One and a Quarter Pounds

Thanks to a friend of mine, who happened to call my proxy saber "cool," I now have a sweet 1.25-pound weight added to it, right behind the five pounds I had already placed there. I didn't do much with it but feel the extra weight yesterday, when I took it apart, smashed my finger somehow, and put it back together with the extra weight, because I had already done a decent saber-related workout and didn't feel like over-cooking it. Today, though, I went to feel it in a variety of drills, and I was pretty shocked. It was a LOT heavier....

The thing is that I don't know if it's too heavy now or not. It certainly felt too light with just five pounds on it, but not when I first put it together. With just five, at first, I was surprised about how close it seemed to the real thing, and that was almost immediately after getting back from working with a real thing. I was pretty sure it was too light from some fluke accident of hearing something along the lines of that the real dadao weighs close to eight pounds (or just over). In any case, I've developed with it a little since then, and I got to where I could move it around with the five pounds that were on it with some degree of grace, though certainly not ease, and even the grace was failing in several of the basic drills. The lack of grace, I'm starting to realize, has something to do with the distribution of weight being very different when all of the weight I've added is in one place (near the balance point of a saber proper) versus more spread out through the steel of the saber.

I can't tell with any certainty now, though, if the thing felt right before and I was getting better at using it, hence the difference I feel now is truly that my proxy is too heavy or if, instead, the thing was too light before and the difference I feel now is just the difference, be my proxy too light or too heavy (theoretically, by my remembering, it's still too light). When I went to worth with it this afternoon with the additional pound and a quarter, I was very surprised as to how much harder the drills seemed. I haven't really been counting too much, just going until my form totally sucks and then quitting, and since I worked out pretty hard with it yesterday, I don't know that it would have mattered much because I might have residual soreness from then that would make it so I could only do fewer today anyway.

In any case, it's incredible the difference that a pound and a quarter can make. I'm somewhat eager to find out the true weight of a saber to be absolutely sure of that, and if I'm still too light, I'll probably go straight to adjusting that and learning to swallow whatever bitter comes along with.