Sunday, October 23, 2011

The Value Behind One-Handed Knot Tying

There are numerous circumstances where one handed knot tying is needed.  In climbing on rope, emergency scenarios are likely to employ one handed rescue techniques.  You are giving aid to yourself or to someone else. This may leave only one hand available.  My most frequent use of one handed knot tying comes into practice when I'm testing out a new reach.  My exploratory reach surprisingly becomes the next hold.  Wait!  I didn't prepare my rope in advance!  It's comforting to know that I can tie the right knot with one hand.

I find that one handed knot tying embeds the skill deep within my memory.  My fingers and hand dance to some silent music that results in a well constructed knot. To this day, I'm amazed by this deep brain process - even though I was the one who methodically created the steps for tying all of the climbing knots with one hand.

In my book, the worst thing for learning knots is to reeve a knot on a table top.  Knots are designed to take us out into adventure.  There are no table top adventures.  The best skill is to tie a knot in mid-air (hint: climbing scenario).  The hand is an unchanging template.  It is a knot tying tool.  The best knot tying moves are specific to the contour and movement of the hand. The mission behind this blog is to give you illustrations of that.

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