throwing sai

[nickb123]

Hey does anyone know how you throw a sai properly. Theres the 'from open grip' position thing, but I've also heard about holding the sai by the blade and throwing it. I had a go and found the open grip throw to be more suited. What you guys think? Also, in the movies its always like 'throw a sai, sai sticks in perfectly'. How do you get a balance so that the blade hits the ground/object first?!?! I know sai aren't meant to be blades so shouldn't be thrown but I'm just wondering

[Shorin Ryuu]

I've actually gone back and forth between the whole idea of "throwing the sai". On one hand, there is the oral tradition that people sometimes even had three sai so they could throw one and fight with two. This conflicts with a more common sense view that metal was pretty expensive in Okinawa, and constables probably didn't have three (or maybe even two). Look at it this way. How much more does it cost to equip each constable with 3 sai each, as opposed to two or even one? Not saying that they never trained to throw them. If anything, just thinking about it makes me wince (big iron shaft at high speeds = lots of pain/injury/death). But I would like to think that there was a lot more emphasis on fighting with the sai in hand...

 

That tangent aside, it is meant to be thrown from the "open grip", as you describe it, rather than by holding the blade. The balance would be totally off if you held the blade.

 

As far as throwing it, I'd imagine there might be two schools of thought (of my invention, not some standard accepted division). In the school of thought that meant for the sai to flip in the air and end up blade first, it is simply practice at understanding how much force to use at certain distances to produce an optimal throw (based on how many times it may spin in the air).

 

I'm much more inclined towards the other school of thought. This is that when you throw, you basically follow through with your hand, but you don't let the wrist bend so much as to cause the sai to do anything but make a beeline towards the target. In other words, as you throw, your arm and wrist align so that you basically point at your target. If the sai was meant to really be thrown, I don't believe the sai was meant to be thrown over a great distance.

 

I don't have too much practice with throwing sai, to be honest, although this is prompting me to go to my backyard and test on some cardboard boxes...

[Sauzin]

Personally I've found having a sai spin in the air is a bad idea. It's going to turn a little but once it makes a full turn the driving forward momentum that causes the rod to shoot into something is lost. Usually this results in it bouncing off of its target.

 

The best way to throw a sai is top down with approximately the same motion you would use to do an overhead strike. There really isn't any way to describe doing it correctly other then how Shorin Ryuu said it, that being "follow through". I'm not sure why, but for some reason swinging it around the side, over the head, and then down seems to make for the smoothest throws. Of course this is right out of the kata Kyan no Sai.

 

One day one of my roommates got pissed off and decided to put his hand through a closet door of an apartment I was renting. After he agreed to pay for it we decided to put the busted door to good use. This is where I got my experience as I spent many hours throwing a sai into that door.

[Shorin Ryuu]

Having spent the last half hour experimenting with throwing the sai, I come to the same conclusion that Sauzin does, namely, that starting from very high and throwing low makes for a pretty smooth throw. I've not seen Kyan no Sai, but in a lot of the sai kata in my system (taken from a lot of Nakaima Kenkou's sai kata) and some others I've done (like Chattan Yara no Sai), that movement is in a lot of places.

 

I have been able to produce satisfactory results without doing this, but I've found that bringing it high and then throwing it down takes advantage of energy/ki/gravity sinking as the throw lowers, making the movement quicker and with less chance of misdirection.

[SaiFightsMS]

The grip used when throwing the sai depends on the distance the sai is to be thrown.

[Shorin Ryuu]

What grip would be used for close distance? I've been playing around with the "open" grip, both with wrist perpendicular (sort of) and parallel (palm upwards) to the ground during close distance. I haven't bothered with long distance, as I don't consider it a long-distance weapon. What I mean long distance is anything over 6 feet or so. This distance doesn't take into account any movement you take before the throw, but simply the distance between the hand and the target at the time of the throw. In my opinion, anything farther causes the thing to go end over end, which isn't good (and there's no point in attacking someone that far away anyway, at least not with a sai).

[harleyt26]

In Tawada no sai as taught in the Tesshinkan the sai is thrown at the foot of your imaginary opponent(aproximately one meter away from your own foot)then as you turn away you draw the third sai from your obi at your back.I have seen Tamayose sensei and Shimabuku sensei both perform this kata this way.We are taught that in Chatan Yara no sai and Hamahiga no sai that these are not throws but are instead low blocks as you move the foot on that side to a safer position,in these kata the block is practiced on both sides in Tawada no sai the throw is only done one time.I am sure that other styles of kobudo have other applications for these movements,the Matayoshi system and Yamane ryu systems do these kata a little differently maybe their applications are a little different also.It is my understanding that in the early days the sai maker would tell you to bring the metal for the sai you ordered,if so then the number of sai you ordered would be dependant on the metal each person could round up.That would make more sense to me than the sai maker having a large supply of hard to get metal.