Note: I’ve now put together a full tutorial using the techniques summarized here. As such, I consider this page mostly retired at this point.

I taught a finger flogging workshop at Kinky Things last weekend, and several people specifically asked for tips on getting down the three-beat Florentine weave. They knew the positioning. They knew the motions. They just couldn’t execute them.

The challenge of the three-beat weave is that it has a lot of moving parts. It comprises six individual moves, none of which is too complicated on its own. But to keep the floggers moving smoothly and without tangling them up, you can’t really practice each individual move in isolation or even slowly. You just have to execute all six moves in succession, which leaves … well, six points of failure.

(As a quick aside, the three-beat weave is the more complicated version of Florentine, where each hand alternates being above or below the other. This is in contrast to the two-beat weave, where one hand is always positioned above and the other hand is always positioned below.)

Here’s an exercise I came up with to address the sticky spots I’ve perceived in learning the three-beat weave. Basically, I pick out the part of the weave that I’ve found to be the most difficult, and I have you drill this part over and over again until it’s in muscle memory. And then at that point, you add in the rest of the moves, and they should feel much easier to incorporate. So here we go …

1. Start With One Hand

Start by crossing your right arm across your chest and spinning your flogger on the left side of your body. Make sure you are flogging in a downwards motion. Every so often, move the flogger back across your body in a figure-8 (see this page if you can’t do figure-8s). Here’s what this motion looks like from three different angles:

Next, do the same for your left hand. Again, from three different angles:

You may find it tricky to spin the floggers in this position without hitting yourself. That’s okay! Just keep drilling until you’re able to spin cleanly and consistently for an extended amount of time. And then do the same with your other hand.

2. Combine Both Hands

Once you’re able to spin each hand individually, combine your two hands and spin in what we call split-time, with your arms crossed over each other. This will probably be the most challenging step in the process. But again, that’s okay! Just keep drilling and drilling until you get it into muscle memory. Here’s what that looks like from the front and the side:

Got that down? Great! Because this is now your default position. The point of the default position is to give you a starting point where everything is already in motion, and then you can focus your attention on the specific move you’re wanting to practice. Each time you make this practice move, you come back to your default position afterwards, take as much time as you need to reset yourself for the next practice move, come back to your default position, reset again, and so on.

So let’s get into those moves now …

3. Add Crossovers

For this step, I’ll just annotate what I’m doing in the videos below. I start in my default position, spinning in split-time as we practiced in Step 2, with my arms crossed over each other and my left hand below my right hand.

I do a few spins to get a rhythm going, and then I focus all my attention on my left hand, while I let my right hand keep spinning on “autopilot,” so to speak. When I’m ready, I drop my left hand, do a figure-8, and come back over the top, ending with my left hand now above my right hand. This is the key move that may take a few tries to nail down, but if you’re able to hold your default position, you can just keep drilling as needed.

To continue, I go back to spinning in place with my arms crossed, now with my right hand below. I spin as long as I need to reset my brain and and shift my focus to my right hand. When I’m ready, I drop my right hand, do a figure-8, and end with that hand now above. And then I reset and repeat.

As I get more comfortable with each individual crossover, I need less and less time to reset between each crossover. Eventually, I’m able to do one crossover after another, and … there we go. That’s the three-beat weave!

So here’s that process, from the front and the side:

Summing Up

The intent of this exercise is first to get a specific position and motion into muscle memory. Once you get this down, it will hopefully be simple enough that you can keep it going without having to think about it actively. This then allows you to direct your attention on the one hand that needs to make a more complicated movement, while you just let the other hand spin in place.

So, instead of having to learn six moves that force you to switch back and forth between your right hand and your left hand, you learn a move that you can isolate and repeat.

Hope that helps!