HEMA Injury Survey Results

[@danielma2404]

I find it telling that the vast majority of comments on the HEMA Alliance page are focused on criticizing presentation style rather than thoughtfully analyzing the 58 concussions or the 5% of injuries that were graded as 5 out of 5 severe. I think it speaks volumes to HEMA safety culture that when presented with actual data, the impulse is to attack, not even the messanger, but the messanger's font selection. Despite the critics, congratulations on this important work. I'm sure it took you a long time to compile, and hopefully some good will come of it.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

I'm so glad you said this. It reflects how I feel right now. Thank you for your kind words. I hope we can approach this information how it is intended - raising awareness and pointing out something constructive we can all work on.

[@emceeunderdogrising]

This is a great subject for someone like me that wants to get into HEMA. My wife looked at me like I was crazy for wanting to get started. Apparently she thinks swinging swords at people is dangerous. Have no idea where she got the idea. But in all seriousness I am getting older and getting into a sport where everyone seems to have gotten a injury at least once makes me hesitant to be honest. Though contusions seems to be par of the course. They can sometimes be serious. That's also a lot of head injuries. No matter what the level head injuries are almost always serious and I'd rather be able to say my grandkids names by the time they exist. Found this video by researching the prevalence of injuries. I'll take it as a good reason to take safety extremely serious.

[@Carlos___Rz]

Thanks for this! Really beneficial! One thing you might want to consider doing, and I think you can do it with the data you already have, is to do some crosstabs! One that comes to mind is seeing how severe different injury types were by crossing injury type or injury area by injury severity. Could help to empirically identify the most high-risk injuries.

[@417hemaspringfieldmo]

Questions that may help round up data in future: Age group?How long have you being practicing/training in HEMA?How often you train? How often you spar? How often you compete on tournaments?

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

Great input! Thank you so much!

[@historyandsabre]

Hey Miles, Thank you for all the effort you are putting into this! I also responded to the survey and I thought your questions were pretty well thought out for a first sample survey. I'll definitely be following along ! :) All the best, Peter

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

Delightful! Thank you Peter!

[@LeafNolan]

If you were to structure another survey, I think it would be beneficial to tie the injury to the weapon, that way you can drill further down into the data. So for each injury they list, almost have them go through the survey again on the injury. That way you can see “oh rapier fighters are getting injured on their left hand more than their chest”. Data like that helps event organizers change their rules to make fighting safer and cleaner.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

Great advice! At this point it's really up in the air if I continue, I'm not convinced the community wants that, I guess we'll see!

[@LeafNolan]

Maritime Sword School Moncton I think the community does want that, and I think some of the better ones to reach out to are Sean Franklin and SwordSTEM as their whole purpose is the data behind these things.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

@@LeafNolan Sean Franklin is the ideal person! I've been hoping he would come out of the woodwork!

[@LeafNolan]

Maritime Sword School Moncton He’s not the most active I’ve seen on social media, better to go to him directly

[@airnt]

i am pretty surprised that HEMA practitioners are not at 100% of 'injuries' if bruises count as 'injury' this really means that it is quite skewed in some way (misunderstanding of the questions by the subject and so forth) it is also intersting to see how much less people are accpting risk in different sports, like riding, for instance. (losing fingers is fairly common, and losing friends as well)

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

I think this preliminary survey really gets the mind working and hopefully sets the stage for some professionals to take on a more scientific survey.

[@adamcousins6996]

thank you

[@aggroalex5470]

Hey Miles love your content. I study saber but I see a real future in smallsword as a bridge to HEMA as an Olympic event. Because it can be on a wireless score keeper and because you can wear sleeker astheticly pleasing gear it is to a marketing eye more accessible. I think if given enough attention smallsword with grappling could be quite the event. It has enough in common with modern fencing to draw from that pool and is seen as lower risk to the untrained eye to recruit students to HEMA. Of course HEMA hivemind would have to show smallsword in a "cool" light which I don't think enough of us do. But it could open up the rest of HEMA to a very large audience do to perceived accessibility.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

That's interesting, we are actually starting to work on smallsword at our clubs. We want to see if there is interest in a lower impact option like smallsword. It's an enjoyable style with a high skill ceiling.

