Combat in 15th century armor.

Terrific Fiore Video

Mindfulness and the sword

Often we fence and perform the plays, but have trouble getting them to work to our satisfaction. Sometimes you must consider your mind along with the physical movements.

when winding and setting aside, perhaps in all plays, there is a tendency to think about where your sword tip is almost exclusively. Unfortunately, this an cause your to lose track of the strong of your blade, leaving you open to after-hits and giving your a lack of control in winding.

Place more presence of mind toward the strong of the blade. The strong is the unsung hero of fencing. it does the work of parrying and guiding your opponent's blade during winding. It is the base of the "cone of steel". It is the frame of the speaking-window.

Some thoughts on controlling the bind and winding effectively.

I have been working on a concept that seems to help during sparring when in the bind and seems to help with some winding while there.

How often do we see two opponents come into the bind strongly and their guards go upward almost into a kron position? It seems that if two combatants are driving forward and their swords bind strongly, their weapons have to be deflected somewhere perpendicular to the forces. Often this is upward.

If you move through the positions of right ochs, right pflug, left pflug, and left ochs you will see that your guard moves in a circle while your points stay fairly stationary. This creates cone. All of the points on the base of that cone lie on a line perpendicular to the forces between two people in a strong bind.

 

When you bind strongly, the combined hilts are going to move to a point on the base of the cone. All the strikes done during winding come from those positions. I do not refer here to changing under or take offs. We should drill controlling where the blades go on that line.

If they go directly upward, you can do crown strikes or techniques from crown such as running through. If you control the deflection to your left, either by pushing that way with your arms or stepping to the right, you come to left ochs and the first winding or a zwerchau. If you deflect it the others way, by hand or foot as before, you can perform the second winding or a doubling by zwerchau.

If the force deflects more horizontally, you can come to pflug positions. To the left gives a shielhau or a thrust and to the right another doubling, this time with the long edge.

You can control which point the blades move to with straight arms and a good frame coupled with footwork and good body mechanics.

I will post more and I clear up my thoughts better on the subject.

Sword Sparring May 7, 2016

William and Aaron working Double Failer and Zornort takeoff

A couple of fight scenes I wrote

I have collaborated a couple of times with a writer friend of mine to write drafts of fight scenes for his stories. In both cases, he gave me the situation and I wrote a fight. These are scenes from two unrelated stories. Enjoy:

Scene 1

Bridget stood with her back to the rubble and surveyed the arena. William stood above her, and god was he huge! He was just out of reach of her lunge, but he would have trouble reaching her at all. She could strike straight out at his legs, but he would have to strike down to touch her anywhere, eliminating his reach advantage and limiting his attacks to her high line. It was true that any blow he landed would be to her head, but you take what you can get. It is true when they say geometry is the life and death of a fencer. She just had to keep him above her.
She drew her sword and dagger, and took a guard with the dagger high as William roared and charged.
She parried with the dagger and cut at his feet quickly and from the wrist, but he avoided the cut with an unlikely kick of his foot, and she found herself parrying his follow up attack with her sword while threatening to gut him with her dagger. He avoided the dagger with a rather liquid twist of the body and danced back, and she realized that with no room to retreat, she would have to be very wary of getting into any sort of grapple with such a monster. His size would leave little chance for success.
Meanwhile, a similar analysis was running through William's head. He realized the he could not over reach her as long as she was below him on the steps, and his legs were in danger. Should she cut him there his one advantage, mobility, would be reduced, and any attempt to grapple would earn him a dagger in the guts.
William retreated a bit to give himself time to think.
Bridget saw William retreat, and followed to give herself room to control the measure should he charge again. This gave William an idea. He retreated further up the stairs until they were even with one of the archways clogged with people.
The crowd was yelling "Kill her!" at William, and some tried to reach out to grab Bridget as the two fencers' blades probed for openings. William scowled at the crowd, "Anyone who touches her dies!" At that moment the crowd at the archway stepped back just an inch, and William charged down at Bridget.
Bridget parried furiously and stepped off line to the newly opened space near the archway, and silently cursed as William passed. Her reflexes had betrayed her. In any other fight, circling as she had would have been proper, but William had counted on it. As he ran past, she saw that he was now below, and he had the reach advantage, and she would have to lean down to hit him.
William now started to use her own strategy against her and she found herself retreating up the stairs to prevent her legs from being laid open. She found herself parrying with her sword and using her dagger for little as she was pressed back. Eventually she would miss a parry and Williams’s strength would end the fight.
Fatigue was taking its toll, and a couple of William’s blows grazed her skirt, but did not penetrate. William saw this and started to move in.
He was not a skilled fencer, and the instinct to grab and twist started to overcome the desire to use the length of the sword. This is true of all swordsmen in their training; one of the first lessons is to fight from the proper distance. Williams’s lack of training betrayed him.
He raised his sword over his head like an axe and charged. As he rushed up the stairs, Bridget thrust at his belly with the dagger when he got close. Instinctively, he grabbed at the dagger, and Bridget tossed it up at his face, and said "Take it," before she cartwheeled past him and he wasted a second trying to comprehend why he was suddenly holding a dagger wrong way round.
Bridget was, once again, below him, and she spun and swiped at his legs. As William tried to get situated, she scored several shallow touches to his legs. They would have crippled anyone else, but William’s feline agility prevented her from being able to sink her point in on any of them. His ankles were turning red, and she supposed it was a moral victory, but the fight was far from over. Something had to happen soon.
Suddenly, BOOM!

