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meat
28th August 2002, 08:36
Hi all, this came up in another post in this forum. We have one of these heavy training bokens in our dojo, i've also been thinking about purchasing one for home use. what are your thoughts on this particular boken? i noticed one person said it develops a different set of skills due to its weight etc. what are everyones opinions?

Howard Quick
28th August 2002, 08:45
Hi Peter
A suburito is a great idea. As well as developing all of the necessary muscles required for swinging a sword, it forces you into good form. Stops you from altering the trajectory of the sword too soon and makes you follow through properly with swings,as long as it is heavy enough. I made my own out of Jarrah, it's readily available here, nice to look at when polished and above all it's 'heavy'

gendzwil
28th August 2002, 15:09
Originally posted by Howard Quick
Hi Peter
A suburito is a great idea. As well as developing all of the necessary muscles required for swinging a sword, it forces you into good form. Stops you from altering the trajectory of the sword too soon and makes you follow through properly with swings,as long as it is heavy enough. I made my own out of Jarrah, it's readily available here, nice to look at when polished and above all it's 'heavy'
Depends on your aims. Howard's aim of following through may be at odds with the goals of a different instructor, thus my earlier advice to ask your sensei if you have one. For IKF kendo and iaido, we generally *do* want to stop the sword at a specific point. Working with a suburito can build up your muscles for that particular purpose: it can also lead to strain injuries. Iaido instructors that I know recommend starting with a lighter sword to avoid injury but this may be mainly due to the one-handed work where tennis elbow is a risk.

rbrown
28th August 2002, 21:14
The question is what do you want to accomplish?? If you want to get stronger then the only way to do that is progressive overload. Now there are different ways to do that: do more cuts with the bokken you're using now or use something heavier. That's about it, of course you shouldn't try to do the same things with something 10 times as heavy, you need to gradually increase the weight or amount of repetitions.
If you are trying to get faster, then that is a different issue. Some believe to get faster you actually have to "under-load" to teach your body how to move faster. That would mean using an even lighter bokken to be able to teach your nervous system to "fire" more quickly to get a faster muscle contraction. Others move a heavy object as fast as they can trying to recruit more fast twitch muscle fibers.
I would disagree that using a subarito develops a different set of skills if used as an addition to your training.
Also one final thought, overuse injuries are not restricted to using heavy items. The most common (not including carpal tunnel for the computer folks) is called "tennis elbow" because people who play a lot of tennis often develop pain and swelling in the elbow joint. I'd hardly call a tennis raquet a heavy object. Over use injuries are often due to bad form, improper warming up, and severe increase in load (imagine after doing 50 cuts a day that you read an article about "Sensei so and so" who does 1,000 cuts a day and tried that without gradually increasing from 50).
Sure that's more info than you wanted, but you asked for opinions.

Richard Brown

ScottUK
28th August 2002, 21:22
My recommendation?

Go and buy a heavier sword.

I often practice with a sword 150-175g heavier than my usual blade. After practicing kata with this, my usual blade cuts much faster and cleaner, as my muscles are still in 'heavysword' mode.

Picture those crappy wrist/ankle weights - not much weight difference, but go out running in them and tell me they weigh nothing :D

A good thing? Maybe. An effective thing? Definitely.

Scott

ScottUK
28th August 2002, 21:28
Richard,

About the 'tennis elbow' thing - I agree entirely. I occasionally suffer from this, but I only discovered where it hit me after doing a shedload of escrima one day. Grip. While this may be obvious, only when I really throw effort into kata (overdoing it again :D ), do I suffer.

Next sword I buy, I shall make sure the tsuka is suitable for bigger, non-asian hands. Try wrapping your tsuka in a thick cloth to increase it's diameter. So much nicer, and so little pain :) - just don't do this for taikai!!

Regards,

Scott

meat
29th August 2002, 13:03
thanx alot guys for all the great posts. you've been really helpful :)