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Benjamin H. Abbott
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 Posted: Mon 30 Sep, 2013 7:24 am Post subject: |
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| Christopher B Lellis wrote: | | In my experience, most people who criticize a supposed lack of "techniques" never can pull off their own techniques in an actual fight and get overwhelmed in a couple of seconds and then they start making excuses. |
How would you know? Do you practice armored combat with sharp weapons and no restrictions? The days of earnest fighting in harness stand behind us. While folks can try to reproduce the same dynamics through sparring, it'll never be quite the same. If you want to learn about and practice the techniques in historical armored-combat manuals, banning thrusts sure ain't the way to accomplish this. Today's full-contact armored combat has a different purpose. It's reasonable for people who want to see historical techniques to stress the distinction. The Battle of Nations and such likely do reinforce popular notions that knights in plate armor bludgeoned one another into submission with sword and shield. As has been mention, there's scant evidence for this historically. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, of course, but we've got pages on how to thrust, lever, and grapple with the longsword in armor yet none for shield bashes or blows with single-handed swords. (Fourquevaux's battlefield manual for targetiers in three-quarters harness instructs them to only thrust at unarmored spots.)
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Tom King
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| Posted: Mon 30 Sep, 2013 11:23 am Post subject: |
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| Benjamin H. Abbott wrote: | | Christopher B Lellis wrote: | | In my experience, most people who criticize a supposed lack of "techniques" never can pull off their own techniques in an actual fight and get overwhelmed in a couple of seconds and then they start making excuses. |
How would you know? Do you practice armored combat with sharp weapons and no restrictions? The days of earnest fighting in harness stand behind us. While folks can try to reproduce the same dynamics through sparring, it'll never be quite the same. If you want to learn about and practice the techniques in historical armored-combat manuals, banning thrusts sure ain't the way to accomplish this. Today's full-contact armored combat has a different purpose. It's reasonable for people who want to see historical techniques to stress the distinction. The Battle of Nations and such likely do reinforce popular notions that knights in plate armor bludgeoned one another into submission with sword and shield. As has been mention, there's scant evidence for this historically. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, of course, but we've got pages on how to thrust, lever, and grapple with the longsword in armor yet none for shield bashes or blows with single-handed swords. (Fourquevaux's battlefield manual for targetiers in three-quarters harness instructs them to only thrust at unarmored spots.) |
Even with "safe" thrusting you cannot aim around the armor to do historical Harnisfetchen or safely do joint manipulations in armor. These techniques are designed to hurt and kill. The only people I practice real armored techniques with are highly skilled hema practitioners who I have known for years; I would not do the same with others in the name of "historical accuracy". To demand such shows a distinct lack of understanding at the nature of this beast.
The BOTN single duels use a boxing style scoring system; it may not be your understanding of pure Harnisfetchen, but they use period correct techniques (you have to, or you lose pretty quickly).
What Chris means is that most of the people claiming elitism as practitioners of some "pure" form of hema unlike "those messy armored fighters" usually end up writing checks their combat skill can't cash. Playing tip fencing out of bind with a feder does not prepare you for the realities of having an armored man bear down on you with a full weighted weapon; Here a strike of wrath actually feels wrathful.
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Benjamin H. Abbott
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| Posted: Mon 30 Sep, 2013 9:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | The BOTN single duels use a boxing style scoring system; it may not be your understanding of pure Harnisfetchen, but they use period correct techniques (you have to, or you lose pretty quickly). |
The HMB duel rules I've read prohibit thrusting and grappling, which matches the videos I've seen of the two combatants in such a duels exchanging blows within easy grappling distance.
| Quote: | | Playing tip fencing out of bind with a feder does not prepare you for the realities of having an armored man bear down on you with a full weighted weapon; Here a strike of wrath actually feels wrathful. |
By the same token, neither does trading wrath strokes with blunted blades necessarily prepare you for the reality of deadly thrusts, joint breaks, kicks to the cods, and so on.
