How many does your dojo do for warm ups?

[swrdply400mrela]

Well our sensei is now trying to increase the number of jumping strike muhri we do for warm ups. We pretty much made that term up, it's bada muhri (sp?), and I think it's called suburi in Japanese. In any case, we're averaging 300 for warm ups. How many do you guys do?

Mike

[sminki]

Well our sensei is now trying to increase the number of jumping strike muhri we do for warm ups. We pretty much made that term up, it's bada muhri (sp?), and I think it's called suburi in Japanese. In any case, we're averaging 300 for warm ups. How many do you guys do?

Mike

The "jumping strike muhri" is actually called "pparun muhri" (hayasuburi in japanese). we do anywhere between 150-200.

[Hongsermeier]

What is up with people doing insane amounts of these things? Be it regular men uchi or haya suburi. It is important to do them correctly. We do 30 or 40 men, sayu men, haya suburi during streching. Then on to warm ups, kirikashi twice, 10 men, 5 kote men, 5 kote do. Split the dojo in two lines, 3 motodachi each for each line. Four or 5 trips through the motodachi. First round men, second round kote men, third round kakarigeiko. Form is much more important than numbers. :cross_eye

[xvikingx]

What is up with people doing insane amounts of these things? Be it regular men uchi or haya suburi. It is important to do them correctly. We do 30 or 40 men, sayu men, haya suburi during streching. Then on to warm ups, kirikashi twice, 10 men, 5 kote men, 5 kote do. Split the dojo in two lines, 3 motodachi each for each line. Four or 5 trips through the motodachi. First round men, second round kote men, third round kakarigeiko. Form is much more important than numbers. :cross_eye

Sounds like where I used to practice. I couldn't imagine doing all that hayasuburi. Sounds like a good way to ruin the tendons in your wrist.

[xvikingx]

We did okuriashi foward and backward the length of the dojo more than we did suburi.

[Neil Gendzwill]

It's very difficult to do thousands of suburi and do them correctly. Eventually everyone is just raising their arms up and down and trying to get to the end, it's a waste of time. We rarely do more than 100 of anything. For hayasuburi lately I've been having them do 30, but in only 3 breaths (10 to each breath). That's tough enough.

[moocow65]

hahahah. yeah hongs, i remember going to your dojo all the time and doing all that stuff. i am not able to make it to practice early enough to do the warm-up excercises, so i'm not sure how many they do. like how everyone else said here: it's qaulity and not quantity. i practiced at a dojo in hawaii in september and they really stressed form and footwork. it was one of the best practices i ever had. i do however believe that repetition is extremely important as long as you do each one correctly. one of the biggest problems at my dojo is that beginners with and without bogu try to swing really fast and do fancy moves. of course it pretty much ruins any good form they had, and all those months of practicing basics goes down the drain. anyways, back to the subject. i believe going into the triple digits for warm-ups is not a good idea, BUT for conditioning and ESPECIALLY punishment 400, 500 hayasuburi is juuust right. heck why not do 1000?

[Hongsermeier]

moocow65...If you want to try 1000, go to Kendo summer camp up in North Cal next summer. Ota sensei always comes and makes 1000 suburi a part of one days warmup. :cross_eye

[Shazzanzzz]

My club in my school, we usually do about 100 men, 100 kote, 50 to 100 do, and about 100 hayasuburi, sometimes 150 hayasuburi, 50 slower, 100 faster. Then we do other evil suburi exercises too sometimes, if I'm the one leading, hehe. I would say we do from 300-500 every practice. Is that a lot?

[moocow65]

the question should be, "do they do the exercises correctly?" if they are unable to do the excercises correctly, then you're probably doing too many.

[Yowai]

Idiotic. Doing suburi or other 'hitting' air warmup more than necessary to increase circulation and to warmup the arms is pointless. 20 of oosuburi, men suburi, and hayasuburi each is enough. Doing more and the warmup becomes fatiguing (not the objective of a warmup) and turns into a aerobic exercise. I know a magical alternative aerobic exercise that is much more natural to the human body: Jogging.

Form can't be improved by swinging your shinai madly in the air. Form is impoved by hitting your opponent.

[Pokie]

Sometimes we do 10 haya suburi per person in a circle..it's okay at the beginning when there's 10 ppl, but wen warm up starts more ppl start joining the circle...sometimes we do 150 haya suburi, might sound heaps, but everyone cud do it, I have energy to spare to about 200. I remembered doing 50 really fast haya suburi in the dojo, I coudldn't bend my wrist for a few weeks after that...something went wrong, but our normal is 100 hs, but we have to finish and cut at the same time...if not..30 more..and 30 more...and 30 more...until we get it right

[Neil Gendzwill]

Form can't be improved by swinging your shinai madly in the air. Form is impoved by hitting your opponent.
That's just not true. Form is greatly improved by swinging in the air properly. If I take a beginner and immediately ask him to hit a target, I guarantee you it will take half of forever to get his swing right, if ever. The focus immediately becomes the target, not the correct swing. Our beginners hit nothing for several weeks. We don't do constant suburi though. More like swing for 10 or 20, stop, correct, explain a different point, swing another 10 or 20, switch exercises.

