#trickroping

I have been working on fixing my bad form on the jump through, a trick similar to the classic skipping through a vertical loop except this one is done with a smaller loop size and can be mixed in to a butterfly routine. I wrote about it earlier as I was preparing to learn the “Texas” Skip and I noted my tendency to lift the loop up so that I went headfirst through instead of the loop passing directly horizontally around the body. Well, I have corrected my form on that and in doing so I have totally overworked myself and caused injury, hopefully not permanent but I’m not sure yet. 

Photo: Gill T. doing a jump through and wrecking his knees 19 Mar 2019

I came out of a week recently where I had trained too hard on other jumping tricks, spoke hops specifically. So my knees were already partially strained, but I didn’t realize the extent of it. After taking some down time I felt ready for another workout, I was loving the feeling of doing the jump through so on Tuesday I took one of my regular lunchtime getaways to the park near the office and roped for a good hour. I started out on many other tricks but the last half of the workout was all about jump through. I was practicing them repeatedly, working towards the point where it’s solid and I would hardly miss, that’s the goal, performance ready.

It was feeling so good I didn’t want to stop, but the time was requiring me to return to the office. After finishing some work that afternoon I picked up my rope and ran the jump through for another 20 minutes, still feeling pretty good, tired, but good. After dinner I started to feel it, my knees were aching and cracking and popping every time I bent them. It wasn’t a muscle ache but in the joint and the swelling began. These warnings came far too late and as I went to bed that night I knew I wouldn’t be doing that or any other jumping trick any time soon. It’s a very depressing feeling.

I lay there pleading with my maker to give me a healing miracle so that I could once again do these tricks, I was just at the point where I felt ready to show my skills to the world! I found my limit by pushing it and exceeding it in a destructive way, and I hope that now that I know this information I can use it to know how hard I can train before taking a break next time. But if I don’t recover to the point where I am able to do these tricks again then I learned a lesson that I cannot directly apply, which would be just a really terrible thing. I might be over-reacting, I really hope that’s what’s going on here and after a few weeks I’ll be well enough to start working these tricks back in, but at a much more reserved pace. I resolved to wait at least a week before doing any sort of jumping trick and that if I do recover enough to do these tricks again, I will practice it a little here and a little there, never again replicating such an intensive training schedule.

I am 41 years old, and although I usually feel rather fit, I am feeling the unavoidable physical degradation that comes with age. It’s suddenly hitting me hard. I thought that staying vigorously active would be a great thing for my body, but the yellow light didn’t come on soon enough, or I was so wrapped up in the joy of jumping through a spinning loop that I didn’t notice it. I have had some joint issues in the past, and I’ve been aware that it’s a weak spot for me. My first knee issues started around age 13 when I was skateboarding in the emptied out swimming pool in our backyard. I heard a pop followed by acute knee pain, I rested and recuperated for a while and then talked to a doctor about it who said it was probably Osgood Schlatter, an issue common in teenage years. Eventually both knees were similarly afflicted and I was told I would grow out of it, which indeed seemed to happen. I don’t know if that has any connection to my current state but over the years I have had other wrist and ankle issues in addition to frequent popping and crackling noises coming from my knees. It’s never put me down like this though.

Alright, I am being a baby about it, I can still walk right now. I’m avoiding stairs if possible and bending especially my left knee. My left ankle was aching too but not as much. I iced it a few times, last night it was feeling a little better but was still noticeably swollen and I feel like I’m a far ways off from being able to safely jump up and down. It’s just a quite different experience than how I felt 3 days ago, shocking that it can turn around like this without even a specific point in time during training where I felt like I was injured or getting injured. Age is a stealthy killer.

Usually one of the most dramatic moments in a trick roping performance is when the roper spins a large vertical loop and then skips through it as it swings back and forth on either side of the roper. We call it the Texas Skip, and it has a ring to it, but I don’t have any proof that the trick has any strong connection to the grand state of Texas and I haven’t even heard of any anecdotal rumor that would link the two together. I have a theory about why we call it the Texas Skip, which is that someone started calling it the “Texas” skip only for a flashy title and to evoke the classic Western imagery that comes along with a word like Texas. At the risk of hurting one’s Texas pride, I venture to say that Texas doesn’t have a claim on this trick’s origination and I will lay out my thought process and the supporting evidence that brought me to this conclusion. Along the way I hope you find this history to be as fascinating as I do.

I have become somewhat obsessed with all things to do with roping so digging into the history of it going back more than a century has been inspiring and eye opening. I feel like I have just scratched the surface though, as there is probably much detail hiding in hard to find places or even lost with those who have passed on. There very well may not be a lot of official documentation on the subject, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is no definitive answer to be had on the origin of the phrase “Texas Skip”. Learning Spanish would probably be a great help to really get into roping history because I’m sure there are insights from the charro and vaquero perspective that can’t be found from the cowboys and in English records.

Google’s ngram viewer, a tool to search the usage of words and phrases from a large library of cataloged written books and media, comes up completely empty for the phrase Texas Skip. I was surprised to see that so I had to proceed with other means of research and I found some fascinating facts along the way, many of which I’ll save for another day but in regards to Texas Skip, or Skipping through a vertical loop, here’s what I know:

The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame website states that champion roper and rider Flores LaDue was reputed to be the first person to have done the Texas Skip, although it refers to it as “the trick known as the Texas Skip”. That they refer to it somewhat indirectly like that makes sense to me because at the time of its origination and for some years after I have found that ropers did not use the phrase “Texas Skip”, but would call it by more of a descriptive name like skipping through a vertical loop. Many rope tricks are called different things by different people as I’m finding out, or just have no name at all. It might be true that LaDue was the first to do this trick, but I don’t believe she, or any of her contemporaries called it as we call it today.

