we have never been in a real swordfight to death, yet we killed so many lightbulbs we gonna certainly all got to hell. for my part, i made a specialty of shooting lamps in my bedroom at midnight by fooling around with a sword, or bumping furnitures with the scabbard of a katana trying to draw as fast as possible, and make a racket that must be heard throughout the neighborhood...
You should have learned to practice in a gym, where ceiling cannot be an issue... If ceiling was an issue, I guess you had other issues with that place.
"The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the world's second best swordman; he fears the worst swordsman because he doesn't know what the idiot is going to do." Several documented duels ended that way...
Yep when I fencing with someone who I know he is good on LARP, where is stabbing and head strikes is forbidden i even keep glasses on face. With every newbie or unkwnown person i change glasses for steel helmet.
You mentioned how generally one would simply pull their leg back to defend a leg attack, but in MMA (which is what I train) you defend a leg attack by lifting your leg and blocking with the knee/shin, we call that checking, which made me realize from pure habit if someone ever swung a blade at my leg my dumbass would probably try to check it
I think that's one of his best traits honestly; not being a condescending a-hole to people over-estimating their abilities online. Harder to encourage people to improve when you only ever shit on them!
He agreed with them up until the part where they replied to an a-hole (maybe a hema simp fanboy, maybe not) dissing hema in the process. It wasn't called for and he addresses that. They just need to up there practice equipment game.
According to the way how guy in blue moves, he certainly has a natural talent. I think you'd be quite surprised if you try to fence with him with any kind of weapon.
I feel like Skal is trying to teach a certain part of a certain community not to go 0-100 on everything they disagree with every time, and imo it's a worthy effort.
When lineage is brought up, its usually East vs West argument in my personal experience. Whether kendo, kali, or kung fu the argument is made that their lineage of masters has gone unchanged for centuries, which isnt the case at all. Usually I show them Lumiere: Escrime au sabre japonais from 1897 and they watch men, probably either former samurai themselves or the descendants of samurai, sparring and it looks completely different from kendo as we might recognize it today. And thats just 130 years difference. Imagine what it looked like 400 years ago. 500 years ago. The argument that studying from a book makes HEMA invalid is kinda foolish. After all, theyre playing a 500 year old game of martial arts telephone vs reading what the masters actually wrote down themselves. Just a thought, hope no one takes offense.
Forgive me, maybe I should gave said Kenjutsu or another term that classifies Japanese swordsmanship as a defensive art. But, many practioners of Kendo that ive met trace their style back to various schools with lineages. The Yagyu-Shinkage-ryu made famous by Munenori and Mitsuyoshi "Jubei" Yagyu, Niten-Ichi-ryu the style developed Miyamoto Musashi, and Itto-ryu founded by Itto Ittosai whose style along with the Yagyu-Shinkage style were the official styles of the Tokugawa Shogunate. But, yeah Kendo has become a sport over time rather than a defensive martial art. Most sword schools arent these day anyways.
Pretty much any martial art or sport or other competition that's practiced with rules will end up conforming to the limits of those rules without regard for original purpose. People are just naturally going to be drawn to the most efficient style you can have under that specific rule set. For example, if you're not allowed to hit the head, then all guards will ignore defending the head. If there's no force required for a hit, then people will tap as fast as they can. Then there's the whole issue with double hits...
Back when I did olympic fencing, my fencing school had historical manuals. While individual techniques might not apply directly, general principals generally did and was good/interesting to know- one cant work out 12 hours a day. The argument that you shouldnt read old books is inane. (also their footwork is terrible)
I just left a wall of text comment about different aspects of the discussion before I had to add at the end...some of Combat Outlooks videos demonstrate some extremely bad form and techniques. He says he doesn't respect people learning from the manuals, and it shows, both in his bad footwork and a lot of wild, flashy, unnecessary movements while sparring.
And he left out the most important part of understanding whether or not someone knows what they are talking about with edged weapons - how they move. Learning good footwork and practicing it to the point where it is unconscious, shows through outside the salle.
I had quite fun in fencing longsword against olympic fencers with their respective weapons. Regarding the footwork: many sources do not delve deeply into the footwork, apart from which foot is in front and which is at the back at a certain technique. My primary source, 44A8 / Liechtenauer is especially scarce here. But the thing is, mostly people started with wrestling back in the 15th century in the germanic regions. You had wrestling matches in front of the church on sundays like you have football matches today. So, you can assume that lots of the footwork is derived from wrestling, especially given the fact that you can move around freely and are not limited by a planche. Later sources have more distinct footwork, when rapiers are coming into play, this can look quite differently. (Also, we don't talk about I.33 footwork ;) )
@@Warrior_Culture Watching him dramatically posing before each attack, he just came across like the 'instruction manual' he studied was anime and manga. Was expecting him to call out the name of his attacks as he made them.
@J C I used to be a sabre fencer when I was young, then took a HEMA sabre class and it was very transferrable/easy 90% of the guards and cuts are the same, though they used the 7 and 8 parries alot more, and everything is heavier/bulkier. Longsword and the more 1400s hema less so as far as bladework. But principles of distance and timing, balance, etc are fairly universal.
I appreciate the way you always respect the people you discuss/disagree with, and address their arguments rather than attacking the people themselves. Your civil and articulate presentation is much more informative and enjoyable than people who trash talk.
I once had a friendly duel with a Larp enthusiast, I had a little fencing experience. Even though I’m no expert I could tell very quickly that his confidence in his skill was greater than his swordsmanship.
When my SCA fencing group branched out into larping, the thing that took me by surprise is that larp swords _don't_ seem to stick in the bind as expected. Solid parries that worked with historical rapier simply failed. The swords slide or trampoline away from each other on contact. I think this is part of the reason why larpers seem to engage from out-of-measure so often: the parry game simply is not there, and the only control you can actually exert comes from _batting_ attacks out of the way and counting on that exaggerated recoil to create your openings. Also I got salty that they don't accept draw or push cuts lol Between that, and taking the head angle away as a viable target, there's so many ways in which the threat of a weapon doesn't have to be respected tactically. This is similar to collegiate fencing's 'right of way' rule, encouraging attacks that would realistically be suicide.
This is also sadly the case with my country's sport. I think this is also what happened that discouraged arnisadors from parrying and rely more on risky attacks considering the use of padded weapons I hope to prevent this by constant and consistent drilling and study of sword sparring sessions (sabres in particular) with my goal to atleast encourage some form of control and a slight change to the rules to have people really treat the weapons like swords.
I ran into the same situation with LRP'ers with me in the SCA...so I just switched targeting for awhile...started targeting the meaty part of the shoulders and legs. A few score nasty bruises later and the LRP'ers got the message that simulating real sword combat and taking clean blows beats walking with a limp for 48 hours or so every time. And ended up dragging a bunch of 'em into the SCA too to learn to fight heavy. I call that a win. (please do remember that SCA heavy combat is full speed, full force.)
In my classes, I teach there are two types of competitive “sword games” to improve In one game, you have 2 footwork squares next to each other and you practice strikes, and parries. Goal is to get the other person off balance. In the other, I have them redo an ancient dispute duel, where the goal was a single strike to the top of the head from the bind. I use sharp simulators for this, but it teaches intuitively how to manipulate through the bind while keeping themselves safe
Living lineage means way less than stress-testing, honestly. MMA proved that to a great degree, and some people still resent that lesson. “Lineages” are to a degree just political hierarchies ripe for exploitation by people who “put in the time”- whether or not that’s ever been thoroughly put to the test. I remember some of the ideas that came out of students at my old CMA school, which had a very traceable “strong” lineage, which were hugely misguided in some ways.
lol, I'd take a good fighter who knows distance and timing over someone who has been in a mcdojo for 10 years doing theory and form practice but has never sparred.
@@ChueyiCha lol Exactly. I remember getting lit up by a normal looking 45 year old dude who was relatively new to the school, because he had rudimentary boxing experience and wasn’t concerned about employing techniques he’d learned in that school specifically/ trying to incorporate moves from forms.
Living lineage in bullshido (thr cma in your example) is still bullshido. Stress-tested "I'm an animal, bro, I black out and go crazy" or half-assed boxing or what have you that has won fights is still less than a real art (definition: a refined skill). Benefitting from living lineages is a huge benefit in attempting to learn or reconstruct an art that we know very little or nothing about.