[@aggroalex5470]

@@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513 Not sure how close I am to your locations but I am not so very far from Nova Scotia. Would be cool to see your club once travel is permitted. I do see lots of promise in smallsword and wish your club the best with it. I hope to soon be a promoter of smallsword in some capacity.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

@@aggroalex5470 that sounds great! Looking forward to meeting!

[@jonnybeairsto3961]

Great job Miles! Keep up the great work buddy 😃👍❤

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

Thanks dude!!!!

[@timharris130]

Good stuff! Glad to have taken part.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

Thank you so much! It was really great how folks showed a lot on interest in this.

[@ianfleming446]

1/3 requiring after-care... wonder how many more required it but ignored it...

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

I totally agree, Ian!!!

[@jmlandels]

Thanks for doing this Miles!

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

My pleasure, Jennifer! If no one does it, it'll never get done! : )

[@jeromepaupe]

Ratio of injury is way lower now than in the past. The poll didn't allowed to record data regarding date.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

I agree! The lack of time period is a critical issue with this survey. To really track trends, the standard even seen in other sports is yearly reporting. That's a big ask for such a disparate community.

[@417hemaspringfieldmo]

Which trainers you use commonly: some sort of synthetic trainer? some sort of wood trainer? rattan? other martial arts trainers like shinai? Aluminum? Steel?

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

More great stuff! Thanks!!

[@417hemaspringfieldmo]

Also Pre-existing conditions and/or injuries before practicing/training in HEMA for the first time? General physical condition? Any experience on other combat/contact sports and/or martial arts previous to starting HEMA?

[@simonbamping6897]

Well done. An important start.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

Thank you, Simon! I really appreciate the kind words!

[@KnightedDawn]

FWIW, a laceration could be a simple scrape caused by fencing in a tee shirt. I wouldn't necessarily consider it an "extreme" wound. I've gotten several over the years, none of which I would consider remotely medically significant.

[@esgrimaxativa5175]

After watching this, I am convinced that "epee de combat" (19th century/early 20th century first blood epee duels) was a safer activity. I suspect first blood saber duels of the period may have been just as "safe." Beating each other with crow bar like weapon simulators might turn out to be more dangerous than actually taking off your shirt and agreeing to fight another man with a pointed epee or a slim bladed saber. Go figure. I was quite surprised about the level of injuries in competitions versus training you mentioned in your video. I think you said 29% in tournaments, which for me is really high. If we count the total time a person practices in a club every week (4 hours? at best) compared with their time in a competition, the 29% you give, is actually quite high. I doubt very much that the amount of reported injuries is proportional to the amount of time spent sparring in one's club. Thank you for sharing this. I look forward to more data on the subject and encourage all who have read this far into my comment to seriously consider less protective gear and even the possibility of using sharps for their sparring. We can learn a lot from what happened to Filipino martial arts beginning in the early 80's /late 70's when they invented their protective gear. Winning at Modern WEKAF has little to do with the techniques taught by the FMA masters, who sparred with rattan sticks and no protective gear. Sometimes, the best way to prevent injuries might actually be increasing the risk of receiving them.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

Thanks for watching and weighing in, that's a really interesting perspective. I totally agree with you about calibration in tournaments, and I actually think that high level karate really shows an amazing blend of speed, appropriate force, and technique. I'm really interested in what you say about FMA, I really don't know much about that world.

[@esgrimaxativa5175]

@@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513 FMA is a strange world. I am not Filipino nor do I have any connections with people of Filipino descent. What I can say is that I have about 9 or 10 books on the matter and even trained in it for about a year or two. I used my sport saber fencing skills to win a FMA tournament once and they were not very happy about it. This particular event was quite strange in that it allowed muay thai style kicks. Normally, they fight three one minute rounds of continous fighting and there is no physical contact other than the checking hand. There are some formats that stop after a hit as in fencing, but these are less common. Given that the protective gear makes you basically unphasable by a stick strike, it typically turns into a pillow fight scenario. This particular event was rather unfair in that the typical FMA body armor isn't very good against kicks to the body, so the kickboxer they paired me up against had a bit of an advantage. He basically, ko'ed his opponents in the preliminary round with repeated kicks to the legs and body. I just hopped around and whacked the shit out of the kickboxers legs with my stick every time he tried to kick me and then in the second and third rounds, I snap cut him with the stick while avoiding his rather wide blows. That said, I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned when looking at FMA, especially aspects such as over zealous patriotism, inhibiting them from accepting a very evedent reality that Spanish Fencing influenced their arts or the very common "crabs in a bucket" mentality which pits all their different schools against each other, forgetting that together they might actually do better. I think the Dog Brothers group did a lot to open them up but then again, those guys too, need to take away the mask and hockey gloves for their bouts because most of the time it just ends up being mma style ground game but with sticks. I hope that helps and I hope I piss off some people too. If any FMA practitioner is offended by this, I will be willing to resolve it with sharp blade in hand but I will use a sharp saber or perhaps a rapier and dagger against your "espada y daga."

