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Historical Fighting Guide

@historicalfightingguide / historicalfightingguide.tumblr.com

The goal here is to list basic resources,mostly those available freely online, that one can use in research of historical fighting.Aimed primarily for beginners but hopefully useful for senior practicioners as well. Another aim is to answer most commonly asked questions that new practitioners might have. And a further aim is to showcase a culture of solidarity,comradery and diversity.To openly work together and offer constructive criticism but where sexism,racism,fascism,xenophobia,ableism,transphobia,queerphobia in general and similar issues are not allowed.

A video with commentary of sparring with various kinds of strikes allowed but not thrown full force while the grappling, be it throws or takedowns or rolls are done with force. This is not inherently more 'historical' due to a myriad of modern aspects of the sparring that make it well modern, and that history is not one thing but a wide variety of different contexts to play with....however historically speaking while you could expect striking to be a part of unarmed fighting( we see it even in primarily grappling sources within HEMA) they're generally just used as set ups, not 'finishing' moves as such. While this video has folks continuing to fight on the ground till they get a submission or the time runs out it still forces a style slightly more similar to something we see in certain historical systems. Especially when the jackets get added.

For those interested in historical grappling forms check out the   HEMA Grapplers facebook group, and Ringen discussiongroup! as well as  Scholars of Fiore dei Liberi are potentially useful facebook groups when it comes to historical grappling forms.

If you're interested in the striking aspect of it all it may be more beneficial to check out HEMA pugilists

Obviously the grappling, wrestling, historical grappling, historical wrestling, boxing, striking, pugilism tags all may be useful and relevant too.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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Consider getting some patches of this sort or these cool rashguards to show support for good causes or a t-shirt like to send a good message while at training.

A fun video of a martial artist trying another olympic fencing discipline. Not everyone has to enjoy this or that form of olympic fencing but it can also be amazing for some, and there's some amazing pedagogy and athletes within it.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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Consider getting some patches of this sort or these cool rashguards to show support for good causes or a t-shirt like to send a good message while at training.

“ At this point in my longsword career, right-of-way is one of my favorite rulesets to fence under. Before you get disgusted and click away, hear me out – I wasn’t always like this, I used to be a right-of-way hater just like most of the HEMA community. It was a slow transition over the course of several years. In this article I will talk about that transition, where it started, and how it’s going today.'’

Fairly interesting and useful article to read through even if you find the concept of ‘right of way’ abhorrent, as the article itself deals with concepts of priority, describing exchanges and giving out value judgements or points to them based on certain principles.

Especially useful if you’re a tournament organizer, instructor looking as to how to instill certain ideas into their students or just a regular fencer who wants to play around with some rulesets in sparring.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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Found here and here.

Ringen discussiongroup! as well as  Scholars of Fiore dei Liberi are potentially useful facebook groups when it comes to historical grappling forms.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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"For as we are not all of a single nature, so we also cannot all have a single style in combat; yet all must nonetheless arise and be derived from a single basis." - Joachim Meyer. ca. 1537

In case you’re interested in historical forms of grappling and wrestling check out

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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Fiore dei Liberi’s patrons literally made up a story that they were descended from an African Muslim and a bisexual female knight - presumably just because they thought it sounded cool. According to chivalric legend the d’Este family of Ferrara was founded by the African knight Ruggiero (who converted to Christianity only shortly before his wedding); and Bradamante, a formidable knight who before her marriage enjoyed a passionate same-sex affair with the Spanish princess Fiordispina. Both prominently featured in the Orlando Furioso. Two of the Fiore manuscripts are dedicated to Niccolò III d'Este - from the wiki: "“Francesco Novati and D. Luigi Zanutto both assume that some time before 1409 he accepted an appointment as court fencing master to Niccolò III d'Este, Marquis of Ferrara, Modena, and Parma; presumably he would have made this change when Milan fell into disarray in 1402, though Zanutto went so far as to speculate that he trained Niccolò for his 1399 passage at arms. …The Ms. Ludwig XV 13 and the Pisani Dossi Ms. are both dedicated to Niccolò III d'Este and state that they were written at his request and according to his design.” “

For folks who want to learn more about Fiore you may want to check out the hyperlinks in the text above, as well as the  Scholars of Fiore dei Liberi facebook group, a free pdf of a translation of his works, a book version of the translation etc.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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New Meyer Translation

Since I was just complaining yesterday about the readability of current Meyer translations. It'll be interesting to see how much can be blamed on translators Vs Meyer himself.

