This weekend my family took my wife, Tara and I out to Arches National Park in Southern Utah since we have not been there before (we've explored much of south-central Utah near Lake Powel and to the west of the dam).  It was a four hour drive and the weather was a bit chilly, but it was AWESOME.  The geologic history is amazing.  And geology of course means rocks.  Utah also means canyons.  Rocks and great big holes in the ground.  It doesn't get much better for slinging heaven.  Having giant arches to sling hole-in-one's was icing on the cake.  The cherry was bringing my brother's Australian stockwhip along and making the canyon walls vibrate (I threw in a movie for you Ben).

Rather than taking up loading time on this page, here is a link to a few photo's of the trip - a few scenic ones, a couple family shots, and of course the toys.  http://www.continentaldrift.net/photovault/Arches/index.html

A whip movie for Ben http://continentaldrift.net/Whipping.mov

And a slinging movie http://continentaldrift.net/Slinging.mov

The slinging movie I'm interested in some feedback on in regards to technique.  I was interested in seeing myself slinging and I slowed it down to see the individual movements.  Here's what I notice:  The overall movement is very much like a right-handed baseball pitcher; left food thrusts forward, arm begins to propel forward, hips rotate as the elbow whips around followed by a final wrist flick and a full follow-through.  More than that though is at what point the body action takes place during the rotation of the sling.  I find occasionally that I throw my shoulder out or I have a weak throw.  This happens when I start to whip my arm when the sling is either directly behind me or at knee level.  You just can't move your arm as fast as the sling is rotating.  On the other hand, my most powerful throws are executed when when I start my throw with the sling directly overhead.  You can see in the slo-mo part of the video that this allows the elbow whip part of the throw to occur when the sling is almost horizontal behind me, or just above.  My best guess is that the sling goes from describing perfect circles to following an eliptical arc with the whipping action of my arm accelerating the cradle around a tighter curve and forward at a speed much greater than if I were to execute the action when the cradle were at the 4 or 5 o'clock position in the arc.  As you can hear, the crack on the sling is pretty significant.  Any thoughts on the technique or ways to improve it?

Not that speed and power are good for anything but fun without accuracy - and mine is horrible.  Of course, the South West isn't much for nice round stones.  Everything around here is pretty jagged.  Makes for cool zinging sounds though  :P

Barak - who had a lot of fun but has a sore arm

Oh, the video clips are about a megabyte and a half.  And sorry Ben, the little digital camera didn't pick up the whip cracks too well - you'll have to imagine the impressive echo's.

Barak

Really great Photos, Barak!!
Thank you for sharing!
I never seen something like that.. What a beautiful wiew!

I will download the movie at home. There I can save it on the harddisk without problem.

Ulrica

Awesome Pics!!

You made me homesick for the mountians. :'(
Did you try to knock the balancing boulder off its pedistal with your sling? ;D

Barak,

Very nice trip, beautiful landscapes!

Did you hit into that delicate arc? ;)

Jurek

Very nice Barak!  Like the website too.  Do you mind if I include some of those in the gallery along with those photo's of your sling?

Chris

sure, Chris, you can use any of the photo's you wish.  Is the movie file too big?  I suppose it might be a pain to download on a modem.  I might be able to drop it down to under a meg, though the resolution will be even worse   ;D  What formats do people prefer?

Barak

Justbarak
    Thanks for posting the quick flick. I enjoyed watching it, (had to view it several times). Showed it to a friend at work. He had several questions about slings after that. It's nice to see other peoples slinging styles. The whole place out there appears to be sandstone. Were you able to find anything else besides that out there?

WalkingBird

Who likes this forum.

most everything in the Southwest is sandstone, a bit of quartz, flint, obsidian...  All jagged, nothing smooth.  Although most of the steady rivers have nice polished stone where I can find good slinging material.  The strangest thing is to be out in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowwhere and find a big deposit of nice river stones all nicely polished.  The geologic history out here is as bizarre as the landscape.

Barak

Barak,

Awesome pictures!  I don't have time now but I'm watching the movies tonight!  What a beautiful place, and you brought all the right stuff, for real fun!  

                                            Ben