Starting a HEMA club, advice?

You have the lineage to call what you do JKD. Schisms happen in many organisations, and some elements always try to decry other offshoots as not "authentic". Are you doing Bruce Lee's JKD? No. Are you doing JKD? Yes, because it says so on your T-shirt and you have the lineage to back that claim.

Taking the spirit of a man's martial vision and making it your own is not the same as trying to recreate how people fought in the past. If you were into that, you'd grow a mullet and moustache, put on a yellow jumpsuit with a red headband, and enter some sub-par kickboxing or kumite competitions. Afterwards, you'd slap on some Hai karate and crack open a Party Seven can.

How do we know that the competitive aspect refines historical understanding? Is it something that was popular in the 14th Century? I'm sure it refines efficacy of the students, but how does it reflect the experiences, abilities and attitudes of the people of that time?

 

Also worth pointing out that somethings are common across systems - When I was in a weapon shop (DAC for Calgary types ) I was told I handled the Scottish broadsword in accordance with the "approved" method....ironically I was doing kali as influenced by the idiosyncrasy of the weapon!

With any area where the is a gap, existing material from other sources can be used to extract it and common sense applied. Is it perfect? no, but it will facilitate greater understanding

 

Sure, but then things that seem obvious to us never occur to some others.

For instance:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb_ezlO1DYE"]Assumptions about weapons from their shape - The Khyber Knife - YouTube[/ame]

If it weren't for a scrap of documentary evidence suggesting it was never used for stabbing, how would we know it wasn't?

 

You wouldn't, but based on my training with a weapon such as the barong - that shares the same "leaf" design - you would know it is NOT designed to do that and is a cutting/slicing weapon



Now you CAN thrust with it but that design does not say that to me at all - so you have inadvertently proven my point

 

To be honest, the shape of that barong looks like it is weighted very differently to the Khyber knife. It's hard to tell without picking them both up, but from looks alone I wouldn't use the two in quite the same way.

Also, what if stabbing became very successful in competition? Without a source to invalidate it, wouldn't that be thought to authenticate stabbing as a probable historical technique?

 

With that blade design no - and again this is based on USING it. Small difference aside, both weapons are clearly slicers...I saw that immediately before pressing play on the video

Competition is ONE method...it does not exist in a vacuum

 

The use of said weapon has also been corroborated by historical accounts - the same thing HEMA advocates use to explore and validate their own training

 

The centre of gravity looks very different to me, but anyway, without the well kept medical records of the British Empire, I would personally be surprised to find out that there were no incidents of stabbing with them at all, regardless of the inherent design function. To me, that speaks more of a culture of fighting rather than efficacy over all else. The British medical records actually state that the wounding potential of the Khyber knife would be far greater if the Afghans did stab with it.

Of course, and as I've said a number of times, I'm not questioning the value of HEMA's methods. But history as an academic subject has a long history of being scuppered by the contemporary culture and technology of those studying the past. It is always something that is best approached with doubt and scepticism. As I said before, the moment you claim to know the past is the moment you stop revealing more about it.

 

Here's another thought; with the growing popularity, and hence standardisation, of HEMA, is there an increased risk in enforcing any potential misunderstandings of historical martial arts?

 

In a word, yes. The rise of Orthopraxy is a concern for some in HEMA.

However, not anytime soon. Given the public access to the source material, there is no way to keep it out of the hands of well, anyone. Literally any person with the will to do so and an internet connection can just go at it. All they need to start working on sword stuff is a stick. They can then put their stuff up on youtube. They can get gear and go to tournaments. No one's going to turn away their registration money. It's going to be hard to enforce ANYTHING on such an inherently democratic and freewheeling movement, which is both good and bad. It means there will always be bad HEMA. It also means that it's unlikely there will be "standard" interpretations of various HEMA disciplines until that changes.

My first instructor told me "you don't need to read the manuals. I've read them all (!) and will tell you what you need to know". If anyone said that today it would be laughable. If I said that to any of my students I should expect that they thrash me soundly about my noggin with undying prejudice and accuracy.

 

Would if I were a descendent of Fiore, would that make me the top authenticity

I have the same paradox with "Authentic Shaolin/Monk"

Does it get to be unjustified if someone remains to claim authenticity or originality in a manner to either upscale or belittle.

Can this hold true that a manual is like learning from a book?

Has it that skill and previous experience make so a manual or a book is a reference and can not always be a true study?