Scene 2

Ulysses looked at Ronald as he climbed into the small boat. The boat rocked significantly as Ronald climbed in. Ronald was wearing a rapier at his belt, a weapon that would be useless with such poor footing and at such a close range, but Ulysses was unarmed, so perhaps Ronald did not feel threatened.
Sensing his opportunity just as Ronald started to sit on the plank that served for a seat in such small boats, Ulysses sprung upon him, seizing a handful of hair in one hand and punching him in the face, over and over, with the other.
Ronald fell over backward to avoid the assault and managed to get his elbow under him to keep from being pinned to the floor as Ulysses drove his knee into his belly to keep him from moving. He reached back for the knives he kept hidden at the back of his belt, and drew one quickly and slashed at Ulysses’ face.
Ulysses jumped back enough to avoid the cut and set the boat tipping violently. As Ronald staggered because of the movement, Ulysses saw the rapier sheath hanging behind and grabbed it. Using it as a lever, he managed to turn Ronald somewhat away so that he could not effectively stab.
Due to the pitching of the small craft, both men lost their footing, and scrambled away from each other. Ulysses had lost the advantage of surprise, and Ronald drew his other knife and started to advance across the seats towards Ulysses.
Ulysses looked about for something that would give him back his edge and grabbed an oar. He swung it violently at Ronald’s head, causing him to duck and stumble, and then, taking one end in each hand and holding it across his chest, he climbed back to his feet and charged as well as he could, which resembled an aggressive stumble more than a charge. Nonetheless, the oar caught Ronald across the chest and pinned his arms while causing him to fall back, hitting his back on the gunwale and dropping his knives.
Ulysses grabbed Ronald’s ridiculous rapier sheath again and used it to turn him over. Ronald tried to resist, but the leverage of the blade stuck to his belt was such that Ulysses, using the sheath, his knees, and a few well-placed punches, was able to turn Ronald over.
He leaped on Ronald’s back and took two full hands of hair and shoved Ronald’s face into the water, driving his hips forward so that Ronald could not get his arms or legs under himself to resist. As Ronald held his breath, his chest became tighter and tighter from his exertions. He found the only direction he could move was the direction Ulysses was driving him, forward and down. He managed to slowly crawl forward, deeper into the water, and felt the pressure lessen as the boat tipped.
Ulysses realized what was happening and tried to pull Ronald back into the boat, but it was too late, and as he jerked violently on Ronald’s hair, the boat capsized and they were both plunged into the cold water.

