Inside the world of longsword fighting
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I've done European medieval combat re-enactment for a few years, so I'd like to expand on that one fighter's comment on the "thee" and "thou" thing.
Generally, in the re-enactment community, there are three different focusses: one is authenticity, trying to replicate historical costumes, equipment and trades; another is entertainment of an audience that is rarely familiar with the subject matter; the third is combat, both as a martial art and as a form of group sports.
The theatricals that seem to be popular at American "ren faires" and the medieval markets in various parts of Europe are strictly an expression of that second focus. Most re-enactors I've met are either into the first or third one (or a mix thereof).
I see HEMA as a logical evolution of that third focus, though I personally find its emphasis on duelling and professional competitions (with all the restrictions that brings) less intriguing.
I guess my point is that you can have medieval combat without the "thee" and "thou" parts outside of HEMA as well. It's very different from HEMA and certainly attracts a different kind of people, but it's still an alternative even if you couldn't care less about the theatrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8b1zWOgOKA https://www.youtube.com/user/FrenchFreerunFamily/videos
I doubt it has close resemblance with medieval long sword fighting, though :-)
It must have been a lot slower fighting in leather, chainmail or plate armor than in this ultra light modern equipment.
And, I assume a medieval fighter would take far smaller chances than these modern hobbyists knowing a counter blow could be (almost surely would be) fatal.
Also, these guys fight one on one. But in a war you would have to guard yourself from blows and cuts not just from one enemy but from a crowd of enemy soldiers, left and right.
The guy you were fighting might be using a sword or he might have another weapon. Maybe he was using a shield and you didn't. And if he had a sword, he might not have read the memo that it should be max 4 feet long.
And fighting on some uneven, damp meadow he might be fighting uphill or downhill, and just keeping ones balance when striking or blocking would be hard compared to fighting indoor on a floor.
Probably closer to training than fighting. It may also be close to whatever sport they made of it back in the day.
I'm comparing modern day martial arts. Pretty much all training and sport.
But just like here, it's more a sport than faithful recreation of sword fighting since a) you're not gonna die if an attack fails and b) this is not battlefield conditions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hlIUrd7d1Q&feature=youtu.be
Take a look at people fighting and doing various exercises in full plate armor on youtube. They're surprisingly fast and mobile.
Also there are HEMA groups that train and compete in group combat and various weapon combinations.
> I doubt it has close resemblance with medieval long sword fighting, though :-)
It does actually resemble it very much, but medieval longsword fighting was probably very different than what you think it was.
> It must have been a lot slower fighting in leather, chainmail or plate armor than in this ultra light modern equipment.
Not really. The main difference is visibility. First, the modern HEMA equipment is a lot heavier than e.g. standard fencing gear. It's a lot thicker (like those dog attack suits) and often have steel or kevlar plates in the inside. Second, medieval gear wasn't all that heavy. I have a full suit of maille (as it's really called) and it weighs less than 15 kilos, helmet included. A full steel plate armour shouldn't weight more than 25 kilos. That's less than modern soldiers have to carry around on the battlefield.
The biggest difference is that a fencing mask gives you better visibility than a historical closed helmet.
> these guys fight one on one
That's what happened in medieval times too most often. The original medieval books were written mostly for one-on-one combat, either for dueling or trial-by-sword. That happened a lot more than being caught in a war on a battlefield. Swords have little use on a medieval battlefield anyway. You use different weapons and tactics.
> And fighting on some uneven, damp meadow [...] would be hard compared to fighting indoor on a floor.
My HEMA group trains for this as well, and I suspect many other groups too. It is also mentioned in the medieval books. I have trained in loose sand, in the surf on a beach, in deep snow, etc. It's true that competitions are usually held indoors on an even ground though.
Just curious - could you explain this in a bit more detail? It's surprising.
Also swords expensive compared to spears.
A reasonably good depiction is the Phalanx shown in the movie "300". The history of warfare is generally about increasing the standoff distance between two militaries. The side with longer spears generally did better, then the side with the better archers.