This one comes with a foreword by Roger Norling, which is probably going to be worth the price on its own

Roger Norling is the man behind HROARR, an amazing HEMA resource and one of the most relevant researchers when it comes to Meyer’s system but also generally a great contributer to the wider historical fencing community in regards to many topics.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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This was made for folks engaging in modern high school and college wrestling in mind, however a lot of the solo practice of this sort can be fairly useful for people that want to learn historical grappling arts too.

In case you’re interested in historical forms of grappling and wrestling check out

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

Jack Slack on the boring nature of uneven numbers in combat. Or evenly matched numbers once that first fighter is eliminated.

I’ve seen people calling for more group combat in HEMA, and I don’t like it personally for three reasons:

1) It’s often not Historical, in the sense of coming from a specific historical martial arts system. The “Other Masters” in 3227a may give advice for when outnumberered, but they also say:

Who wants to stand against four or six /  will just realize that they will get him Just like if he had bought it this way /  He should rather stay in a bed And should have run away and lie down /  instead of practicing this foolishness

There are very few sources for such combat, and fewer that address it in detail. There are some cool examples in historical texts - multiple attackers with rapiers/sideswords and bucklers vs a montante wielder comes to mind. Often that’s not what people are talking about though. They want shield walls and other under-sourced situations.

2) It’s often not even historical, in the sense of “I want to pit one man with a spear, one with a nineteenth century sabre, one with an arming sword and heater shield, and one with a longsword, against a matched team”. I get that SCA and LARP melees are cool, but they’re their own thing and I like to keep my HEMA focused on the historical art, not on random time-traveller brawls.

3) As Mr Slack says, it’s not actually that interesting most of the time. Just a steamroller by the outnumbering group.

That said, if it’s something you enjoy, enjoy it! Simply not really my cup of tea.

One of the issues here is that we don’t even have a clear actual understanding of what a ‘shieldwall’ even is, one can easily see videos of what it might be if it is typed into youtube and find various reenactment groups doing a number of different things but we don’t really have much information from any periods describing these things in too much detail so there’s no one clear way of doing it, especially as it’s a term used for viking/migration era formations just the same as the greek phalanx.

Another element to the actual historical examples that we have with weapons like the montante is that the specific techniques for dealing with multiple opponents tend to assume you have a reason for fighting more than one person and also that you are armed. Even if your opponents are armed you’re more likely to be able to keep multiple people at bay and threaten them with a single attack if you have a weapon than if you don’t have one. Which tends to then present a different context to the ones we have today.

It may be being a bodyguard or a fighter on a galley with no where to run or being suddenly attacked and having to fight your way out etc.  There is the honorary exclusion of Fiore’s ‘I’m so badass I’ll take three sword armed peasants while only using a knife’ that honestly feels very reminiscent of the happo kumite mentioned in the Fightland text.

En example of what can you do that could make sense would be the scholagladiatoria video using a historical anecdote as a base for a fun sparring session where one spear armed user is supposed to fend off several attackers that can only attack through a cramped up space.

The weapons used are a weird mix, kind of like the one mentioned in the original post, but there is at least a clear historical example of the situation being utilized. If one were to use an appropriate mix of weapons it could be even better.

