HEMA, growing in popularity.

So it seems that HEMA is growing in popularity.

How meany of you have experience with HEMA? I know southpaw was looking for a club. It appears that we have a gentleman who just moved to Mayo, a community about 4 hours away from where i live who use to or still does compete with the Spanish team, if I'm not mistaken. I have a friend from High school who i talk to on occasion that is currently training with him. Sounds like they are trying to start a club in Whitehorse. Never thought I'd see HEMA here. Now if those darn Filipinos would open a darn kali club! They are starting to outnumber the french community! Someone must have experience in eskrima.

Life's not fair.

 

What are they doing in their group?

I'm interested in doing HEMA. I just like the idea of having a bit of a scrap with weapons.

I'm not that into the cultural side of Asian martial arts, so for me I'd rather do savate than Muay Thai, wrestling rather than judo. FMA is a bit different though, more pros than cons. As I mentioned in another thread, I prefer to shake or slap hands with a training partner than bow. And I like to call my instructors by their first name, not Sifu or Sensei. So HEMA might work for me in that area.

 

I think HEMA is cool - I know there is a group that meets maybe 45 min away from me. I have never got around to doing it. the closest I have came was SCA dressing up in armour and helmet and whacking people with rattan swords (one time about 25 hrs ago), college fencing many, many years ago. I guess some of the kali stuff I have been learning might sort of be getting in the same universe as hema...

 

Not entirely sure. Just found out about it last week. My friend is getting geared up for long sword + armor. I'll post more about the club as it develops more. I'm not overly interested in it unless they do saber, rapier. Other then FMA and fencing, neither of which i have access to, weapons have never interested me all that much. It is cool to see HEMA growing in popularity, if their sparing resembles the likes of the dog brothers, i might try it for a laugh.

 

Aye, Southpaw's post got me looking into HEMA too and I found a group fairly local (probably 20 minutes drive away). It would be canny to learn something that, really, we should pay more attention to - everyone and their dog knows about how the Chinese and Japanese have fought for centuries but not many have a clue when it comes to the stuff that shaped our country.

Unfortunately they only meet on a Wednesday when I'm already doing karate and I can't swap my karate night without finding a new job :bang:

 

I have always had an interest in things sharp and pointy and have taken a couple of seminars on longsword and one of my friends gave me some lessons on sword and buckler. Because of internal interest my Kali group is going to spin off a sword and buckler study group over the next couple of months. One of the nice things about the development of the HEMA community is resources like DVDs that can provide interpretations of the manuals that don't require me to read renaissance German, Italian, or Spanish.

 

But this is one of the problems I have with HEMA. If someone wanted to learn Wing Chun online, they'd get a lot of negative comments. But HEMA people are doing the same thing but using old texts. Admittedly the HEMA people are a little more honest about it and often pressure test the techniques....but is it that different?

Hopefully our HEMA people can chip in with their opinions.

 

It isn't different, and most of the HEMA groups that I have seen have been totally open about saying "nobody is a master we are all just trying to recreate this stuff."

My first FMA training was from Dog Brothers videos, I think it was appropriate for stick fighting, it wasn't trying to teach a complete system, but give the student some tools to utilize while they figured out what their game was through doing sparring. I still use many of those techniques in my current stickfighting game. I think it would be far harder to teach the subleties of counter-knife through video, and I do think it is more difficult to teach blade work, motions are subtler, but I think at some point the proof is in the pudding.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipbin3vhMlI"]Dimicator Sparring 2 - YouTube[/ame]

I look at that video and think "I want THAT," regardless of if it is exactly correct historically or not.

 

I've been doing HEMA for 10 years, and am one of the instructors at my club. I also do koryu bujutsu and Judo. I've competed at Longpoint 2013 and 2014. You can check out a NY Times article on HEMA and Longpoint here:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zueF4Mu2uM"]Inside the World of Longsword Fighting | The New York Times - YouTube[/ame]

You can see me and my co-instructor having some chill time at 1:13 between some of his bouts on the far right.

If you have a chance to try it, go for it. There's nothing like having someone swing a 3 lb. piece of steel at your head to sharpen one's reflexes!

-Mark

N.B. I actually played a gig in Whitehorse once.

 

That's cool. The guy we have here who started the group is Jose Martinez Amoedo. Power out continue post later

 

That's the difference (to the bold).

Watch some videos, use your judgement.

 

We're very honest about what we're doing. I often hear that "you can't learn to fight from books". Well, you certainly can, and HEMA groups have proven that. It's just rather difficult. If you already have a good background in fighting, it's not so much of a stretch. A good fencer or FMA person is in a reasonable position to learn from the old manuals. The medieval Ringen is not so far from classical Jujutsu. Even a modern wrestler or Judoka can figure out the Ringen stuff with a bit of effort. The key is pressure testing and constantly refining one's interpretations, which is how all this stuff originated back in the day anyway.

The introduction to many manuscripts in the Liechtenauer tradition usually has something like "this is written so that those who already know how to fence can learn from it" which details the main challenge in HEMA... a lot (but not all) of the manuals were written for high-level practitioners. It's like trying to figure out Judo from manuals written for a 7th dan... not impossible but damned hard... much easier for a Division I wrestler than for someone who's never grappled a day in his life.

Fortunately there are a fair amount of talented fighters in HEMA with experience in other disciplines. Some disciplines are so close as to make the reconstruction fairly straightforward; 80% of rapier is preserved in classical epee. No one really argues about rapier stuff anymore because it never completely died out. Longsword is more problematic, but there are so many people doing it there is very little left to argue about as far as the main ideas. We just argue about finer points, which they probably did back in the day anyway. We all know what a Zwerchhau is, but we disagree about the best way to do it.

Now we have people who are great fighters who have done nothing but HEMA, which is cool. It's kind of like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park breeding true. No small accomplishment.

-Mark

 

Well I tried to start HEMA tonight and fell at the first hurdle

 

go on...

 

Went to the class, it wasn't there

 

I found a HEMA group but its hard to access by bus despite being only a village over.
Are there country specific HEMA styles? like british and spanish or did they merge together?

i also found a club in an indian martial art that also runs at my grandparents temple not too far away and it would be interesting to see how my ancestors fought just a few generations ago and how that compares to other indian styles ive seen out of books (i love the history stuff more than the fighting in this case)

also found a maori martial art group in london which would be super cool again for history and a time period lacking metal weapons

 

Most groups will study "schools " the most popular being medieval German, medieval Italian, renaissance Italian, renaissance English and Italian rapier. Some groups do a couple of schools, so Schola Gladiatoria does medieval Italian and Victorian English, School of the Sword does Italian rapier with renaissance Italian.

 

Did I remember that you've moved to Wycombe?

 

yup. unfortunately i cant really afford a bus at the moment let alone training so itll be a while before i take anything up (barely afford bjj)

 

How easy is it to get to Oxford by bus?