The basics of flog­ging arti­cle below can be used as a very basic guide for slave train­ing or bdsm lifestyle scene play. Most local groups give classes on this and many other subjects.

The Basics of Flogging 

flog­ging

or

How to Flog Some­one So They’ll Come Back for More

By Keith L. Kendrick

To the novice flog­ging may look easy, and actu­ally it’s not that dif­fi­cult, but it does require con­cen­tra­tion and phys­i­cal exer­tion along with some prac­tice. How­ever, knowl­edge of some basic guide­lines can greatly enhance the learn­ing curve and enrich the expe­ri­ence for both the “top” and the “bot­tom”. And a begin­ner would do well to prac­tice on a wall or pil­low, focus­ing on the intended strik­ing point.

slave ready for action

Nego­ti­ate Before You Start

Before any flog­ging, the par­tic­i­pants should nego­ti­ate what is desired and what isn’t, along with what “safe-word” or other indi­ca­tion the “bot­tom” is to use to slow­down or stop the flog­ging. Does the “bot­tom” like sting­ing or thud sen­sa­tions? How open is he or she to new expe­ri­ences? Has this per­son had much expe­ri­ence with flog­ging? Novices may think they can take lots of pain, and then be sur­prised at what a good flog­ging actu­ally feels like.

In addi­tion, per­ti­nent med­ical or phys­i­cal prob­lems should be made known before beginning.

Flog­ging The Back

The basic area to flog is the upper back on each side of the spine. Try to stay off the spine to pre­vent injury to the ver­te­brae and related tis­sues, and the skin­nier the per­son is the more impor­tant this is. Also avoid swing­ing the tails down the back onto the hips or upper butt, or else this may cause a dif­fer­ent kind of pain that is unde­sir­able. Rather than a full swing­ing motion (this isn’t golf) that car­ries the tails down the back, stop the flog­ger imme­di­ately after it hits or even pull it back­wards in a snap­ping motion right before it hits. By vary­ing this motion you can con­trol how much of the tails con­nect with the back; more will cause greater thud while hit­ting with just the tips will be stingier.

Wrap­ping

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, avoid unin­ten­tional ”wrap­ping,” which is when the tips of the tails wrap around a curved part of the body such as the shoul­ders, torso, butt or legs. In wrap­ping the tips accel­er­ate tremen­dously and the result­ing exces­sive force at the tips almost always causes an unde­sir­able increase in pain. One dif­fi­culty in avoid­ing wrap­ping is that the tips can fly so fast that you may have trou­ble see­ing them–a per­son some­times has to esti­mate where the tails are hit­ting, espe­cially in darker envi­ron­ments. In addi­tion, when throw­ing a flog­ger peo­ple often have a ten­dency to lunge for­ward, which can cause wrap­ping if it’s not com­pen­sated for. On rare occa­sions a bot­tom may desire wrap­ping, but then this should be done by mutual agree­ment and with care to not overdo it.

Other Tar­gets

Other tar­gets: the butt is very invit­ing, yet because of its smaller size and round­ness it requires greater accu­racy to avoid exces­sive wrap­ping onto the hips or into the espe­cially sen­si­tive “inner” areas; also avoid hit­ting the tail­bone. When flogged well, though, the butt can be very reward­ing. The thighs can be flogged but should be done with extra atten­tion to the power in wrap­ping. Female breasts should be flogged rel­a­tively lightly to avoid later med­ical prob­lems, and this may be more impor­tant if they are flogged often; males can usu­ally safely take more in this area. Gen­er­ally other parts of the body, espe­cially the kid­ney area, shouldn’t be flogged except maybe with very light, minia­ture flog­gers. Stay away from all joints of the legs and arms, and the head and neck should never be flogged.

Also be aware that there is a big dif­fer­ence in flog­ging some­one in the stand­ing posi­tion ver­sus lying down.

Warm Up & Timing

Start with softer blows and work up grad­u­ally to harder ones–this way the bot­tom will be able to take more as well as get more out of the ses­sion. Sim­i­larly, if you have more than one flog­ger, use the lighter one before going to the heav­ier one. In addi­tion, vary­ing the pace and alter­nat­ing heav­ier blows with softer ones (or using just the tips), can make the dif­fer­ence between a good flog­ging and a great one.

Dur­ing a flog­ging the top also needs to be sen­si­tive to the nuances of how the bot­tom is han­dling the expe­ri­ence and when to vary the strokes. And after the bot­tom has recu­per­ated from the flog­ging, the top can learn valu­able infor­ma­tion by obtain­ing the bottom’s per­spec­tive on what it was like.

Thud vs Sting

The top should under­stand that softer/heavier tails will gen­er­ally cause thud, while harder or nar­rower tails will cause more sting–rubber or braided leather tails are usu­ally the most stingy. And these dif­fer­ences are best under­stood by expe­ri­enc­ing them on one’s own skin. A flog­ger also needs to be thrown fast enough so the tails don’t fly apart and land inaccurately–because of this it’s very dif­fi­cult to use a heav­ier flog­ger in place of a lighter one to achieve the blows that a lighter flog­ger would deliver. This is why peo­ple often have more than one flogger.

Health & Safety

Occa­sion­ally dur­ing a flog­ging a small amount of blood may appear on the skin as a result of a blem­ish being bro­ken open. How blood and other body flu­ids on a flog­ger should be dealt with is con­tro­ver­sial; dis­in­fec­tants and leather con­di­tion­ers can alter the leather and hav­ing dif­fer­ent flog­gers for every bot­tom isn’t practical.

First of all, have band-aids avail­able and apply one as soon as any break in the skin is noticed. If any blood or body secre­tions have got­ten on the tails, they should be wiped with a dry cloth while wear­ing a glove (there shouldn’t be much!). Then before using the flog­ger on another per­son it should be hung to air-dry in a warm, dry place for two weeks–the dry­ing action will kill the AIDS and hepati­tis viruses. Some would sug­gest clean­ing the tails with a cloth moist­ened with a fresh solu­tion of bleach mixed 1 part to 10 parts water and then wait­ing 10 min­utes before using the flog­ger on some­one else. A few may sug­gest both the bleach solu­tion and then dry­ing for two weeks, but this may be more than is needed. On the other hand, we are talk­ing about AIDS and hepatitis.

The best approach is to avoid get­ting blood and other body flu­ids on your flog­gers. How­ever, the flog­ging action will tend to wipe blood away and make a tiny skin break dif­fi­cult to see. There­fore check­ing a bottom’s skin after a flog­ging for signs that any blood may have got­ten on the flog­ger would be wise. A few would even say that the same flog­ger should never be used on more than one per­son per day, but that is not actu­ally a suf­fi­cient length of time to be safe from hepati­tis. Oth­ers say that the risk of catch­ing AIDS or hepati­tis from flog­gers is very min­i­mal, yet this would be almost impos­si­ble to ver­ify with certainty.

The Last Word

Finally though, always remem­ber: If some­one is trust­ing you enough to let you flog them, you owe it to him or her to be sen­si­tive and care­ful; and sec­ondly, flog­ging is ulti­mately sup­posed to be grat­i­fy­ing to both parties.

Copy­right © 1998 by Keith L. Kendrick

Per­mis­sion to reprint this in its entirety is freely granted–in fact, it is encour