Sparring Staff

I have used 2 types of padded staffs in sparring. Neither very good. The first was a softwood staff covered in foam rubber. It didn't take long to break this one in sparring. The other was a plastic tube covered in rubber. This one didn't break but was so flimsy that the techniques resembled a whip instead of a staff. I put a metal rod through the center of the plastic tube, this made it better but when the staff would bend slightly, it would stay in that position. Has anyone come up with a better solution for a sparring staff? I have used the real, unpadded staff but it's too much bruising for regular workouts.

I glued wooden dowls inside thin plastic pipe, put the pipe inside a foam tube (for keeping pipes from freezing in our Canadian winters) and wrapped it all in two layers of duct tape.

None broke yet, but they still hurt. The larger ones, the heavy hitters, got an extra layer of heavy foam wrapped on the ends like a pugil stick but they too still hurt.

Teeth won't be knocked out but lips are split and I expect eye injuries could happen so we wear eye gear.

Ted

Some discussion and a bit of practice can be the difference between life and death or minor and major physical trauma.


A Martial Artists Guide to Weapons, Street Violence, and Countervailing Force.my book review.

Our Kobudo class trains regular weapons sparring. We have not found anything that provides a good balance of weapon dexterity and protection. If you pad the weapon enough to actually be "safe", it's almost impossible to use. So we've gone the opposite direction.
We have a combination of forearm and elbow padding, occasional leg protection, and heavy gloves and helmets with full face coverage. The best equipment we have found so far seems to be hockey gear. It's taken some time to find the right mix of equipment but the gloves and helmets are the primary pieces. These, combined with an appropriate amount of control seem to work well. We still have accidents and injuries but it allows us to train much more aggressively without serious damage.

Hello,

we do staff sparring and sparrings competions a lot in germany. We have decided to go the way over a padded weapon. Sorry at the moment i ve just a slovak description how to build a safty bo. http://www.kobudo.sk/boshiai.html# and then press Výroba zbrane na bo shiai.
My teacher has a long experience with staff sparring, he first did it in an kendo bugo and real staff that had been some where in the 80's. Then he had gone the way and has a real stuff and put it into a pipe isnsulation. That had the disadvantage that it had been to big, but we could fight without protetive clothes. The next step had been to use an alumin pipe in an pipe insulation. That kind of safty bo had been thinner and much faster, but wiht this type the injuris got much more. So we change it to a PVC-pipe inside. With this we got much less injuries but this safty could break, but better to break the safty bo as to break a bone.
Here are some of the fights:

http://de.youtube.com/results?search_query=bo+shiai&search_type=&aq=f

Thomas

Thanks for the link. I realize now that I've seen VERY little bo-like sparring on the internet besides kendo, or choreographed kobudo bunkai. I see the above video, and much like the sparring videos, I don't see much of what I'm told to stress in training (for example: covering behind the bo, blocking, and double-ended bo attacks)...but assume it's a different style.

Hello Herlan,

the people who are fighting there came from 3 different styles, Ryukyu Kobudo Tesshinkan, Gendai Goshin Kobujutsu and Yamanni-Chinnen Ryu. Covering and Blocking you find also there, double-ended bo attacks are seldom, cause if you grip the bo in the typical way to take it at 1/3 1/3 (sorry I dont know how to explain that grip better in english) you are getting a distanze problem if the other is gripping the bo more at the end. So the normal fighting grip is hand more at the end, like you have seen in the vids, and with the grip you have a greater range.
We also do sometimes randori training with the safty angainst an other weapon. The bo fighter just attaks, and the other has to defend with the learnd kumite. It show very nice where are the weekness of the pupil or the weekness of a kumite.

Thomas

Thank you for the detail.

Thomas -

Thanks for sharing. BTW, are you in this video? -

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=DJHaslrTA8c

No, I hadn't participate at that competion. I hope i would be there next year.

Harlan,
Note that the techniques you mentioned may be missing as a result of the TYPE of fight seen in the videos. In this isolated environment the long grip and quick parries are the most beneficial. For other scenarios this is not always the case. I find myself changing grips, length and ends of the bo constantly throughout the training session. Wish I had video.

Thanks for the reply. I haven't left the beginner's end of the pool yet...and appreciate the insights.

Anyone care to jump in as to the types of bo/staff sparring that exist? My framework is limited to 1) pre-arranged bunkai, 2) non-prearranged 'kendo' type meets seen on the 'net.

The sparring we do looks different then what was in the video as well. We do alot of short range attacks with one end of the staff messing with our opponents legs and the other end attacking high. There are throws and joint locks incorporated with the staff training.

From a distance, the staff is held on one end. There is a snapping motion from the wrist with each strike. When done in the air, you should see the staff warp and the opposite end move several inches. This snapping motion creates a tourque power that travels through the staff into your opponent.

As we advance toward our opponent, our grip becomes more central. Their is a figure 8 digging motion to get past the opponents defenses. Once inside, then we do the trips, throws, locks etc.. with strikes.

There is also a set of techniques from a nonthreatening holding the staff as a walking stick. One end of the staff is planted into the ground and the other is cupped behind the staff. You then move arround the staff, keeping it generally vertical and between you and the opponent. Parries and strikes are done from this position.

Hey everyone,

do you have a vid of your staff-fights?

Thomas

i would love to see that too!
i just have this videos, not me, i was filming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHBX7sZOY7o
here, controled sparing with real wooden sticks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtqCVzhiMk
here, some more full contact sparing, in a relaxed, not competitive mood.
This are the actionflex sticks, they are not very good for jogo do pau since we use all the staffs lenth for our advantage in a fight and the grip is in one of the tips ofthe staff and if you used actionflex staffs they are soft on both sides, so it looks really sloppy.. hope we can get to a better solution in the future.

The full contact sticks seem suprisingly soft? Are there slightly stiffer variants of them or is that how they usually are?

they do are very soft, but at the moment they are the best solution at least for jogo do pau.
They use a technology that make it softer on the tip and stronger on the base, but that is for swords, for staffs they just put 2 soft tips on each side.
But this is great because it allows full speed hits and at the same time you can block with the center of the stick as you would with a normal one for security. And with the power of the hits in jogo do pau, anything stiffer would cause bruises or need for expensive armor(we tried lots of stuff) the only problem is that we don't have a decent grip on one of the sides and the back hand, that should be the stronger grip ends up gripping a soft part of it.

Hello Mambawaba,

what are the rule in your fightings?

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But this is great because it allows full speed hits and at the same time you can block with the center of the stick as you would with a normal one for security. And with the power of the hits in jogo do pau, anything stiffer would cause bruises or need for expensive armor(we tried lots of stuff) the only problem is that we don't have a decent grip on one of the sides and the back hand, that should be the stronger grip ends up gripping a soft part of it.

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I know the problem of the bad gripping, this is part of our security tricks for the fight, if you have a bad grip cause the stick it to thick you cant hit so hard, then you also could use a less fexlible stick.

Sincerly

Thomas