Combining Rope and Impact Play in BDSM.

Combining impact and rope bondage can be super fun. I recently taught a class on this one, which was pretty fun, and surprisingly simple to teach. Experience definitely helps, and I like to simplify topics where I can.

So here are a few of my notes.

When we get into kink, a lot of us get into a combination of different things, or eventually end up exploring a bunch of different things.

I’ve found that many of us, as an example, enjoy rope bondage. And many of us enjoy impact.

What’s useful to note, however, is that either of these kinks by themselves can be really intense, and when you combine the two, it gets even more intense. That can result in some unwanted and unexpected sensations such as nausea, general emotional overwhelm, or having to end a scene before you’d really want to, because you didn’t realize you had to calibrate for that much intensity.

So it’s a really good idea to work up to combining rope and impact play, gradually acquiring the conditioning with both activities to sustain it. This is especially important for the bottom, but it’s helpful for the Top, too… after all, the better we know the ins and outs of a situation, the more in control we’ll feel, which is sexy as hell. It really doesn’t hurt to gradually acquire experience first, on both sides.

The Best Rope Tie for Impact

Aaaaand once again, it’s the double column tie.

Why?

Simply put, when you’re doing an impact scene, and you want to incorporate bondage, the best thing you can do is to leave all your impact zones available. This means using rope very strategically, without covering up your impact zones.

A general rule for impact zones, by the way, is whatever is nicely covered by muscle or other padding.

The double column tie around the wrists has so far been the most useful tie I’ve seen for impact. It binds the wrists and hands nicely, you can use the remainder of the working end as a lead, or you can tie off to something else.

Seriously, it’s a power move. You tie the wrists, have your person bend over the couch, you’re holding the end of the rope in your hand like a leash, and you lean down and spank away. Simple.

For more bondage, add a double column tie to the ankles (unless you want your person to walk around, in which case, don’t do that yet).

You don’t have to bend your person over a couch. You can do that on the bed, have them kneel against a wall, whatever you like. And this same position will often work well for floggers or other impact toys.

Pro-tip: starting very light and warming up gradually with your impact strikes is even more important than usual when you’ve added bondage. Because the person is more helpless, and again, the intensity is raised. Calibrate carefully for your person.

Tying Hands Overhead

It’s often a great idea to tie someone’s hands overhead for a scene, provided you have your safety cutters on hand and you’re going to be staying close to them. Again, super intense. Approach this with reasonable caution and negotiation first.

This frees up both your hands, and creates this really delicious dynamic where you can walk around your person, having access to their entire body from all sides. That’s fucking fire for an impact scene.

Technically though, that makes this a partial suspension.

So if you’re going to do that, I highly recommend you check out the below video by Gorgone and the Shibari Studies crew. Basically, you’ll need to know how to do a suspension line from a single column tie (first 4 minutes of the video) which you’ll adapt to use with a double column tie. You’ll also need to know how to do the half hitch lock offs, as these are among the best ways to do any kind of suspension line. The whole video is worth watching. Great content.

A useful additional tip; when you tie the double column tie for suspending the wrists overhead, I recommend placing the knot on the underside of the wrists, so the tails can come up through the hands. This gives your person something to hold onto, improving their balance, and keeping their wrists a whole lot safer for less unwanted damage and wear and tear.

You’re welcome.

Flogging Cuffs

Because people like to hang onto stuff while they’re being flogged or otherwise experiencing impact, it’s useful to be able to make something adjustable for that just that.

I was at a kink party a couple of weekends ago, and one cute but very petite bottom couldn’t reach the cuffs attached to a cross without a giant pair of heels. If the top for that scene had known these, they wouldn’t have needed the giant heels.

The below video covers the design pretty well, but I highly recommend using a single column tie as a base around the wrists instead. You want to situate the knot below the little finger, on the side of the wrist.

Psychological Impact

One of the really fun things you can do with rope is really highlight a target zone, by binding the area around it and really highlighting it. You can often do this with breast bondage really easily, and there’s a tutorial in my ebook for exactly that.

However, we can also pervert Tifereth’s Peach Tie to do exactly the same thing. And that’s why we re-taught that in rope class. Tifereth did not design it for this, but it marks out a great target zone on the ass within the “cupcakes” of the tie.

And yes, when you tie someone into this, and they have a good understanding of what you plan to do later, it has a very fun psychological impact, really drawing their attention to that area. That’s some spicy anticipation right there.

It really bugs me that you can’t just watch that here, but hey. Youtube. Google makes the rules.

Using ties in exactly this way isn’t for everyone; it can take awhile to do, and you may not want all that rope in the way of your impact or other BDSM plans. But it is fun to experiment with, and also; your partner’s ass will look amazing.

That’s everything we covered in class! Happy tying, my kinky friends.