@@45calibermedic a) I didn’t say that lineage has no meaning at all. B) I wasn’t anywhere in my comment legitimizing the “bullshido” Kung Fu school I went to. C) Of course the techniques used by the winner of a fight between unskilled/undertrained opponents are likely not worthy of transmission; but I suspect you know that’s not what I was saying... Where is the “I black out bro” stuff coming from? I never mentioned anything approaching that. Though, if someone with less experience in one martial art (or none at all) can routinely beat intermediate/advanced practitioners of another art on fair-terms, something’s gotta be examined there. A “refined skill” in martial art that doesn’t do what it advertises is ritual dance/meditation or glorified LARP. Lastly, what do you mean “Living Lineages are of benefit in learning arts we know little or nothing about”? ... I can see *some* merit in informing the running of a school, etc.; but if they are different arts, I’d think it’d be important to actually not let the existing art tinge too much of the one being reconstructed, no?
Huh, I was actually a part of this group for a few years, interesting to see it pop up here. Guess a few tidbits for some people curious. so for one, this is a college group, so theres quite a few restrictions on what they can freely bring around on campus for safety reasons, theyve even had the cops called on them before just with their larp swords. (thankfully at this point they kinda know the group so if anything arises they just drop by and confirm it them before leaving). Another tidbit is while there are a number of regulars, this group lets pretty much any types drop in and out, so plenty of the videos youll see people ranging from quite experience in fencing or other practices to random people wanting to swing swords around. Id also say the fighting itself is kinda half the groups focus, the other half being general discussions on different types of weapons, their history of use and other general weapon discussions.
@@gillsejusbates6938 Schools denying access to weapons under the false guise of creating saftey. As if a person intent to harm others cares about the "no weapons" rule.
7:00-9:50 He says that when the back isn't straight, not when it isn't vertical. It can be straight with a forward lean. You talk about something called a hip hinge. When you demo it, you're bending at the hip, but your spine remains straight, which is good. The point I think he's trying to make is about broken posture. If you bend your spine to lean, then you have issues. If you look at fighting styles that focus on clench fighting, like Muay Thai, you are fighting to gain dominance over your opponent's head so you can break their posture by bending their neck because it makes them easier to take down.
Learing form the old manuscripts can be quiet dificult. My HEMA instructor once gave every group (4 groups in total) a side of a manuscript and every group came had outcome (the funniest was to basicly drop the polearm and punch the enemy in the face)
To defend me and the Larp community ^^ "I and my group practice HEMA, we practice duels, but also formations. We pay great attention to authenticity, especially what the (sorry, I don't know the English term for it)" play out " A weapon concerns. Especially when it comes to the weight of a weapon, we attach great importance to it. The nice thing about it is that there are LARP weapons that have a lead band incorporated to add weight. We prefer an authentic fight, especially because wildly waving one around can put yourself, and more importantly, others in danger!
"how they hold and respect the weapon" Me, looking confused at the rusty piece of sword-looking iron bar that I bought as the cheepest hema sidesword I could find
I think many traditional arts have a big problem with their lineage. Every new master wants to give it a touch of his. I noticed that in den Japanese arts (I have now 12 years of experience in Iaido) some arts tend to have lost their edge. It is hard to describe. You just notice techniques, where you can tell how they should be done, but are not any more. Often for ease of teaching or elegance or because they fit better in the style of the system. I think the books in HEMA give us an incredible advantage. These cannot be watered down over the years of master to master who never really experienced what the authors of the books did. They give an incredibly good beacon for how it should look.
also about your remarks on subtitles, i use them for every single youtube video including yours and can’t watch videos without them :) they are ABSOLUTELY useful, i can verify they are pretty useful most of the time as i’m not fully deaf.
My epee coach, who was from Poland, always claimed that his master had been in the cavalry and had killed two cossacks in battle. Apparently he beheaded them with the forte of his sabre. How's that for lineage?
As gun owner/enthusiast safety is huge. Even growing with nerf guns safety was instilled with me and even running drills now with stand ins I practice safety
I read an article were they said Verdadera Destreza was a style that opposed to other Spanish styles and said that these other styles were organized and had a method represented in true schools, not just a "bag of tricks". I live in Honduras were machete fights (to the death or at least until one fighter begs for mercy) still occur and country people here basically manage a "bag of tricks" styles that they teach one another, it is not organized buy they do have a kind of empiric method. When I was an adolescent one man known as a machete fighter (25 years ago) show my Dad an uncle and me some of his tricks.
Foundation>> Fixed your base to maintain balance ( correct footwork and knowing were your Centre is), straighten your spine to isolate upper body shock and transfer it to your legs by propping your pelvic bone forwards. Anyone who has drilled this into muscle memory will best anyone who hasn`t. I`m a Koryu practioner and would happily enter a HEMA contest armed with an Oak half staff. :)
This is kind of like airsoft versus actual combat. Imagine if we lived in a world where no one fought with actual guns anymore and could only recreate it through airsoft. The methods and habits would be considerably different than actual combat, but there would be no way to verify that. People would act like reading old war manuals and watching training videos from WWII and such would be worthless, but there's a huge difference between playing a game or simulation and doing the real thing.
The most recent sword combat is probably in the Philippines where I have heard stories of living masters having fought in duels. There are parts of East Africa where swords have been used relatively recently.
I’ve been sparring with Foam Bokken with son, we’ve been LOVING them, but we’re trying to use correct historical technique. I also ordered two accurately weighted synthetic broadswords so we can get a more realistic idea of how the swords were used.
I’m a Brazilian jiu jitsu player, and the art has changed just in the years I’ve been practicing. We also go live for five 5 minute rounds at the end of class where we try to kill each other. Anyway, great content, I always enjoy it.
Flashback to my first HEMA practice with steel. At the beginning of the practice "yay, this feder is sort of light". By the end "this feder weighs a metric ton!"
I've always said that sparring and fighting are separate from each other. Sparring is for learning and application the respect is usually there. Actual fighting in a lot of cases is just you trying to remove the opponent from the fight or vice versa. I don't think the guy who kicked your teeth in after you've been knocked out respects you... lol
Most fencing books talk about duells. You can apply the art otherwise as well, but that is the context in most cases. Suppose you're a bürger (citizen) in small germanic town around 1550. It is evening, you go to the tavern, having some beers. You get into an argument with a fellow citizen. He calls your mother something nasty or otherwise insults your honor. You know, your honor is a real thing and getting it damaged may lead to real life economical consquences. You have to defend it. You demand a duell. You agree to meet with your seconds at a certain place the other night. Now, indulge me: what is a good outcome, what is bad outcome for your private duell? Suppose you both draw your sword, have a fight. You cut through the hand of your opponent, so that he loses some fingers or is otherwise unable to work with his hand for a living. You both live in the same town, you get sued and will have to pay for his injuries. Definetly not an optimal outcome. Maybe you even land a very good thrust to the face or the or the chest, exactly like your treatise describes. He dies of his injuries, either instantly or later. Doesn't matter. You're probably getting persecuted and most likely hanged. Even worse outcome. Maybe both of you draw your sharp swords, hit the other and inflict some superficial wounds. He apologises. Your honor is restored, because both of you were brave enough to fight with sharp swords. Now, do you think, that there is an incentive to fight in a controlled way in the 15th century under the circumstances described in our fencing books?
@@mephisto8101 Are you sure that people were persecuted by law because of duels? Weren't you excused to maim or even kill the other since they accepted the duel?
@@BioTheHuman That highly depends on location and time. Would have to check the laws. A good read about the martial ethic and the legal circumstances can be found in B. Ann Tlusty's "The martial ethic in early modern germany: civic duty and the right of arms" . From the back of my head, if you participate in a Fechtschule, a fencing tournament, the usual goal was to cut a bleeding wound on your opponent, preferably at the head. The so called "Höchste Rühr" or highest goal. That could win you the round. If you stab your opponent in the eye, you would have to pay a considerable fine. If you kill them in the tournament, there would be a legal investigation by the authorities on the circumstances and your relationship with the victim. If it was established, that both of you didn't know each other and held no grudge and it was indeed an accident, you could go free. That was a historic case. Later on, when duelling became really popular amongst unversity students, this kind of behavior was highly discouraged by the lawmakers, as many young lads perished during duels. The interesting thing was, that the legal punishment for duels was extraordinarily high, but it was rarely enforced. It was intended to up the stakes and create an incentive for cautious behaviour.
12:18 "Expert" can mean may thing depending on context (oh hi Matt ^^). I am a Masters Student in Chemistry. Does that make me an "expert"? When compared to the average Joe: yes. When eating family dinner I am the "chemistry expert". However among academia I am by no means an expert in anything. The higher up you go in education the smaller the areas become that you would call yourself an expert in. Most of my Professors would not call themselves experts outside of the exact topics they are researching. Skall could very much been seen as an expert in the right context.
I've been watching your content for over 2 years now and just noticed I wasn't subbed. I though I was and I made sure I fixed that, you're always on my feed.
