This is forward-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
- 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.
A double column is pretty much the same as a single column, but with a cinch in the middle. The same idea can be extended to three columns (as in a TK) or more… I am going to show two versions, the standard just-tie-them-up version and a useful variation if you are going to put the tie under tension — make it “load-bearing“.
Important Safety Tip! Wrists are sensitive, they must be handled with care. So “load-bearing”, means reasonable amounts of load. Hands attached overhead is fine, suspending someone by their wrists alone is not. More:
- Wrists have a lot of nerve 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 tie, I used one 10′ (~3m) piece of 1/4″ (6mm) Braided Cotton Rope. This can be done with much less. 5′ (~1.5m) is plenty.
For most ties on this site, I use an amazing Natural hemp rope provided by my affiliate Twisted Monk. Check them out!
Prerequisites:
Video Contents:
- Core Technique (0:18)
- Converting it to a Load-Bearing Version (2:30)
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.
Ugh i don’t know what to do with the remaining of the rope. I usually have a lot of rope after this tie
Yes! This tie is particularly efficient with rope. If you like doing just hands or just ankles, you could consider cutting one of your older ropes to a shorter length suitable to just do those cuffs.
Alternatively, you could use the ends to turn the cuffs into a load-bearing version, then attaching them to something. To see one way of doing this, check out: https://www.theduchy.com/fast-lbdc/
Could you theoretically place the knot so it was in the direction of load, and then take tails after the knot and use them as the load bearing line? Isn’t that effectively similar to running a bite of rope around the inner cuff and loading that?
Yep! That will work just as well 🙂