HEMA at Home - Traversing Footwork

The ongoing series teaching Biitish Military Swordsmanship from home. This is working from Roworth (1798-1824), and is for all military swords used on foot, including Broad sword, sabre, spadroon, hanger and cutlass.

[@KirkWilliams300]

Often overlooked, you can have all the skill in your arms, but without the footwork, you aren’t grounded. Definitely some good notes on practicing this

[@KlausBeckEwerhardy]

As somebody who does a lot of baguazhan I found this quite interesting, because there the zick-zacking or the circular walking for dodging and striking is a bit more complicated. The thought while watching your new video was: How to teach this to a mixed group of left- and right-handed people. In both cases the foot always goes outward gif you set your right foot to the right you obviously go to the right and vice versa - no matter whether it is in front or in the back. It reminded me of driving in the UK as a continental. If yo drive a left-steering car on British roads it is difficult to remember the different right of way at every crossing. If you rent right-steering car you simply have to remember: 'When I have to look a long way through my car - across the passenger-space - the other car normally has priority at the crossing. Thinking 'left - right' mixes up many people as I often observe in martial arts or orienteering training. Just a thought your video started in my brain.

[@AcademyofHistoricalFencing]

How to teach lefties is an interesting one that we often re-consider and re-evaluate. In terms of the style being taught, they would have no choice but to learn right handed, as it was a military disciplined system. Being left handed was also looked down on throughout a lot of European history, and so they were compartively rare. Manuals give no insight to teaching them as it is not to be encouraged, so much so that one Broadsword master declared they should be bread out of humanity! Now, we don't stop people using their left hand these days, and so how to do it? Well really there are two ways, you can have the left handed swordsman follow the same lines of movement, so for example when delivering cut one, both left and right would cut along the same line. Or you can have the lefties mirror everything, which is our prefered method because the body mechanics remain the same.

[@theholeyknight]

This is a great video. Thank you for the time you're putting into this. I have a question about terminology. Is the fore-traverse specifically to the left, or is it an inside direction (specifically for lefties)?

[@AcademyofHistoricalFencing]

There are no instructions for how a leftie should do anything as it was generally frowned upon. But our system is to always have a leftie do a perfect mirror of what a right hander would do, so that the body mechanics stay the same. you don't need to worry about inside or outside here because it will simply depend whether you fight a right or left handed fencer. So just mirror everything.

[@jf5078]

Looks like Thomas Page's diagram put in practice. Do you think Roworth used this alot or is it just something he tacked on the system as an option?

[@petereduardojaimezcontrera6357]

You probably know that the illustration looks like those belonging to: "La Verdadera Destreza" the Spanish system of fencing. Cheers

[@craighosey96]

It was lifted directly from Thomas Page's The Use of the Broad Sword (1746).

[@grsshppr7659]

You are beginning to move well. Have your studies uncovered any warnings related to training footwork? If you start to notice that the tempo of your subconscious stepping in place begins to increase, or if you begin to get restlessness leg symptoms when sitting or lying down, or if you just decide it is not optimal to always have the empty leg bouncing up off the ground, I can offer a few simple training techniques designed to alleviate. Unless your system has them, of course. It does get worse, btw. You've already learned how to hold an internal tension so as to offset the sword's weight/momentum and you've connected your hands to your feet with similar internal tension. One must learn how to turn that tension off on purpose; it is not a skill just given when one learns how to turn it on.

[@eddard9442]

What system do you do? i want to better understand what you are talking about.