[swrdply400mrela]

If I take a beginner and immediately ask him to hit a target, I guarantee you it will take half of forever to get his swing right, if ever. The focus immediately becomes the target, not the correct swing.

That is definitely true.

Also, our sensei explains that if we are doing suburi correctly, we shouldn't be feeling that exhausted. So if we're having trouble doing them, then our form is wrong. And usually he'll stop then and correct us.

[Curtis]

Well this is an interesting discussion. Let me add my experience.

I’ll start with my own suburi. At one point I was doing 1000 suburi almost daily to improve my strike. I did these in front of a mirror so I could do them both for speed and correctness. This means part was done for correct form and part for speed improvement. Suburi serves many purposes for improving your kendo.

Now for my students. So every practice you tell them that they should do suburi. Do they go and do it? Most do not. So since they won’t do it on their own I make them do it at practice.

In order to teach certain waza they have to have an adequate skill level. So the beginning and intermediate students could not make a good enough strike to do the waza. This of course is due to a weak strike, which lacks proper handwork.

So I added an additional 200 men strike during warmup. We did 3 sets of 100 with sets of 30 one-step fumikomi men in between. This is finished up with 50 hayasuburi. Emphasis is on correct strike. After only a few weeks I saw improvement in the students. At first they were just struggling to get through it. Now they can zip right through it. Bottom line is one way or another it has to be done.

[slidercrank]

I don't have anything original to add on this subject. I just want to say that I enjoy very much reading the posts from the teaching senseis on this forum, no matter the subject. They add a very different and thoughtful perspective to discussions here. And you know their opinions are backed up by years of instruction. Reading those messages have definitely deepened my understanding of kendo. THanks to all of the senseis who take the time to post here.

[sminki]

Idiotic. Doing suburi or other 'hitting' air warmup more than necessary to increase circulation and to warmup the arms is pointless. 20 of oosuburi, men suburi, and hayasuburi each is enough. Doing more and the warmup becomes fatiguing (not the objective of a warmup) and turns into a aerobic exercise. I know a magical alternative aerobic exercise that is much more natural to the human body: Jogging.

Form can't be improved by swinging your shinai madly in the air. Form is impoved by hitting your opponent.

I'm with Neil on this subject. suburi/hayasuburi is not only for increasing circulation and warming up the arms, but also (more importantly) for developing the correct kensen/sword path and loosening and relaxing the shoulders. In fact, I know some senseis who make a point of doing a lot so as to make the students have to stop flexing shoulders and arms (after all, they can't when they're fatigued). If form were improved by hitting the opponent, everyone would start doing bogu practice from the beginning.

One thing that I'd like to add is that it does oftentimes help to have a "target". I have seen many beginners doing hayasuburi in the air and therefore having to make their own decisions as to how hard to strike down and when to pull up. If hayasuburi is done with a partner receiving with a shinai (holding the shinai horizontally with both hands), I've seen that it gives beginners a better sense of datotsu by being able to relax the shoulders and bounce the shinai on the target.

[justforkendo]

Suburi and hayasuburi are not just for learning how to swing or strike or just a warm up exercise. Like everything in kendo they are multi purpose exercise's. If you do lots of suburi you are training your legs and increasing your leg muscles. Leg power is so important for effective kendo. Therefore you should concentrate on other things as well as you swing or strike. Train your feet to be paralel during your foot work, practice yor breathing for when practice or keiko gets a little firery, tenuchi. kiai, postion of hands etc etc. suburi or hayasuburi can be done many ways fast and slow each has a purpose and not just for warm ups. doing lots of suburi is not a bad thing, as long as you know the purpose for which you are doing them. Often the sensei dont give enough explaination to students. Slow suburi makes a great cool down exercise.

How many clubs finish by doing one set of kirikaishi after jikeiko? is this a good enough cool down?

What kind of cool downs does your club do?

[Nishi]

Form can't be improved by swinging your shinai madly in the air. Form is impoved by hitting your opponent.

So much for the iaido approach hu?

We do alot of suburi (sometimes to fast), but when we do our endurance suburi, its really more about not quitting, and giving in to yourself. This is good for the spirit...alot like kakarigeiko in some ways. I agree completely with the form over speed theme though, it drives me up the wall watching students swinging all over trying to keep up...

[samurai999]

For warmups, If I lead.. If we do, heres what I usually do.

