How can I increase my shinai speed ?

[Samurai Fe-taru]

Hello everyone,
I nned some help. Please give me some ideas as to what I can do to increase my shinai speed. I'm not slow by any means but, I need to be able to swing faster to beat my sempai and to improve my kendo over all, please help ! Thank you all very much.

[gendzwil]

1. Wrong forum
2. By the question you're a beginner so don't worry about speed yet
3. If you still insist, I'd have to see your swing so...
4. Ask your sensei

[jest]

Racing stripes and a big spoiler :)

[Shitoryu Dude]

I found that a little Astroglide on the shinai helps. :cool:

[gendzwil]

Suburito and tip weights are really unlikely to be the solution. Speed comes from relaxation. Beginners swinging weighted shinai just get more tense. But really, I'd have to see his swing to diagnose it, so it's much simpler if he just asks his sensei. If he doesn't have a sensei to ask, then he's sol.

[pgsmith]

Practice!
More practice and more experience is the surest way to increase that speed. I'd be willing to put money on the fact that if you practice hard, in five years you'll be much faster than you are now. :)

Cheers,

[hyaku]

Hello everyone,
I nned some help. Please give me some ideas as to what I can do to increase my shinai speed. I'm not slow by any means but, I need to be able to swing faster to beat my sempai and to improve my kendo over all, please help ! Thank you all very much.

I think its faster feet you need not a faster swing. It takes no effort to lift something the weight of an umbrella with two hands and zero effort to drop it. If you let it go it would fall even faster.

Get your sempai to give you an hours kakari geiko and a nice hard swipe across the backside with his shinai if you go too slow. Works wonders.

[Brian Owens]

...Please give me some ideas as to what I can do to increase my shinai speed. I'm not slow by any means but, I need to be able to swing faster to beat my sempai...
Hello, Jason.

If your sempai train as dilligently as you, you may never be able to beat them. They'll be getting faster as you are.

However, as others have said, the way to get faster than you are now is to keep training.

Also, what some might think of as speed of the weapon is often actually better timing and better perception; sensing an opening sooner, detecting an attack before it starts, etc.

Those, too, can only be improved by constant practice.

Keep training, and follow your sensei's guidance!

Good luck.

[Samurai Fe-taru]

Thank you all for the suggestions I will put them all to use, I have been in kendo for over a year now and I can see that more years of experience will improve everything. I do 100 men a day so I will up to 200 maybe more. Thank you all again.

[Gessho]

Hello everyone,
I nned some help. Please give me some ideas as to what I can do to increase my shinai speed. I'm not slow by any means but, I need to be able to swing faster to beat my sempai and to improve my kendo over all, please help ! Thank you all very much.

Swing harder.

[gendzwil]

Swing harder.
Hope you were attempting a joke, there. No. Just, no. He'll be clubbing his dojomates to death soon enough when he hits nidan, they all seem to go through this phase of skull-denting around that time.

[hyaku]

Hello, Jason.

If your sempai train as dilligently as you, you may never be able to beat them. They'll be getting faster as you are.
.

Then he is not a very good sempai is he?

[Dogger]

Rocket power! or cool stickers or spare with Sang K. and after all your knuckles are bloody, youll just put the darn thing away! HAHA

But really speed and quickness comes from years of practice and hours of daily practice. How many remember after hours of sword throws you finally get a "thats correct" from your Sensei and with all that new energy you strike again and he just shakes his head. What happened? The good one came from not trying, you just let it happen and the next one you tried again to hard for it to happen. Wow totally ZEN like!

Hey am I close?

Your friend
Jim Williams

[Brian Owens]

Then he is not a very good sempai is he?
I would think he is.

If my sempai or sensei adjusts his speed to let me experience "winning" that's not the same as me getting faster than him through more dilligent training and actually "beating" him.

[Butsudoka]

Kuroda Tetsuzan gave a great seminar at the 2003(?) AikiExpo and said something to the effect of one must learn how to start moving without tensing the muscles.

When one starts moving in this manner far fewer signals are given to the opponent giving them far less time to react.

David Bunnell

[Samurai Fe-taru]

Kuroda Tetsuzan gave a great seminar at the 2003(?) AikiExpo and said something to the effect of one must learn how to start moving without tensing the muscles.

When one starts moving in this manner far fewer signals are given to the opponent giving them far less time to react.

David Bunnell


Wow, I like that bit of info, that makes alot of sense. I will try to see if I can practice that, I've experienced that before with another one of our sempai from Boston he starts to work the shinai really fast kinda like playing with the tip of your shinai but just before he attacks he looks like he will explode, and that he does. That sempai is sooo fast.

[gendzwil]

As I said before, speed comes from relaxation. Unfortunately, it's not very teachable. I tell lots of people to relax but really it only comes from doing lots of keiko so that you eventually, you know, relax. One of those simple to explain, hard to do concepts we have in kendo.

[Mr. Matt]

I've known a few japanese girls who did kendo in highschool. They were doing 4000 cuts a day every day. Kinda makes my 1000 cut high seem kinda pointless. *sigh* So much for ego. Anyhoo... give it a try for 3 months, that should do it.

[Scott Irey]

You want faster? Try hooking one of these up to your shinai:

http://www.bcam.net/engines/merlin.htm

I have one on my favorite iaito and I swing faster than anybody I have ever seen with that baby at full throttle. Only problem is it is hard to make out any tachikaze with that thing running..... Make sure to click on the little picture of the p-51 when you go to the link.

[Mr. Matt]

I realize that just jumping in and doing 4000 cuts is impractical and inadvisable. Let me clarify this suggestion. You're doing 100 cuts right now, yes? You should definitely up it... gradually. Try something like 50 shomen, 50 migi, 50 hidari, and end with 50 shomen... do that each day. Then every week or two, up it a bit. Make a New Year's Resolution type of thing, a goal to be doing say 500 or 1000 cuts by the end of the year. Then set a new goal on Jan 1st, maybe 2000.

The trick is that you can't just go out there and swing while thinking about what you're gonna do when you're done, or what movies are coming out or whatever. Focus on each cut, figuring out what was wrong with that one and fix it on the next one. Like "is my right or left hand too tight? Is my back or butt too tight? Am I cutting straight? Can I relax my shoulders more? Is my breath high in my chest? Am I kiai-ing from my throat or my center? etc."
Keep an ongoing monologue.

As your cuts get better they'll get faster.