Even after gunpowder was introduced, the reload time was so long that after getting a shot off, armies would switch to pikes.
The "wall of men in formation" you see in the Napoleonic wars and the American Revolutionary and Civil wars was sort of the last use of that kind of traditional formation and movement. The widespread use of heavy artillery put an end to it much like the airplane put an end to trench warfare.
Edit: Added link I forgot.
1: http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepri...
So, sending out a group armed with swords on the battlefield isn't going to do much. You want warhammers with backspikes that can pierce steel plate and crush bone, halberds that can hit so hard it crushes anything underneath armour, long pikes to keep the enemy at a distance, bows to pierce maille. The best weapon on the battlefield is actually mass. Get a group large enough close together and trample your opponents.
That's how most battles were won. In viking and early medieval times you would use large shields and short spears, create a shield wall and run over your opponent. Later on heavy cavalry appeared who could easily run over them. Cavalry dominated until the English started using the longbow en masse to kill the mounts of the cavalry. Swiss pikemen started using 6+ meter long pikes in tight bock formations. These pikes were so long that cavalry could be stopped dead before they reached the pikemen in a charge. It's like a wooden cumple zone. That pretty much spelled the end of heavy cavalry. Then soldiers started using halberds to get in between the pikes and crush pike blocks.
Swords were often carried on the battlefield but usually as a backup weapon, not as the primary weapon. Their cross shape granted them a lot of symbolic meaning in those religious times, but there are much better weapons available if you want to win large battles.
This sounds a bit like a Greek Hoplite Phalanx.
When people think pikemen, they think of very static formations, with little mobility. This is true of a lot of historical pike units, but the Swiss pikemen are the opposite of it. They drilled as small companies of ~100 men, and they were so successful because they made mobility as an unit into an art. A swiss pike block was drilled to change facing in seconds, and they liked to charge pikes levelled at near running speed. Many a condottiere got their last surprise when they were at the last stretch of their charge against an exposed flank or rear of a swiss block, and suddenly all the pikes rise, everyone turns, all the pikes come down again, and the swiss start charging the would-be attackers like madmen.
Early blackpowder was of poor quality, as were the handgonnes, and round balls are ballistically inefficient (and the actual projectiles were usually worse). So, probably pretty well, until you got too close.
P.S. The primary effect that I keep seeing mentioned is that they make a really loud noise and scare the crap out of everyone.
P.P.S As far as I can tell, the use of armor declines as the momentum of the projectiles (and number of firearms) goes up. Accuracy was the last attribute that was important on the battlefield. (Except for individual rate of fire.)
Besides, all that hot lead had to go somewhere. Maybe you wouldn't be hit by the guy in front of you, but you'd still risk getting hit by the one behind him or the ones next to him. Arrows may have been more precise, but at least you could see where they were going.
A sword may not be an ideal weapon against an armored opponent, but half-swording with one is still very effective...
As seen in Seven Samurai
But many of those soldiers would also have carried a sword as a backup weapon and for use at closer range.
Swords are great against lightly armoured and unarmoured targets, like peasants, archers and civilians. Swords remained in use as a side arm and civilian weapon, and a popular duelling weapon, which may also be why so many medieval manuscripts are about one-on-one fights. Carrying a polearm with you everywhere you go is a lot more cumbersome than having a sword hanging on your belt.
But swords were absolutely used on the battlefield. Romans and vikings used them a lot. Knights had them of course, and even they became increasingly less useful against other knights, they often didn't really want to kill each other anyway. Pikemen generally had a short sword as backup weapon (the Katzbalger), and there's of course the massive two-handed swords used by Landsknechts to break up pike formations (supposedly; nobody knows for sure). But again knights in plate armour, you'd better get something that can knock holes in it. If you want to kill him, that it.
You might compare the sword to a pistol. You don't usually send a mass of soldiers into battle with just a pistol; you give them assault rifles (or polearms). But officers and civilians tend to carry a pistol, and maybe some soldiers have one for backup.
A sword may not be an ideal weapon against an armored opponent, but half-swording with one is still very effective...