Our New Partners

Here is the link to the other half of the new school.
Sacramento Frei Fechter

Did I mention that HEMA can be a little strange?

Slick as snot! Shortpoint 2016 Norwood vs Mayott

Jake Norwood is as slick as snot. Look at this control!

Banned Judo and Fabian von Auerswald's Ringen

If you look at this time point in the video, that is the "hook" that  Fabian von Auerswald teaches. The rest of the video is cool as well.

Compare that to this drawing from his manual.

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New location.

Starting in May, we will be partnering with another HEMA school to move into a larger facility and offer more classes per week. Details will follow.

The new location is 1511 North C St in Sacramento.

Nice video with wrestling.

The first pair of Koning gloves

I am really looking forward to getting my hands on...er...in these bad boys.

What is HEMA and why should you do it?

Combatcon has posted a nice article about what HEMA is and why it should be done.

For whatever reason, “martial arts” in America became synonymous with traditional Eastern styles like “kung fu” (as we frequently describe a group of over 30 individual Chinese styles), Karate, Judo, Muay Thai, and others. These are all incredible arts with a long-standing traditional pedigree and a host of fluent practitioners – but wait. We know that combat and warfare existed outside of Asia, right? What happened to those styles? Those arts?

Check it out!

GoPro sparring at a Chinese HEMA club!

Honestly, this is TOO awesome. Chinese badasses learning European martial arts!

I painted my masks.

Flipped classroom

I am planning on modifying the class structure to what is called a "flipped classroom".

In short, the lessons will be delivered by video, probably by YouTube. The student will watch a video of a technique, either before class, or on their smartphone at the beginning of class, and then use class time to practice with a partner. They would also be able to refer to the video as class progresses and ask the instructor for clarification.

The instructor would test the students periodically to assure comprehension, and have them repeat lessons as needed.

This allows students to:

1. Get more reps in of assigned lessons.
2. Learn at their own pace, possibly learning more.
3. Study what they need individually. In one class session, several different students might be practicing something different.

I feel this will improve the student experience, and allow more weapons to be added as the school grows.

Right now, this will be done with a checklist for each student, but videos will be added over time to fill out the experience. I have high expectations.

Also, I my curriculum will be eventually available on YouTube so that other schools can take advantage of it, or even solo practitioners or clubs. This will likely be offered as a free service, but we will ask for donation through a service such as Patreon. Details will come, but we look forward to this being a very useful practice.

Accurate choreography can look good on film. Pugil: A Fencer's Story

Ringen Analysis at Ritterkunst

There is a very nice article about grips in ringen over at Ritterkunst:

HEMA practitioners who spend the majority of their time focused on the swordsmanship aspect of the Art have a great advantage in their study, in that the techniques have names and classifications that are, for the vast majority of the time, consistent across treatises. This, sadly, is not the case for Ringen. Rather, more often than not, techniques are called something like “another good technique” which isn’t very useful for comparing and contrasting techniques across manuscripts!

Further, different masters have different words they use to describe steps or arm movements, adding to the confusion. Some treatises are words-only, some are images only, some are images with brief descriptions and others (though too few) have both images and text. It muddles the tactical lessons inherent in the throws and leaves us to work out on our own these important details in the proper use of these throws. This lack of continuity in nomenclature, pedagogical presentation of the techniques, and visual presentation has left many with the impression that there are hundreds, if not thousands of discrete techniques, none of which are named.

I believe otherwise, and suspect that there are in fact only a relatively small number of techniques that can be properly called Ringen techniques. Much more likely, there are probably 70 or less discrete techniques, but that each technique has a variety of possible entries, grips from which it may be performed, and other small differences that can be identified, while the basic throw is unchanged. These techniques can be used often as stand-alone throws, as counter-throws, or as combination techniques.

Leckuchner Videos

I think I need to make video interpretations of all the plates on Leckuchner. What do you think? Who wants to help?