One can argue that many manuals were created by people that saw combat in their age or expected to see it. However even so merely pitting many vs many may not be enough in on its own. You might want to experiment with objectives like capturing a specific point/defending a particular target, etc. Or if you have the silly big numbers that most HEMA clubs probably won’t have for the next few decades see if you can have an all out battle all with pike blocks etc. but at that point you probably ought to also look at tactical and strategic manuals from the ancient, medieval and renaissance times-depending on what exactly it is you’re trying out. And even then you’re lacking cavalry and artillery. If you’re not I’m wondering how are you doing it without anybody dying and want in :D

Point being training scenarios that encompass more than just 1v1 is not impossible or completely without use, but it does require a lot more than what most clubs right now might be willing or capable to do if it’s a serious approach in terms of research and not just fun sparring.

Arguably if you only want to improve your own understanding of group fighting or have fun you can always do so within LARP, reenacment, SCA, BOTN, or you may even see to it that you organize HEMA events around this idea ;) After all we have seen some basic 3 on 3 mini tournaments a few times in the past. If there are people willing to create more no one is going to stop them and you can see how many people are actually interested in attending.

As for further examples of HEMA texts and videos on the topic check out http://historicalfightingguide.tumblr.com/multipleopponents&groupcombat

An old post worth revisiting, lots of small details can be changed in what’s been said above but TLDR: Group fighting when folks dont even know the basics of 1 on 1 fighting isnt a great idea. Group fights dont necessarily just function like a bunch of 1on1 fights after a certain point. Just like with 1on1 situations introducing specific games, focused type sparring, certain constraints and the like can be great for getting folks to improve and try out new things. You may need more protective gear and control for group fighting than for regular sparring. It can be a great idea to reach out to folks that train various other activities (LARP, reenacment, SCA, Bohurt but also rugby, american football, generally team sports) to find better ways of co-ordinating with your teamates in a group scenario. Historical manuscripts we study in HEMA tend to emphasize 1on1 situations, but not necessarily because it was always the only context the art shown in them was meant for, but sometimes as a pedagogical tool and the same principles were meant to be applied in accordance to the situation whether one is in a fechtschule, a judicial duel, a back alley brawl, a siege, a skirmish, galley fight or a pitched battle.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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“Is it a good or bad thing to develop a personal style within the practice of HEMA, which is essentially the recreation of fighting systems from the past? If we commit to an authentic reconstruction (or at least, to the attempt to make our reconstruction as authentic as possible), then does this preclude the development of a personal style?How much wiggle room is there to develop your own way of using a sword while still following the instructions in our original sources?These are some interesting questions, and I hope to stimulate some discussion with this article.“ found here 

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In some ways we do this anyway by virtue of reconstruction.

It is impossible to learn “Liechtenauer’s longsword”.

You will always be learning some interpretation of it, whether that’s your own or your instructors or, these days, their instructors.

The problem with personal style “in HEMA” is that style is all HEMA is. We know very little about the common fencing practices of Europe. We know these styles because they were unique enough in their counterintuitive-ness to preserve on paper.

It is fine to pick up a sword and teach yourself to use it from scratch or use HEMA as a basis for a personal style… But it would be uncouth to bring that style to a tournament where people are sleuthing through history to revive a specific thing, and call it HEMA.

In the very least you’d find yourself having to justify every letter in the acronym.

After more than two decades in this game, I find that the people who desire to make a personal sword style fall into four categories…

People who struggle with common interpretations due to poor body mechanics. Sometimes this is a genuine struggle, but often these students simply lack the motivation to reach an appropriate fitness level for the techniques they are attempting and are seeking to justify their body’s natural comfort shortcuts as something new they have invented.

This is usually corrected pretty harmlessly in a class setting but can drag on in a backyard club for years.

That may sound harsh, but it’s from a place of love. As a teen, this was me 100%.

Relatively skilled fencers who are, in short, very bored. Interest in HEMA waxes and wanes over the years, even among the most prolific. Some are naturally going to want to change the drapes on the HEMA window.

Egomaniacs. There are many stories of “that one instructor” in HEMA these days.