[@rogerhobden7670]

HEMA novice there: Are injuries systematically monitored yearly by every HEMA organization in each country according to activity (tournaments, courses, etc.) ?

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

They are not! I think we'll see that start to develop as the sport aspect develops. Modern HEMA is still pretty knew, and is defined figuring things out as it goes. I think that given time, injury reporting will become more of the norm.

[@417hemaspringfieldmo]

On injury severity?: Skin breaking? profuse bleeding? organ bruising? permanent damage? length for recovery after injury?

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

More great stuff!

[@SamStuart07]

Fab Miles!

[@bradpineau]

Science! It's cool.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

It really is! I suck at it! But it's the best!

[@derekgill8161]

I hope this isn't seen as taking a jab at the presenter, but are these results available in text and graph for anywhere? It would be very helpful to have the information available in writing so that it isn't necessary to skip through the video and pause to view the tables.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

I'll release the data in .pdf in due time! Part of this for me was trying to release the information into the wild in a constructive way. I am really worried about someone taking this information out of context. I feel that initially releasing these responses in a brief graphical format could have resulted in an alarmist atmosphere, where people would jump to conclusions about the information. By initially releasing in the form of a presentation, it allows me to provide the context of the information, being forth coming about the information not being scientific, and pointing out the flaws I see in each item as it is presented. I hope that helps you understand why I chose the current format. Thanks for your comment!

[@derekgill8161]

@@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513 I think I understand your thinking but I'm not sure I follow. I work in clinical research and this is counter intuitive to me but that may be due to my constant skepticism in data. I'm accustomed to the standard publication formatting which typically contains sections discussing the shortcomings or potential issues with the data collection process and conclusions that can be drawn as well as potential misinterpretations. The risk for misinterpretation is inherent in any publication of data unfortunately, but providing raw data points with zero interpretation tends to allow for different approaches to the data to come to light for discussion (diversity in context and concern). Again, not a jab, just a stylistic difference.

[@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513]

@@derekgill8161 I specifically set out not to draw conclusions. I think that's a path fraught with peril, not least of which is attempting to deal with backlash for said suggestions. Look at the current situation: there is absurd backlash from a small group for presenting this information in the least alarmist way possible. I specifically eased people into this information, and the HEMA alliance Facebook group managed to detail the conversation. It's a rare gift! Imagine how I could have structured this message around that 95% injury statistic, or 1 in 20 injuries being rated as severe. Imagine how that would be interpreted and construed. Imagine that on day one that data is running rampant with zero context. Imagine if I dared to suggest solutions! Calamity! All that is to say, there is no format that pleases everyone. I've been very clear that this is not scientific and that I am actively seeking out professionals to take on the work. Maybe this is an opportunity for you to apply your skills to your hobby!

[@derekgill8161]

@@maritimeswordschoolmoncton6513 I appreciate your efforts here. Your intent is understandable but some constructive criticism from having reviewed thousands of publications and trials; If you put out data, you can preface the data with the context of the cross section of the survey population. Anyone with experience analyzing and interpreting data knows that the numbers without their identifier don't mean anything. The unfortunate flaw of publishing any kind of accessible data is how easily it can be turned into sensationalist misinterpretations. Backlash should be expected regardless, but that is why a Discussions section is so helpful if you are aiming for a publication. Again, no jabs taken from my side, but this release format tends to stir a lot of backlash in most cases as people want to take a look at the data at their own pace prior to a discussion on it. Thanks for your response.

[@KnightedDawn]

I agree with@@derekgill8161 here. I actually think this release format encouraged a lot more negative feedback than an article would have-unfortunately, the video here makes it much easier to take the data out of context, since it's much harder to look directly at the data this way. I think it's a great effort, and a valuable contribution, but a very poor choice of media for this kind of project.