Ashi-sabaki (diag, foward-back, side to side)

Jougen suburi - 20

Back-forward men - 30-40

Yoko-men - 30-40

Hayasuburi - 20, 30, then last 10...

If time permits,

squatting suburi - 30

"the cross" - Suburi going forward, back, right left. (right left doing sayuu men)
i usually do like 30.

so Id say from totalling everything up, 140-220 swings. One time though we did 500 suburi for warmups...

For "cooldowns", we sometimes go through "quick" conditioning drills. Or it can be as simple as one good set of kirikaeshi at the end..

Moocow has a point that our sensei likes to stress.. You can do as many suburi as you want, but if you do 750 wrong, it is much worse than doing 50-100 swings correctly. Id much rather build on 50 correct suburi than struggle through 1000.

Tim

[Raiza]

Here's the suburi schedule for my dojo...

Naname suburi-30
Jogei suburi-30
Katate (men) suburi-20
Shomen suburi-30
Kirikaeshi suburi (aka sayumen suburi)-30
Hayasuburi-50
More if the overall kiai isn't strong enough...

[Eldritch Knight]

Normally, we'd do about 150-200 suburi (including 30 hayasuburi). We don't do them fast, but we do them correctly (our senpai gets really mad if we mess up) and powerfully. I couldn't imagine doing hayasuburi in the 1000s....

[Yowai]

That's just not true. Form is greatly improved by swinging in the air properly. If I take a beginner and immediately ask him to hit a target, I guarantee you it will take half of forever to get his swing right, if ever. The focus immediately becomes the target, not the correct swing. Our beginners hit nothing for several weeks. We don't do constant suburi though. More like swing for 10 or 20, stop, correct, explain a different point, swing another 10 or 20, switch exercises.

If one were to instruct a beginning piano student to play the Cmaj scale 1000 times a day for the next 1000 days, will the student be a better student as a result of it? All suburi are rather simple movements of the arms and takes less then ten minutes under constant supervision to 'master'. Suburi is a warmup and nothing else. Much like if a pianist is given a piece to learn in five hours, the pianist will not spend four hours and fifty minutes playing the scale in a delusion that the exercise will help him/her learn the piece.

[kohai]

Sometimes we do 10 haya suburi per person in a circle..it's okay at the beginning when there's 10 ppl, but wen warm up starts more ppl start joining the circle...sometimes we do 150 haya suburi, might sound heaps, but everyone cud do it, I have energy to spare to about 200. I remembered doing 50 really fast haya suburi in the dojo, I coudldn't bend my wrist for a few weeks after that...something went wrong, but our normal is 100 hs, but we have to finish and cut at the same time...if not..30 more..and 30 more...and 30 more...until we get it right


he he he...sounds familiar.... i think i know where you train! go unsw!

[Fantasia]

If one were to instruct a beginning piano student to play the Cmaj scale 1000 times a day for the next 1000 days, will the student be a better student as a result of it? All suburi are rather simple movements of the arms and takes less then ten minutes under constant supervision to 'master'. Suburi is a warmup and nothing else. Much like if a pianist is given a piece to learn in five hours, the pianist will not spend four hours and fifty minutes playing the scale in a delusion that the exercise will help him/her learn the piece.

I was a piano performance major in college.

Your example is ludicrous, but YES, both beginning piano students and advanced piano students DO many repetitions of scales (usually they don't start with C major, it's actually one of the more difficult scales fingering-wise)

In college I would usually do Each major and minor scale in eighth, triplet, and sixteenth-note patterns. That's 24 scales 3 times, so 72 scales. that was part of my warmup. Now consider that the eighth note pattern is 4 octaves (two up, two down) the triplet is 6, and the 16th note is 8, that gives us... 18 octaves per scale times 24 different scales.

So a total of 432 octaves. 216 ascending, 216 descending. Depending on the tempo I was taking, that could take anywhere from about 8-16 minutes.

Of course a beginning student wouldn't do all the scales or such a wide range at such fast speeds, but I would ask a beginning student to spend at least 5 minutes out of each 30 minute practice time doing scales.

The point of these scales is twofold. First, you practice the basics so that you can perform them without thinking when you encounter them in the real spiel. Scale passages are common in all piano music, and when I see one I don't even have to think about it anymore.

Secondly, practicing scales like that adds to your general strength, flexibility, speed, and endurance of piano playing, which aids you at all times.

The same thing equates to suburi. Or bump drills in volleyball, or line drills in basketball. Repetition of the basic skills makes using them in the whole picture that much easier and improves your all around facility at that skill.

My question for you is... why do you think you know how to teach this art better than the masters who have been teaching it for hundreds of years?

[Neil Gendzwill]

All suburi are rather simple movements of the arms and takes less then ten minutes under constant supervision to 'master'. Suburi is a warmup and nothing else.
I don't often say this because in kendo practice, there are often shades of gray and one sensei will have differing opinions however: Both these statements are just flat-out wrong, wrong, wrong. Correct suburi takes a long time to master. I'll let you know when I've got it right, it's only been 20 years for me.