Flores LaDue born in 1883 was from Minnesota, at a rather young age she ran off to perform with various western shows, met fellow performer Guy Weadick and they got married. They did some traveling in the US, Canada, and around Europe. Back in the states she had a short stint with a show Will Rogers was running in late 1910 to early 1911 but soon after settled in Canada and started up the Calgary Stampede. No account that I found mentions any association with the state of Texas, she has no personal connection to the state and there is no reason it would be called “Texas” skip on her account.

James F. Taylor  of The Pittsburgh Press Oct 1, 1916 describes LaDue doing a trick which sounds exactly like the one in question, which shows us that it was indeed a trick that she could do and included in her performances: “With the end of the rope in her right hand she jumps through the revolving loop from one side to the other. And all the time twenty or thirty or forty feet of rope is whirling around so rapidly, in a great circle, that one cannot see the loop.”

In the 2011 book “The First Stampede of Flores LaDue” Wendy Bryden, author, says that Flores was the first woman to do the trick known as the Texas Skip, which is a little bit different of a statement than that made by the National Cowgirl Museum which was that she was the first person to do the trick. In any case, I don’t doubt that she was very influential and has a strong association with the trick. Most tricks don’t have traceable attribution anyway since they are usually passed around in such a non-formal way, but a rough idea of the time and place of origination can sometimes be deciphered. 

The first video I know of the trick is from 1918 made by Ford motor company which shows Will Rogers doing rope tricks for a few minutes, some nice 2 rope tricks and the skip. We also have video of Will Rogers in his 1922 film “The Ropin’ Fool” doing this and many other tricks and catches. Video recording was not common at that time so I don’t expect to find much of it, but with photographs and written accounts we can still decipher a lot. Will Rogers, Oklahoma’s favorite son, was such a popular figure that there is a lot written about him and I haven’t reviewed nearly half of it but so far I haven’t come across mention that he did the skip in his earlier Vaudeville days in the first decade of the century.

There is photographic evidence seen above in a 1913 product brochure from Plymouth Rope of 2 ropers apparently skipping through vertical loops at Miller Brothers and Arlington 101 Ranch in Oklahoma. These ropers are Hank Durnell and Chester Byers, Durnell was from Indiana and Byers was born in Illinois but moved to Oklahoma as a young child and there was inspired to become a trick roper and cowboy; at age eight he ran into Will Rogers and fell in love with roping and cowboy culture. Byers wrote a book called “Roping” published in 1928 where he calls the trick simply “Skipping - through a vertical loop”. Speaking of Oklahoma ropers who were inspired by Will Rogers, Sam Garrett, a friend of Byers’ was a very famous roper who has been photographed doing the trick. It is recounted that Will Rogers at least had some part in passing on some tricks to both Garrett and Byers. Another 1913 photo exists of cowgirl turned movie actress Jane Bernoudy doing a trick captioned “Jumping through a vertical loop” at the Pendleton Round Up seen below and published in “The World’s Work, A History of Our Time Vol 27″ in a sub-article called “Let ‘er Buck”.

It’s clear that by 1913 the trick was well known among top ropers performing the circuit, none of which were from Texas that I can tell (many of which were from Oklahoma though). Furthermore, none of them seem to be calling the trick the Texas Skip. But a snappy name means a lot, and at some point somebody called it that and boy did it stick! I am a little put off by it as it is historically misleading, but I admit that it’s an easy name and I probably don’t have the influence to change it at this point so I’ll live with it, but I will also use it cautiously and perhaps only when necessary.

Roping is a versatile art, if you consider it an art at all. It could be thought of as many different things depending on your approach: a practical skill, a hobby, a performance, a sport, a dance, or even acrobatics. I have not myself taken much of an acrobatic approach to it and I think most people don’t, but if I were more of a gymnast myself, I should like to. Roping has its roots in labor, a tool for the rancher to get the job done. From there it found its way to the stage, whether rodeo, vaudeville, or circus. In the early days of American roping, after being passed to the cowboys by the Mexican charros, there was strong representation on all three of those stages with some of the same performers making appearances across the board. Western culture is romanticized with the image of the rugged free spirit cowboy on the ranch but we shouldn’t ignore the parallel path that trick roping has taken as those early pioneers developed it into a performance art by the likes of Will Rogers who after being influenced by Vicente Oropeza’s rope demonstration in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show went on to hone his own trick rope act in New York City and on the Vaudeville circuit. 

I see trick roping pop up in some unexpected places and by those who never set foot on a ranch in the Old West, and I’m not complaining about it either. I myself, although from a town with rich Southwest and Mexican culture, was essentially a city kid as I grew up in Tucson Arizona but I have the belief that any who love and embrace the rope can be adopted in as true and authentic rope bearers no matter how physically far removed from the ranch you are. This is how the tradition can stay alive, grow, and thrive.

Many have taken the rope to the circus ring, England born Vince Bruce was one of the greatest to do so. Much of his act retained a western feel, but his unicycle mounted Texas Skip was a fusion of trick roping with a more standard circus technique that he performed both in the big top and in the rodeo arena as seen in this video at the 1 minute mark. 

Video: Vince Bruce performing the trick rope skip on a unicycle.

This isn’t exactly acrobatics but it’s a representation of the mixing of western arts with circus skills. I don’t know if he was the first to do this trick, I have seen it one other time by a Chinese circus performer but I have no idea if they got the idea from watching Vince or not. That point requires some investigation, which I intend to do. 

