39

[iwatekenshi]

My wife just bought a 39 shinai and will stick with it from now on. Uh-oh :eek:!
She was wondering if other women use a 39 and how does it feel from a 38?

[CypherSushi]

I used a 39 when i first started training, but that was because my club is a small one with not many females so they didn't have any 38ths at the dojo.
I found that the 39 was both too long and too heavy for me... I was too weak to perform the techniques properly with it. After that I used a 37 that was mended with heavy tape. It was good leangth-wise, but VERY heavy... Got good muscles from it though....

Now I have my own 38 and I just love it... for me it is the perfect choice....

/Cyph-san

[kendo_chick]

I also started out using a 39, however, the problem that I found is because a women's arms and forearms especially are shorter than a man's. The problem comes with the length of the handle of the shinai. If a handle is too long and therefore your hands are further apart, you run the risk of over extending your wrists and that can really injure your wrists. I really suggest that your wife take note of the distance between her hands and decide if it is too far apart.

I enjoy using a 39 with a smaller tsuba and therefore making the shinai handle shorter for subari and waza just to strengthen my muscles before a tournament. It makes my 38 that much lighter feeling and therefore easier to swing.

[kendokamax]

But do you need to hold the shinai with the right hand touching the tsuba? no..so you can adapt.

however i don't know, i'm not a girl.

but I would like to be able to use a 38 shinai...it's so light!

[CypherSushi]

Originally posted by kendokamax
But do you need to hold the shinai with the right hand touching the tsuba? no..so you can adapt.

Now you don't have to but I think the balance is better if I do. And I agree with kendo-chick, if I use a 39 the distance is too great... and once again my technique suffers.... I had forgotten that part of training with a 39 :)

[reicheru]

I have used 37, 38, and 39s. I don't like 37s (too light), but I have no problem switching between 38 and 39. For the past year, I've mostly been using a 39. If it seems too heavy at first, that will probably change as you get used to it.

As for the distance between hands, a sensei in Kyoto this summer noticed that I was sometimes sliding my right hand down along the tsuka a bit as I swung the shinai. He told me to untie it, roll down the tsuka once or twice, loop it through itself, and tie it back up. Now the distance is much better, and consequently so is my grip...

Rachel

[cklin]

I think the most important thing isn't so much the overall length of the shinai, but the length of the tsuka (as reicheru suggests). Even for 39's, for some people, it's a good idea to use a 38's tsuka.

Too-long tsuka encourage weird swinging habits.

[lewis]

Reicheru

Great tip! Thanks.

[gill]

I have been using 39s for years - although I am quite tall for a woman. however I think I have been using very heavy 39s, and it was affecting my ki-ken-tai-ichi, as my arms were too slow. I have recently swapped back to a 38, and it has solved the problem. My ideal shinai would be a 39 but a lighter weight.

Gill

[saki_wooah]

I used a 39 oval grip carbon shinai (huh i think so, or something like that) once for kirikaishi (how do we write this word?!?), and actually it felt much lighter than my 38 ( ??!?? ). I don't know why... and when I tried someone else normal bamboo 39 shinai, it was soo heavy... The oval grip makes it very, very, but very comfortable....

[Confound]

technically speaking, there is a way to determine how long your shinai should be. stand it upriht on the floor, and it should come up to a point just below your solar plexus. i'm 167 centimetres tall and I use a 38. a 37 is too short, and a 39 is unweildy.

though people may develop preferences for longer or shorter shinai than the one prescribed by this measuring method, be warned that at tournaments (at least in japan), i've seen people measured against their shinai...

. . . and remember what musashi miyamoto said, an inch doesn't convey an advantage. your skill is independent of the length of your weapon.

d

[hamish]

To work out the right length of tsuka for you, try this simple test:

hold the shinai with your right hand near the tsuba, and then bend your right arm at a right angle, with your palm upward. The tsuka should rest along your forearm, with the end of the tsuka stopping at the bottom of your bicep. If necessary adjust the position of the tsuba and/or shorten the length of the tsukagawa accordingly.

If you've got gangly arms like me, a 39 tsuka does fine, but the majority of people in Japan seem to use 38 tsuka for this very reason.

Hamish