I have some kenjutsu training. That's in an art with the fancy schmancy lineage. When I started, I had already developed a certain love of Talhoffer and the messer. The first time my sensei called on me to demonstrate a technique, I surprised him. Turns out, certain messer techniques can work with a katana. From those "old books" I had learned the concept of the strong and the weak of the blade and how to fight in the bind. He never expected that in a beginners' class. Note: I am not an expert, and he NEVER let me get the drop on him again.
I started to fight with steel swords (not sharpened) at age 11. And it´s great workout. But to put it bluntly there is almost as many techniques as there are swordtypes. The basics doesn´t differ that much but otherwise there is a huge difference. Some of this goes in the knife fighting aswell.
To add to the part where he grabbed the larp rapier blade. Scolagladatoria in one of his videos mentioned people don't typically like to fight against a rapier of they also don't have one. As rapiers although typically heavier are fast and have vastly better tip control and can get around another swords defense because it's hard to fend off because of the speed. So yeah as you said you try grab sword, (a rapier especially)not in a bind youre getting it through your hand. Imo it also breaks a standard in sword combat. You don't want to expose your body in front of your own blade as you can't protect against the attack to that appendage.
There is always a sacrifice of reality when trying to practice a lethal activity, safely. LARP and synthetic swords are close simulators, but we find wood still makes each participant respect the weapons because they still hurt if you get hit. We practice with at least padded gambesons with wood, and drill with steel, but only fence with steel by adding gauntlets and masks. The sacrifice is the armour is not what would be worn in a real fight, we aren't practicing armoured combat.
In the kitchens your told to hold that blade pointing down. Believe it or not but I could tell you a story about someone getting themselves run through by their own French blade. He had his knife in his hand,blade running up the inside of his forearm so he could pick up a box of bar fruit and never put the knife down. Went to open the walk in cooler and someone was in the cooler already and kicked the door open with their foot because they had stuff in their hands and the door slammed into the kid with the knife and the force of the door hitting the box in the hand holding the knife stabbed him in the stomach. So proper handling of a blade or any tool is a good indicator of someone's experience.
A friend was on a Special Forces A team in Afghanistan in 2003. He witnessed a duel to the death with "sabres" and bucklers by champions of two clans. On horseback at that.
I think for posture he was more so talking about not hinging at the spine, which holds true even for those positions you mentioned, since they typically hinge at the hips, thereby not breaking your posture.
My brother and I do some amateur practice of sword techniques with home made wooden mock ups that are quite close to actual weights just for getting a work out. We just can't really afford getting serviceable practice gear in our country due to a lack of local makers and schools for weapon focused martial arts.
Careful of wooden solid blades as they have a tendency to injure people. If you really have to use that material consider building them in a way similar to those kendo practice swords made of multiple sticks tied together.
My first entry into HEMA was at Lonin using foam swords for sparring. We had steel on hand, but it was hot as hell that summer and we couldn't gear up all the way without risking heat sickness.
As far as the reason why the group uses larp weapons, a large part of it is because the meetings are held at a public university. Even in Texas I think the longest blade you can bring on campus is 5 inches. Anything more and you have to go through a lot of red tape. Also since we use larp weapons we don’t have to heavily invest in protective gear. So there are no dues to be in the club. You just have to show up. A larp sword will be loaned to you for the meeting you don’t have your own. There was a particular exercise we did that did involve wearing. A fencing mask, though it has been years since we did that. I speak as someone who has been involved with the group in question for a little over half a decade.
Nice analysis. With regards to a straight back around 8:00 - you sort of contradicted yourself. You used the key word "hip hinge" which is to say bending at the hips but retaining a straight (flat) back. Biomechanically this is what you do in the deadlift, for example. Perhaps when the speaker in the video said "back is always straight" they meant just that: keeping the spine structurally supported, even if leaning forward in a hip hinge position? I'm sure there is more subtlety to it than that as well, so always good to hear more!
Fun Fact: here in RD we have ppl that are proficient with machetes, is a cheap weapon and most of the country ppl and poor areas use it to fight to the death or sometimes just to solve fewds like old times, although guns are the most common weapon for solving fights coming closer to knives, but no one has a martial training on these thing, i only saw a karate master making an demosration with machetes but was just throwing them as knives to a target
There's a book by Dan Inosanto, he interviews old FMA masters who used to have stick duels. One guy talked about not being able to lift his hand above his head for a week after one of those duels.
Are you INSANE? No no no no no no no do NOT fight without protection with sticks that is NO DO NOT Dude Just doing the little x and inverted x routine with escrima sticks, my hand getting hit, that *hurts*. Actually going at it are you NUTS? Also: We once bought some cool looking...cherry? sticks, and hit-hit-hit mine broke, lodging in the ceiling.
@@daniel-zh9nj6yn6y I like having fingers that aren't broken, thank you. Dad did a uh...whatever, the details aren't super relevant. So the class either got a stick, or a rubber knife (for training). Now obviously a blade is SUPER dangerous irl, but in the *training*, everyone switched to the stick because it could hand-snipe, and wood hurt WAY more than rubber.
About LARP swords and hits: my partner dented a steel helm (cheap, but still steel) using one. The hit was hard. So yeah, LARP sword definitely can hit EXTREMELY hard. I was still feeling them through an cross motorbike armour, a butted steel 10kgs chainmail, and a thin padded jacket.
I know part of swordmanship is not saying your a swordsman, you are familiar with a range of swords and techniques, "sword" is a broad scope. I am most familiar with Norse longswords and I'm no master, I actually prefer axes to swords but I admit the staff is my favorite. Part of it is also being humble, hell for honor managed to get this right "fight with courage and without fear and you can make it through, allow that to manifest as overconfidence and you will be delivered your death" I'm paraphrasing a particularly tough part of the campaign. I think the main reason I love Norse longswords is I growing up had one but my family trained me first with machetes before letting me use it. A lot of technique can carry over but they are fundamentally different. This is ramble-y but the point is be humble because the dunning Kruger effect is real and you don't want to be under it.
my friends and I will occasionally go outside and fight with, what I think you would call, synthetic swords and axes, and sometimes wooden ones. the "synthetic" ones I have are polypropylene, idk if that counts as synthetic. I try to match certain stances and moves that I see you and others like Shadiversity do, but I haven't actually trained properly. We often wear hand protection, but none of us usually wear head protection, and for the most part we're careful to not hit each other in the head.
Please get some head protection if you seriously want to continue. It only takes a millisecond mistake to mistime a blow or thrust and you're looking at a concussion or a gouged eye.
About the point with the back, I assume he means that the back must not bend, not lean. The pictures from the manuals you showed, in all of them the back is actually straight... It's just inclined forward, but the spine is not bent, which I believe was the key point.
I don't have any sword fighting experience but it sounds like it is doable for me to show all 4 signs. -I have a history in boxing, footwork (and using it to keep just out of the opponents reach) was my biggest strength there (this should help with both the rear foot and the straight back) -I even respect my pocket knife, respecting a sword should be common sense -I hold knives/table tennis bats and whatnot in the "fingering the guard" way already, since I feel like I don't get control while doing a hammergrip. That being said I would probably stand out on a lack of blade control and/or lack of technique, since as I stated I don't have swordfighting experience. So anyone with respect for the sword with a martial arts background has a chance of getting through this chechlist.
a good way to tell if someone is any way competent with the sword, is when they start to remove their pommel. didnt even have to watch this 24min video to tell you that.
As someone who does both Kendo and LARP and practices with friends who do HEMA and Fencing: You can bring concepts from martial arts swordsmanship (HEMA, Kendo, Fencing, etc) into LARP and adapt them successfully. You cannot really bring LARP concepts into martial arts swordsmanship nearly as effectively. The removal of the head as a target is huge. The weight of the weapons (though maybe if you're doing something like Belegarath or Dagohir, the weapons are heavy enough) The general caliber of fighters is not quite there. There isn't as much discipline in the overall pool of people you face off against. Most LARPers are there to play a game, not become experts at sword fighting (if they wanted that, they would be at a martial arts school). An exception can probably be made for participants of SKBC and other similar events. Game mechanics play into LARP combat a lot. You're dealing with hit points, special attacks, defense mechanics, ranged attacks, etc. A much wider variety of scenarios than point scoring or tournament rules that various martial arts tournaments have. The one thing that LARP really brings into play is large scale skirmishes and battles. Most sport based swordsmanship focuses very heavily on 1v1 duels. LARP helped me understand very well how to behave in a large variety of matchups as well as taught me how to attempt to coordinate groups of untrained fighters from leading small parties of 6-10 to well over 100. I don't think any other sport reaches those numbers aside from some high profile SCA events.
Skall, about 7:42. Notice that although their stance lean forward, their back are absolutely straight. They hinge forward using their hip, not by bending their spine.