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Tom King
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| Posted: Mon 30 Sep, 2013 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Benjamin H. Abbott wrote: | | By the same token, neither does trading wrath strokes with blunted blades necessarily prepare you for the reality of deadly thrusts, joint breaks, kicks to the cods, and so on. |
neither does blossfechten out of bind afraid to get tapped with a feder; at all.
when we are practicing historic armored fighting we use halfswording, joint locks, etc. but when we need to entertain drunks or free spar (relatively safe) flashy blade work takes center stage.
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Jean Henri Chandler
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| Posted: Tue 01 Oct, 2013 1:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Tom King wrote: | | Chad Hanson wrote: |
Yes, of course a solid blow will 'ring your bell' through a helm- I think that fact is well known by pretty much all HEMA fighters by this point, isn't it? I'm not sure what your point is with that statement. |
How many HEMA practitioners have actually experienced it though? The physical toll a short, brutal, fight has on you? The feel of operating on pure adrenaline once endurance fails? What it feels like to take a blow to the temple from a longsword swung in as close to anger as can be recreated? The fact that most of the HEMA community focuses on blossfechten at the expense of the other 3/4 of each manual leaves them in the dark on what first hand experience of armored combat feels like and how the harnischfecten would truly work in full kit. |
Trust me, blossfechten with steel feders or blunts wearing just a fencing mask, gloves and a lightly padded coat is plenty intense and you can get your bell good and rung and much more besides. I've seen people literally kicked out of the ring, thrown onto their heads, and been on the receiving end of some bell ringing hits. Broken bones are not unusual at large HEMA tournaments.
Admittedly though, I don't think it's as crazy as a couple of those East-European Viking re-enactor videos, that is a whole different deal! The one thing most HEMA fighters are definitely not used to is large group fights (though that might change one day as we are finding more manuals -some of the Iberian manuscripts in particular which do deal with small group actions.)
J
Books and games on Medieval Europe Codex Integrum
Codex Guide to the Medieval Baltic Now available in print
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Jean Henri Chandler
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| Posted: Tue 01 Oct, 2013 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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For context, not every HEMA tournament involves delicate tip cutting from a bind. The ensifer feders most of the guys in this video for example are using weigh close to 2 kg and are plenty hard hitting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv4jt2B9VcM
in fact the people who spar the way you were describing tend to be the guys in the HEMA world closer to the armored fighting end of the spectrum - the ones who eschew the tournament circuit. Tournaments are done with a wide range of levels of intensity and rules-sets, but the bigger international ones are pretty hard core. When one of those guys like Jan Chodkiewicz strikes you with a wrath strike it IS a wrath strike.
I respect BOTN and Bohurt tournaments, I gather that most of the fights are won by just knocking somebody down on the ground, which is different from us, and obviously nobody can use true harnischfechten techniques in an intense tournament like that, but it takes balls to fight like that armor or no armor. (It also has taught the world a lot of about armor). and there are a lot of techniques that we can't use in HEMA tournaments either.
HEMA (notably the Liechtenauer and Fiore traditions most people are referring to when they say HEMA, even though it includes a much wider range of martial arts) has a different emphasis and I think does put a bit more focus on historical techniques and one - on - one fencing skill, but clearly there is a convergence between the two realms, a lot of re-enactors have joined HEMA circles and vice versa, and we are all learning from one another.
J
Books and games on Medieval Europe Codex Integrum
Codex Guide to the Medieval Baltic Now available in print
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Jean Henri Chandler
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M Boyd
Location: Northern Midlands, Tasmania Joined: 16 Aug 2013
Posts: 63
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| Posted: Tue 01 Oct, 2013 11:16 pm Post subject: |
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Those guys are good.
Thanks for posting it.
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Nathan G
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| Posted: Thu 03 Oct, 2013 7:38 pm Post subject: |
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Wow, looks great. Those guys must really enjoy what they do.
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