If your school is closed to interpretations from other instructors, even when those interpretations fit the source material and seem to be working well in tournament… Your instructor may be attempting to create their own style in the guise of “better interpretation” of the source material.

Multiclassers.

These people have studied every bladed art and feel that the best way forward is to put them in a blender and hit frappe.

Which again, is fine… But buy a new acronym.

Mostly agreed however I’d argue that the manuscripts we study give us enough width to really do have a personal style that fits within the principles of the arts we study without having to actively work on creating it but purely through long term work on interpreting the system, training the fundementals, testing and experimenting with it all in drills and sparring and competition and thus finding out what works best for us personally while staying true to the material we chose to study.

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Fair point. I suppose it depends on where you place the bar between personal style and individual interpretation.

There’s plenty of wiggle room in my argument.

Yes definitely, was countering the argument less rather more specifying the details where I may somewhat disagree or was unclear on your meaning.

An old post worth revisiting

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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An in-depth analysis of some cool fencing exchanges at the Icebreaker event earlier this year. James Reilly you may know from the various KDF-related posts on this blog and the desire line podcast, while you may know Josias Arcadia from his cuhooligan  youtube channel*. Josias is one of the fighters in the video, while the other is the person behind the  SuperiorHEMA youtube channel.

It’s not rare that one can find sparring videos on this blog, but it’s really rare to see as detailed of a breakdown of a historical fencing sparring video as this one is pretty much anywhere online.

*Could’ve sworn he had a tik tok by the same name but it doesnt come up for some reason. For more on how to use youtube content for learning historical fencing I suggest checking out these older posts on the concept of video study of sparring and tournament footage. If you are interested in learning how to use a longsword check out these few links. For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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A great write up on how to dose ones own exercise regiment using a modified version of the RPE scale to avoid overtraining while allowing us to keep our activity level appropriate when dealing with pain and similar issues. While RPE is a bit harder to apply to historical fencing it’s a great tool for anyone doing any added working out in order to supplement their fencing or for some other reason.

For more specific info go to HEMA Strong® or check out older posts on the topic of exercise 

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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An excellent video on coaching, folks are primarily historical fencing instructors but a lot of this is applicable to combat sports and martial arts more generally.

“ I’m joined by my good friend Julian Schuetze, of The Historical Combat Collective. Together we discuss coaching in the sword community and how to involve and motivate sword fighters in their own training. 

 Make sure to check out THCC: https://www.thccs.ca 

 Join me on Patreon for exclusive content❤️⚔️ https://www.patreon.com/saintleafy

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

An interesting article talking about certain differences between training for self defense and training for martial arts with a takeway that may be unusual for some folks.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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An excellent video covering some generally good advice when it comes to thrusting, the author chose to do this with a longsword but a lot of this applies with other weapons as well.

There are also things you can do that are different to the suggestions noted here or actively contrary, however one can argue that such examples tend to be exceptions to the rule, or a stylistic difference between systems of fencing.

Timestamps: “0:00 Intro 

0:36 Distance 

1:36 Arms Extension 

2:30 Arms First... 

4:29 Bind Awareness 

5:18 Gain Degrees 

6:31 Touch First, Oppose After 

8:21 Use Opponent's Times 

9:20 Do Not Tense up! 

10:57 Use confusing Rhythms 

11:59 If it Doesn't Work...”

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

“ How well can we perceive the action opportunities available to others? What information do we use? Can we perceive nested affordances – that is, be sensitive to not only another person’s action capabilities but impending changes in their capabilities? Some implications for coaching.   

 Articles:  

   More information: http://perceptionaction.com/

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

Running isn’t something everyone has to do but it is a great way to improve ones cardio, which can be great for martial artists and combat sport athletes of various sorts.

Obviously one can get better cardio just by sparring or doing stuff like HIIT, (stationary or regular) bicycles, rowing machines etc. etc. however one of the cheapest and easiest to get into options can be running.