Also its important to note, the sword pedagogically-speaking is the root weapon of HEMA systems. So the fact these folks train with a sword as their primary weapon makes sense. Manuscripts support historical training following the same pattern. I teach you how to use a sword, then I teach you how to use a pole-axe...
I elaborate more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948675
>You might compare the sword to a pistol.
This is a good point, I think people often overlook how knights and samurai on foot share the same battlefield weapon configuration: <primary weapon> + <longsword/Katana> + <dagger/Tantō>
That's exactly why I said "nearly". That, and the Mordhau.
they are useless for penetration. The rest of effects are in place. The beauty and usability of sword comes from it being very convenient weapon to focus and amplify the power of your movement in much wider envelope of possible positions and movements - much better than any other type of weapon. Hammer/axe comes close but it trades in significant part of the envelope for penetrating abilities in other part of the envelope.
Swords were partially ceremonial and partially "nobility" weapons. Walking around with a spear in town is tiring, because its big, heavy and awkward.
On the other hand, swords can be sheathed. They were expensive to manufacture, so they denoted wealth. And finally, they were effective weapons at the end of the day.
Pistol vs Machine Gun is the best way to compare a Swordman vs Spearman. It is said that you can train a Spearman in a week to beat even expert Swordsmen (with years of training) regularly.
Spears / Polearms were cheaper to manufacture, more effective in the battlefield, and easier to teach. Swords were more of a "city personal defense weapon", very similar to pistols today. I'm sure the HEMA players around here know how much that range advantage gives you.
A Halberd was perhaps the perfection of Medieval combat weaponry. A long spear-tip for stabbing, a strong blade for cutting, and a hook for pulling people off of horses. Halberds could definitely do a lot more than swordmen, at much cheaper costs.
I mean, what is a swordman supposed to do against a heavy-Calvary charge? Halberdiers also outrange Swordmen, and have stronger formations. The two-handed poleweapon can be swung with massive leverage that can break shields and cut through even plate with ease. While the stabbing point can be dug in to brace against calvery charges. It was an effective weapon at all stages of medieval combat.
The only swordmen on the medieval battlefield were the legendary "Double-paid" Zweihanders (The Doppelsöldner). But the massive swords these Doppelsoldners used were approximately the same size as a halberd.
http://i.imgur.com/KPEFFD4.jpg
But they were expensive, and the full-metal massive swords that they wielded were heavy, expensive, and required extensive training. (ie: more expensive) It was more effective in the long term to just train more Halberdiers, and the Zweihanders left the battlefield by the 1500s.
In any case, the "Longsword" is much shorter than these Zweihanders, and is at a considerable range disadvantage against spearmen. Mind you, King Author of legend killed Mordred with a Spear.
Swords were probably carried by Soldiers in case their primary weapon broke. They are excellent sidearms (like Pistols today), but I personally am much more comfortable with a pole-weapon (Spear, Pike or Halberd) than I am with a Sword. And I started with Foil Fencing mind you.
Indeed, there is a reason that both are generally referred to as 'sidearms' in military parlance.
Can you elaborate on this? What were they doing with swords instead?
edit: beaten to it, that's what i get for loading a whole bunch of tabs when i first get into work...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hlIUrd7d1Q
Swords pretty much work against plate armor, because they trained to precisely drive the point toward the joints.
Although its worth pointing out, there are Harnischfechten techniques for longsword commonly referred to as half-swording (and you almost NEVER see these in movies). Btw, the unarmed component is called Ringen.
P.S. There are two similar schools for HEMA, the German and Italian school, my terms used above are the German terms. Most of the difference is either style, terminology or quite subtle.
For much of their history, the Roman Legions used a kind of short, broad-bladed sword called the gladius. There were various types across the centuries, but generally they were quite a bit shorter than the swords we see in the movies, sometimes as short as 18 inches from guard to point. This was not a great one-on-one weapon; all other things being equal, a warrior with a traditional long-bladed sword would usually beat a shorter one.
