Mini Shinai

[David J]

I have heard tell of short shinai suitable for practice in rooms with low ceilings. Does anyone know where you can get these from?

Dave

[GriffM-J]

Get an old broken shinai, hacksaw halfway down just above the knuckle of the bamboo, buy a hose clip that screws tight and apply that to the end after putting 4-5 six inch nails into the void of the take. this gives the missing weight back to the shinai that you have just taken off and "voia la" an ideal indoor, "low ceiling" Suburi shinai

[David J]

Fantastic! I love the bit about the nails - just as I was about to say that the weighting would be different!

Only thing is that as a novice I havent broken one yet...oh well, give it time ;-)

Thanks Griff

[KhawMengLee]

Ha Ha!!! It works!!!

I just made one, it great...now my ceiling won't have anymore scratch marks from those overstretched cuts.

I can also take it with me when I travel so holidays won't mean time off from practice!

Thanx Griff

[GriffM-J]

Glad you like the end result, I am suprised that noboby has thought of doing this before? I think I will draw up some build diagrams for kendoka to download and print.

Happy practicing!!!

GriffM-J

[David J]

"I think I will draw up some build diagrams for kendoka to download and print."

Good man Griff, get to it!

As an aside, someone suggested doing suburi practice in seiza position - not much good for footwork practice, but you get better at sitting in seiza! Another one that is really weird is doing suburi flat on your back (to stop the habit of over-swinging backwards, which I'm very bad at). Does anyone else have any odd forms of practice? Bath-suburi?

<rei>

Dave

[ben]

An alternative to the mini-shinai is to fill an old champagne bottle with sand and stopper the end. Makes for a very compact and heavy suburi-to.

b

[lewis]

Does anyone else have any odd forms of practice?

I had a low ceiling so I combined a wrestling practice technique with suburi practice. In wrestling, you spend a lot of time in a deep crouch with both knees very bent. To develop these muscles, one exercise was to essentially do lunges from one side of the room to the other. Essentially you are taking deep steps and your waist remains about 1 foot or more lower than your normal standing height. The lower you can keep it, the better the work out.

Combine that with suburi practice and you can get a good work out. The exagerated lunge forward is also very helpful for developing the balance and strength needed for smoothing doing the seated Iai forms.

[Confound]

I had a psycho student teacher come to my school who made us do suburi some very weird positions. we did quite a bit while squatting. He was a unique individual. I pity the students he'll teach when he graduates.

c

[KhawMengLee]

Ho! Ho! Its CTO!

CRAZY TEACHER ONIZUKA!

[Confound]

Oddly enough, I have the dvd for Great Teacher Onizuka, I like the movie, cheesy, yet amusing. This teacher was Konno-sensei, so it would be Crazy Teacher Konno (CTK).

Some of my students call me GTS, they heard that I like the movie, and thought it woudl be funny. my school was not impressed. needless to say, no one uses it anymore.

c

[KhawMengLee]

Oddly enough, I have the dvd for Great Teacher Onizuka, I like the movie, cheesy, yet amusing. This teacher was Konno-sensei, so it would be Crazy Teacher Konno (CTK).

Check out the Anime. It's funnier.

Some of my students call me GTS, they heard that I like the movie, and thought it woudl be funny. my school was not impressed. needless to say, no one uses it anymore.

Why was the school not impressed?

Well...my friend and I had a pretty funky pair of nicknames but I think it is too obscene for this post.

Wait...are you Japanese?

[Confound]

I am not Japanese, one would suspect that my use of English would have revealed that by now. that may sound cruel, but if you've lived here for any extended lenth of time, you know what I mean. . .

I'm a Canadian who just happens to live in Japan at the moment. Hopefully I'll be home in another year. I don't particularly like it here, unfortunately.

c

[KhawMengLee]

wait to you meet a nice sweet japanese girl...

heh.

[Confound]

This is classic.

As astounding as this may be, I have no interest in Japanese women, I'm not a lesbian. Personally, I've found all the Japanese women i've met to be pleasant, but they're dumb as a sack of hammers. I've met some Japanese women who are clearly intelligent, but they take the most ridiculous pains to giggle and act stupid just like everyone else. I am not a great fan of Japanese women.

As for the men, if I decided to list the number of times I've been sexually assaulted in Japan, this post would be ridiculously long.

c