Using Heavier Weapons

[SeekerOfWisdom]

I have a rock pry bar I have been thinking of using as a bo for practice. It weighs a good 15lbs. The reason being is because you get used to the heavier weight and when you get a regular staff you would use it a little faster than if you had just used a wood one to train with. That make sense or am I out of my mind?

[littlebird]

Do simple exercises with the heavier bar to build up muscles.

Don't bother doing intricate moves because a much heavier weapon will change "how" you do it too much from the real thing.

If you wish to build up say your forearm or grip, or something else, then simple muscle building or strength building exercises that you can find in a weight training or lifting manual or web site will be of as much use as the heavy bar and help isolate the muscle.

Likewise improvising your own method of exercising specifice muscles or muscle groups will work if your budget is limited.

[Dark Blade]

Yeah, you might strain yourself using a bar as a bo.

[Cudgel]

and the balance and feel of a metal bar would be much different from a bo.
Now if you were planning on using a heavier bo for training and lighter bo for fighting and what not that would work better, atleast as far as speed is concerned. I just recently switched over to lighter weapon for practice after having used my ugly stick for aobut year.

[Reiki]

I'd agree with the others that its not a good idea to use this heavy bar as a bo. You may find other uses as suggested work better for building up the muscles.

The art of using a bo is being able to move it about easily and snap it into a strike where it will have full impact. Using this very heavy bar will impede the strikes.

It would be very difficult to change grips and make effective strikes because of the weight...

[Freeform]

I'd suggest just using a slighly heavier, thicker stick than normal, like I do. If you use to heavy a bar, technique will suffer and you could injure yourself (damaged wrists).

Col

[Stolenbjorn]

In WMA in Norway, someone is discussing wether to train with wooden swords first and then move to metal ones, or wether to go directly to metal swords. Why? Because the metal sword and the wooden one behaves different, and if you learn a tecniqe with a different weapon than the one you are to use in combat that might hamper you. I believe that will be the case with a stick as well, so I'll advice you to just train weights/train harder with the proper stick than resorting to a heavier stick. It will cause you to have a different stance due to its mass (things like angles of your sceletal structure and your point of balance will be different with a heavier stick...)

[gojuman]

I do not see anything wrong with working bo techniques with a very heavy bar. The exercise will result in the development of the muscles used in bo techniques, so that when you pick up a normal weight bo you will be able to move faster for one thing. Obviously use caution when working with any weapon so as not to over do it and strain your self and this is more important to remember when using a weighted bo.
I have a pipe that I use once in a while and it provides for a serious work out by just performing bo techniques.
Keep on swinging!!

[smalldark&purry]

i think i understand your reasoning, as after a point i felt a need to further develop my wrist and fore arm rotary power ,Tanren bo seemed the most natural progression but in all honest i felt a little perturbed to spending in excess of $150 on a heavier training bokken(if you have not seen tanden bo it is, as a rudimentary evaluation, closely resemabeling of an oar with a handel)the major problem i found was that the weight was far too little and the price too high, that aside i would recommend regular tanren bo training to anyone ,to say that i recently found myself in a very fortunate position of acquiring a second world war blade , the appeal for myself was the sheer size and weight of the piece, approx a little over five foot in length and weight of 13.2 pounds, its an ideal single handed tb training piece. so you would be surprised where your next training tool may come from.