Pretty much on covering basics, it is fine. However, I am with you on the overall of their particular practices and visible technique, weapons etc... It looks as sloppy as myself and friends "playing around" sparing, when we started actual weapons training fighting in the SCA(Society for Creative Anachronism). I'm still un aware of your particular knowledge of the group, of which I can always send different links to give better info, and not just my word(s).
Im sure there are people who have been in a real sword fight to the death. They just dont care about this youtube comment war, i believe. That is, if they have internet in the first place.
Many people using the LARP weapons never learn that it takes just as much force to STOP the axe swing as it does to MAKE the axe swing, so they never seem to learn how to properly control weapons made from steel.
I would say Academic Dueling/Mensur is the closest thing we have to "sword combat" today. True, protective gear is worn, but full speed with sharp blades should count.
21:16 I don't think that's a grab, it looks like he has a LARP dagger in that hand. I had to run it back a few times because it goes by so fast and the tip is towards the camera, but I'm pretty sure that was a Parry. Now, holding a dagger in front with a sword in back is probably STILL less than ideal for sword & dagger technique, but I'm pretty sure he's not grabbing the opponent's blade.
Whether you take it negatively or positively, the comment was accurate. Modern hema has been learned from books and is not a continuous lineage. However much research and testing has gone into modern hema, and regardless of its quality, it came from books. That isnt negative or positive but simply true. Lineage: People take up martial arts for different reasons, and some just really like the romanitic idea of lineage. As for whether that lineage confers some superior qualities to that martial art, or to what degree the lineage has changed over time, or whether that is good or bad, it depends on the art and shouldnt be addressed with generalizations. Expert sworders: there are definitely hema guys who are quite arrogant about their expertise. Just recently i saw a vid of a filipino guy demonstrate rapier techniques he learned as a child in the 60s, and which had been passed down as part of an old eskrima lineage. Hema guy in the comments simply asserted that the techniques were wrong and that the 60 year old guy demonstrating should try them in a tournament. Ive also had similar experiences in person and been lectured on the pros and cons of eskrima by a hema guy who has never even tried it. Im not saying hema guys are arrogant in general, but that arrogant hema guys exist, and their particular brand of arrogance is not the same as the usual east asian 'look at my lineage' arrogance. As for the other comments that stood out to me in the video: sparring, however violent or dangerous, is certainly not fighting, but training to improve. Fighting, on the other hand, is trying to win. If sparring were fighting then we wouldnt need 2 different words. Finally regarding upright posture and voiding the leg: depends on the terrain, and if you void the leg properly then you wont lose power or balance even if your foot leaves the ground. Like a superman punch going backwards. You can even jump while voiding, and see this often in krabi krabong and eskrima.
Let me tell you about getting a thrust to the face at age 14 and ending up in the hospital with a close call to losing my eye. Was super not fun. Always wear a mask
We had Larrping swords we built out of pcv and foam like normal but we filled the pcv with sand or mud whatever to get that weight behind it. It was also fun when swords exploded. We tried water... that worked real well... not
way back when I first got involved in reenactment fighting, my Master at Arms was an Olympic contender for saber, and had been raised learning kenjitsu from his grandfather. During our first training session, he came to me and said "You study Karate? I can tell by your foot work. For now, just stick to what you know. You'll adapt as you need to."
As you say lineage doesn't necessarily mean a martial art is unchanged, nor does such lack or presence of change necessarily indicate current quality. What matters is whether the martial art is tested and proven.
Seiji Miyaguchi, who plays Kyuzo the master swordsman in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, never touched a sword in his life before getting that role. He looks pretty convincing, though!
I think the last duel in France was in the 1900's Between to statesmen, but that's an oddball and was considered ludicrous even then. And that's at least half a century ago ^^ Point is : yeah, finding someone who has been in a real sword fight is night impossible
So much bickering in martial arts can be solved by just fighting. Dojo-storming used to be so much more common. I get it, the distances that we can now cover with the internet make it impractical. But there's gotta be HEMA clubs within 50km of those guys.
For Further reference pertaining to the heel coming up, refer to Meyer 1570, LS plates A and L, dussack plate L, rapier plate G, and quarterstaff plate G, Sometimes you need to cut to an opening that would be "counter" to your footwork, unless you bend your knee, turn your front foot the outside with your heel coming up, This allows you to rotate your core giving your cut power. It doesn't take much training to be perfectly balanced during this technique. th-cam.com/video/9XmI4WYqvqw/w-d-xo.html
I will say that it depends on the LARP sword. Mine come out heavy the way I make them (not on purpose, just because I like to balance ether hilt to make them less floppy and feel more like an actual well-balanced sword). That being said, I have no idea if that's as heavy as a real sword, but it's definitely heavier than most of the swords in my LARP. My LARP is also a full-contact sport that requires significant force, as opposed to the common light touch of many other LARPs. We also pad our weapons more than most, to prevent things like stabbing into eye sockets, excessive bruising, breaking bones, etc. So ours tend to be slightly heavier than generic LARP swords, anyway. Granted that does also make them large and chunky, but hey 🤷🏻♂️.
I could also agree with this guy... But my brain instantly regrets to take seriously someone with a larp sword in the hand, it is just impossible for me
This guy: "Certain weapons need to be held certain ways in order to be used correctly" Me, using a reverse grip to lure an opponent in before using it like a spear: "I completely agree."
the thing is is that you must realize that martial arts are actually made to train for the use of weapons. So before you pick up a sword or any other weapon, know some basics and be able to practice the form of a martial art such as karate and when using the sword allways think of it as fighting in that stance.
Maybe someone from the WW1is still alive and did combat, but you are correct that is the kind of of question that provoque really high emotional answers, bu it's totally meaningless. Politicians are very good at creating their "framing questions"
My 6 years of Ringen saved me in an altercation much more readily than my 20 years of martial arts with a "lineage". I like to think this says more for the old books than it dismisses my esteemed sensei.
Again in regards to larp fighting here in the UK Head shots in general are legal BUT ALL BLOWS ARE MEANT TO BE PULLED. These two guys fighting full bore with no pulls are fricking unsafe. Also two handed weapons like the axe shown here are meant to have two hands on at all times when being used so people dont eat a full speed swing with a 6 foot lever (Reach +weapon) and get knocked out or other injuries
I think you misunderstood his point about the back. He said whether their back was straight, meaning that they do not curve the spine or hunch, not that their overall stance should always be straight and upright, just that their back/spine should be. edit: I agree with everything else you said
In last year clashes between India and China in the Himalayas clubs, knifes and sword like objects were used, as part of the area was subject to a no firearms agreement... If conflict should resume there I could see actual sword fights coming back...
First thing I learned about handling a sword: be mindful of the ceiling.
Second thing I learned: Be. Mindful. Of. The. Ceiling!
Third thing I learned: HOLY SHIT I FORGOT THERE WAS A LIGHTBULB THERE
We killed two ceiling lamps while training at home because of the lockdowns... so I hear you XD
we have never been in a real swordfight to death, yet we killed so many lightbulbs we gonna certainly all got to hell.
for my part, i made a specialty of shooting lamps in my bedroom at midnight by fooling around with a sword, or bumping furnitures with the scabbard of a katana trying to draw as fast as possible, and make a racket that must be heard throughout the neighborhood...
Me, a tall person: man, never thought I'd stab the ceiling with a dagger...
You should have learned to practice in a gym, where ceiling cannot be an issue... If ceiling was an issue, I guess you had other issues with that place.
"The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the world's second best swordman; he fears the worst swordsman because he doesn't know what the idiot is going to do." Several documented duels ended that way...
The comment I was looking for especially if the worst swordsman feels like he has nothing to lose.
Yep when I fencing with someone who I know he is good on LARP, where is stabbing and head strikes is forbidden i even keep glasses on face. With every newbie or unkwnown person i change glasses for steel helmet.
there's a saying that goes something like "when against a scrub, think like a scrub"
Then he gets drubbed by a farmer with a stick. ;)
@@Klaaism think, not act
You mentioned how generally one would simply pull their leg back to defend a leg attack, but in MMA (which is what I train) you defend a leg attack by lifting your leg and blocking with the knee/shin, we call that checking, which made me realize from pure habit if someone ever swung a blade at my leg my dumbass would probably try to check it
Well, technically you could if you got the angle right.
So you need greaves. :D
You could if you wore armor!
I'm actually surprised how gentle skal was with this, these guys seem like they have no experience in actual swordsmanship.
I think that's one of his best traits honestly; not being a condescending a-hole to people over-estimating their abilities online. Harder to encourage people to improve when you only ever shit on them!
He agreed with them up until the part where they replied to an a-hole (maybe a hema simp fanboy, maybe not) dissing hema in the process. It wasn't called for and he addresses that. They just need to up there practice equipment game.
🤣 The Canadian has overtaken his inner Viking.