I suggest you check out the thread pointing to the documentary on Ishida-sensei's attempts to pass the 8th dan test. His main practice was striking men on a target dummy. Men, step back, men again.

[Yowai]

I think my original statement is being warped. I am not against doing suburi warm-ups in general. I am against swinging in the air as practice of form (not as a warmup if the suburi is not done excessively), because there is a better alternative to that, which alternative is hitting a target.


I suggest you check out the thread pointing to the documentary on Ishida-sensei's attempts to pass the 8th dan test. His main practice was striking men on a target dummy. Men, step back, men again.
A dummy is a target. Remember that I said "form can't be improved by swinging your shinai madly in the air. Form is impoved by hitting your opponent."

If we wish to improve general strength, flexibility, speed, or endurance which attributes will aid us in kendo, I believe that these activities are superior to doing suburi:
General strength - Weight lifting
Flexibility - Yoga (?), stretching
Speed - Plyometrics
Endurance - Jogging

When most people do hayasuburi or excessive number of suburi, the kensen will never stop. At the end of the swing, the shinai is immediately jolted upwards. For even a brief moment in time, the velocity and the acceleration of the kensen should be zero at the end of the swing if the suburi exercises are not be to detrimental to form. Not many people can keep that up when doing a excessive number of suburi at an excessive rate.

Instead of spending 20 minutes of the beginning of the pracitice doing suburi, woudn't you agree that substituting kihon fumikomi men cut exercise is vastly beneficial?


I was a piano performance major in college.
Disregard my piano analogy then, as I feel stupid. :)
But I digress that when performing "repetition of the basic skills," that specific skill should be men uchi, not suburi.

[Neil Gendzwill]

When most people do hayasuburi or excessive number of suburi, the kensen will never stop. At the end of the swing, the shinai is immediately jolted upwards. For even a brief moment in time, the velocity and the acceleration of the kensen should be zero at the end of the swing if the suburi exercises are not be to detrimental to form. Not many people can keep that up when doing a excessive number of suburi at an excessive rate.
Well, yeah. Which is the point that several people made - if you are doing 1000 suburi, odds are you are just raising your arms up and down. 100 correct suburi are more beneficial than 1000 bad ones. It's also the point about learning suburi in 10 minutes - if they are learning suburi in 10 minutes, they are learning bad suburi. It takes years to develop nice suburi, not minutes.

Regarding tenouchi - the same point can be made for hitting a target - many beginners just thwack into the target like swinging a club, and make no attempt to stop the kensen themselves. The target fools them into thinking they have tenouchi when in fact they don't.

Having the target there is useful for timing with fumikomi, but as far as swing mechanics are concerned it is unnecessary. In fact, when developing swing mechanics early on, the target is much more of a distraction than anything else. Just proved this to myself again this past Sunday when I introduced hitting a target in our kids' class. Most of the kids forgot everything we had taught them and just tried to wack the target. Back to suburi for them!

[Bane]

I can't even do a hundred of anytihng, my health has been pretty bad, I have to have injections to give me energy due to an illness I have, I have managed tp stop drinking but smoking is something I do a lot, and I curse myself for it. It really shows as well when we do any excercise I'm panting and sweating away before we have really started : (

[xvikingx]

I can't even do a hundred of anytihng, my health has been pretty bad, I have to have injections to give me energy due to an illness I have, I have managed tp stop drinking but smoking is something I do a lot, and I curse myself for it. It really shows as well when we do any excercise I'm panting and sweating away before we have really started : (

I used to be a heavy smoker untill I started kendo. Once I got bogu, I though I was going to die. Whoops... this has nothing to do with suburi. :normal:

[Rularn]

Well, like anything, it just takes practice and time. I try to do at least 1000 choyaku suburi maybe once a month or so. During regular practice, it's more like 200-300 with everyone else in parts so no-one is half-assing it from being tired.

[park]

we usually do about 200 of them but if the Sensei happens to be in a bad mood... then we do it untill someone falls

[goshawk]

we do about 200-300 inc. different styles, which is okay. i think the purpose is to make sure the form of cut is good and nature

[Kendo Crazy]

my kendo class spends a lot of time warming up and streaches. i wish we could spend more time doing other things, but any way i cant blame my teacher for doing that at all

[Kendo Crazy]

:confused: my kendo class spends a lot of time warming up and streaches. i wish we could spend more time doing other things, but any way i cant blame my teacher for doing that at al. i also just started the class and i have to amit i thought it was going to be easyer thanit is right now. we are doing 50 now and we are going to get more as we progress. *sigh* i cant wait!

[Neil Gendzwill]

Thread necromancy.