A recent video I found shows another fusion of circus arts and roping, this example is a mix of tumbling gymnastics and roping, not paying much homage to western culture stylistically but the performers are spinning ropes while performing quite impressive acrobatic feats. It’s a very stunning performance, I image that these performers started out as gymnasts foremost and then added trick roping to that, instead of the other way around. It gives you a sense that there is a lot more that can be done with a rope. They do various flips while spinning a wedding ring, some backward rolls, and a very impressive one handed back handspring run also with a wedding ring. Please view the performance yourself, and I’ll remind you that youtube has a setting to slow down the video which is helpful to see how they flip through the rope like that.  

Video: Nanjing Troupe, China - Lazo (Icarian Games with Lasso)

They are using rather long ropes, probably cotton, with swivels on the handles as it appears to me. I only know what is included in the title and description of the video, and this was from an October 2018 performance in Italy. I hadn’t seen this type of acrobatic work with trick roping before this, so I thought it might be a rather new phenomenon, but just last week I found a video that Chris McDaniel posted of some cowboy style acrobatics from an old movie clip that had some similarities. This one has more classic tricks but also a cartwheel and a running front flip into a wedding ring. Very cool. I wish I could tell you what movie this is, and who the ropers are but that’s another research project for me apparently (it could be Cuba Crutchfield 1891-1969, known for acrobatic roping, he lived in Nevada).

Video: Acrobatic Trick Roping in an unknown old western movie (Nevada?)

A more popular (although not very widely used) trick I’ve seen a few contemporary ropers do that goes in this direction is the headfirst jump into the wedding ring, or handstand jump. I’m not sure what it’s called but it’s a trick where you spin a flat loop and dive down into it using your non spinning hand to brace yourself and your feet kick up over your head. The rope vaults up and over your body as your feet come back down. How I’ve seen it, the rope goes up and over the body and is directly lifted off back to a flat loop. You can see Loop Rawlins do this in his routines, including in this 2014 AGT performance at the two minute mark. It’s quite a crowd pleaser, and rightly so.

Video: Loop Rawlins performs an acrobatic headfirst jump into the rope

I really enjoy this kind of blending of trick roping with other skills and I hope to see more of it in the future, I believe we will. I myself am working on some ideas that I will share when the time comes.

UPDATE 11 Mar 2019

I must add this in here because I saw a roping video over the weekend that was wonderful and had some very fresh elements; it is the work of a roper named Shena Tschofen. She has great dance elements and some very flexible body moves mixed in, this is a look at the frontier of roping performance. “Please Go Around”

A favorite trick of ropers is the butterfly, La Mariposa. Named thus because the shape the loop marks out as it traverses it's cyclical pattern resembles left and right wings of a butterfly (in another world it could be called the Tie-Fighter). The challenge it presents comes with rewards in the form of a trick that is beautiful and satisfying to execute. It lends itself to variation and layering more tricks on top of the base butterfly pattern, so it is a standard part of a comprehensive trick roping routine. Limited to a smaller loop size, the trick gets it's appeal from the dynamic multi-dimensional movement of the loop and by the quick subtle movements of the arm and wrist needed to maintain it. Although never entering the category of big loop tricks, the trick can still be manipulated on a range from small to tiny loop, where the skill and speed needed is inversely proportional to the size of the loop - a point not always recognized by the general audience.

The trick consists of a vertical loop and is moved back and forth to the left and right side of the roper in a pattern that can be repeated continually. The vertical spin is in the forward direction, it spins like a wheel that would roll forward. A full cycle of the trick takes 4 revolutions of the loop, with 2 on each side. In the second half of the spin on each side you pull the rope over to the other side and the loop passes in front of the roper. The Reverse Butterfly can also be done by spinning the loop in the opposite direction, this will become handy when doing tricks like the Arrowhead and others where the pattern is taken around the body or the roper does a 180 degree turn. If you are familiar with Texas Skip then the cycle of the butterfly will be very familiar, the difference is in the size of the loop and that the loop passes in front of the roper instead of the roper jumping through the middle.

I am familiar with cotton ropes, so that is the perspective I give here. There are other varieties of stiffer ropes that you can use for this and many other tricks, but I don’t know enough about those yet to make any useful comments. I do know the feel of some ropes can be quite different, but some of the same principles will still apply. The rope I learned on and that I use in the video is a 12 foot limp cotton rope with 2 pennies added to the honda for weight. You can do this trick without the extra weight, or with a little more weight but don’t go too heavy or you’ll throw your shoulder out trying to spin fast enough to keep the loop open. Use a rope that is 9 feet or more for a comfortable butterfly. I start with about 9 or 10 feet of rope to make the loop and spoke combined, with the spoke initially being 1 to 1.5 feet and that leaves a loop that can be around 3 feet in diameter. When you first start spinning the loop will often decrease a little so don’t start too small.

You can start on either the right or left side, I switch between both ways and although most references will recommend starting on the left side for right handers, I find starting on the right side comfortable. On the right side you find yourself in a natural position but on the left you cross your right hand over your left so you can throw the initial spin forward, it gives some good momentum out of the gate. Either way, once you are in the trick it’s all the same because it just keeps alternating sides. And there is no difference in the pattern for right handed or left handed butterfly, you can pass off between hands without interruption to the pattern once you have developed the skill in both hands.

For the sake of balance, I suggest you learn right and left handed butterfly at the same time instead of learning first with your dominant hand then starting the process again with your non-dominant hand. I give you three reasons why:

1. Practicing repeatedly with the same arm only, gives you an uneven workout.

2. You can practice longer without fatigue when you alternate arms.

3. Once you have it down with your dominant hand, it feels frustrating to go back to ground zero when you start with your non-dominant hand. It’s better to work them up simultaneously so one doesn’t get jealous of the other.

