How to tie into the harness with Perfect Figure 8 knot every time

in this video we are gonna learn the

fastest way of tying your rope

into the harness using the figure of

eight

knot and this method is great

because it will always always end up as

a perfect

figure of eight like so

ta-da it will never have any overlapping

strands

and it will be in the version which is

easy to untie

if you missed this video i showed you

that there are two figure of eight

knots two versions of the same knot that

look very similar but they load

completely different during the fall

and one of them is easier to untie after

a hard fall

and then i received a lot of questions

but which version is

stronger so you will see that

a little bit later but first let's learn

how to tie the good version

in case you're left-handed you might

want to

mirror everything what i will be

explaining so when i say

right hand you use your other right hand

okay so let's begin grab the rope with

your right hand

and extend it to the side and with the

left hand you will be

measuring the amount of rope that you

will need this measurement

will eliminate the issue of not having

enough rope to finish the knot

or having too much of the rope where you

end up with very very long tail

and this is bad because during the climb

you might actually accidentally grab it

and try to clip it to deal with this

problem

you will see people tying a stopper knot

or

a double fisherman's knot or some

even call this a safety knot and you

have to know that

this knot adds absolutely no safety to

figure of eight

figure of it does not need any extra

backups it's a safe knot by itself

and then the second problem with this is

that it gets in a way

if you are clipping close to yourself so

if the quick draw is here you will grab

the rope

and then the knot kind of gets stuck in

the quick drill

if you are unlucky so it's better to

eliminate this

tail completely and have a tail which is

short

but not shorter than 10 centimeters

which is

about the width of your palm so in my

case

i have one and a half now where to

measure

depends on two things the thickness of

your rope and of course your body size

so personally for me with 9.5

millimeters rope i measure around till

this point

if the rope is thicker i go more

and if the rope is slimmer of course i

go less

so just tie a couple of figure of eights

and then you will find out

what works for you okay now you will

need to do a little bit of multitasking

at the same time when your right arm

goes to the side

you need your left arm in a way but it's

palm

facing the same direction and the thumb

is facing down

so then you put your rope on top of your

thumb

and make a little loop like so with the

index finger

so you extend you measure the rope

and then the next step is to twist the

wrist

like so and then you have this loop

where you put your tail through and pull

up

you twist and twist

and then put the tail through the top

loop

at this point don't let the knot drop

like so this is bad because you will

lose the measurement

that you did instead you need to

hold the loop with your left hand

and pull the tail up so slow mo

extend measure

the waist to waist and the tail goes

through the top and full speed version

extend twist twist

so if you did everything correctly you

will have something like this

the figure of eight sign but if you get

this

then you didn't twist it enough times

okay

and now we pass the rope through the

harness most of the harnesses have three

loops one two three

the leg loop the waist loop and the

middle loop which connects these two

and the middle loop is called belay loop

so you want your rope to go through

leg loop and then waist loop like so

now a fun question do you think this

will hold me or not

it already connects to these two right

so it should hold

so the answer is yes it will hold you

but this is why you don't want to do

that

you use your belay loop for attaching

many things

like your sling and a belay device so as

you can see this might get really

crowded and

uncomfortable to work with and the

second reason is because

leg loop and waist loop has extra

protection

to protect from the rope wearing the

harness quickly

okay then another question can you do

this

where you tying only into the leg loop

it's connected to everything it has

extra protection right

so in this case the answer is no because

when you take a fall

your legs will be loaded more than the

waist

and you will have a tendency to flip

upside

down so ideally you want your rope to go

through leg loop

and the waist loop and probably i heard

it some expert feelings right here

that will say that going bottom up is

incorrect

what we will say that you need to go top

down

like so and the only reason why they say

this

is because if you go bottom up and

somehow you manage to miss the waist

loop

you will end up only on the bottom loop

which is dangerous

where on the contrary if you go top down

and you somehow miss a hole you will end

up with the top

loop the waist loop which is okay so if

you're a person who can easily miss a

hole

then better go top down but for the rest

of you

bottom up is more convenient and that's

what

