Allow me to announce a new site, www.theHEMAists.com, a resource for Historical European Martial Artists (and other sword buffs)! We have a lot of really cool content coming down the pipeline, including regular articles dealing with training tips, antique weapons, analysis of historical documents, and more. We also will have periodic articles, such as BladeFit (a HEMA fitness series), and "Say it Right!", a series of articles making sure you know how to pronounce all of those pesky foreign terms in the fencing treatises. Check us out, and please feel free to follow us!

Sounds interesting: I just now " BOOKMARKED IT " for regular viewing/reading and to not forget about it.

How about some common Italian terms? :cool:

You probably should consider setting up a Facebook page, too. Would make the site's feed easier to follow for people who spend most of their social media lives over there.

Maaaybe ... but bear in mind that a lot of serious martial artists and people involved in the self-defence, personal protection, military, and intelligence sectors are not on Facebook.

This is something that people not in these sectors often are unaware of. This issue seems to particularly affect the HEMA community, which spans both camps - those who 'live on social' and those who've been trained to 'never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut'.

So, FB might be helpful for updates to a (large, yet critically limited) audience, but I for one hope that main content remains on 'home' sites.

And updates on relevant fora a would reach the (smaller, yet critically interested) target audience - as well a provide a longer-lasting, and more considered, site for discussion.

Just sayin'. ;)

PS Thanks, Bill, for the new site. Can't wait to see what's in the pipeline.

Totally agree, Mark! A Facebook page would only be to announce updates...

...and on that note, I'm announcing a new update. :) David Rowe just wrote a new article, "The Art of Translation Part 1: What Makes a Good Translation?" David is currently working on his masters at Catholic University focusing on medieval studies and translation, and has even had access to period manuscripts as part of his training. This is the first of an ongoing series, and David has plans for articles with translations, tips and general advice for the would-be scholars of our community. Without the period treatises, HEMA wouldn't exist!

http://thehemaists.com/2014/09/02/the-art-of-...anslation/

Note, I won't post here every single time there is an update to the site so as not to spam to forums (I already skipped a forum announcement for one article). I'll only post if there is an article that I think people on the forums would find of particular note. But we do intend to have a quite a number of updates for our "small" articles (such as our BladeFit and "Say it Right!" articles), and if you want to stay in the loop, please follow us on our page for e-mail updates!

Well, if you'd rather not do it yourself, myArmoury's FB page has been sharing your last few updates there, and it might be a good idea to make this into an informal (but officially sanctioned) arrangement of sorts.

Someone earlier this week sent me a message saying he didn't realize how much stuff we've added to the site, so I'm going to plug it again.

http://theHEMAists.com/

Most recently Tim Hall put up an article about the unarmed German art of Ringen. He discusses how many in the modern world want to focus purely on the "combat" applications (which he's defining as the more dangerous actions such as elbow break and knee stomps) and want to skip the "sport" techniques because they don't think those reflect real life fighting. Tim's argument is that one needs to train both, as the sport side will strongly effect how you are able to apply the combat techniques. Read about it here:

http://thehemaists.com/2015/03/14/ringen-trai...plication/

Nice stuff, glad to see this. You folks do good work and it's good to see another solid HEMA site online adding to the conversation in a grownup way.

Jean