When I started learning this trick, just last summer, I could hardly get started and the loop would close up and even at best I had a distorted and flailing pattern. It was very hard to control. I worked on it for a while and made some progress, but it was still not smooth and I could not run it for very long. I decided to try it with a tighter eye of the honda, so I pinched down the honda and put a piece of tape there to keep it tighter around the rope and not let it slip as freely. This does make it easier to spin the butterfly but the feel is different and you don’t have the control over the loop size to make it bigger or smaller intentionally. I had difficulty controlling the loop size anyway so this was actually a temporary help for me. A big problem I had was the loop would sometimes get too big and the spoke too small and I would compensate by spinning my arm in a bigger circle, on the other hand I had times when the loop would rapidly close up and I would lose it completely. Not having to worry about that made it easier to focus on the coarse motions needed to run the pattern. I kept it for a few days before I took the tape off and was ready to learn it properly. It just takes time to get total control over the loop, I still have a ways to go on that journey, but it has gotten a lot better. I made a lot of mistakes, but I try not to make the same mistake too many times, at least make different mistakes, then you find that some of those mistakes aren’t mistakes at all, but you can learn something from them about how a certain motion of the hand influences the rope. 

I learned that for a smooth flow, you don’t apply equal force as you spin around all 360 degrees, it can be good to do a swift flick to get the honda over the top of the loop and then back off while the momentum carries it around again. I learned that keeping the loop close to the arm instead of letting it fling out to the far left and right side makes it easier to build up a bigger loop, and conversely I learned that a more elaborate left and right swing movement can help decrease the loop size, or keep it from growing. There are other ways to control the speed, size, and position of the rope but these are just the first helpful things I’ve noticed.

A weighted honda was an unfamiliar thing to me until recently. I taped a few pennies on one of my smaller ropes months ago and didn't notice a big difference right away, later as I switched between ropes I could tell a subtle difference, and I started liking a little extra weight. A few pennies is small change though when it comes to honda weight, that would only be applicable to smaller ropes to do flat loop and butterfly tricks. Those aren't heavy ropes, just light ropes that have been "balanced" to taste. There is another breed of rope that has a different purpose and feel; heavy ropes that are good for large vertical loops and large wedding ring tricks, but the number one attraction seems to be the Texas Skip. I've seen a few Texas Skip videos and read a few brief tutorials but I haven't seen a lot of detailed accounts on the subject of transitioning from light ropes to heavy ropes so I hope to share something meaningful from my experience. I'm not intending to move away from light ropes of course, I love those ropes. I'm just expanding my repertoire. 

The video below demonstrates most of what is discussed in this entry.

Video: Adventures In Trick Roping - Long and Heavy Ropes

I have a 25 foot length for a long skip rope but I haven't put a brass honda in it yet, I'm experimenting with just tying a big fat honda on it which upon first test does well for large wedding rings but I don't think the weight of the knot is quite enough for the large vertical loop needed for skip, I'll probably transition to the traditional brass honda soon. 

Photo: A simple but effective tied honda.

Before going to a 20+ foot rope, I dive in with my 18 foot rope that used to seem too long and floppy so I hardly used it, that's before I added weight to it though. A month ago I put in a metal thimble and now it's a different beast. I just picked up an off the shelf 3/8 in rope thimble from the hardware store and taped it in snug to try it out, figuring that if I liked it I could sew it in later. I’m pretty sure at this point that I will sew it in permanently.

Photo: Honda weighted by a metal rope/cable thimble.

The first thing I noticed when spinning this rope is that I really had to crank it to get a good loop to open. I can do a horizontal loop with a moderate to large loop diameter. Sustaining a small loop with a heavy honda does not seem to work for me, I didn't expect it to work but just wanted to try it out. The weight has a tendency to close the loop on you quickly, especially when your loop size is smaller. It's clearly more of a workout with your arm and shoulder to spin these loops, you will feel it. Even with the weight, a loop will still open up bigger when you accelerate enough so you can start at a medium size and work up to a big loop. Be careful though, you can still get to a point where the loop will ride up your spoke and if you've got no more rope to let out the loop will lose its circular shape and at that point and start flopping around which could get dangerous. There's more rope and more weight, in addition to sometimes faster speeds so it packs more of a wallop when you smack yourself with it. I've gotten hit in the face and other sensitive ares when working with light ropes, and I really want to avoid that with a weighted honda. That aspect brings a new fear, and fear is prohibitive to development. We should keep ourselves safe, but also take appropriate risks. Tread slowly enough at first to build some confidence, then ramp it up to try new things and open yourself to improvement. It didn't take too long to get used to it, I haven't smacked myself yet but I'm sure it's inevitable. I’m happy to risk it, they used to call me Danger Boy after all.