But the Legions didn't fight one-on-one. They fought shoulder-to-shoulder, leading with big rectangular shields, and thrusting around the side, top, or bottom with the gladius. Quite a few of their of their enemies came from traditions that emphasized personal glory and used big, long swords that needed room to swing. These men had to space themselves out further to avoid hitting their fellows, and so each one would find himself facing two Legionnaires shoulder-to-shoulder. A bigger sword doesn't help much against odds like that.
(I am not an expert and I have probably got some details wrong; feel free to correct me.)
I'm from upstate NY (US), and I agree wholeheartedly with everything mentioned here. This man speaks truth.
Our group focuses on medieval German Longsword, but we also take a dip into several other techniques, ranging through history from slings, to viking sword and axe, all the way through la canne and savate.
Like true vikings, we train in the snow (when the weather cooperates and gives us snowy fields). Nothing quite invigorates the blood like doing laps and duels in the frozen north!
I am surprised that nobody in this thread has mentioned the Dog Brothers from California. They do not fight with swords, but they practice live, full contact stick and staff fighting. In a cage. Without any armor.
Yes, I also thought that that can't possibly be a thing...
The focus of the SCA is more on reliving medieval times. They wear medieval clothing and armour for example, they hold medieval banquets, practice dancing, etc. As for fighting style, I don't think medieval swordsmanship skills will get you very far on an SCA battlefield. Maybe in one-on-one tournaments though.
There's also a difference in scoring with regards to defense. In my HEMA group if opponent A strikes B, but B strikes back in the same motion (roughly 0.5 seconds, but basically the same "move") then it's a double-hit. Often counted as 0 points for either side but on some tournaments even counted as -1 for both sides.
It's very interesting that modern fencing is so "ritualistic" and far removed from actual sword combat. I wonder how that happened?
This has long been my dissatisfaction with fencing. The type of strike you describe (a glancing touch at maximum extension of one's body, arm, and fingertips) is unlikely to disable any opponent wearing so much as a leather vest. Not to mention the fact that a sword and arm extended thus are highly likely to be mangled or removed by an overhead slash by a heavier sword from the position you describe.
Of course, this is a matter of taste. Since few of us will ever find ourselves fighting for keeps, we can play in whatever sword discipline we prefer.
I recently saw a full-armor longsword fight. It was fast as hell. I'm talking leather, chainmail, chest plates and metal helmets. I could barely follow the action.
It was pretty awesome and that one live match turned me from skeptic into fan.
TLDR: The round shield was uniquely suited to be used or assist as an attack weapon instead of merely defensive
The implicit contract for military support between the King and the areas he ruled changed in the Dark Ages: instead of providing many men, you provided few mounted men (a requirement that led directly to the feudal system).
So many other people here are correct in pointing out that these sword skills weren't the most relevant thing to the conducting of all-out war.
Nonetheless, europe was pretty martial, and there were a lot of martial contexts besides massed combat.
We certainly could reproduce that today, but I don't think most people would want to. :)
One thing that nobody has mentioned so far is (I believe) people were much more fit in those days. Today we have a very sedentary lifestyle. Not so much in those days, people were much more active. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2614780/How-F...
Agriculture did have a noticeable impact. People who have a longer evolutionary history of grain monocultures are shorter on average than those whose ancestors adopted agriculture later but the difference isn't that big. Humans have only gotten about 5 cm shorter since the dawn of agriculture.
I'm aware of no evidence on speed or strength but the thing is that most people were not near the limits of human performance, ever.
It's almost certain that modern humanity is the fittest that it's been since the dawn of agriculture. Most hunter-gatherer skeletons are fit and strong because of low disease burden but mostly because in famine times they just died. Farmers OTOH survived, stunted, diseased and with deficiencies in vitamins, minerals and just not enough food.
But the warrior class always ate fine. Even as late as WW1, the average member of the House of Lords was a foot taller than the equivalent Member of Parliament.
So, what data?
It is clear, however, that early childhood physical activity creates a foundation for adult physical fitness that is difficult to compete with. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874089/
When you have an entire society living that lifestyle due to circumstances, not by choice, you'll also have a much larger sample pool from which to draw exceptional warriors. That is my argument. And the farther you go back, the larger the source pool will be, simply due to the circumstances of how the world lived.