According to the way how guy in blue moves, he certainly has a natural talent. I think you'd be quite surprised if you try to fence with him with any kind of weapon.
I feel like Skal is trying to teach a certain part of a certain community not to go 0-100 on everything they disagree with every time, and imo it's a worthy effort.
When lineage is brought up, its usually East vs West argument in my personal experience. Whether kendo, kali, or kung fu the argument is made that their lineage of masters has gone unchanged for centuries, which isnt the case at all. Usually I show them Lumiere: Escrime au sabre japonais from 1897 and they watch men, probably either former samurai themselves or the descendants of samurai, sparring and it looks completely different from kendo as we might recognize it today. And thats just 130 years difference. Imagine what it looked like 400 years ago. 500 years ago. The argument that studying from a book makes HEMA invalid is kinda foolish. After all, theyre playing a 500 year old game of martial arts telephone vs reading what the masters actually wrote down themselves. Just a thought, hope no one takes offense.
If I'm not mistaken kendo isn't really a martial art, it's more like a sport akin to fencing.
Forgive me, maybe I should gave said Kenjutsu or another term that classifies Japanese swordsmanship as a defensive art. But, many practioners of Kendo that ive met trace their style back to various schools with lineages. The Yagyu-Shinkage-ryu made famous by Munenori and Mitsuyoshi "Jubei" Yagyu, Niten-Ichi-ryu the style developed Miyamoto Musashi, and Itto-ryu founded by Itto Ittosai whose style along with the Yagyu-Shinkage style were the official styles of the Tokugawa Shogunate. But, yeah Kendo has become a sport over time rather than a defensive martial art. Most sword schools arent these day anyways.
Pretty much any martial art or sport or other competition that's practiced with rules will end up conforming to the limits of those rules without regard for original purpose. People are just naturally going to be drawn to the most efficient style you can have under that specific rule set. For example, if you're not allowed to hit the head, then all guards will ignore defending the head. If there's no force required for a hit, then people will tap as fast as they can. Then there's the whole issue with double hits...
No, no. You're right.
Agreed
Back when I did olympic fencing, my fencing school had historical manuals. While individual techniques might not apply directly, general principals generally did and was good/interesting to know- one cant work out 12 hours a day. The argument that you shouldnt read old books is inane. (also their footwork is terrible)
I just left a wall of text comment about different aspects of the discussion before I had to add at the end...some of Combat Outlooks videos demonstrate some extremely bad form and techniques. He says he doesn't respect people learning from the manuals, and it shows, both in his bad footwork and a lot of wild, flashy, unnecessary movements while sparring.
And he left out the most important part of understanding whether or not someone knows what they are talking about with edged weapons - how they move. Learning good footwork and practicing it to the point where it is unconscious, shows through outside the salle.
I had quite fun in fencing longsword against olympic fencers with their respective weapons.
Regarding the footwork: many sources do not delve deeply into the footwork, apart from which foot is in front and which is at the back at a certain technique. My primary source, 44A8 / Liechtenauer is especially scarce here.
But the thing is, mostly people started with wrestling back in the 15th century in the germanic regions. You had wrestling matches in front of the church on sundays like you have football matches today. So, you can assume that lots of the footwork is derived from wrestling, especially given the fact that you can move around freely and are not limited by a planche.
Later sources have more distinct footwork, when rapiers are coming into play, this can look quite differently. (Also, we don't talk about I.33 footwork ;) )
@@Warrior_Culture Watching him dramatically posing before each attack, he just came across like the 'instruction manual' he studied was anime and manga. Was expecting him to call out the name of his attacks as he made them.
@J C I used to be a sabre fencer when I was young, then took a HEMA sabre class and it was very transferrable/easy 90% of the guards and cuts are the same, though they used the 7 and 8 parries alot more, and everything is heavier/bulkier. Longsword and the more 1400s hema less so as far as bladework. But principles of distance and timing, balance, etc are fairly universal.
I appreciate the way you always respect the people you discuss/disagree with, and address their arguments rather than attacking the people themselves. Your civil and articulate presentation is much more informative and enjoyable than people who trash talk.
I once had a friendly duel with a Larp enthusiast, I had a little fencing experience. Even though I’m no expert I could tell very quickly that his confidence in his skill was greater than his swordsmanship.
When my SCA fencing group branched out into larping, the thing that took me by surprise is that larp swords _don't_ seem to stick in the bind as expected. Solid parries that worked with historical rapier simply failed. The swords slide or trampoline away from each other on contact. I think this is part of the reason why larpers seem to engage from out-of-measure so often: the parry game simply is not there, and the only control you can actually exert comes from _batting_ attacks out of the way and counting on that exaggerated recoil to create your openings.
Also I got salty that they don't accept draw or push cuts lol Between that, and taking the head angle away as a viable target, there's so many ways in which the threat of a weapon doesn't have to be respected tactically. This is similar to collegiate fencing's 'right of way' rule, encouraging attacks that would realistically be suicide.
This is also sadly the case with my country's sport. I think this is also what happened that discouraged arnisadors from parrying and rely more on risky attacks considering the use of padded weapons
I hope to prevent this by constant and consistent drilling and study of sword sparring sessions (sabres in particular) with my goal to atleast encourage some form of control and a slight change to the rules to have people really treat the weapons like swords.
I ran into the same situation with LRP'ers with me in the SCA...so I just switched targeting for awhile...started targeting the meaty part of the shoulders and legs. A few score nasty bruises later and the LRP'ers got the message that simulating real sword combat and taking clean blows beats walking with a limp for 48 hours or so every time. And ended up dragging a bunch of 'em into the SCA too to learn to fight heavy. I call that a win. (please do remember that SCA heavy combat is full speed, full force.)
In my classes, I teach there are two types of competitive “sword games” to improve
In one game, you have 2 footwork squares next to each other and you practice strikes, and parries. Goal is to get the other person off balance.
In the other, I have them redo an ancient dispute duel, where the goal was a single strike to the top of the head from the bind. I use sharp simulators for this, but it teaches intuitively how to manipulate through the bind while keeping themselves safe
Living lineage means way less than stress-testing, honestly. MMA proved that to a great degree, and some people still resent that lesson.
“Lineages” are to a degree just political hierarchies ripe for exploitation by people who “put in the time”- whether or not that’s ever been thoroughly put to the test.
I remember some of the ideas that came out of students at my old CMA school, which had a very traceable “strong” lineage, which were hugely misguided in some ways.
lol, I'd take a good fighter who knows distance and timing over someone who has been in a mcdojo for 10 years doing theory and form practice but has never sparred.
@@ChueyiCha lol Exactly. I remember getting lit up by a normal looking 45 year old dude who was relatively new to the school, because he had rudimentary boxing experience and wasn’t concerned about employing techniques he’d learned in that school specifically/ trying to incorporate moves from forms.
Living lineage in bullshido (thr cma in your example) is still bullshido. Stress-tested "I'm an animal, bro, I black out and go crazy" or half-assed boxing or what have you that has won fights is still less than a real art (definition: a refined skill). Benefitting from living lineages is a huge benefit in attempting to learn or reconstruct an art that we know very little or nothing about.
@@45calibermedic a) I didn’t say that lineage has no meaning at all.
B) I wasn’t anywhere in my comment legitimizing the “bullshido” Kung Fu school I went to.
C) Of course the techniques used by the winner of a fight between unskilled/undertrained opponents are likely not worthy of transmission; but I suspect you know that’s not what I was saying...
Where is the “I black out bro” stuff coming from? I never mentioned anything approaching that.
Though, if someone with less experience in one martial art (or none at all) can routinely beat intermediate/advanced practitioners of another art on fair-terms, something’s gotta be examined there.
A “refined skill” in martial art that doesn’t do what it advertises is ritual dance/meditation or glorified LARP.
Lastly, what do you mean “Living Lineages are of benefit in learning arts we know little or nothing about”? ... I can see *some* merit in informing the running of a school, etc.; but if they are different arts, I’d think it’d be important to actually not let the existing art tinge too much of the one being reconstructed, no?
I've heard the "I black out bro" thing from so many idiots who had no idea what they were doing... that's called getting knocked out dude XD
Huh, I was actually a part of this group for a few years, interesting to see it pop up here. Guess a few tidbits for some people curious.
so for one, this is a college group, so theres quite a few restrictions on what they can freely bring around on campus for safety reasons, theyve even had the cops called on them before just with their larp swords. (thankfully at this point they kinda know the group so if anything arises they just drop by and confirm it them before leaving). Another tidbit is while there are a number of regulars, this group lets pretty much any types drop in and out, so plenty of the videos youll see people ranging from quite experience in fencing or other practices to random people wanting to swing swords around. Id also say the fighting itself is kinda half the groups focus, the other half being general discussions on different types of weapons, their history of use and other general weapon discussions.