It can get uncomfortable to spin a large flat loop, heavy or not, the positioning of a vertical loop is probably easier on your posture because you don't have to worry about keeping the loop away from your shins but the spinning feel is different for a vertical loop as gravity is working with the honda half the cycle and against the honda the other half instead of equally all the way around like with horizontal loops. I started with a medium size flat loop and tilted it up into a horizontal loop to get the vertical loop feel. Then I tried starting right into a horizontal loop. The start takes some getting used to, there's no quick secret trick to it that I can share, you just have to start cranking. I did have some starts where the rope got all tangled up in my arms right away, I think it might be a question of how fast and how big of a circle you swing your arm from the start, but I don't know exactly. From the start I experimented with spinning direction, a few items of clarification are in order on the subject of spinning direction. Standard "forward" butterfly uses a counter clockwise loop when it's on your right side but will then be a clockwise loop when it's on your left side. Of course the loop doesn't change spinning direction, it's just that your perspective changes as it passes from one side to the other, just like someone on one side of a door says the knob is on the left while someone on the other side of the door says the knob is on the right. The standard Texas Skip loop however uses a clockwise loop when it's on your right side but it becomes a counter clockwise loop on your left side so it's more akin to a reverse butterfly in the direction of spin. That's the convention, it's supposed to be a little easier that way but I can't say from any experience yet. I know that when I try reverse butterfly it feels strange and hard to spin it that direction, but maybe just because it's different than what I'm used to.

One of the first things I wanted to do after getting a little feel for a stationary vertical loop was transitioning from a vertical loop into a wedding ring. This one is not a lift-on but a gradual tilt of the rope till it's in the horizontal position. I thought it shouldn't be too difficult of a trick, and I was mostly right but I'm not quite solid on it every time. I had a few wobbles and instances of getting tangled up in it but in a short time I had success too. My main focus was in smoothing out the loop as it transitions. I started the vertical spin in a clockwise direction with my right hand, built up the loop a little and then started tilting. It wasn't so steady for me in the in the transition and I think that the speed of your spin is very critical. When it goes horizontal it feels like you can ease up a bit compared to what you need to keep the vertical loop going. It's just a new, unfamiliar feel but I'm getting used to it. You can start your vertical spin in the other direction (counter clock wise) but mind you, when it falls to a horizontal loop it will then be going in the opposite direction from what most people are used to for wedding ring. While in training, you may quickly feel the muscles straining in your shoulder and want to alternate between left and right arms to balance it all out, that's what I did and my left arm was actually pretty good out of the gate.

The next little step was going from flat loop, to vertical loop, to wedding ring. Which is really just putting two things together that I already did so I found it not really any more difficult. It's interesting to consider that this works with a heavy honda, but now if you pick up a light rope and try this you will likely get it into a vertical loop for a few seconds and then it goes all wet noodle. Now I see why we have weighted hondas. So I then started thinking about doing the trick in reverse order? From wedding ring tilting into a vertical loop, I tried it a few times (with a heavy rope of course) and it didn't feel easy but I got it to work once. I haven’t tried it since because I don’t want to tarnish my record. ;)

I then decided to try some horizontal loop tricks with a heavy rope. Flat loop, step in, wedding ring, handshakes, spoke hops, lift-off, and even lift-on were all do-able while keeping the loop size in check. Some of those tricks felt quite different with a large heavy rope but I want to keep working them so I have the option to make a continuous routine going back and forth between horizontal tricks and vertical skip tricks.

Here is an interesting question: can you do the butterfly with the heavy rope? and my answer is for practical purposes no. To keep the movement of the rope manageable in front of you it's best to not have too big a loop for butterfly but these heavy ropes work best with bigger loops it seems, so that's against you, the loop closes up and you end up fighting it pretty hard to try to keep it open. Try it if you want a difficult physically intensive challenge, let me know if you have success. Now a medium weight rope would probably be a yes for butterfly but I’d steer clear of it with heavy ropes.

I turn now to Texas Skip from my beginner's perspective. I've heard it's not quite as hard as the butterfly, and I can do at least a passable butterfly at this point so I have some confidence going into this but I've got to tell you, once I see that big spinning loop next to me, skipping through it does not come too natural. But one nice thing about these ropes is that if you spin the right speed and motion, you can spin a stationary vertical loop for as long as your arm holds out and you can stare at that spinning spoke for as long as you like while contemplating jumping through. The loop will hold there till you're ready to jump through, compare this to learning butterfly and you've got to keep that loop moving left to right and back, you can't easily stop and hold the loop on one side till you're ready to bring it back to the other side again. Maybe you're better at coaxing your butterfly to stay put but mine loses shape if I try to hold it on one side for more than a few spins. For me, it feels easier to jump through when I'm turning the rope in the opposite direction from the standard skip. A counter clockwise loop on my right side seems easier to jump through from a timing perspective than a clockwise loop. I haven't really tried very much yet but I'm just backwards I guess.

My skip was not immediately feeling smooth. I did make it through the loop sometimes as you can see in the video, and I don't always lose the loop after I go through it but I can't keep skipping through multipe times and what I've got isn't pretty, it's a struggle. This first rope I'm trying is smaller than standard which probably causes some issues, but I'm sure that's not the source of all my issues. I've only spent a few sessions trying this trick out, so right now I just need to spend more time with it, review some video of my flaws and work to correct them one at a time.

Photo: Jump Through Sequence with 15 ft. rope.

I think that the reason why I feel more comfortable spinning the rope in the "other" direction for skip is because that's how I did the jump-through trick from my younger days (see the first blog entry: Choir Boy Beginnings) and it's hard for me now to approach this trick as something different, but I feel it should be considered as such. The Texas Skip as I see it performed by others looks very different to me than my old jump through trick and not just because of the differences in the rope used. During skip the rope stays very vertical, it should anyway, straight up and down; and the body should stay facing forward, just moving the arm to the right and left to keep the loop going on either side of you. The rope should also be at the same height on both sides, not going up and down at all. I have really bad technique in all those areas, I'm afraid I learned bad habits young but I'm sure I can break it. The jump through I did was probably borne out of copying and approximating the actual Texas Skip, I learned the jump through from other chorus boys at a time when I hadn't ever seen the actual Texas Skip but I think someone saw it and figured a way to do something similar with a shorter rope and then passed it on to me. So now looking at my jump through shortcomings with a critical eye: I tilt the rope so it's not quite vertical, it tends to be lower when on my right side, my head leans in and goes through the loop first, and I face my body more to the left side. Wow, I have a lot of work to do to clean this up, but at least I now have a rope more suited for the job. 