It is interesting that the History of Fitness article guys claim that a society becoming lazy in general contributed to a loss in their overall fighting power. Can we prove it? OK, maybe we can't. But I'd posit that we can't say there is NO data out there to create better theories, as long as we acknowledge the possibility that we could be wrong.
The Met has a fantastic lecture, How to Mount a Horse in Armor and Other Chivalric Problems, where a this question is explicitly addressed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqC_squo6X4#t=1427
The short of it being that armor wasn't particularly heavy, especially when compared to the modern combat load, and that it affords quite a bit of mobility.
If this interests you, the entire lecture is worth your time.
Others have commented on the heft of modern equipment relative to medieval equivalents, but it bears mentioning that the plate armor of the period was exceptionally well made. Not just light weight, but form fitted for the wearer. It's been said that fighters in good plate could do cartwheels, due to the exceptional balance of the armor; it was like a second skin.
It's a bit silly, but check this short clip out it will open your eyes a bit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm11yAXeegg
If only I had a dollar for each movie that shows rubber maille in closeups.
http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2012/06/der-fechtkampf.html
When you look at many of the plates from earlier fencing manuals, such as those of Fabris or Capo Ferro (Italian fencers from the 1600s), many of the prime guards and ways you strike are done so that you are parrying in measure -- your blade and hilt are in a position that prevents the opponent's sword from connecting with your body. Many similar ideas are present in other swordmasters' treatises.
Disclaimer: I'm a terrible fencer, but several of my friends are up to their eyeballs in historican fencing, so when I go home on holiday, I get an earfull of it. ;)
Fascinating to see this matter being discussed on here.
By way of putting my cards on the table, I am a former curator from the Royal Armouries in England (most recently taking care of the RA collection at the Tower of London). I now live in Boston where I founded The School of Mars, teaching arming sword inspired from a variety of early manuals.
A lot of the myths seem to have been adequately busted in this thread, for which I am thankful. But just to recap.
- Yes, battlefield combat is a very different game from tournament style 'one on one' combat. Some techniques are more suited to one than the other. However, many of the techniques in the manuals are usable in both situations, and it is more a matter of the mindset and application of the individual. I agree that most of the HEMA community trains for tournament style combat, because this is mainly the way in which techniques are demonstrated and used in competition. It would be very interesting indeed for training regimes to work out systems of teaching how to apply these techniques to a battle environment.
- Categorizing HEMA is going to depend largely on what your intentions are in studying it. If you want to attempt to accurately re-create the style of fighting from a particular master/manual, and restrict your research/practice to just the contents of said manual and any contextualising resources, then you are more in the realm of re-enactment. I am not yet convinced that the full realization of this is possible, given that we are dealing with texts of variable clarity and no living individuals from an unbroken lineage to verify our theories. That is not to say that there isn't a martial/competitive aspect to this particular type of re-enactment, but in this case one is dealing with a fundamentally 'dead' style, with a set end date and a finite number of techniques, unable to change after its period.
- To make it a martial art requires that we allow the style to be organic, to grow with modern practitioners and teachers as everyone discovers variations of the style that suits them (much like the masters did themselves). This is the idea that I am attempting to bring about with School of Mars. The manuals form the foundation of the teachings, but as new insights from modern practitioners, who may have been exposed to other styles etc., the techniques adapt, or have new techniques or applications added on. We today have the benefit of access to a rich martial heritage that spans the globe, which the early masters did not. To some the thought of mingling them could be seen as heresy, but in my opinion doing so is simply part of reviving the martial arts of Europe in a modern setting. I suspect that the early masters would have leapt upon the opportunity to gain inspiration from other martial styles had they the ability.
/rant. :-)
HEMA tries to follow the authentic fighting styles very closely and therefore places a lot of emphasis on killing/disarming blows, including stabs to the head (at eye level) or throat and slashes at the hands. This works with sufficient protective gear under controlled conditions.
