K gotcha. Break away lances missed that one thank you

Punching horses is out of bounds too. :wtf: That bordered on unbelievable and the upper ups agreed. Some of the injuries so far seem to have been avoidable, like getting a cracked a tooth when not wearing a mouth guard.

No doubt, more money could have been spent on armour but I don't think they had absolute correctness and style in mind. It looks good, in a Lego, Iron Man kind of way.

As to a comment I made earlier in the evening, watching the manner in which some are couching once turned about.shows some of the finesse that could help a lot. Some are showing a lot of good upper body control in getting the lance set on the rest and gripping tight., others flailing a bit. Getting stirrup height right, little stuff.

Cheers

GC

I'm following the show and enjoy it. Since it's on television, even on the "History" Channel, I assume it's not interested in real history and don't expect much in that regard.

The armour is odd, but I understand reasonings that may have factored in. If they went with more historical armour, what period or what locale would they choose? And more importantly, who besides us would really notice or care? I doubt they'd gain or lose any measurable number of viewers because they decided to go with German armour of the 1480s over Greenwich-style 16th century armour. So from their perspective there's no return on investment for spending time figuring out which to do. So why bother? There are likely other concerns. The IronMan style helms allow for vision and ventilation while still letting them cover those areas with whatever they're using to keep lance splinters out. Since people in olden and modern times have died from lance splinters through their occularia, I'm sure the lawyers wanted it as safe as possible, despite the waivers they undoubtedly made the participants sign. The bottom line is that real research takes time and money. Really good-looking, historical, well-fitting armour takes time and money.

Matthew Stagmer's post sums it up:

Quote:

We were contacted to do the armor and they wanted to pay almost nothing for it. Don't believe that the reason for this awfull armor is to bridge any gap. It is simple. They didn't want to pay for correctly formed armor and that is the only reason the armor on this show looks the way it does.

The armour doesn't bug me as I wasn't expecting much.

I like the coaches and host. Shane has a great personality for this: somewhat low-key and matter of fact, but very engaging and authoritative. Rod evidently knows his stuff as does Ripper. I like the contrast between Rod's and Ripper's approaches.

I met Ripper years ago at the Ohio Faire, where we both worked. The brass group I was in played at the jousts (among other things) so we had to work with the jousters on what music they wanted when. Ripper's a pretty positive, super-nice guy and it was great to work with him (he actually has/had a copy of our CD). He's also a fierce competitor. He won more often than not at the jousts because of skill, plain and simple; if he lost, we were surprised as he always seemed to win. He seems to be the kind who'd knock you down, help you up, laugh, clap you on the back and go back after you. If you knocked him down, he'd get up, laugh, clap you on the back and go back after you.

Rod's approach is more matter of fact and aggressive. It's interesting to see how differently they handle the technical issues as well as the mental ones. I wouldn't want to face either one in a joust. :)

I'm with Phil on the injuries from this week. I can see that the cost of custom high cantle saddles (and or steel reinforcing) might have been cost prohibitive. But hell, go on Ebay and buy some used Butchers Aprons (Whitting & Davis welded stainless steel ) for $35. Very cheap in perspective. They make great chain skirts, and would have turned that nasty cut on the inside of the leg into a mere bruise. The puncture to the scrotum might not have been stopped, but it would at least have lessen the wound (IMO).

Lloyd, I have a question for you. I have noticed that the jousters are only wearing a plain leather glove on the lance hand. Is that normal? I would have that a nice set of 15th to 16th century gauntlets would decrease the felt shock to the hand, and protect against injuries. Watching the super slow motion video of the show, I notice that the jousters hands and wrists are twisting all over the at the moment of impact. I am really surprised that there has been no breaks or bad sprains yet.

Chris,

In the "old" days, before we started using grappers and arrets, you could pretty much count on breaking your hand once or twice a year. I wore all manner of gauntlets at the time and none really seemed to be all that effective (of course, on the occasion when the other person's lance happened to strike my lance hand, I was pretty damn glad I was wearing a gauntlet). Most of the time, you would get a "Gameskeeper's facture" to the thumb, or rip the tendon away entirely.

We tried a variety of things to prevent it: we screwed the vamplates down onto the lance - made it worse!; we taped the vamplate down and taped the grapper on - made it better, but not great; we added arrets - now, the entire force of the impact, instead of being transmitted to our hands, was pushed back into the connection of the grapper and arret.

Pretty much the only way that you would take a considerable amount of impact on the hand is if you punch. Punching may be great of WII jousting, but not in real jousting. A lot of times, when you see the guy's hands being distorted on the hit they either punched or they failed to properly lock in their lance.

The other benefit of using the grapper/arret system? It increased the impact exponentially. It used to hurt, now it often takes your breathe away.

Hope that makes sense.

Hi everyone!
I've just come to realise that full metal jousting (full tilt jousting) might be up there besides MMA as entertaining value.
As a complete novice to the sport I've a couple of questions:
1) What organizations (if any) in Europe compete in jousting using "authentic" 14-16century armour using tilting as the object of the game?
2) Is it correct that this form of jousting, when you tried to unhorse your opponent, was called "tilting" in period* and the rules was codified as "Rennzeug"? (*during 14-16th century?)
3)Is it the rules of Rennzeug that the Full Metal Jousting is based on?
4) What level of horsemanship is required to be able to compete with success in the full tilt version of jousting?
Hope some of the questions made any sense.

Thanks/
Magnus
(Edit for spelling)

i've been stuck on night shift for almost the entire season of the show, but finally got to watch an episode yesterday.

much more impressive than the Knight of mayhem in my opinion.

this program is showing much more structure in the sport than what KoM gave you an opinion on.

i loosely tried to keep up with this post while on midnight shift but i just couldn't keep up with it, too much being said too fast. i can look past the period armor, it does look like some extra though was put into the helms as the eye slits look to be also covered with a fine mesh of some kind to prevent splinters. the back of the helm looks to actually locks into the gorget to some extent, visor is locked in place by some kind of codder pin to prevent it from flying open after being struck. after watching yesterday and seeing the one guy knocked off 3 times and was able to get up each time without a serious injury, definitely a +. risky but he's still going to fight another day. where as KoM seemed like they were going to die after each hit like that.

strategy is also evident in the series. even though it's a simple move, the ability to choose a horse seems to be beneficial to the jouster.

i know the show isn't trended to historical ideas - but i don't feel that it's taking away from the sport it's trying to rekindle.

i'm almost wishing they'd have spin off of the show displaying, ah crap i can't remember what it's called but i know it has a name, the part of the tourney where two swordsman face off.