Single Whip Cracks Flow Chart

Background

The original version of the chart was created by Justin Berezczki of Canada Whips. With Justin's permission John Cantin took it over in 2022 and added some additional techniques to it. After presenting the new chart on Facebook a new debate came up about the difficulty ratings and even the idea of removing the ratings entirely. A survey was created to get feedback from the community. This page details some of the findings from that survey.

Responses

26 responses were collected. Two respondents ratings were removed from the scores as it appeared they either misunderstood the rating system or were intentionally trying to skew them.

Respondent's Skill Levels

One of the initial questions asked the respondents to rate their own skill level.

Calculating the Difficulty of Cracks

The remaining questions gave the name of a crack and asked the respondent to rate the difficulty from "beginner" to "expert". Because it was expected that not everyone would be familiar with all the cracks or might not be able to perform them, two additional options were offered "I don't know what this technique is" and "I know the technique, but I can't perform it so don't want to rate it".

Each crack was given a score of 1-4 (1=beginner 2=intermediate 3=advanced 4=expert). The average value for each crack was then assessed as follows.

1.00-1.75 = Beginner

1.76-2.50 = Intermediate

2.51-3.25 = Advanced

3.26-4.00 = Expert

The final results put only one technique (Hassett's Four Corners) into the "expert" category so it was decided to remove that category and just call anything that scored over a 3.25 as "advanced".

Cracks Removed

One of the response options was "I don't know what this technique is". Over 50% of respondents selected that option for two cracks (Elevator Crack and Cookie Cutter). As a result of their rather obscure standing, they were removed from the chart, but they still remain as pages on whipipedia.

Comments From the Respondents

The final question on the survey asked the respondent for any other feedback they would like to offer. One recurring theme in the responses was asking if there are plans for doing something similar for double whips. Although the plan is to indeed expand whipipedia.org to include double whip routines the wide variety of the possibilities may make it impossible to create a chart similar to this one.