Lovely blade. (the SIGI maestro) Thank you for the review. I really liked the Pummel and leatherwork on the hilt. For me, aesthetics help me connect to them. If I am going to dance with a sword, I want it to be elegant and flow well with me.

3:21 It looks like you have 30cm cross guard. You can pick 28cm now in the constructor when making a sword to order. So 1cm shorter on each side :)

Love the dancing!!! Do the shag in your next video! 😅

There’s nothing in this video against historical fencing for kids - only bad coaching. Almost every sport at kids’ level is run by volunteer parent coaches outside of the more “elite” end. There’s absolutely no reason to believe historical fencing would be any worse for kids than other sports and there isn’t really an argument put forward in the video. My HEMA instructor is a teacher. Guy is 100% able to do everything you said in this video but kids still should stay away?

Look amazing. People coming together to enjoy nature, connection and fencing. @04:46 Bild work with slippers 😂 I just love it

1:22 What do you mean it's just a tool?! Do you not get excited when you buy yourself a new electric drill or power saw? 😆

I dont wanna be bitchy, but isnt the point to travel from one Hengen to another, while executing winden? I cannot see the Ochs and Pflug. In addition, the footwork and sword manipulation seems not really coordinated. Sorry to say that, but please take it rather as a question or point for your answer. Thank you and all the best in your path!

Wish my club did, we did some games around Christmas time with masks and wooden/foam swords. Most fun I’ve had at the salle. Applying basic principles my class had learned over the previous 6 weeks in a contact game against senior students. Now we’ve spent the last two or three months doing drills. It’s good to know things like this, but it’s only so interesting or educational for a short time because if my partner isn’t allowed to move in a natural way or try to counter me I can’t see what learning I can attain. Like I don’t feel I need to practice winding when neither of us are trying to hit the other for 3 sessions you know? I’d rather do one session practicing the movements then try apply it in a full contact setting naturally. That’s how I learn, hands on.

We also do sparring games, not too different from this, right from the first class. Have been from the start. Fantastic way of presenting this!

Hey Anders, interesting video :) I agree with what you say, yet in my club we do things in quite a specific way. Students enroll by joining a once-a-week beginners course that lasts 10 weeks, to learn the basics of the German longsword system. During these 10 weeks, they will have "sparring games" popping up during various classes (games with cuts, thrusts, winding etc) but they don't get to do full contact steel sparring. So in a sense, they do get some "competitive games" where they try to hit their partner without getting hit, similar to your post it game, but i don't think I would count these are full sparring. At the end of their 10 weeks beginners course they officially join the club and they can join all advanced classes, in all the traditions/weapons we work on. And they can spar, including full contact sparring with steel (we have loaner protective gear for them). Also, during advanced classes, we always keep 15 to 30 minutes of free sparring at the end of the class, so a beginner who joins his first advanced class immediately after finishing his beginners course will get some sparring. In a sense, we don't have our beginners do full sparring from day one, but we also don't let them wait 6 months or a year like some clubs do. Btw, I hope Battles in the North went well, from the videos and photos it looks like it was a great event, I was at a tournament in France on that weekend but maybe I'll show up next year, and if you want to come to our tournament in September, you're more than welcome :) Colin M.

Did you read and understud the original Text?

Thank you for your channel, it’s very enlightening! I have been attracted to historical fencing for some time and am thinking 2023 may be the year I take the plunge and actually start classes. You make a good case in this video 😊

Awesome interview, nice getting to know more about Orlando's past and glad the pictures were used :)

By participating in duels, we accept risks. The main thing is that both participants understand this risk equally. I am a supporter of different types of sparring both in protectiv gear and without it. And within reasonable limits. A mask is, in my opinion, an obligatory element. It will prevent broken teeth or a gouged eye, i.e. irreversible injuries. However, a duel without protective equipment significantly increases the sense of responsibility. Missed strikes cease to be free of charge. After all, fencing is the art of striking blows without receiving them.

Teaching the Mohawk Tribe European Martial Arts? Sounds like he's definitely BASED in Canada. InB4 accusations of Colonization.

Nice! Orlando thanks for putting up with Anders for over one hour, an Herculean feat.

The main question you should have asked him is why is he called Orlando? That's not even in Canada!

My coach told me not to fight without gear in the club for safety and legal reasons but encouraged me to do it at home with my brother

Amazing 👍👍👍, good training, videos Keep it up May i also know, 1. There are individual in the video wearing blue color jacket fighting become the center of target one by one with other HEMA practitioner, what brand and model name of the jacket? 2. What kind of color does that individual wear? Blue or Blue Navy or other color? Thank you and appreciate it 😊

Another important reason to get into historical fencing is the black fencing gear which looks so much cooler than its white sport fencing equivalent.

10/10 would bang❤

Well put Sir!

I share your sentiments for fencing to the highest bleeding wound. It is my favorite fencing format as well.

I just fight like a train.

This is very similar to how we drill the same concepts. If anything I would recommend keeping the point more forwards when practicing your defense/counters, and then also work to prevent your partner from cutting around to the other side. This really forces them to make a big abnehmen to get around which you can counter with some variation of zucken most of the time, or if they zwerch, you zwerch under theirs.