Battlefield scenarios as seen in re-enactment are far more chaotic. It works because the ruleset is the spectral opposite of HEMA: no stabs to the head, no blows to the hands. Basically medieval combat without the "fun parts".
I don't think it'd be possible to create that kind of environment with a HEMA ruleset without making a whole lot more dangerous and accident prone.
OTOH battlefield re-enactment can frequently get away with barely any armour at all (because the rules emphasize safe techniques) while plated gambesons and face guards seem to be the norm in most of HEMA.
Meh. What do I know anyway.
> How appropriate. You fight like a cow.
All of them (spoilers!): http://www.worldofmi.com/gamehelp/insults/mi1.php
I guarantee you, if you've played kendo at any decent dojo, you've had your ass kicked by an unassuming Japanese lady, or possibly her granddaughter. Even if you are like a Mountain, whatever that's supposed to mean.
The Mountain is a fictitious character from the popular TV series Game of Thrones. He uses a huge sword that you wouldn't be able to stop the same way you stop your fake swords brandished by girls. And I only dared to use him as an example because all of this is basically just that: a game, a fantasy.
If I had to pick a guardian, I would choose a newbie sword man from the middle ages over your instructor (who has never had a real fight) any day.
If you think Kendo is real, see what the guys from Iaido have to say about them: When they pick a real sword, they simply can't handle the weight, and the ones that can don't know how to actually cut stuff, because all they have learned is to win points in a game similar to tag.
With a very serious face she said exactly this: "It's a serious martial art". Then the narrator says she's already a champion (with just 3 years of training? while studying/working as an engineer? lol) that fights opponents twice her size. And then she goes on with her fantasy: "It's hard for me to fight small people because I'm SO used to fighting with people taller than me or larger than me" (yeah right, that totally makes sense, lol). And then (some context huh?) she says that size shouldn't matter. I have seen this sort of delusion in many activities, including but not limited to religion and "martial arts". And let me tell you, it's all fun and games until someone crashes against reality.
> Is it that her sport is not as "real" as your favorite HBO program?
I specifically said both are fantasy. But it's hilarious that you out of all the people try to mock me for this. By the way, I'm pretty sure the actor who plays the Mountain got more training than you. I would bet my life-savings to him in a fight where he used only armour (no sword) versus you or your "champion" with armour and a real sword. It will probably end like this:
http://youtu.be/pRY4Mpmfk1o?t=3m19s
That's not the Mountain by the way. Check him out: http://media.joe.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/gameofthrones... . But don't worry. What does it matter that his arm is the size of your torso? You are very fast and skilled. It's not like he wouldn't cut you in half with a single swing, right? Because size doesn't matter.
> Oh, now I see, you're an iaido fan.
No, you don't see ;), because I'm not a Iaido fan. In fact I've never even tried it.
> After all the other stuff you've said, that's just cute.
Is it. I think you are cute.
If it was seen just as a sport or a game, kind of like cosplay, I wouldn't mind. But the girl in the video truly believes she's a warrior and that can't end well.
Does she? For all one can tell she seems to believe she knows what she's doing when she's using a sword in HEMA. Does an experienced kendo, aikido, taekwondo, <insert established MA here> fighter think of himself as a "warrior"?
I'd sure hope not. In fact I'd hope nobody today really thinks of himself as a "warrior". A soldier maybe, but even then it seems a bit antiquated and out of place. And worrying, if they would carry that notion over into their civil life.
If you're trained to disarm actual attackers in actual violent conflicts in actual life-or-death scenarios (not staged fights where both fighters use a formal style and fight with any kind of ruleset), maybe it's somewhat understandable you'd think of yourself as a warrior. But that is no more applicable to her than it is to a participant in any other martial art.
You seem to project some kind of anachronistic grandeur onto the notion of being a real "warrior". It's a sport. Like the vast majority of martial arts today already are.
You're right, an HEMA "world champion" (or whatever) likely couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag in a realistic life-or-death situation. But that holds true for any martial art taught as a sport.
