Basic Whip Cracking Curriculum

“An amateur practices until he can do a thing right, a professional until he can't do it wrong.” - Percy C. Buck

There's no recognized curriculum for whip cracking. Part of the reason may simply be that everyone's goals can be so varied that a curriculum that works for one person wouldn't work as well for the next. Much like how a person's whip cracking interests will dictate the best whip for them, those same interests will affect the best possible progression of techniques for them to archive their goals.

For these reasons, Whipipedia won't provide a specific curriculum but we will provide some suggestions for creating your own.

Self Rating System

Make a copy of this spread sheet. There are columns on the spreadsheet to score both your dominant and non-dominant hands. While it's inevitably true that one side of your body will perform better than the other, the goal should still be to become proficient with both hands. This will become particularly important if you want to move on to two handed whip cracking. Use columns C and D to rate your own competence with each of the cracks using the following methodology.

1. Perform the crack/pattern 10 times
2. For each solid crack/pattern give yourself 1 point
   1. For combinations, each of the cracks of the pattern must be solid to get your 1 point
   2. If you hit yourself then you don't get the point
3. After completing the ten cracks/patterns, deduct one point for each knot in your fall or cracker

The difficulty ratings for the each of the cracks/patterns are based off of a survey made of whip crackers of varying skills. There's no need to "master" the beginner cracks before moving on to the intermediate ones, but it is recommended to work your way through the techniques approximately in the flow laid out in the Whip Cracking Flow Chart as many of the skills do build upon each other.