Great insight, thank you!

Can we consider a specialist also who studies only one treatise? Always good topics, I miss your podcast 😁

If possible at all-please do a review of sigi King and discuss your opinion on the "sparring-safe" blunts or similar concepts? Thanks in advance.

Been doing this so long that I've been mistaken for a specialist in some weapons (not all at once, of course). 😆 I have seen the specialist guys many times try to pick up a different weapon and get frustrated that they suck at it. I wonder if sometimes they just forget how it was when they started in their specialized weapon. 🤔 I believe that it's more fun to learn different things, Ringen, Messer, longsword, dagger, staff... And isn't fun the primary reason we do this? Find YOUR fun! Thanks, Anders.

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Just look to the sources. Why does schietelhau not seem to "work" in sparring or tournament? The answer is simple when you take the mask off and fence blossfechten. It does work, just not in the context of a game. Further, and even more interesting imo, in lekuchner's messer this cut also exists but not by that name. It's called the "danger cut". Context around that is so revealing. Our masters knew. This is an old argument. If you discourage bloss and no or low gear fencing among your more experienced students you are teaching them a sporting game, which only has similarities to the Art.

"Masters would be very confused by this shaming of risky behaviour." Meanwhile, verdadeira destreza was born out of shaming risky behaviour :D prioritizing disarms rather than wounds, whenever circumstances allow it.

I see this sentiment a lot (that we should not fence without gear). Sorry, but if you're afraid of pain, don't be a sword fighter. My club fights light on a regular. Just fencing masks and thin gloves. It brings out a better style of fencing without stupid rushing in with langort for a thrust (which I see a lot of in most HEMA tournaments. If we get hurt, we get hurt. We all signed a waiver when we joined the club. We're all grown ass adults. We knowingly put ourselves in danger of bones breaking or possible death (with an accidental broken blade during a thrust). Yet I see all this shaming against fencing light. Shit I used to see you and Axel in old videos fencing just wearing masks and gloves. And you guys are fine. Now I'm not saying protection is bad. I love my AP light. But there's just something you can't replicate in full gear when fencing. It just feels "real" when I fence with only a mask and work gloves. HEMA is going in a direction that I'm not all too fond of in general. Like a lot of new people saying the old manuscripts are useless. And that we have a living tradition now in HEMA, and have no need for source material anymore. Sorry, but that just takes the H out of HEMA. I'm rambling. Sorry.

Every system needs innovation. Higher risk is also higher risk; higher risk of injury which leads to not being able to train, risk of injuring another person, which is always fun... Then again there is hitting hard and there is hitting hard; getting hit by someone with technique and speed hurts like hell, but it is controlled. It will hurt, leave a bruise but that's it. Getting hit by someone who saw an opening and decided to go for it with all might is something different. And will people bring this to its natural point, pun intended. Fight as Fiore fought with only gambesons, gloves and sharp swords. Would that not be the ultimate test, the hardest contact? I remember a video of a German group basically doing this and was shared as the "Don't do this"-video. Personally I would say that there is hard hitting and then there is hard hitting. There are people in my group i would gladly spar with in limited gear; mask, gorget and gloves. Although I would gladly do this because I know they will not see a hit to my ribs and go "I will help his consciousness" and just go for it. Personally I believe there is a zone somewhere between no/light contact and the hardest contact. You can't see a person fall to their knees gasping for breath after a stab to the throat protected by three layers (one of them hard) and try to claim that competition doesn't go for hard contact. Glorifying wounds, glorifying violence to that extreme that you risk being maimed is, let's just get it out there, stupid. Why? You either do what the German group did and truly cut your opponent up and get cut up yourself. Or you do it in so controlled circumstances that the there is no real risk for serious injury and you do it only for the bragging rights of a tiny scalp wound, so is it really that hard hitting? Are you even trying to get a proper cut in? Probably not because you only want to wound, to get a tiny speck of blood to appear. Personally I would say around half my hits in sparring or competition would be fatal, but we have gear.. so we can go for a beer afterwards and not mourn the sudden passing. There is a certain lack of fear for the blade, we see suicide charges, hitting knowing very well we will be hit in a lower scored place and that is something coaches should focus on for it makes for better fencing. I don't want to miss practice, or work, because of an easily avoided injury. Then again, we are adults and adults get to do whatever they want, even stupid things, within reason. PS: also fighting to the bloom is basically just cutting by proxy or a truly misguided display of machismo I thought we had grown out of. Just my view of it. Go forth and do... whatever.

Thank you Brother ! Many of us have not abandoned the approach. It is still alive and well in some circles. And produces excellent, controlled fencing. You hit on many valid points of contention today with regards to modern HEMA practitioners. Alas, I feel the majority of current folks training and competing today will not see the true value of fencing to the bloom, or even fencing with limited safety gear. And it will probably always remain a niche. Maybe it should remain there. Maybe that is where it belongs. Relegated to those few who seek a "higher level of consciousness" from all this. For those who seek it, will adhere to the required control and concise targeting. And after all, that is the type of fencer who you really want to compete against. I learned more about myself and my art from this approach, than all the 19 years combined of my studies. K.