Video Tutorial now included below!

There are 3 classic images in my head of roping cowboys: 1. Swinging the rope overhead, often times while riding horseback about to make a catch 2. Skipping through a large vertical loop a.k.a. "Texas Skip" and 3. Spinning the horizontal loop around the body in what's known as being "in the wedding ring". The wedding ring is the natural next step after mastering the flat loop. There are 4 ways that I can think of to get yourself into the wedding ring, 2 easy ways and 2 advanced ways. The easy ways are to start with a flat loop and step into the loop as you bring your arm over your head and continue spinning, or to start from holding the rope in a resting position directly into a wedding ring by giving it a spin overhead as your first rotation, thus skipping the flat loop altogether.

The advanced ways are to start with a flat loop and do a lift-on (or pop on?) over your head instead of stepping into it, or you could start with a vertical loop and gradually tilt the axis into a horizontal loop centered around your body but you shouldn't think too much about those options until you first get the hang of the 2 easier ways to get into the wedding ring. I will give you some details on how to do that, but first keep in mind that the rope will still get twisted as you spin, so you will eventually need to counter twist with your spinning hand to keep the rope free of kinks. You won't need to worry about twisting in your fingers during the step in transition though because a helpful feature of transitioning from the flat loop to the wedding ring is that the two tricks twist the rope in different directions because of the proximity of your spinning hand. So if your flat spin is getting slightly twisted and you step in the wedding ring then the first few twists in the ring will untwist it without any additional effort! You could plausibly continuously alternate between flat loop and wedding ring keeping the same number of spins each and never have to twist the rope in your fingers. It works well up to about 6 spins. But before we get ahead of ourselves too much, let's lay out the steps of how to get in the wedding ring:

Photo: caught in the act of stepping in

The step in - This is my preferred method. I actually found it a bit easier than starting directly from resting position but not all have that same experience so go ahead and try both out and see what sticks first. Do a flat loop big enough to fit your body in and with some buffer, but don't use an excessively long rope. While it's possible to do the "big loop" as it's called with a very long rope, you are adding more difficulty managing all that length and weight so for adults I recommend about 15 feet of rope, no need to add much extra weight to the honda. I am 6 feet tall with broad shoulders and although I can do these tricks with a 12 foot rope, I find it easier with 15. The following instructions are from a right handed, counter clockwise perspective (but please extend this to the 3 other combinations as described in the flat loop tutorial).

Start with the flat spin and monitor the movement of the spoke in its spinning cycle to see when your window of opportunity is, you must step in when the spoke is passing on the far side of the loop in order to avoid spoke collision. You can step in right foot first, left foot first, or hop in with both simultaneously but since the right leg is closer to the loop, I will describe the method of right leg first. Keep a steady moderate speed in your spinning hand throughout the whole process. When the spoke gets to 9 o'clock you can lift your right foot and start the movement to step in quickly. My foot actually touches down inside the loop when the spoke is between 6 and 3 o'clock followed directly by my left foot around 12-9 o'clock.

If you do nothing different with your spinning hand then you will find yourself inside the loop but with the spoke now hitting your legs and game over. The trick is to coordinate your stepping while at the same time lifting your spinning hand over your head. Start to raise your hand around 12 o'clock which may be before your left foot is all the way in, step high with the left foot so it doesn't catch the rising loop. Raise your hand up while still spinning from 12 o'clock to the 6 o'clock position, at which point the hand should now be just above the head with the spoke spinning around the back of you. Now maintain the spin with your wrist and work towards keeping smooth enough motions and constant spinning speed to not distort your loop because that could cause it to hit your arms or body.

There are a lot of elements going on in this maneuver so you should break it down into smaller parts and master them one by one. You won't be able to get them learned all at once. Assuming you have a solid flat loop that you can maintain comfortably at different speeds then the next thing to get is the timing of the step. It's ok to practice stepping in and have the loop stall out on your body a moment later. Just try to get smooth with your step before worrying very much about raising your spinning hand. With your step in place then you should start refining the upward movement of the spinning hand, keep smooth fluid motions and perhaps hardest of all is to maintain a steady constant spinning speed. When you concentrate on the step and the raising hand it's very easy to neglect your spin and to have the rope slow down (remember Dory - "just keep spinning"). A slower rope will be much more prone to stalling out at the least bit of opposition such as rubbing on the elbow or boot, so don't let it drag. Conversely you shouldn't go too fast because you need time to step in and to raise that hand in a half cycle without a jerky motion. It is tempting to accelerate your spin once you get your hand up over your head, but quick changes in speed can also distort the circular shape of your loop and cause it to hit your body. Keep working at it, making small adjustments till you have success and your muscles will learn what to do.

The over the head start - Going straight into wedding ring from a resting position eliminates the timing challenges of stepping in but the challenge on the flip side is that your are just starting a fresh loop and you probably know by now that it can take a few cycles for a loop to establish a nice steady circular shape. With your body in the middle there is not a lot of wiggle room however. Still, it's quite similar in difficulty to stepping in and the two can be worked on in parallel. If you happen to get the hang of this method before the step in method then it can eliminate some trouble with the step in method because once you get in the loop you'll already have the knack of continuing the spin of the wedding ring.

