loop, that energy comes from the hip on the dominant side of the body...
AAAAAND that is a perfect segue and teaser for the next entry, because I will explain all of this covering Ron Lew’s Tibetan Wave...So, there’s my tease for the NEXT chapter. Excelsior, and tune in next week, true believers!
I see you shiver with antici…
In Anthony’s Rolling Loop, there is a delay where the whip has almost curled all the way back down to the ground before he begins the forward movement.
This has two major effects.
The first is that the supinated whip forms the loop directly in front of the handle rather than forming further down the whip as we see in Wild West style, The Circle Model and Tibetan Wave, (this is a key characteristic of Anthony’s Rolling Loop system that makes it FAR more visually appealing in cinema.)
The second is that while the whip remains in motion and is still somewhat energized, it has “dumped” a significant amount of the energy payload that was loaded into it as Anthony swung the whip over his shoulder in the "Load Phase" of that compound crack.
Think of it like this: Imagine you’re holding a bottle of water with no cap on it, and you want to sling water at something ahead of you. If you swing it over your shoulder and immediately swing it forward, the bulk of that water will spray out forward. However, if you hesitate between the “Load” phase swinging it backward and the “Throw” phase of swinging it forward, more water just spills out behind you, and not as much of the water makes it out in front of you.
The same thing is happening here with the whip.
If you watch Anthony performing both compound and windmill cracks, that hesitation really turns that “Compound Crack” and “Windmill” crack into a relatively de-energized “Basic Forward.” The dramatic swing backward and behind in the Compound and Elliptical MOVEMENTS are really not much more than setting up the Basic Forward.
Now, here’s where it all goes sideways…
IF what I’ve stated is valid, and IF DeLongis Rolling Loop reduces the Compound and Elliptical cracks in my Circle Model to just setting up the Basic Forward. AND the Basic Forward doesn’t exist in the Circle Model because it essentially does not follow the 180-degree rule, THEN didn’t I just COMPLETELY invalidate that Circle Model that I spent almost 5000 words describing in tedious detail in Part 3?
I struggled with that thought for a long while after it finally dawned on me how Rolling Loop worked, (and I specifically used a video that Ramona shot of Anthony’s Master Class to demonstrate the Basic Forward Throw in this post because it was one of her videos from that class that featured Anthony working directly WITH me that FINALLY showed me that Anthony’s Compound didn’t follow my 180-degree rule either because it was just a setup for the Basic Forward. So, it was thanks to her for that I experienced that big “AH HA” moment! Thank you for providing that glorious revelation and existential crisis, Ramona!)
As I stated in the Introduction to this series of essays, the purpose of sharing all of this granular tedium on whip cracking and asking for feedback is to improve the Circle Model. Improving it often involves breaking it first. I myself had dashed it upon the rocks a couple times before and completely reimagined it.
I thought I might have to do that yet again, but that’s not really the case. The key difference between the Circle Model and Rolling Loop is a difference in goals.
One of the goals in the Circle Model is to maximize the output with minimal input. That’s what the 180-degree rule is all about. If the motion of the whip can be considered an orbit, then the turning point at that 180-degrees from the crack is the apogee. It is at that point that you’re no longer loading energy into the whip, and if the whip travels past that point, then it starts losing energy. Within the Circle Model, that is where the turn should take place, as that is the optimum point to turn the direction and deliver the maximum payload to the target.
The goals of Rolling Loop are the exact opposite of that. Rolling Loop was developed for stage combat and dramatic violence. The goal is to deliver a minimum payload of energy to the target for the safety of the performer while maintaining the appearance that the whip is moving under significant force.
That additional layer of safety protocol, just DID NOT exist in Hollywood whip work before Anthony.
That additional safety protocol is SO convincing that people who’ve been using whips for years, (like me,) don’t often see it, and it’s something that even seasoned stage combat folks don’t always get.
And that leaves us with two more questions that I want to touch on in this entry:
First, if Rolling Loop was developed by a martial artist for stage combat and simulated violence, then does that mean that Rolling Loop is lacking in actual practical ballistic use in actual martial practice?
Not at all. In fact, it trains a level of skill that if need be would prove just as - if not far more effective than - the more ballistic Wild West approach that the Circle Model was initially based on.
I said earlier that Anthony “dumps” a lot of that energy in the hesitation between the load and the throw phase, but the truth is, he doesn’t have to if he chooses not to. And that’s the key thing here: Choice in how he wants to apply it. He can put as much pressure and power down that whip as he wants to, and can back off of the power while maintaining the same accuracy and precision. That subtlety is astounding.
Since my last training session with Anthony, (and the revelation of what he was doing vs. what I was doing,) I have worked diligently on that Basic Forward Throw to make it as smooth and flowing as I can, and the dynamic range of power in my throws has increased greatly. I have extended the lower range.
On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is the lightest I can throw a whip with accuracy and 10 is full-on loudest/hardest I can go, what was my Level 1 before is now between a 3 and a 4.
As with everything with the whip, once you’ve got doing it lightly, it’s just as easy to add more force behind it. So, not only can I work much more lightly than I ever could before, I now can hit harder and faster with that much more accuracy while using even less effort.
The last question is this: Even though the Basic Forward Throw doesn’t follow the Circle Model’s 180-degree rule, the laws of physics still apply. Since the whip begins de-energized, essentially stretched out toward the ground, then when you push the whip forward into the Throw Phase, why doesn’t it end up going straight up - 180-degrees from the at-rest state it was in when it was stretched out toward the ground?
This has to do with the very short “Load” phase, and where the energy that is actually loaded into the whip comes from.
In the Circle Model, that energy comes from the arm through the mechanical act of raising the whip and stretching it out.
In DeLongis Rolling Loop, that energy comes from the hip on the dominant side of the body...
AAAAAND that is a perfect segue and teaser for the next entry, because I will explain all of this covering Ron Lew’s Tibetan Wave...So, there’s my tease for the NEXT chapter. Excelsior, and tune in next week, true believers!
I see you shiver with antici…