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Comment by pilom | Hacker News Reader

Random bit of information cluttering my brain. When playing tug of war, hold the rope with your thumbs pointed towards yourself. A trained professional can usually pull about 0.8-1.0x their body weight that way vs. about .5-.7x with thumbs away. Looped around a waist and the same person can get up to about 1.0-1.5x with cleats on turf. Obviously there is lots of variance for type and thickness of rope as well as footwear and surface but the general principal stands, hold the rope thumbs towards yourself. Source: I studied thrown rope rescues in swift water situations.

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Don't loop around waist if other people might pull on your side. And don't even think about making a knot.

The article mentions a hand being ripped off because a guy looped the rope around his... I'm not sure you want to loop it around your waist.

I don't think pilom is arguing looping the rope around your hand; he's arguing to zig-zag the rope a bit so that he force pulling on it tried pulling it through your fingers (pinkie first), perpendicular to the direction of the rope, instead of parallel to it, so that it can slide out of your fingers.

I am not sure that works with tug of war ropes, though, as they, given the forces used, are too thick to allow for that zig-zaggy bend.

I certainly don't see it in photos on http://www.tug-of-war.org.uk/towtactics.htm

He was referencing this statement from the GP: "Looped around a waist and the same person can get up to about 1.0-1.5x with cleats on turf." Point is, if tug-of-war players have been known to lose hands because the rope was wrapped around them, do you really want to see what happens when you wrap it around your waist? Maybe it's safer because your body is much thicker than your wrist, but is that really an experiment you want to run?

> do you really want to see what happens when you wrap it around your waist?

The last player on each end can safely wrap the rope around themselves if they like. The rope behind them is slack, so the only tension on the rope is the tension they put on it themselves. Where people get into trouble is when they are somewhere in the middle where there is (significant)tension being applied to their section of rope by people on either side.

No, not even then - in the article is mentioned the anchors being pulled through (the rest of the people) and getting lacerations

This is exactly what I was referencing, in the wikipedia page you can see a 1904 olympic competition where the anchor man has safely wrapped the rope partially around his waist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tug_of_war#/media/File:1904_tu...

I can't edit above anymore but down thread someone pasted and awesome video showing best form in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ3OPHeSOB0&feature=youtu.be...

Those 1800s Harvard guys were lying down, not standing. And their form seemed very safety-conscious. But I don't find anything else about that.

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