Drawing1: the starting position for the over the head start (same as for flat loop)

Start in the same position you take when about to start a flat loop. Again start with a right hand motion similar to the flat loop by swinging the hand out but this time lifting upwards more than out so that the honda moves up diagonally across from by your right knee to up above your head on the left side. Up to this point you should still be holding the loop in both your right and left hands. The honda will continue back to behind your head and with your left hand still holding the rope in front, you will now essentially be inside the loop. Practice this motion without letting go of the loop and the honda should flip around behind you to end up back on the right side close to your right elbow as your right hand comes to rest above the head.

When you have done this multiple times and are satisfied you have ended up in the loop properly you should then give another attempt but now release the loop with right and left hand simultaneously at the moment when the honda is passing your right elbow or just after it passes. The left hand releases the loop without any fanfare but the right hand will release the loop with a flick of the wrist towards the left to get the loop to fully open and the spoke to pass in front of you. From here on, the loop is maintained with wrist rotations above your head.

Next Steps Both the flat loop and wedding ring starts have been described from a two handed resting position but they can also be accomplished one handed without holding the loop open with your non spinning hand, just make sure your rope isn't twisted and give a good initial flick to open that loop up. The one handed start doesn't add too much more from a performance perspective but when you start to do two handed, two rope combo tricks it will be necessary to be able to start one handed. Now that you're in the wedding ring you will want to add tricks. More likely, you will first be left wondering how to gracefully get out, stepping out can feel a little harder than stepping in. You will rightly guess that to get out of a wedding ring you can roughly reverse the steps you took to get in, get creative and you will figure it out. You can make a trick out of just stepping in and out of the ring, done quickly over and over it gets your blood pumping too. Other common wedding ring based tricks are handshakes, body bounce or "juggling", lift-off, and lift-on. All of these deserve their own tutorials so I won't go into details here. Don't forget to try it with your non-dominant hand and spinning in opposite directions for a challenge. You can pass the rope between your hands rather easily once inside the wedding ring. This is a good technique to use if your right arm starts to get tired.

Video has flat loop and wedding ring tutorials. Skip ahead to 6:00 for wedding ring.

Video Tutorial now included below!

If I remember anything from first learning the flat spin, it is just a faint recollection. I was in the back yard by the pool just spinning that rope over and over. I remember enjoying it, and I don't think it took very long to get. It was over 30 years ago though. I knew how to get into the starting position and I had seen others do the spin, once you have that much it just takes a single dedicated session before you can get your loop to open. Then a few more sessions to smooth it out and get your finger twists going.

You should start with a rope about 10 to 15 feet in total length, but go ahead and try with whatever you've got handy. Adjust the spoke to be about 2 feet long, maybe a tad longer but keep it less than 3 feet. The starting position looks like this for a right handed counter clockwise spin:

Drawing1: Roping Starting Position

As you look down at your hands this is how the rope should be held:

Drawing2: How the rope is held in hands

The spoke is between the right thumb and index finger and the loop is held with the remaining fingers of the right hand. The honda is hanging down towards your right leg and your left hand is opening the loop on the left side with the rest of the rope hanging down to the floor.

Drawing3: The honda as it hangs down on your right side

Smooth floors are easiest for this and many other tricks. Dirt, carpet, and especially grass will slow a rope down and possibly kill the spin when the rope is allowed to drag. In these environments you will need to either speed the rope up so the momentum of it outweighs the drag, raise up your arm so it doesn't touch the ground or both. Speeding up your spin will also naturally cause the loop to rise up a bit.

First motions 1. Swing your right hand out in front of you in a counter clockwise direction. Your left hand doesn't need to do much moving, it just holds the loop open to start with and lets the loop drop free just as your right hand starts the first spin. 2. When your right hand is extended out to about a 9 o'clock position you release the loop with your fingers but keep holding the spoke. With this starting spin the force should open the loop horizontally in front of you. 3. Your right arm should be extended out so the rope doesn't get too close to your body (and start to hit your legs). The arm makes a small counter clockwise circle smoothly continuing from your initial throw and without bending the elbow too much. As the loop gets established it will take less motion from your right arm to keep it going and ideally just wrist motion in small and steady counter clockwise circles to maintain the flat spin.

Pitfalls 1. Jerky motions are generally bad for the loop, try to keep it smooth. If your initial throw causes the rope to spring out away from you rather than down in front of you then you need to readjust your aim, the center of the loop should stay in the same position and not be moving around. 2. Irregular spinning speed will cause distortions in the loop and possible failure. You need to maintain a rather brisk tempo at least at first, but if you speed up too quickly the rope won't react well, likewise if you stall or hesitate then the loop will close up and fall.

As with all new tricks, the primary problem areas are usually in speed and timing. Try small alterations in these parameters to find a spot that gets you the result you want. If the loop is closing up then usually you will need to make larger motions to correct it, a larger circular spin with your arm and maybe at a little faster pace to open it up again. Then when established, try to scale it back slowly to a small steady motion.

At some point the rope can be beyond saving, if it closes up and is very twisted then it's best to just stop and untwist the rope before another attempt. The rope will get twisted as you spin, it is best to first learn to get the loop spinning and get a feel for the basic arm, wrist, and hand motions before trying to learn the next step of continuously untwisting the rope in your fingers. Your first attempts will have to go like this: get into starting position, throw rope out and spin for a while, the rope gets twisted or closes up so you must stop and untwist the rope before repeating. It can be a little tedious untwisting the rope and resetting for each attempt but you will quickly get the hang of it with a little persistence.