All the points you made here are totally valid. I don't disagree with any of them, but I'd like to take the conversation in another direction, by mentioning 2 things I believe would be beneficial for children from learning HEMA. Besides all the ''sport'' aspects, which I'm not qualified to discuss, I think getting into HEMA young could bring them some more cultural, philosophical benefits that could be helpful for their whole lives. - Learning to love learning, and learning to love History. While of course putting a XVth century fencing treatise in the hands of an 8 years old make no sense, HEMA trainig would be a great way to show children that History wasn't just a long series of dates, or boring classroom lessons, but also something more organic, more alive, something that people actually lived through in the past. Most children unfortunately don't like History classes in school, but as soon as you take them on a day trip to visit a local castle, you can see the awe in their eyes. The problem with the way History is taught to kids is that it's all very abstract. Kids would remember a lot more from their History classes if they could see pictures, historical costumes, songs, and martial arts from the past, among other things, instead of long tedious lessons and texts. Adding a bit of cultural/historical knowledge here and there during their HEMA practice could do wonders. In that sense, I believe having children learn historical fencing young could lead them to realise that History is cool. That could also lead them to love and embrace their heritage, but that's another topic. Overall, I believe it could just open their eyes to the fact that learning something new can be cool and fun. - Learning respect. While HEMA is far from being as codified as a lot of Asian Martial Arts, the HEMA community in its vast majority shares values of respect. Respect of the instructor, the sparring partner, the aversary in the tournament, the referee/judge. I have never once seen a HEMAist being bad sports (though I'm sure it does happen from time to time), throwing a tantrum, being openly arrogant and cocky, disrespecting or even assaulting someone like it happens so often in some other sports (football for example, but in many sports in fact). I believe children could learn a lot about respecting others (and themselves) from starting HEMA young, while still not having to go through the very high level of discipline seen in other Martial Arts. And I know that a lot of kids could benefit from that ;) These things of course don't contradict your arguments, but I thought they would be worth mentioning :) Colin

I have to disagree. Many coaches are barely coaches and small groups of kids aren’t hard to teach as long as you hold their attention, etc. I use foam exclusively with them when I do rarely teach younger students and I also make the terms easy to understand. Ex: a wide passing step becomes a candy cane because I want them to recreate the pattern. It makes it easier to watch a few students and ensure no one gets hurt even with boffers, masks, etc. No coach should be expected to be a personal trainer unless they have the credentials. And if we expect coaches to be able to provide the perfect development, we will only get a handful at best. Fencing class is for fencing. Lifting is for the gym, etc.

Agreed. I've been coaching WMA/HEMA for nearly 30 years and am often horrified by the quality of other coaching I see in this. For the first 10 years I only coached adults, because I felt I didn't have the training or experience to teach kids. I rectified that by getting the sports coaching training I needed. I am fortunate that I also have a teaching degree and understood what I was lacking, even though I started out miles ahead of others. I've been trying to tell people for years that they need to understand the things you mentioned in here (and more, besides). Most don't want to hear it, though. I'm not sure why that is, although I have my hypotheses.

This somewhat makes the assumption that, at kids levels, all coaches from other sports are professionals, which is also not true, certainly not where I grew up, and can easily relate to some of the coaching mistakes you mentioned regarding my own experience as a kid that practiced several sports (but mostly basketball - feeling stark differences in quality between coaches even of the same sport). And also that all historical fencing coaches are amateurs, and don't have a sport teaching background carried from other sports, which is also not true - there is plenty of clubs that have this "fixed". And bringing kids into the sport in this context would help historical fencers get better at teaching kids. This being said, there are plenty of valid claims in this video that make it a good video worth watching, I just wanted to add some more nuance to the conversation.

Was it always blows landed, or was it ever blows attempted? Blows attempted would make more sense to me than blows landed.

We will try this. So maybe 10 strikes and 3 minutes? Or something else?

I accidentally hit the like button!

Wicked video! Please make more!

Helpfull dwarf assistant

1:25:40 the screen shut itself down? haha Still problems with the 30 minute max recording time with the camera?

I love it, but the music shocked me ;D

Awesome!

Hi Anders, I know that this is off the topic of this video but I wondered if you or anyone in the fencing community you know have experienced any symptoms of CTE (dementia pugilistica), as more scientific research is confirming the dangers of repetitive mild traumatic brain injury in contact sports such as American football, boxing and ice hockey. I myself was a (Dutch) tournament longsword fencer for many years but never minded the risk. I could not find any sources on the internet (aside from one reddit topic) discussing this issue, and as you and Axel are the fencers with the longest tournament track record in the entire commmunity I am interested in what your ideas are on the risks in HEMA for developing CTE and whether you or anyone you know are dealing with symptoms. Thanks!

What was the book you were talking about in 1:06:50?

Just discovered this. Pretty cool exchange!