How to learn the Shinai (I think that's what it's called)

[ShotokanKid]

Recently, a fellow black belt and I were in the dojo alone (we're both assistant instructors and we were finishing a photo shoot for the kids) but anyway, we found the shinai (I think that's what they are, they are bamboo swords with a tensor thing) and we started using them against each other. Neither one of us have experience with them but because of doing karate, we had basic reaction skills. We want to do a supplement class for other karate people but the problem is that neither one of us know anything about the shinai or boken. Any advice or is this the dumbest thing you've ever read?

[isshinryu5toforever]

I would suggest proper training in kendo or iaido, before messing with a shinai. Shinai are used for disciplinary and conditioning purposes though, and you should know how this is done by now. if not you can ask me later online.

[yamesu]

Yes, training in Kendo will be the best way to go about this.

 

Kendo and karate are very different though.

[Shorinryu Sensei]

Attempting to train others in something that you have no idea about yourself is not a good idea. I've seen many sensei's that don't have any formal training in kobudo (weapons), and nunchauku being the most abused, self-teaching themselves a bunch of garbage that "looks cool", then passing on that garbage to others as legitimate technique. There students don't know any difference and accept this garbage as gospel. It's one of my strongest peeves that I see.

[Jussi Häkkinen]

is this the dumbest thing you've ever read?

 

No, but still pretty dumb. If you want to learn to use shinai, go to train kendo.

[Shorin Ryuu]

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have any shinai. I'd also be lying if I said me and some friends never just played around with them or did light sparring with them out of sheer curiosity (heck, most boys did that with sticks when they grew up). We just wanted to experiment with them and see what the feel was. In all honesty, it was pretty rare for us to do that though. I could probably count the instances on my two hands over a period of four years. We were just curious to see what principles may apply between our other weapons and empty hand training and the shinai. This wasn't anything in class, just on a few occassions when we were down there working out in our free time. The bottom line is that we were looking at the sword through the lenses of our other martial arts training to see if there were any interesting similarities or obvious differences. That's all. Almost more of an academic interest than anything else. (That, and I suppose swords are cool)

 

But what we didn't do was as important as what we did do. I've had a friend in my younger years who would show me a thing or two with the sword, but I didn't let that trick me into thinking I knew much about it. Likewise, we didn't have any delusions that we were teaching ourselves kendo or the proper use of the shinai. Nor did we delude ourselves into thinking we would be competent to teach others, let alone ourselves.

 

Since then, I've had a few iaido classes and noticed that we weren't too far off on some things and pretty far off on others. As a side note, I later quit the iaido class because while I would obviously gain knowledge and skills in using the sword, the general fighting principles remained the same, so I wasn't getting too much extra out of it in terms of overall fighting ability.

 

I'm not going to tell you to not fool around with shinai, if you're just curious about various weapons principles or about it in general. I've done that with the sword. I've done that with many things. Experimentation isn't necessarily a bad thing (as long as safety is a primary concern). However, I draw the line at thinking you have gained serious knowledge and in no way would ever recommend you teach something like that to others. Like others, my advice is that if you are determined to pick up anything beyond a rather cursory examination of the weapon, find an instructor. The vast majority of all the "experimentation" I have done is usually on things outside of class that I would have an opportunity to learn inside of class as well.

[ShotokanKid]

I don't know of any keno dojos within a 200 mile radius.

[ovine king]

don't a lot of aikido schools do work with swords as well?

[ShotokanKid]

No idea, only do Shotokan

[Shorin Ryuu]

(That was ovine king's way of suggesting you should look around for aikido schools in the area, as some offer sword training)