Club Obi Wan

techrtr wrote:What's the difference between the Flick and the Cattleman's crack? I've seen a complete video of the Flick, but only a short demo of the Cattleman's crack and it looks like they are pretty much the same. If someone can point me to a video that shows the difference between the two I'd really appreciate it.

midwestwhips wrote:It seems like there's been a bit of confusion lately about what to call different cracks, so we thought we'd make up a quick video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvJ3k16EVX0

There are really only two ways to make a whip crack.

1. The first way is to reverse the direction the whip is flowing while it's in midair, which creates a loop in the whip ("The Cattleman's Crack"). Do this crack in different planes around your body and point the crack in different directions, and you can do a wide variety of cracks.

2. The second way is to throw the whip so that a hairpin curve flows down the taper of the whip ("The Flick"). Making the whip crack with the flick is similar to throwing a baseball in some ways. And as Mike Murphy has said, you can crack the whip with the flick in any direction you can throw a baseball - so you can make many different cracks with this basic flick.

This video shows some of the most basic ways to use these two types of cracks. People refer to some of these cracks using multiple names, but during the video we have labeled each with the most commonly used and accepted terms, worldwide. We hope that this can be a reference for everyone on COW to help avoid confusion when we all talk about specific cracks.

The whipcrackers in this video (who also happen to be whipmakers) are Paul Nolan, Lauren Wickline, and Bernardo del Carpio. Extra special thanks go to Lauren Wickline for taking an enormous amount of time to edit together this video and provide the visual commentary on each of the cracks.

Regards,

Paul Nolan
www.midwestwhips.com