 

Yeah, that was my thought. You need a certain proportion of unorthodox outliers in research, for that one in a million time when they come up with something revolutionary.

 

I would pay good money to see that! Hannibal, why have you not been doing this all along?

 

We don't for sure, but we know that it was done in the day.

Very. Competitive fencing was required to earn a master's licence from the London Masters of Defence. It was public IIRC.

In Germany, there were "fechtschule" bouts where fencing guilds would compete for various prizes. It was incredibly rough and tumble.

There were of course, people deriding knights who were only good jousters but not good lancers on the battlefied: "jousting don't work on the street, yo!!!"

There's the rub. Today, we don't accept the same levels of risk they did, and we have much more robust protective equipment. Even the training swords (called by the neologism "feders") are more robust today because we tend to hit harder in competition, again thanks to the protective gear.

I have sparred with steel feders with no protection, not even goggles or gloves, but only with one person who I trust. I think that might get close to historical practice. Scary as heck but also fun and enlightening. Keep in mind that was after 10 years of practice, and was not full speed. That would have been dumb.

Regardless, modern practitioners of any sword art are actually practicing to NOT kill each other. Ideally, we are practicing well enough that we could shift gears and use the techniques as they were intended to be used in a life or death situation.

Coming full circle to my Meyer quotes, his manual is considered to have a large sporting component. However, he was employed on multiple occasions to train men for war. So at least in his mind, and the minds of his employers, training to NOT kill someone was training enough to kill someone.

Some things never change. "Sport MAists can't fight on da street", and only those arts with "t3h d34d1y" can hang on the mean streets of modern times or muddy medieval battlefields. Except that's entirely untrue. I would run from any collegiate wrestler who wanted to throw down, and, secret time traveller that I am, would run just as fast from a sword-wielding Joachim Meyer should I somehow draw his ire.

 

From what I can gather, public fencing bouts started in the 1500's. Were there clandestine games outside of the towns while private schools of fence were banned in England?

Apparently, the London Masters of Defence test of "Playing the Prize" was not a competition, but a trial of being pressured by your superiors. In England, it seems they were more TMA-esque than in Germany:

"Centered around London, the English guilds essentially followed in the centuries old practices of the traditional Medieval master-at-arms, but adapted to the changed times. Each public school or "Company of Masters" had special rules, regulations and codes that were strictly upheld. For example, no student could fight for real with another student or harm a Master. No Master could challenge another. No Master could open a school within seven miles of another or without prior permission from the Ancient Masters (senior faculty). No student was to raise his weapon in anger, be a drunkard, criminal, or a traitor. As well, no one could reveal the secret teachings of the school. Most of the rules were to preserve the school's status, prestige, and economic monopoly on the trade. Similar conditions existed in later 18th century small-sword salons, feudal Japanese sword schools, and even among contemporary sport fencing halls."

And the nature of the test:

"Two bouts had to be played with a number of different weapons against as few as four and as many as ten opponent's each. To "Play their Prize" as it was called, a student might face in a single afternoon an average total of sixty bouts or more. These were all against more senior opponents, with little rest in-between. The job of the opponents, or "answerers" as they were known, was not to break or beat the "Player" but to seriously test them. The "Prize" meant promotion and the respect and acceptance of one's peers. A Scholar would set their own training pace until a time they then felt ready to request their first public Prizing."

From this: http://www.thearma.org/essays/playpriz.htm#.VrmeQceoKV4

Yes, it seems it was quite different in Germany. They still had to ban the d34dly street moves though!

“Yet all men should know what is to be forbidden in this fencing school, such as Ort, button, point, Einlauff , breaking of an arm, violent push, reaching for the eyes, stone-throwing and all dishonorable devices which many no doubt know how to use, but I cannot mention them all, and have never learned them; and let no one strike either above or below the staves. Guard and protection is to be extended to each, as well as to all the rest, and likewise I wish to request that if two of you bear hatred and envy towards one another you will not fight it out in this school, but where it has power and might."


"Suddenly there was a commotion. A furrier’s apprentice had offended against a prohibition by recklessly thrusting the pommel of his sword into his opponent’s face.

The fencing master took the sword from his hand and by throwing it down at his feet forbade him from taking up any weapon at all. The one who was publicly branded in this way crept away and was “soundly thrashed” in the gateway by some Federfechter and their relatives who had followed him [note: word for word according to the fencing-school rhymes of 1579], which of course was used by the furrier’s friends as an excuse to join in. The fistfight might have drawn even more people in if the groundsmen had not competely cleared the space with their leather Dussacken in a few seconds."