most of the people do a little pro tip

while putting the rope through the

harness you have your belay loop kind of

in your way

so you will be choosing whether you want

your rope to go on this side

or that side and actually going this

side

is easier then you have your belay loop

on the right of the row

you can also go that way but then you

have to take

with your left hand on your right side

which is not so convenient

but it works then you would have your

belay loop on the left of the rope

but i prefer going to this side because

it's faster

next you need to trace the original

figure of 8

with your tail and this is where the

most people mess up and

actually you can blame a lot of climbing

coaches and

video tutorials for this because all

they say

is to follow the figure of 8 with your

tail

and you will be fine but there are so

many ways to do this follow through

and most of these ways lead to a really

funky knot

so instead just follow what i will be

doing very precisely

and you will have no problems first of

all make sure that this line

goes to the right side if i would flip

the knot

now this line goes to the left so you

want your knot to look like this

then you put your tail in between of

these two strands

so you kind of make a little bit of

space here and push

your tail through at this point you need

to

pull the knot close to your harness and

this is very very important

if you don't do this you will end up

with the big loop

in front of your knot and this is

dangerous because it can get stuck

somewhere on the rock or you can even

accidentally clip

into the quick draw into it and i've

seen this happen

okay and then you continue tracing the

original figure of eight

by putting your tail on top of it

then it goes into this hole

like so then it goes around

and finishes in this hole

like so and the only thing left is to

tighten the knot so i like to grab

all the nut loosely with my left hand

take the tail with the right hand

and pull and push at the same time like

so

and then switch right hand to another

tail

and repeat the process done if you want

the knot to be even tighter you can grab

this pull left hand switches

pull right hand switches pull

left hand switches pull this will make

the knot even tighter

but usually this and switch this is

enough

so if you did everything correctly you

will have one two

three four five parallel strands on both

sides of the knot

and none of these strands are crossing

each other and

if you messed up with your original

measurement and your tail is slightly

too long

you can still tie a stopper knot by

going

around and putting the tail through

itself like so

and make sure that it's close to the

figure of eight

so this is the end result but as i

already said

this knot doesn't add any safety it's

just to manage the rope from dangling

around so it's much better if you have

something like this

where this tail is short and you don't

even need this knot to begin with

and so repeat this process multiple

times

and then you will develop a muscle

memory where you can do it blindfolded

just in case you will get stuck in dark

and need to tie your figure of fate

which will probably never ever happen

boom

like a ninja and like a true ninja you

should

know what you should not do with figure

of eight figure of

eight is designed to be pulled along

this axis only

never clip and pull like this this is

called a cross

loading and it will make the knot to

slip and do all funky things

and it might even undo

bonus time in the beginning of the video

i told you

that there are two figure of eight knots

or two versions of the same knot

and one of them is easier to untie but

the question is which one is stronger

so let's find out load line goes

on the top here

load line goes in the middle so let's

find out which one is stronger

so do you think that i'm so crazy to do

this

well yeah

no no no i don't want to risk some

projectiles flying into my van

instead i called my good buddy ryan from

youtube channel

how not to highline where he makes

things go kaboom

and welcome to my garage where we have a

slack snap machine it's a big giant

rectangle let me show you how it works

and so after he snapped a bunch of knots

the results were that

all of them were way stronger than

any climbing fall that you might

encounter so

don't worry about that but if you want

to find out

which version is stronger

watch ryan's video now for real go check

out this guy's channel he does a lot of

cool stuff he breaks a lot of climbing

equipment

and he even pulls out the cams and

trends out of

real rocks to show how much we hold and

if you like what he is doing don't

forget to support him and same don't

forget to support me

because you like my videos right

that's it done ah now i'm gonna steal

the ryan's outro

it's that simple if you're going to take

20 minutes and try to perfect

your knot at the gym and you're holding

up other parties tell them about our

videos

and share it with them so they don't

hate you nearly as much and they

understand why you're holding their

party up instead of you smashing your

figure eights with hammers trying to

untie them because you did it wrong

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see ya