Worthless woke college nonsense.
@@Sheridantank wait whats woke about that
@@gillsejusbates6938
Schools denying access to weapons under the false guise of creating saftey. As if a person intent to harm others cares about the "no weapons" rule.
@@Sheridantank bruh
@@Sheridantank if you wanna go stab your friends with real weapons for fun go do that somewhere else not in your school
7:00-9:50 He says that when the back isn't straight, not when it isn't vertical. It can be straight with a forward lean. You talk about something called a hip hinge. When you demo it, you're bending at the hip, but your spine remains straight, which is good.
The point I think he's trying to make is about broken posture. If you bend your spine to lean, then you have issues. If you look at fighting styles that focus on clench fighting, like Muay Thai, you are fighting to gain dominance over your opponent's head so you can break their posture by bending their neck because it makes them easier to take down.
*clinch
Learing form the old manuscripts can be quiet dificult. My HEMA instructor once gave every group (4 groups in total) a side of a manuscript and every group came had outcome (the funniest was to basicly drop the polearm and punch the enemy in the face)
To defend me and the Larp community ^^ "I and my group practice HEMA, we practice duels, but also formations. We pay great attention to authenticity, especially what the (sorry, I don't know the English term for it)" play out " A weapon concerns. Especially when it comes to the weight of a weapon, we attach great importance to it. The nice thing about it is that there are LARP weapons that have a lead band incorporated to add weight. We prefer an authentic fight, especially because wildly waving one around can put yourself, and more importantly, others in danger!
"how they hold and respect the weapon"
Me, looking confused at the rusty piece of sword-looking iron bar that I bought as the cheepest hema sidesword I could find
The last sword fights? WWII cavalry with a saber?
More recent? Yakuza maybe?
Once you had a reliable bullet, carrying a sword became dead weight.
1970s france, although it was a duel to first blood
@@conniethesconnie Mad Jack would have LOVED to disagree with you, if he was still alive.
I think many traditional arts have a big problem with their lineage. Every new master wants to give it a touch of his. I noticed that in den Japanese arts (I have now 12 years of experience in Iaido) some arts tend to have lost their edge. It is hard to describe. You just notice techniques, where you can tell how they should be done, but are not any more. Often for ease of teaching or elegance or because they fit better in the style of the system. I think the books in HEMA give us an incredible advantage. These cannot be watered down over the years of master to master who never really experienced what the authors of the books did. They give an incredibly good beacon for how it should look.
also about your remarks on subtitles, i use them for every single youtube video including yours and can’t watch videos without them :) they are ABSOLUTELY useful, i can verify they are pretty useful most of the time as i’m not fully deaf.
My epee coach, who was from Poland, always claimed that his master had been in the cavalry and had killed two cossacks in battle. Apparently he beheaded them with the forte of his sabre. How's that for lineage?
I learned proper gun safety with watter pistols so using toys as a stand in for weapons certainly works for teaching.
As gun owner/enthusiast safety is huge. Even growing with nerf guns safety was instilled with me and even running drills now with stand ins I practice safety
@OhioStateTexan yep and this should apply to all weapons
Skall, when making an Unterhau to your left Ochs, make sure the tip is pointed towards your opponents face (just like you do in your right Ochs).
I read an article were they said Verdadera Destreza was a style that opposed to other Spanish styles and said that these other styles were organized and had a method represented in true schools, not just a "bag of tricks".
I live in Honduras were machete fights (to the death or at least until one fighter begs for mercy) still occur and country people here basically manage a "bag of tricks" styles that they teach one another, it is not organized buy they do have a kind of empiric method. When I was an adolescent one man known as a machete fighter (25 years ago) show my Dad an uncle and me some of his tricks.
Foundation>> Fixed your base to maintain balance ( correct footwork and knowing were your Centre is), straighten your spine to isolate upper body shock and transfer it to your legs by propping your pelvic bone forwards. Anyone who has drilled this into muscle memory will best anyone who hasn`t.
I`m a Koryu practioner and would happily enter a HEMA contest armed with an Oak half staff. :)
This is kind of like airsoft versus actual combat. Imagine if we lived in a world where no one fought with actual guns anymore and could only recreate it through airsoft. The methods and habits would be considerably different than actual combat, but there would be no way to verify that. People would act like reading old war manuals and watching training videos from WWII and such would be worthless, but there's a huge difference between playing a game or simulation and doing the real thing.
The most recent sword combat is probably in the Philippines where I have heard stories of living masters having fought in duels. There are parts of East Africa where swords have been used relatively recently.
I’ve been sparring with Foam Bokken with son, we’ve been LOVING them, but we’re trying to use correct historical technique. I also ordered two accurately weighted synthetic broadswords so we can get a more realistic idea of how the swords were used.
I’m a Brazilian jiu jitsu player, and the art has changed just in the years I’ve been practicing. We also go live for five 5 minute rounds at the end of class where we try to kill each other. Anyway, great content, I always enjoy it.
Flashback to my first HEMA practice with steel. At the beginning of the practice "yay, this feder is sort of light". By the end "this feder weighs a metric ton!"
It's good for you though!
I've always said that sparring and fighting are separate from each other.
Sparring is for learning and application the respect is usually there. Actual fighting in a lot of cases is just you trying to remove the opponent from the fight or vice versa. I don't think the guy who kicked your teeth in after you've been knocked out respects you... lol
Most fencing books talk about duells. You can apply the art otherwise as well, but that is the context in most cases.
Suppose you're a bürger (citizen) in small germanic town around 1550. It is evening, you go to the tavern, having some beers. You get into an argument with a fellow citizen. He calls your mother something nasty or otherwise insults your honor. You know, your honor is a real thing and getting it damaged may lead to real life economical consquences. You have to defend it.
You demand a duell. You agree to meet with your seconds at a certain place the other night.
Now, indulge me: what is a good outcome, what is bad outcome for your private duell?
Suppose you both draw your sword, have a fight. You cut through the hand of your opponent, so that he loses some fingers or is otherwise unable to work with his hand for a living. You both live in the same town, you get sued and will have to pay for his injuries. Definetly not an optimal outcome.
Maybe you even land a very good thrust to the face or the or the chest, exactly like your treatise describes. He dies of his injuries, either instantly or later. Doesn't matter. You're probably getting persecuted and most likely hanged. Even worse outcome.
Maybe both of you draw your sharp swords, hit the other and inflict some superficial wounds. He apologises. Your honor is restored, because both of you were brave enough to fight with sharp swords.
Now, do you think, that there is an incentive to fight in a controlled way in the 15th century under the circumstances described in our fencing books?
@@mephisto8101 Are you sure that people were persecuted by law because of duels?
Weren't you excused to maim or even kill the other since they accepted the duel?
@@BioTheHuman That highly depends on location and time. Would have to check the laws. A good read about the martial ethic and the legal circumstances can be found in B. Ann Tlusty's "The martial ethic in early modern germany: civic duty and the right of arms" .
From the back of my head, if you participate in a Fechtschule, a fencing tournament, the usual goal was to cut a bleeding wound on your opponent, preferably at the head. The so called "Höchste Rühr" or highest goal. That could win you the round. If you stab your opponent in the eye, you would have to pay a considerable fine. If you kill them in the tournament, there would be a legal investigation by the authorities on the circumstances and your relationship with the victim. If it was established, that both of you didn't know each other and held no grudge and it was indeed an accident, you could go free. That was a historic case.
Later on, when duelling became really popular amongst unversity students, this kind of behavior was highly discouraged by the lawmakers, as many young lads perished during duels. The interesting thing was, that the legal punishment for duels was extraordinarily high, but it was rarely enforced. It was intended to up the stakes and create an incentive for cautious behaviour.
12:18 "Expert" can mean may thing depending on context (oh hi Matt ^^). I am a Masters Student in Chemistry. Does that make me an "expert"? When compared to the average Joe: yes. When eating family dinner I am the "chemistry expert". However among academia I am by no means an expert in anything. The higher up you go in education the smaller the areas become that you would call yourself an expert in. Most of my Professors would not call themselves experts outside of the exact topics they are researching. Skall could very much been seen as an expert in the right context.
I've been watching your content for over 2 years now and just noticed I wasn't subbed. I though I was and I made sure I fixed that, you're always on my feed.
I have some kenjutsu training. That's in an art with the fancy schmancy lineage. When I started, I had already developed a certain love of Talhoffer and the messer. The first time my sensei called on me to demonstrate a technique, I surprised him. Turns out, certain messer techniques can work with a katana. From those "old books" I had learned the concept of the strong and the weak of the blade and how to fight in the bind. He never expected that in a beginners' class.
