How Many per Year?

[D'Artagnan]

How many shinai (approx) do you brake per year?

[not-I]

How many shinai (approx) do you brake per year?
You mean stop? Like at men level during suburi? (Sorry man, couldn't resist, as i saw you playing spelling police on another thread.) :D

Well, seeing as i rotate staves and have a year's worth of seven broken ones, i currently BREAK 1.75 shinai per year.

[D'Artagnan]

p.s. for the smartasses, this is intended to mean Bamboo shinai, not carbon graphite shinai.

[D'Artagnan]

You mean stop? Like at men level during suburi? (Sorry man, couldn't resist, as i saw you playing spelling police on another thread.) :D
.


hahahaha D'OH,

Correction 'Break' (trying to type faster than i am able to again)

[emitbrownne]

ME HIT TOO HARD...

ME SMASH STICK OVER LITTLE MEN....

actually the last one broke when I cut through in the Preston class, a little too enthusiastically, and a little too close to the wall.

Tai-atari'd the wall.!!!....


Well it nearly moved ;)

shinai went snap though.......

[Legio]

It's almost a year and I haven't broken my shinai yet. I'm planning to get another one though just in case.

[JSchmidt]

Depends.
A standard shinai will last me about 3 months, high quality 6 months+.
On the same note, I'm not the most diligent shinai-maintainer. (I will check and remove minor splinters, but don't oil them anywhere near as often as I should)

Jakob

[nodachi]

I've had the same shinai for over a year before. fix splinters and lightly oil it everyweek. I don't do a "deep soaking" kinda process that I read some people do, but this way works for me. Helps me to mentally prepare for practice as I fix my shinai the night before as well.

[Random]

I'm saying 2. I can use staves over and stuff so maybe not even two.
Then again, this year I did total one shinai so bad I couldn't use any of the staves. So maybe 3. e.x One must wonder....

[Anime12478]

I have only been in it for a year, but I haven't broken one yet. I plan on buying one or two just in case since prospects don't look too good for the one I have now.

[Dave Fowler]

I used to go though about 3 or so a year. Then I took over things at the club and had tons of newibies beating on me so that jumped up to 5 or so a year. After that I bought my nice carbon one, and have only broken one so far in a year... much better.


Note: While i agree with most that the carbon's feel like a wet noodle when you use em, they sure cut the costs associated with training newbies :-) I just save my good bamboo ones for waza with senior students.

[amatsuda]

I'm sure that the same applies for the other U.S. Team members...I am sure that Tenken and Moocow had to replace just as many shinai....

Between April 2000 and July 2003 I went through about 35-40 shinai.....

I kept all the broken staves for those 3+ years and at the end I had about 140 pieces...

When a stave broke, I would write on the inside with a Sharpie the type of shinai (Musha, Hyoei, Tozansaku, Aun, etc.), the date it broke, and mark the area where the shinai broke.

It was interesting to see where the shinai broke as my training for the U.S. and World Championship progressed...

In the beginning, I was out of shape and also had not practiced seriously for over two years....I noticed that most of the breaks were either all over the place (random stave) or more towards the upper tip of the shinai....

However, as the training progressed, I noticed that the shinai would consistently break on the bottom stave right at the monouchi. I took this as a good sign because I felt that it showed me that the cut is deeper and the body is moving forward and covering more ground during fumikomi..

Additionally, I broke three staves of my carbon shinai which was used for kirikaeshi and kakarigeiko..The Hasegawa was definitely a life saver because I would have probably broken more shinai had I not used it...

amatsuda
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/sjkendo

[Wolverinekenshi]

I have problem with using the bamboo shinai, it might be i didn't keep up with the shinai's maintanance or what, but recently I bought a shinai from a tournament booth, not sure about the quality. Broke it in ~3 months. Broke the staff to half vertically.

Anyone can advice me on a good quality shinai? FYI: I'm ~160 cm in height (I consider myself short) and I'm female.

[bobfwoods]

We went to a tournament recently (uni games in Newcastle Australia) in the team of three we went through 6 or 7 shinai. I personally cracked only one slat. Perhaps my teammates were hitting to hard or we had a bad batch of shinai.