This is reverse-tension double column. It is great for tying any two things together:
- Wrist to wrist
- Ankle to ankle
- Wrists to ankles
- Wrists to thighs
- Knee to knee
- Ankle to thigh (as in a Frog Tie)
- Wrist to arm of a chair
- Even elbow to elbow (if your partner is ridiculously flexible)
It is simple to apply and yet results in a snug and secure tie.
Pros & Cons
Reverse-tension techniques like this have an advantage over with forward-tension techniques like the Wrap & Cinch in that you gain control of your partner early in the tie, so you don’t need to finish the tie to gain control. If they want to play struggle games you can quickly cinch it tight for a moment to get them under control, and then loosen it to the appropriate level to continue the tie.
They are also more secure. It cannot be untied until the tail is loosened or freed.
Reverse-tension techniques also have a disadvantage in that you have to do a number of “tail-pulls” to tie them. This takes more time than forward-tension techniques, and the extra time will be proportional to the length of your rope – the longer your rope, the longer the tie will take.
Note: A double column is usually tied similarly to a single column, but then you add a cinch in the middle. The same idea can be extended to three columns (as in Gote Shibari / Takate Kote (“TK”)) or more…
Important Safety Tip!
Wrists are sensitive, they must be handled with care.
- They have a lot of nerves and blood vessels near the skin on the inside of the wrists. Too much pressure there can impact blood flow or nerve conduction. Cuffs should never be too tight; you should always be able to run two fingers under a cuff.
- The wrist joint itself is also fragile. If you pull on wrists too hard, you can damage that joint or even push some of those small wrist bones into the wrong position. NEVER suspend someone by the wrists alone. Never tie someone in a position where rope is a applying heavy continual stress on the wrists.
- An example of this might be if you tied your partner’s wrists to the bedposts, then grabbed their feet and pulled them sharply toward the foot of the bed. In that scenario, you may end up applying too much pressure to the wrist joints. Tying your partner to a bed can be amazing fun, but make sure there is enough slack in the tie that they can move their arms and wrists enough to adjust the lay of the cuff and rope strands from time to time.
For this tutorial, I used one 10′ (~3m) piece of Braided Cotton Rope.
I usually use hemp rope provided by my affiliate Twisted Monk. Check them out for some amazing rope!
Prerequisites:
Video Contents:
- Creating the Cuffs (0:17)
- Ending 1 – Split the tails. Lock with Square Knot (2:12)
- Safety & Converting Ending 1 to a Load-bearing Version (3:30)
- Ending 2 – Keep tails together. Lock with Half-Hitch (5:12)
- Ending 2 – Convert to Load-bearing, if desired (6:24)
If you plan to have any tension or load on your double column–for example, if you plan to tie your partner to a bed so they can struggle or tie them to an overhead hard point–it is extremely important do so in such a way that the cords of the cuffs don’t cinch down more tightly. Here is one good way to do so.
In the core technique above, we split the tails to close the cuffs (Step 13). In this version, we will keep the tail together.
Is there any reason to not split the rope just after it exits the larkshead and wrap the tails on opposite sides before putting them through the bight (from opposite directions)? This makes the cuff symmetric and you can add a lot more wraps without it bunching.
Not at all. That would also work just fine. It is a little more fiddley when tying and locking off, but if you like the end results better, go for it! It would go be some other name though to avoid confusion. What do you think a good name might be?
Hey Lazarus,
It looks like you changed the technique of the load bearing larks head double column from what you previously had on here (the second pic at the top of the page). I had been using that version a lot. Do you prefer this method over the other? or is there a reason you replaced with a new version/technique? Thanks as always for what you do.
No, They both work just fine. The Lark’s-Head-around-the-cinch-lines version is just easier for many people. But as long as you load the cinch cords and not the cuffs, it should work fine!