Running on soft ground  and avoiding concrete as much as possible is a good guideline but not absolutely necessary if you cant fully follow it. Similarly absolutely do get running shoes that work for you personally if you can, but regular sports sneakers will do ok if you follow a good program.

When it comes to running just like with many other aspects of exercise a lot of folks may not know a good general approach to sensible training longterm and how to avoid overtraining and similar issues. The ‘couch to 5k’ is a program developed by NHS in UK but has at this point been used used by millions around the world to start getting into running.

It is not the only program ever you can use, and there’s many more intermediate/advanced running programs, however for folks just starting out or getting into running again it’s a great approach to use. If you find a few tweaks to the original program helps you avoid exhaustion or injury, to fit it more easily into your routine etc. feel free to adapt it slightly.

Once you’ve gone through it working on using more specific types of running for specific types of usability for training can be smart. Here’s an older post on that topic.

All that aside how exactly is cardio useful for us? Obviously if one wants to take part in competitions having both anaerobic and aerobic capacity is important - to be able to do a sequence of explosive movements within a single exchange but also be able to keep going from match to match. Aside from that for folks who may not care about competition but want to get most out of their training can benefit from more cardio and being able to do more reps of any drill or focused sparring they’re doing. Or even more generally if you’ve got better cardio you feel less tired for the same amount of fencing training you may be doing. Even if you dont want to increase the speed of the drills you’re doing or the number of repetitions but just want to feel less tired at the end of general training, having better cardio you got via running(or cycling,rowing,skating, dancing etc. etc.) can be very beneficial and make you feel way more comfortable, less out of breath, and usually make it less likely for you to overheat as much and feel out of it due to that. For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

HEMA Bookshelf is a project run by Michael Chidester, who is also the creator and digital shepherd of the Wiktenauer (www.wiktenauer.com).

 HEMA Bookshelf produces facsimiles of historical fencing manuals that are sure to enrich the sword community! 

See below for video time stamps. 

 Not sure what a facsimile is or why you, as a historical martial artist, should care? Watch and find out! 

 Want to get your hands on a facsimile? Go to www.HEMAbookshelf.com

 Want to jump on the Bauman/Wallerstein fechtbuch facsimile before it starts trending? Here’s the indiegogo campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bauman-fechtbuch-codex-wallerstein-facsimile#/

 Patrons! Please use the secret link on patreon to get your discount for HEMAbookshelf! 

⚔️❤️ Join me on Patreon for exclusive content, discounts, and more: www.patreon.com/saintleafy

  0:18 What is a facsimile 

  3:30 NEW facsimile project! 

  6:40 Look at the Talhoffer facsimile 

  9:13 Where to get your own facsimile

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

The opening of the book by  Arkadiev, Vitaly Andreevich( Аркадьев, Виталий Андреевич) on fencing tactics in the context of olympic fencing and how to train in regards to those. Obviously the main goal and purpose of the book is for aiding soviet fencers win in olympic fencing competitions, but there’s a wealth of lessons through out the book that can be useful to fencers regardless of whether they practice modern olympic or historical fencing and whether they compete at all. The original book is in russian, but using the in-built chrome option or generally google translate gets you 99% of the intended meaning. For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

You may also want to go over the post on soviet foil drills in regards to direct attacks as well as the post on soviet foil drills in regards to circular takes and deceives and try to apply the same principles to other weapons to get most out of this book and make it applicable to historical fencing. More than that when reading try to cross reference it with the original sources you study - be it Meyer, Jean-Louis MichelMarozzo, Radaelli, Carranza, Walpurgis ....  and see which concepts and ideas overlap, what differences exist and when you encounter them try to figure out why - is it purely a personal stylistic choice? Could be a cultural artifact of the period? Could be related to the specific context of the situation described etc. etc.

A pretty great video on how to train yourself to deal with beginners in sparring and tournaments.  TLDR use specific constrains when you can to get yourself to deal with specific issues and develop your basics that will allow you to deal with beginners reliably. +some great advice on being a good and useful training partner too

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.