I believe the proper way is to hold them at the feet.
The sound of a snapped bull whip is when the large initial force at the handle to “crack” the entire system system travels over increasingly smaller mass, and arrives at the featherweight flick having lost only a fraction on the preceding time; the flick breaks the sound barrier and we hear the shock wave interaction.
I would think the tensile strength of the leather is higher than the skeletal and ligament system–not to speak that it is a continuum without intermediate failure points than your average enemy soldier. Nonetheless, that is how I’d pop his head off in the telling.