The Bo Staff is an incredibly versatile martial arts weapon. Bos and similarly structured training weapons are involved in a number of disciplines and a wide range of techniques. Martial artists who train with the bo can take their skills everywhere from the dojo to tournaments to Hollywood.
With a little creativity, you can also adapt the Bo Staff for uses outside of martial arts, including cross-training workouts and mind/body exercises.
Let’s take a look at five ways you can use a Bo Staff, from the traditional to the experimental.
Martial Arts
The Bo Staff is a traditional Okinawan martial arts weapon that has been used in Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū for most of its existence. It is used for both Kata and Forms in modern day Karate. Bo Staffs can also be adapted for use in martial arts that use forms of wooden staffs in their trainig, like Kung Fu, Taekwondo, Filipino Martial Arts, and Budo.
Karateka who train with the Bo Staff can use it as a supplementary tool to help them develop balance, coordination, mental focus and dexterity in other aspects of their practice. They also have the option of making the Bo Staff a primary focus on their martial arts weapons training. Bo Staff training can be done recreationally, or with a focus on participating in competitions, tournaments, and demonstrations.
Stage Combat and Stunt Work
The Bo Staff has become a prominent martial arts weapon on both stage and screen. In addition to being a staple of wuxia films, Bos have landed starring roles in movies and TV shows like Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Pacific Rim, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The late, great Kung Fu film legend Cheng Pei-pei considered the Bo particularly well suited to older martial arts and action film stars and focused on it in many of her later works, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Which makes a Bo Staff a solid investment for anyone who is interested in training for stage combat or stunt work. Becoming familiar with the Bo and its basic techniques can take you anywhere from Broadway to a galaxy far, far away.
Bodyweight Workouts
Weightlifters are more commonly associated with heavy metal bars than staffs, but many of them got their start on long wooden dowels. Many of them still warm up with dowels, too. And some exercisers build entire bodyweight exercises around them.
Wooden sticks or dowels provide tactile cues that help exercisers learn and maintain proper form during lifts and other moves. Using one in place of a heavy bar allows new lifters to figure out the mechanics of moves like barbell squats, overhead squats, and good mornings. Seasoned exercisers can also benefit from grabbing a stick and doing a few reps of these moves during their warmups to make sure their body awareness and movement patterns are ready to go. And fitness buffs on the go or working at home can grab a stick and use it as a guide for the bodyweight versions of classic barbell moves.
While any kind of stick or dowel will do, a good wooden Bo Staff would make a functional and cool choice for all of the above exercises.
Pilates
Pilates is an exercises methodology that encourages a strong connection between the mind and body. So Pilates instructors love the tactile cues involved in working with a dowel or staff like a Bo. Adding a staff to Pilates mat exercises can help students develop greater awareness of their posture, shoulder blades, and head and neck position, all of which will make their practice healthier and move effective. For some moves, the staff can also add a tiny bit of extra weight to a move and increase the core challenge.
Outside of mat work, wooden dowels can also be used to prep students for working with Pilates equipment like the reformer and the Cadillac.
Mobility Training and Rehab Exercises
Dowels or staffs like a Bo are also a popular choice for physiotherapists and fitness professionals who specialize in rehab and mobility training. Bos are solid enough to provide structure to mobility moves, allowing patients to work with good form throughout their ranges of motion. But they’re also light enough to allow people to work through that ROM safely without a heavier external load adding pressure to the joints and risking bad form, strains, or injury.
But you don’t have to be on the mend to benefit from this kind of mobility training. Anyone can get a solid flexibility and mobility workout with a Bo staff. Working with a staff can improve everything from the range of motion in your shoulder joints to the mobility of your spine.
