Shinai for WMA???

[Cudgel]

Ive been doing SCA styled shinai fighting for almsot 5 years, and in that period of time Ive grwon les tan fond of some of the pecularites of shinai.
Such as the cylindrical shape, the lightnes, and the different balance.

I was all for ditching my shinai and taking up singlestick, but I was persuing swordforum.com and found that a few WMAist some who are rather respected, from what Ive gathered, use shinai for everything from fiore, single stick and I.33.
Ive also found that shinai are inapropiate for any twoahnded styles, such as the Itallaien or German styles, the proportions are off, and that to alter the proportions of a shinai would not really help any.
Those who use shinai cut down for backsword, I.33 and as singlesticks say the shinia are wonderful, as one Swordforumite said, "A singlestick the same weight as a shinai is a lethal instrument. A singlestick light enough to be safe is so light as to handle quite unlike a real sword. The shinai are heavier than singlesticks and are designed to allow you to hit harder while doing no damage. Even very light singlesticks hit harder than shinai double the weight. "
And naturally any and all PRODUCTIVE comments are weclome and in fact desired.


And on a similar note Ive decided to try my hand at making schiavona styled basket hilts for shinai. I might even try making some mortuary hilts as well:D

[Rob Lovett]

Hi there,

Cudgel personally I find that the shinai are too light and too far removed from the weapon they intend to simulate to be muchh good,. other people obviously have had different mileage, and more strength to them I say, however, this is a particular tool that I do not intend to employ in my training.
Some of them also mentioned the extra safety level for sparing that the shinai gives someone, I personally believe that part of the training should involve not only control but also the conquering of your fear of getting hurt so as to manage to step in with your cover and use that blistering counter you have been working on for so long :) - but as I said different strokes for different folks :)

Regardds
Rob

[Stolenbjorn]

Well, I suspect my (former :( -he moved to germany; **** those women :rolleyes: ) trainer; Colin is one of the swordforumers speaking kindly about shinai.

I operate with 4 different ways of fighting with a sword:
A LARP/Re-enactment; which is more like a sport/game than proper martial arts.
B Slow/light-contact sparring
C Theatrical fighting -which is all about how to look impressive and convinsing while fighting
D Full contact

The shinai has only a role in the last category;"D". What's the point of "D"? For me it's about trying out techniques full speed, and to try the ones that are so potent that when doing them in category "A"-"C", you have to take so much care that they don't work. Me and Colin tryed to work on the techniques you can do from the true cross using wooden swords, and in order to make them work, we had to go on reflexes and some speed, and after 1,5 hour of this, my arms adopted some kind of black, painful marks that stayed there for 3 weeks :cry:

I have never actually sparred with a shinai, but I've done plenty of more or less full contact with ash-wasters. There are IMO 3 alternative tools you can use when doing full contact; steel, hard wood or shinai.

Steel: You have to have tons of padding and armor. Now that costs a load of money, and will strain both your blade and your armor. You allso have to know how to control your weapon as it's lethal -even if the opponent do have armor.

Wood: It's cheaper to aquire (I make them myself, so for me they're for free :D ), and you can go lighter on the padding, and more important, you can use cheaper armor-equipment; like Hocheystash / fencingmasks / boxingheadgear. But it still require loads of preparations in order to go some rounds, and hard wood is still lethal enough that you kind of need to have security in the back of your head. And as for the balance; they are NOT the same as metal-weapons!

Shinai: I regard them as even safer to swing than wood, thus making it easier to to full contact without having safety overriding all the time -provided you go with the same degree of protection as with the wooden swords. I allso think that the balance isn't that much worse than hard wood, and they should be used in conjuntion with metal swords, for "katas"/test-cutting, and wooden swords/blunt metalswords for slow sparring.

If i ever stumble across some shinai for free, I'd use them in my classes when the students are becoming competent on the basic principles of fencing, so that they can try the techniques out without fearing too much for the opponent.