After you can repeatedly start a good flat loop and maintain it for a number of turns, you are ready to start thinking about twisting the rope in the fingers as you spin, or rather - untwisting it. Your spinning actions twist the rope so your fingers must therefore untwist it to keep it free of kinks. This is accomplished in 2 ways simultaneously, you must let up on your grip so the rope can twist easier, this makes you more at risk to drop the spoke so you must develop a nimble finesse with your fingers. You can also help the rope along by twisting between your thumb and fingers but if the rope gets enough twisted tension in it you may feel it turning on its own just as you let up on your grip. Waiting for it to turn on its own is not a good enough long term solution though, you generally don't want it to get to that point where force of the twist is enough to spin it in your fingers so please learn to help it along. It just takes some time to get good at it.

After you have mastered the right handed counter clockwise spin then it doesn't take much imagination to realize there are 3 other combinations of flat spins: right handed clockwise, left handed clockwise, and left handed counter clockwise. If your goal is roping mastery then you should work on all 4 variations. I never thought about this when I was starting, I only did the one variation until recently I wised up and am working my left hand in overtime to catch up. I want an even workout and two handed flexibility for future complex tricks so my goal is to learn most everything on both sides, both directions. It can be frustrating to do but it's humbling and when mastered, it sets you apart a step above.

I stumbled on a nice display of trick roping in popular media recently. I didn't so much stumble on it but more like did a web search for something like "trick roping" and it was served to me. I first found an interview with actor Alden Ehrenreich who was promoting a movie called Hail Caesar! A Cohen brothers film from 2016. He was discussing training with horses, ropes, and guns for a role as an old time western movie star named Hobie. I searched out the clip of the roping scene and it packed everything from flat loop to Texas skip in less than a minute. It was impressive, and nice to see trick roping take a spotlight for a moment.

The second half of the sequence really started running away though and I had to watch it six times (probably more) trying to make sense of it. All the tricks were legitimate standards, impressive stuff that I wouldn't expect one could pick up in two months while doing all the other preparation an actor must be doing before a movie. The real kicker though was the transitions between tricks, they weren't quite like anything I had seen and I couldn't quite wrap my head around them. He goes into bouncing the loop over his head a few times, but it looked a little strange as he goes for that first lift. The more peculiar part was coming out of it he's spinning the loop counter clockwise which is standard, but somehow pulls off a merry go round clockwise around his body and hoists it up vertical into Texas skip with a nice big loop. I don't even think you can use the same rope for small horizontal loop tricks and large vertical loop skip and pull it off so nonchalantly.

Now, I'm not going to say all that is impossible,  just because I don't understand how a thing could be done doesn't mean it's impossible but  I knew for sure this guy was either a roping wizard or Hollywood has done what we all love it to do and fabricated a fancy little roping scene here. I set out to find out for sure which of my hypotheses were correct, knowing that it was probably the latter. I read through a good many interviews and articles which gave background to what was going on.

I found good evidence that Ehrenreich trained for six weeks with Cliff McLaughlin, son of famed stuntman Gene McLaughlin who was a big name in classic Hollywood westerns. In fact he says in an article on Front Row Features   "The rope twirling was real. I worked with a guy named Cliff McLaughlin"

So is that our answer then? Hmm, let's get a second opinion, it sounds like a vague answer that needs some clarification, pressing onward.

This piece where Robert Seigel of NPR  interviews Josh Brolin who was also in the movie is quite interesting, openly alluding to the possibility that the scene was doctored. I should mention there is apparently another roping scene in the movie which involves noodles instead of rope but I haven't seen that part yet.

SIEGEL: Alden Ehrenreich...

BROLIN: Yes.

SIEGEL: ...Learned to do rope tricks for this last.

BROLIN: Yeah, and with spaghetti.

SIEGEL: (Laughter) That's right.

BROLIN: So the great thing about now is we'll never know whether he really learned that, whether it was a stunt rope, whether it was a digital rope. You'll never know.

SIEGEL: Never know.

BROLIN: And you don't need to know. Why break the mystery?

I will concede that it is true we don't need to know if it was real or not, we as the general movie-going public who just want to be entertained and swept up into fantasy as a reprieve from the drugery of our lives. We as trick ropers on the other hand do have a professional responsibility to know if there really is a prodigy rope wizard out there among us. The fact that Brolin brought up digital alteration without any prompting from the interviewer is a little telling but we can't really read much into it either because he may not know where the line of special effects was drawn.

On Mashable Ehrenreich himself directly refers to "movie magic"

Interviewer: "The rope tricks. Too cool to be totally true, right?" Ehrenreich: [Laughs again] "I had to learn a lot of it! I had a trick-roping guy. But there’s a lot of movie magic there."

Uh huh, the truth comes out. Just one more reference from FXGuide that goes so far as to describe the extent and the method of how the effect was done. Digging into the article about three fourths of the way through it describes that Ehrenreich did indeed learn the ropes literally, he started out with a few tricks without any effects and then transitions into a sequence where he was only holding a short piece of rope going through the motions of the tricks but the full rope was added digitally. He was trained on the basics and how to move to make it believable. They did a good job, it's a nice moment but I admit I'm glad to find out it wasn't real, I wouldn't want someone picking these tricks up effortlessly and thereby shaming all the rest of us who have worked so hard to earn these the long way. It may be my pride talking but there could be a little harm here, as the effect was done very well and to most people it looks real. So there are probably a lot of people out there that think this actor did pull off all these tricks and if he - not a roping professional - could do it then the next time they see an actual roper doing it they will think it's not as big a deal as it really is. But I want to focus on the positive, and I remember that public perception it not the main motivating factor driving me to be a trick roper, so I shouldn't lose any sleep over it.