Note: I am not an expert, and he NEVER let me get the drop on him again.
I started to fight with steel swords (not sharpened) at age 11. And it´s great workout. But to put it bluntly there is almost as many techniques as there are swordtypes. The basics doesn´t differ that much but otherwise there is a huge difference. Some of this goes in the knife fighting aswell.
To add to the part where he grabbed the larp rapier blade. Scolagladatoria in one of his videos mentioned people don't typically like to fight against a rapier of they also don't have one. As rapiers although typically heavier are fast and have vastly better tip control and can get around another swords defense because it's hard to fend off because of the speed.
So yeah as you said you try grab sword, (a rapier especially)not in a bind youre getting it through your hand.
Imo it also breaks a standard in sword combat. You don't want to expose your body in front of your own blade as you can't protect against the attack to that appendage.
There is always a sacrifice of reality when trying to practice a lethal activity, safely. LARP and synthetic swords are close simulators, but we find wood still makes each participant respect the weapons because they still hurt if you get hit. We practice with at least padded gambesons with wood, and drill with steel, but only fence with steel by adding gauntlets and masks. The sacrifice is the armour is not what would be worn in a real fight, we aren't practicing armoured combat.
In the kitchens your told to hold that blade pointing down. Believe it or not but I could tell you a story about someone getting themselves run through by their own French blade. He had his knife in his hand,blade running up the inside of his forearm so he could pick up a box of bar fruit and never put the knife down. Went to open the walk in cooler and someone was in the cooler already and kicked the door open with their foot because they had stuff in their hands and the door slammed into the kid with the knife and the force of the door hitting the box in the hand holding the knife stabbed him in the stomach. So proper handling of a blade or any tool is a good indicator of someone's experience.
A friend was on a Special Forces A team in Afghanistan in 2003. He witnessed a duel to the death with "sabres" and bucklers by champions of two clans. On horseback at that.
I think for posture he was more so talking about not hinging at the spine, which holds true even for those positions you mentioned, since they typically hinge at the hips, thereby not breaking your posture.
My brother and I do some amateur practice of sword techniques with home made wooden mock ups that are quite close to actual weights just for getting a work out.
We just can't really afford getting serviceable practice gear in our country due to a lack of local makers and schools for weapon focused martial arts.
Careful of wooden solid blades as they have a tendency to injure people. If you really have to use that material consider building them in a way similar to those kendo practice swords made of multiple sticks tied together.
My first entry into HEMA was at Lonin using foam swords for sparring. We had steel on hand, but it was hot as hell that summer and we couldn't gear up all the way without risking heat sickness.
I personally know the guy in the video (the guy skall is watching obviously) really good guy. Very passionate about what he does
@19:45 check out that footwork on the dude wearing blue. Interesting considering the very criticism he'd previously uttered.
I can watch your videos all day, you are the best. Thank you for your content
“FINGER the sharp section” -Skalla
OH BEhave!!! 😏😏😏
As far as the reason why the group uses larp weapons, a large part of it is because the meetings are held at a public university. Even in Texas I think the longest blade you can bring on campus is 5 inches. Anything more and you have to go through a lot of red tape.
Also since we use larp weapons we don’t have to heavily invest in protective gear. So there are no dues to be in the club. You just have to show up. A larp sword will be loaned to you for the meeting you don’t have your own. There was a particular exercise we did that did involve wearing. A fencing mask, though it has been years since we did that.
I speak as someone who has been involved with the group in question for a little over half a decade.
I think Some young people will be amazed. I love this , maybe my son will learn an easy valuable lesson away from TV. much appreciated.
Nice analysis. With regards to a straight back around 8:00 - you sort of contradicted yourself. You used the key word "hip hinge" which is to say bending at the hips but retaining a straight (flat) back. Biomechanically this is what you do in the deadlift, for example. Perhaps when the speaker in the video said "back is always straight" they meant just that: keeping the spine structurally supported, even if leaning forward in a hip hinge position? I'm sure there is more subtlety to it than that as well, so always good to hear more!
I love these fluid moves that you do with the blade. great vid also, keep it up :)
One of the best videos yet. Nicely done. I agree with everything.
Fun Fact: here in RD we have ppl that are proficient with machetes, is a cheap weapon and most of the country ppl and poor areas use it to fight to the death or sometimes just to solve fewds like old times, although guns are the most common weapon for solving fights coming closer to knives, but no one has a martial training on these thing, i only saw a karate master making an demosration with machetes but was just throwing them as knives to a target
There's a book by Dan Inosanto, he interviews old FMA masters who used to have stick duels. One guy talked about not being able to lift his hand above his head for a week after one of those duels.
Are you INSANE? No no no no no no no do NOT fight without protection with sticks that is NO DO NOT
Dude
Just doing the little x and inverted x routine with escrima sticks, my hand getting hit, that *hurts*. Actually going at it are you NUTS?
Also: We once bought some cool looking...cherry? sticks, and hit-hit-hit mine broke, lodging in the ceiling.
@@Eidenhoek Those old dudes fought without protection. I don't even train stick fighting.
@@daniel-zh9nj6yn6y I like having fingers that aren't broken, thank you.
Dad did a uh...whatever, the details aren't super relevant. So the class either got a stick, or a rubber knife (for training). Now obviously a blade is SUPER dangerous irl, but in the *training*, everyone switched to the stick because it could hand-snipe, and wood hurt WAY more than rubber.
"Certain areas of the world you might still have machete fights"
Ah yes, the far off land of Londonistan.
Or Mexico.
About LARP swords and hits: my partner dented a steel helm (cheap, but still steel) using one. The hit was hard. So yeah, LARP sword definitely can hit EXTREMELY hard. I was still feeling them through an cross motorbike armour, a butted steel 10kgs chainmail, and a thin padded jacket.
I know part of swordmanship is not saying your a swordsman, you are familiar with a range of swords and techniques, "sword" is a broad scope. I am most familiar with Norse longswords and I'm no master, I actually prefer axes to swords but I admit the staff is my favorite. Part of it is also being humble, hell for honor managed to get this right "fight with courage and without fear and you can make it through, allow that to manifest as overconfidence and you will be delivered your death" I'm paraphrasing a particularly tough part of the campaign. I think the main reason I love Norse longswords is I growing up had one but my family trained me first with machetes before letting me use it. A lot of technique can carry over but they are fundamentally different.
This is ramble-y but the point is be humble because the dunning Kruger effect is real and you don't want to be under it.
:20
If you're not here to attack anyone personally, CLEARLY you don't know swordsmanship. The art of attacking someone personally. Witha sword.
my friends and I will occasionally go outside and fight with, what I think you would call, synthetic swords and axes, and sometimes wooden ones. the "synthetic" ones I have are polypropylene, idk if that counts as synthetic. I try to match certain stances and moves that I see you and others like Shadiversity do, but I haven't actually trained properly. We often wear hand protection, but none of us usually wear head protection, and for the most part we're careful to not hit each other in the head.
Please get some head protection if you seriously want to continue. It only takes a millisecond mistake to mistime a blow or thrust and you're looking at a concussion or a gouged eye.
About the point with the back, I assume he means that the back must not bend, not lean. The pictures from the manuals you showed, in all of them the back is actually straight... It's just inclined forward, but the spine is not bent, which I believe was the key point.
I don't have any sword fighting experience but it sounds like it is doable for me to show all 4 signs.
-I have a history in boxing, footwork (and using it to keep just out of the opponents reach) was my biggest strength there (this should help with both the rear foot and the straight back)
-I even respect my pocket knife, respecting a sword should be common sense
-I hold knives/table tennis bats and whatnot in the "fingering the guard" way already, since I feel like I don't get control while doing a hammergrip.
That being said I would probably stand out on a lack of blade control and/or lack of technique, since as I stated I don't have swordfighting experience.
So anyone with respect for the sword with a martial arts background has a chance of getting through this chechlist.
a good way to tell if someone is any way competent with the sword, is when they start to remove their pommel. didnt even have to watch this 24min video to tell you that.
Id love to test out moves and all on opponants, but the problem is that I dont have anyone to do it with :(
Exactly... There is a different.. Just between holding Larp weapons..
And going and holding SOME REAL WEAPONS... A major amount of differences
As someone who does both Kendo and LARP and practices with friends who do HEMA and Fencing:
You can bring concepts from martial arts swordsmanship (HEMA, Kendo, Fencing, etc) into LARP and adapt them successfully.
You cannot really bring LARP concepts into martial arts swordsmanship nearly as effectively.
The removal of the head as a target is huge.
The weight of the weapons (though maybe if you're doing something like Belegarath or Dagohir, the weapons are heavy enough)
The general caliber of fighters is not quite there. There isn't as much discipline in the overall pool of people you face off against. Most LARPers are there to play a game, not become experts at sword fighting (if they wanted that, they would be at a martial arts school). An exception can probably be made for participants of SKBC and other similar events.