From: https://fechtschule.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/fechtschule-secret-history/

I hope you didn't think that my comments about HEMA competition were a sport vs. street argument. They were more about what HEMA competitions are meant to represent, historically speaking, and where they are seen to fit in the triangulation of approximating old practices.

I did find it interesting that there were both competitive and non-competitive formats in 16th Century Germany, and England, respectively.

 

Meh. I think HEMA competitions are in the end a form of pressure testing, of using historical wespons in a modern context. I think its far to broad a church for it to be ever standardised (with the exception of longsword which is developping its own ad-hoc circuit). However I was reading on some boards about a fear that the longsword comps were becoming too 'sportified', that people were sticking to a few high percentage techniques and athleticism rather than using the whole repetoire from whichever manual they are drawring/chanelling their skillset from. I dont see this as necessarily a negative. In sport fencing yes you can do complex second intention phrases but at the higher levels tbe athletes dont use them (but trust me they are fully capable of all the repetoires) why? Because basics work better than complex stuff.

That being said if HEMA perhaps needs to avoid some of the artificiality that has crept into sport fencing that takes it too far from its historical roots.

1) Telling blows. Sport Fencing has been bedevilled with keeping the sport safe and to do this it has had to make the hits lighter. For 15 years 'flick hits' in foil nearly ruined the sport, so the governing body the FIE had to change the electronic timing so that the fishing rod whip attack had been reined in. They were hits so light they registered on the machine but barely felt them. HEMA is having to constantly grapple with the same problem. How to maintain an element of realism of hitting with a blow that would damage rather than simply tag. What is an optimal technique to simply hit is not always an optimal technique to cause damage.

2) referees: In sport fencing with the electronic box despite all the arguing and raging theatrics, if you have been hit there is no way to disguise it and the referee has to take it into account. I saw at recently one HEMA sabre bout where the the referees were all wrong in their call, to the point I suspected bias.For as long as HEMA remains a good natured movement it will make no difference. But the more competitive it becomes the more. Possibility that biased politics/referreing will develop.

 

Cheating is part of sport. As long as it doesn't become profitable the impact should be negligible though.

Is there any expectation to stick to a particular style in competition? Or can you fight however you like?

 

If by style you historical manual or treaties then no, you preety much approach the fight as you like taking in the consideration the format of the competition, assuming g this is an open competition rather than an internal one.

Longsword sometimes looks quite generic, but a practiced eye will notice the differences from which treaties is being used. Rapier is a bit more varied, and Sabre is even more varied still. Polish/Eastern European sabre for example is very different from the Western European methods and is always fun to watch.

Edit: polish type at 23:40

http://youtu.be/qvhxUmAE2eY

 

Generic? My word!!!

To look for: German: more strikes with the back edge in any of the eight basic angles. Tend to initiate attacks rather than wait and counter. More likely to "storm" and opponent than Italian stylists. Tend to weight stances 50-50 or front-load in tournament, though 16th century style uses more leaning. A German stylist is more likely to take large, aggressive steps. Look for strikes with the hilt held above the head, the blade circling the head like a helicopter.

Italian: back edge strikes tend to come from below as a parry, though that is also done in the German school. Will often wait and counter more than the average German stylist. More willing to use tip engagements. Stances tend to be weighted either forwards or backwards noticeably, less often than 50-50. Footwork is very pivot-y.

 

Judging is a perennial problem in HEMA. Even with the best of intentions, mistakes are made. Bias is a problem in any judged sport, really.

I know of no HEMA competitor that has not has a heartbreakingly bad call. I have also never met one that hasn't had a very lucky call. I figure my ratio is about 50-50, which probably means no one really hates me. I would suspect that bad judging has never cost me a medal, but has cost me the colour of the medal. I'm also pretty sure bad judging has gotten me into medal rounds when perhaps I shouldn't have been there. It's also hard to tell when you're fighting. Sometimes I've scored in tournament, thinking that it was a low scoring hit, only to find it won the match. I was dead certain when it happened, but when I reviewed the video, the judges were right and I was wrong. I actually did hit a high value target, when I could have sworn I hit a low value one.

Judging is hard, and I'm considered a pretty darn good judge. I'm a better judge than fencer, really. I still make mistakes, and have probably cost people matches at one point or another. But what can you do? Just like MA, try to get better.