And unless your day job (or geographical circumstance) involves an extremely high chance of getting into those situations, there's no reason this should matter. And if you do have a high chance of getting in those situations, why the fuck would you care about what kinds of martial arts are performed as a sport?
Aside: in any HEMA fight I would rather bet my money on the one with the better reflexes and legwork. And although I've seen big guys with almost feline grace, generally big blokes tend to overvalue their size/strength advantage and underestimate the importance of speed and balance. And I'm not sure I'd ever bet any amount of money on a paid actor who has been taught what kind of moves look good to a television audience. We're talking about free fighting, not choreography here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafth%C3%B3r_J%C3%BAl%C3%ADus_...
If you think your "leg work" can save you from someone who can lift 400+ Kg, you live in fantasy land. Unless you mean you will run like hell.
There is a reason why contact sports like Box or MMA have weight categories. Size matters! And swords aren't such good weapons that they remove the strength factor. If we were talking about guns, or even bows, then sure, dexterity beats everything else. But in close combat you don't want to fight someone who can literally crush your body with his bare hands.
Edit: A picture with Arnold, for comparison:
http://www.dv.is/media/cache/0c/10/0c10973a39a53647327481c60...
And Arnold didn't focus on strength when he trained, but this man did. Imagine that.
Wikipedia has some interesting reading on this:
> Iaido encompasses hundreds of styles of swordsmanship, all of which subscribe to non-combative aims and purposes.
Well, that's a not a good start at all, is it?
> Iaidoka are regularly prescribed to practice kendo to safeguard that battling feel; it is normal for high positioning kendoka to hold high rank in iaido and the other way around.
Oh dear... They not only allow, but maybe even encourage them do both?! What is this world coming to?
Size can actually be a disadvantage. If you're small, you can cover more of your body with a sword of the same size. If you're bigger, you open up more of your body when you attack.
You have to be strong enough to hold a sword and to move a sword. Despite the unintuitively low weight of a well-balanced sword, that's actually something that takes some training. Not just strength training -- you need to train the actual muscles involved. You're holding weights in unusual positions, not picking up and putting down (or pulling and pushing) heavy things.
But beyond a certain point, strength doesn't matter. Sword fighting is not about jedi-style sword clashes with sparks flying off to the side as you try to wrestle the opponent off balance. Sword fighting is more about evasion and putting your sword where it needs to be at the right moment to hit the other guy.
Actually, aside from the "binding" that is being discussed a lot in the other comments, one of the best techniques is not actually making contact with the other guy's sword at all. If you hit the other guy's sword, your sword is bound as well. If you instead avoid being hit by the other guy's sword as it comes in and sidestep into a counter at the same time, his momentum evaporates as you land your fully controlled hit.
If the other guy has a strength advantage and wants to use it to win by brute force -- just don't play his game. Side-step, evade, move your body out of the way and your sword into him as he attacks.
If it's good enough for Asian martial arts, it works in HEMA too.
I mean, I still have the t-shirt.
It may be a serious, and quite cool, sport. But i don't think something that has zero real world practicability or application falls under the banner of a "martial art".
By "Hacker News" I presume you mean news that hackers find interesting? In which case, that is your answer.
If I imagine the internet usage of the visitors of hackernews as a enormous Venn diagram with each visitor his own circle, these type of articles allow me to look beyond the border of my own circle into the circles overlapping mine most, allowing me to expand my circle.
Tell that to aikido...
1: even those of who were black belt
It's like saying someone can take a class and earn some networking certificate, and from that point on they are an undeniable expert in networking. Of course that's ridiculous; that certificate is meant to certify a basic level of knowledge that is enhanced through experience, not complete mastery.
I don't know if it's true, but it's a nice image.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_belt_%28martial_arts%29#O...
The downsides of aikido as a practical style are the same as many of the more intricate/interesting martial arts: they are far from including a complete set of skills for real fights, and it takes much longer to be proficient enough with their intricate techniques to actually use them than it does to get competent in train-by-actually-doing-it styles like boxing, judo, wrestling, etc.
