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.