Do you know what a battle rope is?

They are for exercise and have been around for a little over a decade. I’ve mostly heard of them being used by football players and martial artists, but they might be popular among other groups for all I know. The name comes from the idea that the ropes are heavy and not easy to control at first, so you are doing battle with the ropes. In other words, the exercise itself might be called “rope battling,” and the tool you use is a “battle rope.” The creator also likes to say that the benefits of rope training “will transfer into your chosen battlefield,” by which he means whatever other physical activities you engage in. The battlefield metaphor is probably an extension of the name, though, and not part of its origin.

I have seen cross fit trainers use them with clients. The ropes are tied to something immovable, like tree, and then the person working out lifts the end and raises it up and down trying to get the whole thing off the ground in waves..

Or then they can drag the whole thing behind them as they move it fifty feet or so.

They are heavyy and give one a good workout if that is the kind of workout you want.

Aha, thanks folks!

(So it’s not used in sweeping 20-foot flailing arcs to entangle and bewilder opponents? ;-) )

Actually, they could, if you have worked out enough with it to have a high comfort level in manipulating it.

I did lots of line handling during my years in the Navy. Mostly I was working with one inch manila, sometimes one point five.
After a certain amount of use, they start twisting up like long phone cords. To take out the twist, the common thing was the very activity described above, except it was not tied off to anything. I got quite talented with various maneuvers, and gosh was I buff. If I wanted, I could grab someone with weight equal to my own, and fling them overboard with one hand. Of course, not all that power came from line handling, but it definitely contributed.

This reminded me of a series of books I read in high school many, many years ago. Together they were called the Battle Circle series by Piers Anthony, Sos the Rope, Var the Stick and Neq the Sword.

my friend wrote a sequel that didn’t go far, it was called Willie the Dipstick.

Wow @Patty_Melt ! Interesting! I presume when you’re talking about tossing people overboard, you mean with your hand, not with a rope? ;-)

@rojo Is Sos the Rope about some hero who specializes in using rope as a weapon? If so, does that character appear in the other books in the series?

@Zaku It has been many a year but, yes, each person was named after their chief weapon and I believe there was overlap with the characters named in the individual books.

Yah, with my hand. I could not pick someone up one handed, but if I used a backhand motion, I could grasp clothing and flip them over the caprail.
I didn’t look bulky, my profile pic was taken during that era, but I was solid clear through. Not many bothered with challenging me, to the point of causing me to react. Of the men who did, went away whimpering.
I could also Indiana Jones a bullwhip before having seen the movie. Grabbed a stick right from a guy’s hand once. He never saw it coming. He messed around and pointed a stick at me, then it was in my hand. His only clue was hearing a crack from the whip. I attribute my skills with a whip to the constant work I did with lines.

@Patty_Melt Wow, that’s really interesting! So you could just be holding a rope, and snap it over and back to disarm him and end up with you holding his stick before he knew what was happening, without having trained to do that?

Do you think you had a rare knack for it? How many of your peer experienced rope handlers do you think could do that without training to?

@rojo Thanks!

I snatched the stick with a leather bullwhip, but my familiarity with handling ropes enhanced my skill.
I could control ropes in rather impressive ways. I never got the hang of lasso, though.

We were dressed for Halloween. I was in all black leather with fangs, a vampire, but a friend though I should have a whip, and loaned me his.
This huge tall guy I didn’t know, challenged me. He held out the stick and taunted, “en guarde!” so I snapped the whip back, forward, back, and I had the stick. It was impressive AF, and was my first attempt to do that.

Yes, we did start dating.

@Patty_Melt Oh I see, you had a whip not just a rope. Still very impressive! I had no idea this question would lead to such a story! Very fun!