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Roping Europe

This update is delayed but I took a trip in June to England, Ireland, and France. This was just for vacation and sightseeing for 15 days but I did bring a rope of course! Here are some photo highlights of roping in Europe, sorry but most of my pictures are from London. I didn’t manage to catch any roping shots in Paris, I was too busy enjoying the city. The weather was wonderful when I was there but since then they’ve had two very harsh heat waves. Glad I missed that but at the same time we’ve gotten to 116 F here at home.

London, by Trafalgar Square:

London Parliament:

By Tower Bridge

London, Russel Square:

Ireland, Cliffs of Moher

Joan of Arc in Paris:

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Learning Texas Skip

This is a travel log detailing my journey of learning Texas Skip. I'm not calling it a tutorial because for one, that would imply a level of proficiency on my part that I don't think I have yet, but if you're a beginner at the skip you can use it as a tutorial for lack of a personal coach. I will walk you through my methods which I believe have been effective. If you're experienced at skip then maybe you just love roping so much that you want to read about it anyway; I will do my best to make it interesting by mixing in some personal antics because at heart I'm an entertainer after all. There is a companion video to go with this post, embedded below (while you’re there like, follow, subscribe etc.).

I have been roping a lot lately, nearly every day in the last three months and at least regularly for the last six months. I started this kick when I took a summer vacation to San Diego and brought with me a rope and juggling balls. I got a nasty sunburn spending a day at the beach juggling and roping, it was well worth it. I'm full on obsessed with roping at this point and don't plan on stopping. I went from thinking more about juggling to almost completely consumed with roping at the expense of my juggling progression, although I have a goal to get a solid 5 club juggle down this year so I'll be coming back around to that.

I thought I was a decent roper previously, but now I see I've made more progress in the last six months than at any other period and I have a lot of room to go, so by comparison I wasn't anything special, just someone who knew a few tricks but would go years at a time without touching a rope. I've repented of all that now and I keep a rope by my bedside at all times, a fact to which my wife can attest, or detest as it may be.

I knew I would need to learn the butterfly and the skip if I were to take myself as a serious roper, and I didn't have the right rope for skip so I started with butterfly. It's much easier to find room indoors to practice that one anyway. The struggles of learning the butterfly kept me busy for a while but as I had success there I knew it was time to take the plunge into Texas Skip. It's scary because it's bigger, but that's no reason to run away from it. I can just move some furniture out of the way.

After ordering 100 feet of rope, I turned my mind to procuring a brass honda, which I have heard about so often in relation to the skip. Before I followed through with that, I got curious about an 18 foot rope I bought a while back but never used very much (It was actually a little less than 18 feet, but I'm not counting). I picked up a metal rope thimble at the hardware store on my way home from work one day and then all the fun began. I'm assuming this thimble is not as heavy as most brass hondas, I haven't measured it though.

My previous entry discusses how I eased into this longer and heavier rope. I won't recount all that here, just what's directly relevant to skip. I can sum most of that up by saying that a heavy honda took some getting used to, and although at first I was a little confused and distracted with a jump through trick I had already learned, I soon decided to put that out of my head, back up, and just learn the standard skip as explained in the reference material I have been reading.

So now you know the reason I'm using such a short rope, because I procrastinated ordering the honda and was too lazy to put together a longer rope. I do wonder if the shorter rope means that the spinning cycles are faster though; with many other tricks I find I need to spin faster when I use a smaller loop and can slow it down with a bigger loop. When I say slow I mean the RPMs, not the actual speed of the honda. At a fixed RPM, a bigger loop requires the honda to actually move faster around the circular path of travel than it would with a smaller loop. That's a tangent though, more experimentation needed on this later.

When I had thrown that rope around enough, I felt ready to get down to work at learning this trick in earnest. It's a cyclical trick, consisting of a repeating sequence not unlike the butterfly. As with all rope tricks, speed and timing are critical, the other critical element is smoothing out the trajectory of motion. What is different about this trick compared to most other tricks is the size and the intensity. Those are the same factors that cause it to be such a crowd pleaser too. It feels like you are cranking a big propeller back and forth as you jump up and down without even a second to rest. There is a great aerobic benefit to this, I'm not so young anymore myself so If I can pull this off I'll consider myself fortunate enough to have a second childhood. Naturally, the novice must exert extra effort but as the technique is refined, some unnecessary work is eliminated leaving only an elegant efficiency. I'm not at that point yet needless to say.

Since the full trick is a complicated sequence of moves, I broke it down into individual elements that I could practice separately and later put back together. Some of what I discuss is demonstrated in this video, but you could get some additional insight from reading through, so don’t stop here.

Now I will explain right handed texas skip, standard direction spin (as if you set the loop down and it would roll backwards) here's the full Gill T. Rundown:

Spin a vertical loop clockwise on the right side. I don't start with the full length of loop out, I build up to it in the first 5 turns or so. Two challenges are starting the loop and keeping it steady. Once it's started, I had an easier time building it up than keeping it steady after it was full size.

With a continuous loop, the next step is to understand the rhythm to know when to skip through. As you swing the spoke down, get ready to jump. When you pull up, also pull to the left as you jump and the loop will ideally pass around you. You should be in the air as the spoke rises up and over by your left shoulder. I got tangled in the rope at this point a number of times, but eventually I cleared it; the loop didn't continue spinning on the other side but just making it through was a win.

Check now to make sure you can turn a steady loop on your left side with your right arm crossed over to the left, counter clockwise spin. This is what you will need to do as soon as you clear your first skip.

A big milestone is being able to start your loop on the right, skip through when ready, then continue the loop steady on the left. Indeed this is a trick in and of itself. Congratulate yourself and celebrate your achievement when you get here, you’re not far off from a continuous skip.

Being able to skip through from left to right is now what you need to add, it can be approached in the same stepwise fashion as you learned the right to left skip, just be aware that your body might not have perfect symmetry in ability. You may find certain aspects harder or easier on the other side.

At this point you should focus on spinning multiple spins on the side, skipping through, spinning more on the other side and then skipping back when ready. This can be repeated as long as desired or till you run out of steam. You can imagine now that if you eliminate the extra spins between skips, then you are running the classic Texas Skip!

The full cycle of the trick consists of 4 complete rotations of the rope. I think of the rhythm as 1 & 2 skip 3 & 4 skip repeated over and over, with the numbers counted when the spoke is going downward and the &s and skips when the spoke is going upward. 1 and 2 are on the right side and 3 and 4 are on the left. I highly recommend going through the motions without the rope, you could even start with your arm only and then add the jump when you are ready. A big advantage to this is that you can slow it down as much as you need. When you pick up the rope physics will force a minimum speed on you, for me and my current rope I clock in at 126 RPM, I know because I measured it while watching a video playback. You can get a free metronome app so go ahead and practice the motions to a steady click (full disclosure, I didn’t practice with a metronome, but it’s not a bad idea). You could start around 90 - 100 BPM (beats per minute) and work up. Your friends won’t be impressed that you can swing your arm and hop around so you’ll have to eventually pick your rope back up and do it with the rope. You will get tired and tangled, the rope will slap your face, back, legs etc. but over the course of a few dedicated practice sessions you should start to see some improvement. I had spun ropes a lot before trying this trick so it might have come faster to me than average, but after a few weeks I was doing something resembling the Texas Skip.

From here I’m going to get the trick more solid and then work it up with a forward spin and try the fast skip, which only gives one turn on each side instead of two. I’ve seen 180 degree body turns too which add nice variety, but one step at a time...

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