Aikido does have the added disadvantage that being entirely defensive in nature, you only learn to defend against the level of attack you train with. Unsurprisingly, people who train in an entirely defensive style don't attack well without outside influence, which can lead to unfortunate delusions like being able to "catch a punch" that would last approximately one session training with anyone skilled in any decent striking style.
This is one of the major reasons why "practical" martial arts, such as Krav Maga, have become so popular in recent years. It doesn't mean the less practical arts are not "arts," or are somehow not "martial." The history of martial arts is a history of the militaries, weapons, circumstances, etc., that have given rise to the need for formalized combat styles throughout the world. In feudal Japan, for instance, it was probably a very helpful and practical thing to be well-versed in the art of the samurai sword. In present-day Japan, a bit less so.
Some martial arts are practical in 2015. Some martial arts were practical in 1915, and some were practical in 1515. Circumstances change. The stuff people wear, or carry around with them everyday, or bring into a combat zone, change pretty quickly and dramatically. And of course, some martial arts have never really been practical at all, being used mainly for ceremony, discipline, and lifestyle.
I would hope so! If an average, everyday person needed to deploy martial in more than 1 out of every 10,000 of their normal, everyday circumstances, it would be a very sad state for humanity :)
There are many reasons why this is the case. I'll go over two or three of them. First, many of these martial arts were developed a very long while ago, in very different eras, with very different combatants in mind. Second, many of these martial arts are actually "staged" versions of real combat. If you're a karate master, for instance, you are mostly trained on how to fight combatants also using karate, who've been taught the same moves, the same stances, and the same patterns. Or, at least, you assume they've learned similar variants. Now, in a bar fight with a drunk, who's maybe got a few pounds on you, and is going to come out fighting irrationally and unpredictably, all of your karate staging, and your karate timing, and your karate pattern-seeking flies right out the window. Your mind will be addled by adrenaline. Your reflexes will be clumsy and jittery. You won't have time to think. If you've received very formal training, you may well panic and forget it.
Modern arts are a lot less formal, because many of them were designed with modern fights in mind——be it a close grapple with an enemy soldier on a battlefield, or a standoff against an aggressive assailant in a dark alley.
Full disclosure: I'm a 99-pound pencilneck who couldn't take your grandmother in a fist fight. I trained in karate to a fairly high level as a young teenager. To this day, I harbor no illusions that my karate will do anything for me, other than earn the occasional Daniel LaRusso joke.
"Martial arts are codified systems and traditions of combat practices, which are practiced for a variety of reasons: self-defense, competition, physical health and fitness, entertainment, as well as mental, physical, and spiritual development."
I guess it's hard for you to understand the value of physical health, entertainment, mental, physical and spiritual development. This is something that people in these boards should value a lot more, and that can have a huge impact in your life.
Sorry for the long reply, but your comment made me feel sad for you.
Only you take the time to belittle me based off 2 sentences.
In the same vein as you presume to proscribe to the rest of the board that they need to lead better lives, i ask you to please try and lead a more compassionate life. :)
My comment was -indeed- actually trying to be educative, at least it was my goal.
In my phrase I should have stated that I was referring to many people that spend most of the day in boards like this one, I made a mistake and generalised in my statement.
> "This is something that people in these boards should value a lot more"
should be:
> "This is something that a lot of people in these boards should value a lot more".
"so ignorant it makes me sad" - yes it was ignorant, as i admitted and explained in why i used the wording i did, and certainly not an ignorance i cling to, so the sad part just comes across as a holier-than-thou ad hominem
"I guess it's hard for you to understand" - that phrase in its own is pretty bad
"I guess it's hard for you to understand the value of physical health, entertainment, mental, physical and spiritual development." - i had just come from the gym, don't think i need to say more to that
"This is something that people in these boards should value a lot more" - who says i don't, i didn't even say it was worthless
"sorry ... your comment made me feel sad for you." - both a non-apology and a needless ad hominem
Edit: I love how the downvotes on this only serve to demonstrate how some parts of this community actively loathe discourse in dialogue.