Zip Zap Zop is a warm-up game designed to exercise an individual player’s attention, intention and reaction time and the group’s ability to listen and respond to each other.

Working with the basic verbal pattern of “Zip, Zap, Zop,” the group stands in neutral in a circle, looking at everyone else in the group.  One player starts out by sending a single word “Zip” to someone else in the circle while being clear with their eye contact and hand motion to whom they’re sending the impulse.  This person receives the impulse and then sends it with a “Zap” to someone else, again, being clear through eye contact and hand gesture to whom they’re sending the impulse.  This person then sends it to a fourth person with a “Zop” with the same clear intention, eye contact and hand direction.

At this point the pattern begins again “Zip” and then “Zap” and then “Zop,” working it’s way around the circle from person to person.

We call the moment that a single person sends a single word across the circle as “an impulse.”  It can also be called the “energy” or the “action,” or whatever the group likes to think of it as and the point is to use these individual moments to create an unbroken line between players.  When the group succeeds, the pattern sounds like one person saying “Zip Zap Zop Zip Zap Zop Zip Zap Zop” over and over and over again.

With proficiency, players gain quickness and alertness, able to jump in and seamlessly contribute to the pattern without any gaps or lags in the rhythm.  At this point, the pattern can be adjusted, by adding or removing hand claps, changing the hand gesture and adding or removing the words “Zip,” “Zap” or “Zop” themselves.  As a variation, play can become competitive with eliminations – eliminating players if they fail to maintain the pattern flow until the final two end up in a showdown for ultimate “Zip Zap Domination!”