punisher73
Senior Master
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2004
- Messages
- 3,959
- Reaction score
- 1,058
Good question because I was never given a guide on staff height. In the school we trained with staffs of various sizes (not by choice if you didn't have your own). My own personal guide is a range.
- Staff should not be shorter than your height
- Staff cannot touch the ground when you hold the middle of the staff and raise your arm parallel to the ground. There should be a few inches (1or 2) between the ground and the bottom of the staff.
Thanks! Sometimes when I watched a Jow Ga staff set it looked like a 6 foot staff and other times it looked longer and never saw anything that said the length.Good question because I was never given a guide on staff height. In the school we trained with staffs of various sizes (not by choice if you didn't have your own). My own personal guide is a range.
- Staff should not be shorter than your height
- Staff cannot touch the ground when you hold the middle of the staff and raise your arm parallel to the ground. There should be a few inches (1or 2) between the ground and the bottom of the staff.
Anything within that range should still allow you to flower the staff without issue and to do other techniques.
When the staff is too short then the range becomes too short in a bad way, like trying to block a swing or attack, Your opponent's staff only to have it go under there staff. When the staff is too high then it causes problems with the lower "upper cut" type swings and "paddle your boat" movement. My son was having difficulty in performing one of the techniques so I told him to think like he's rowing a boat and that seemed to work. Not sure if that works for other people. Below is the "paddle your boat" motion. If your staff is tool long then this motion becomes troublesome when the stance level changes causing the staff to hit the ground. It becomes less of an issue as you get used to the size of the staff you are using.
If it's too short like the Jo Staff in Aikido then you end up missing the staff when you use a similar "paddle your boat" technique. Making sure your staff doesn't hit the ground when doing techniques like the one below is more important than the flowering. We don't do a lot of flowering but it's a good measurement of when a staff is too long.
View attachment 26777