Game mechanics play into LARP combat a lot. You're dealing with hit points, special attacks, defense mechanics, ranged attacks, etc. A much wider variety of scenarios than point scoring or tournament rules that various martial arts tournaments have.
The one thing that LARP really brings into play is large scale skirmishes and battles. Most sport based swordsmanship focuses very heavily on 1v1 duels. LARP helped me understand very well how to behave in a large variety of matchups as well as taught me how to attempt to coordinate groups of untrained fighters from leading small parties of 6-10 to well over 100. I don't think any other sport reaches those numbers aside from some high profile SCA events.
i might be wrong but by straight back he mean hunched over, you might lean forward but your back is straight with strong structure
I, personally, think that if you can pick it up, use it, and do the job with it, it works.
Skall, about 7:42. Notice that although their stance lean forward, their back are absolutely straight. They hinge forward using their hip, not by bending their spine.
Pretty much on covering basics, it is fine. However, I am with you on the overall of their particular practices and visible technique, weapons etc... It looks as sloppy as myself and friends "playing around" sparing, when we started actual weapons training fighting in the SCA(Society for Creative Anachronism). I'm still un aware of your particular knowledge of the group, of which I can always send different links to give better info, and not just my word(s).
As far as leg strikes are concerned what do you think about the old saying,"He who strikes low gets punished above."
Im sure there are people who have been in a real sword fight to the death. They just dont care about this youtube comment war, i believe. That is, if they have internet in the first place.
Anyone who uses swords in combat now probably have no actual training and would unironically be shit on by anyone with skill in hema
@@Nikotheleepic well, hema fights devolve into mindless flailing quite often, so I'd say chances are equal
Many people using the LARP weapons never learn that it takes just as much force to STOP the axe swing as it does to MAKE the axe swing, so they never seem to learn how to properly control weapons made from steel.
I would say Academic Dueling/Mensur is the closest thing we have to "sword combat" today. True, protective gear is worn, but full speed with sharp blades should count.
21:16 I don't think that's a grab, it looks like he has a LARP dagger in that hand.
I had to run it back a few times because it goes by so fast and the tip is towards the camera, but I'm pretty sure that was a Parry. Now, holding a dagger in front with a sword in back is probably STILL less than ideal for sword & dagger technique, but I'm pretty sure
he's not grabbing the opponent's blade.
Whether you take it negatively or positively, the comment was accurate. Modern hema has been learned from books and is not a continuous lineage. However much research and testing has gone into modern hema, and regardless of its quality, it came from books. That isnt negative or positive but simply true.
Lineage: People take up martial arts for different reasons, and some just really like the romanitic idea of lineage. As for whether that lineage confers some superior qualities to that martial art, or to what degree the lineage has changed over time, or whether that is good or bad, it depends on the art and shouldnt be addressed with generalizations.
Expert sworders: there are definitely hema guys who are quite arrogant about their expertise. Just recently i saw a vid of a filipino guy demonstrate rapier techniques he learned as a child in the 60s, and which had been passed down as part of an old eskrima lineage. Hema guy in the comments simply asserted that the techniques were wrong and that the 60 year old guy demonstrating should try them in a tournament. Ive also had similar experiences in person and been lectured on the pros and cons of eskrima by a hema guy who has never even tried it. Im not saying hema guys are arrogant in general, but that arrogant hema guys exist, and their particular brand of arrogance is not the same as the usual east asian 'look at my lineage' arrogance.
As for the other comments that stood out to me in the video: sparring, however violent or dangerous, is certainly not fighting, but training to improve. Fighting, on the other hand, is trying to win. If sparring were fighting then we wouldnt need 2 different words.
Finally regarding upright posture and voiding the leg: depends on the terrain, and if you void the leg properly then you wont lose power or balance even if your foot leaves the ground. Like a superman punch going backwards. You can even jump while voiding, and see this often in krabi krabong and eskrima.
I remember hearing about 2 guys who decided to do an honor duel in a park over some issue, this was several years ago
Let me tell you about getting a thrust to the face at age 14 and ending up in the hospital with a close call to losing my eye. Was super not fun. Always wear a mask
We had Larrping swords we built out of pcv and foam like normal but we filled the pcv with sand or mud whatever to get that weight behind it. It was also fun when swords exploded. We tried water... that worked real well... not
way back when I first got involved in reenactment fighting, my Master at Arms was an Olympic contender for saber, and had been raised learning kenjitsu from his grandfather.
During our first training session, he came to me and said "You study Karate? I can tell by your foot work. For now, just stick to what you know. You'll adapt as you need to."
the old pre-HEMA days, back in the late 80's and early 90's
As you say lineage doesn't necessarily mean a martial art is unchanged, nor does such lack or presence of change necessarily indicate current quality. What matters is whether the martial art is tested and proven.
Seiji Miyaguchi, who plays Kyuzo the master swordsman in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, never touched a sword in his life before getting that role. He looks pretty convincing, though!
I think the last duel in France was in the 1900's Between to statesmen, but that's an oddball and was considered ludicrous even then. And that's at least half a century ago ^^
Point is : yeah, finding someone who has been in a real sword fight is night impossible
I don't want to be that guy, but Skal said "finger the blade" at some point in the video. It made me chuckle.
You may be surprised on some larp swords. I have used a few that had similar weight and balance to longswords
So much bickering in martial arts can be solved by just fighting. Dojo-storming used to be so much more common. I get it, the distances that we can now cover with the internet make it impractical. But there's gotta be HEMA clubs within 50km of those guys.
For Further reference pertaining to the heel coming up, refer to Meyer 1570, LS plates A and L, dussack plate L, rapier plate G, and quarterstaff plate G, Sometimes you need to cut to an opening that would be "counter" to your footwork, unless you bend your knee, turn your front foot the outside with your heel coming up, This allows you to rotate your core giving your cut power. It doesn't take much training to be perfectly balanced during this technique.
th-cam.com/video/9XmI4WYqvqw/w-d-xo.html
I will say that it depends on the LARP sword. Mine come out heavy the way I make them (not on purpose, just because I like to balance ether hilt to make them less floppy and feel more like an actual well-balanced sword). That being said, I have no idea if that's as heavy as a real sword, but it's definitely heavier than most of the swords in my LARP. My LARP is also a full-contact sport that requires significant force, as opposed to the common light touch of many other LARPs. We also pad our weapons more than most, to prevent things like stabbing into eye sockets, excessive bruising, breaking bones, etc. So ours tend to be slightly heavier than generic LARP swords, anyway. Granted that does also make them large and chunky, but hey 🤷🏻♂️.
I like the amount of restraint Skall has here, that is respectable.
My life for Aiur!! I was thinking that the whole video xD
Love the Starcraft shirt! 😜✌🏻
I could also agree with this guy... But my brain instantly regrets to take seriously someone with a larp sword in the hand, it is just impossible for me
I spar full contact with sword and spear we use protective gear and have been doing this for this for 20 years
Buy the way I am a big fan of your channel I am using my grandmother's youtube do to me being skater bran
This guy: "Certain weapons need to be held certain ways in order to be used correctly"
Me, using a reverse grip to lure an opponent in before using it like a spear: "I completely agree."
6:40 Practice makes permanent and you may be practicing perfectly wrong
the thing is is that you must realize that martial arts are actually made to train for the use of weapons. So before you pick up a sword or any other weapon, know some basics and be able to practice the form of a martial art such as karate and when using the sword allways think of it as fighting in that stance.
Maybe someone from the WW1is still alive and did combat, but you are correct that is the kind of of question that provoque really high emotional answers, bu it's totally meaningless. Politicians are very good at creating their "framing questions"
My 6 years of Ringen saved me in an altercation much more readily than my 20 years of martial arts with a "lineage". I like to think this says more for the old books than it dismisses my esteemed sensei.
It'd be cool to see you work with
Sellsword arts channel.
Again in regards to larp fighting here in the UK Head shots in general are legal BUT ALL BLOWS ARE MEANT TO BE PULLED. These two guys fighting full bore with no pulls are fricking unsafe. Also two handed weapons like the axe shown here are meant to have two hands on at all times when being used so people dont eat a full speed swing with a 6 foot lever (Reach +weapon) and get knocked out or other injuries
I think you misunderstood his point about the back. He said whether their back was straight, meaning that they do not curve the spine or hunch, not that their overall stance should always be straight and upright, just that their back/spine should be.
edit: I agree with everything else you said
In last year clashes between India and China in the Himalayas clubs, knifes and sword like objects were used, as part of the area was subject to a no firearms agreement... If conflict should resume there I could see actual sword fights coming back...