While I've had the good fortune to learn from some truly fine martial artists, the most unique, and single most instructive thing I've done was to practice two or three times per week for most of a year (1987) with a long, end-weighted staff. I don't remember exactly how long it was and never actually weighed it, but guesstimate it's length at just a hair under 7 ft., with nearly all its weight concentrated towards the ends. It had a considerable moment of inertia (mass with respect to angular momentum). As far as the traditional arts go, this staff actually came closer to some counterweighted pole-arms than to a regular staff, although it had nothing resembling a blade. For that year, my teacher and my training implement were one in the same. That staff displayed no ego at all, just the motion that I imparted to it, and a tenaciousness about carrying it through. It displayed neither glee nor remorse when rupturing the skin over my right shin or removing a piece of cartilage from my left ear. After all, it was just going where I'd sent it. It had no need at all for respect, and yet demanded that I respect it. To begin with, I didn't set out to construct anything so heavy. I knew I wanted a little extra weight on the ends, but thought a pound or so would be plenty, and found these heavy springs at a surplus store (probably valve springs for some sort of stationary engine) that were a good fit for the stick that I'd already picked out, and basically glued them in place with the finish I applied to the wood. But it didn't take me long to decide it needed more weight. I didn't quite know why, just that it wasn't getting me where I wanted to go with it. Having already fixed the springs in place, I next got some steel balls (slingshot shot) and wrapped them into the gaps in the springs using plastic electrical tape. But even that wasn't enough, although it was beginning to get close, so I just kept adding tape, roll after roll, until it felt right. "Right" turned out to be the weight at which its moment of inertia, in rotation around a vertical axis, significantly exceeded my own, such that manipulating it engaged my entire body, all the way down to my feet ... which turned out to be the point of the entire exercise, getting my whole body working together as a single unit. I've generally stated that it probably weighed around 7 pounds, but that was a very conservative estimate in the interest of modesty, and the truth is that it was probably closer to twice that. It was formidable when moving fast, and could easily have dislocated a joint or broken a bone, in a moment of recklessness, and, as previously stated, actually did cause me a couple of bloody wounds. At one point, fairly early on, the stick split in two when it went flying out of my hands and hit the ground hard with one end. I decided to try gluing it back together, using clamps, and then wrapping it tightly, end-to-end, with cotton string, just in case it broke again. This turned out to be a good idea for grip and avoiding splinters, so when I made a second, lighter staff a couple of years later, I wrapped it the same way. (A third, which I gave to Jesse Clay, who later became the Olympic karate coach, I didn't wrap, but only because he graciously accepted it as it was. I was quite prepared to wrap it had he requested that.) The "design" was something of a compromise. The stick was long enough to be cumbersome; I had to lift its center to nearly shoulder height to keep it from hitting the ground when in rotation around a horizontal axis. But a shorter stick would have needed more weight to provide the same effect, and it was already heavy enough that compensating for gravity distracted from the inertial aspect of the practice. I think that I needed so much weight for much the same reason that people sometimes need drugs to break through conceptual barriers, because I was physically a bit too stupid to properly entrain my cerebellum without the extra inertia, which had the effect of slowing everything down to the point where I could keep track of it. Lowering gravity, if that were possible, would probably have much the same effect. Not having a clear idea why I was practicing with a staff at all, I kept trying to turn the practice towards martial application, but each time something in me rebelled. I understand now that it was only barely about handling a staff and not at all about its use as a weapon, but then I was more confused and eventually got frustrated and bored ... and musclebound. -=<>=- In the last couple years, I've broken through my inhibitions about dancing, with the help of some musical friends, and found that much of my movement repertoire stems from that year of practice with a heavy staff.