HEMA is BROKEN - Here's how to fix it

A lot of people seem to share the opinion that HEMA is inherently flawed, but most of the proposed solutions are ridiculous.
I'd argue that the actual solution to the issue is contained within HEMA and always has been.
Watch the video, let me know what you think.
The quote from Monte's collectanea is from Jerry Forgeng's transcription which you can purchase here: amzn.to/46pf5AN

[@strangletherobot3832]

I've been preaching this for years at my local club, and I'm glad to see that this is a problem that others recognize. I practice KDF, and though it isn't explicitly stated with KDF, wrestling is undoubtedly a basis for the system.

[@hailhydreigon2700]

I already posted this in a comment below, but, Lichtenauer says "Wrestle Well" in the very beginning of the Zettel.

[@Tkoutlosh]

This is why I think it is right to say there is a lot of laughably HEMA clubs... sad but true. But this happen to many MAs after all, only issue is, that it cannot be proven by HEMA tournament, this is why I think whole sport HEMA scene has mediocre effect on reconstruction and finding the truth, it can even have a bad influence..

[@willaumep]

Well all weapons have their lengh and their mesure. I see KD as more of tactical system that works accross mutiple weapon (open hand included), So you could say that for every aspect of KDF. i mean Ringeck clearly told us that werling is to bypass weapon and that the aim is the same as kodokan judo, pin the opponent long enough to stab him/her/ey. Even for Fiore, i am not sure that wrestling is the basis, rather than the easiest medium to demonstate/teach the concept/principles.

[@michaelbuelow9275]

I am a karate guy. Been at it for over two decades. What I have seen and experienced makes me think that this advice should be shared with the folks doing "stand up" Eastern arts, too! Brilliant video.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Thank you!

[@nighttimeaudio]

At the point in time I started Wrestling(Greco) I had been practising boxing for a decade. .Wrestling improved my boxing ALOT!

[@user-ey1hh1jl9s]

This video put me in mind of the time my sensei used to put aside to have us just wrestle. She definitely would agree with the sentiments and ideas expressed here, wrestling should be considered foundational training in any martial art.

[@methomps01123]

Man, this one hit home. I freestyle wrestled for a lot of years and still coach it in schools and I'm also recently the guy who's doing grappling at my local HEMA club. I agree a hell of a lot. You truly can't read those techniques without a solid foundation of grappling. Like, I'm working us through Ott and he says nothing about footwork but I feel completely comfortable filling in those blanks but a lot of the Ott stuff online is hopeless in its application because no one presenting is a grappler. I can see how the argument could absolutely be made that grappling should be a pre-requesite for HEMA. The real problem is at a place like our club is no one would stick around if we made them do a year of grappling first. People want to play with swords and getting a decent sized core of students to focus on the grappling (even in my city of 1.3 million) is just not gonna happen. Hell it's hard enough keeping a decent sized core of wrestling at my city's high schools.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Yep, agreed 100%

[@DctrBread]

they may change their minds if the results cannot be ignored

[@TheTenguwarrior]

I am a student of Katori Shinto ryu in the the line of Sugino Yoshio Sensei. An very old stil living japanese school of swordfighting. I found this video very interesting, as also Sugino Sensei always said "Taijutsu [lit. Body Techniques, meaning unarmed fighting] is the basis of everything". Seems like this is an universal truth.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

It may well be!

[@DinoOrison]

it is universal, cuz basically how would you run when you can't walk properly yet

[@kanucks9]

"Sometimes you can push yourself as hard as you think you possibly can, and find that you lose anyway." This was what stayed with me most from wrestling. For a while, i thought "I should have pulled harder, i could have gotten him!" But there comes a point where you don't believe you could have tried any harder, and you lost anyway. Very important

[@fredsmith5782]

Even though I haven’t done HEMA in years, I agree with everything you said. I always had an issue with the HEMA community in general when it came to things like athletics and conditioning. In my HEMA school, outside of the mma guy who just happens to like swords there was no emphasis of general physical conditioning and grappling.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

So often the case.

[@allengordon6929]

I had it real bad. A gym jock of a teacher. I wanted to learn ringen, rondel, rapier, and sabre. He only wanted longsword, longsword, longsword. The one person who should have been able to exmplify Dave's point...didn't. Story of my life.

[@jaketheasianguy3307]

Imagine Anti Grappling fencers when you tell them pushing or pulling people with the off hand is also a wrestling action. "Oh it's a sword fight so don't wrestle, just do this or that that's technically still basic wrestling"

[@brittakriep2938]

I am german, Brittas boyfriend, and a pure armchair expert. May be ten years ago, i visited an antiques Show. As , Highlight' from time to time there was a 17th century Style fencing Show. The speaker of this three persons group explained , what he and the two young ladies showed. The man clearly said: Fencing in 17th century was not this, what you see in Theater or Olympic Games! And showed, how fencers of those days used wrestling, grabbing opponents coat or belt etc., they did everthing which could hurt the opponent or stopped him moving. My personal oppinion: In Middleage and Renaissance wrestling was a normal addition to fencing, practiced also by Kings. But in second half of 17th century, represented by french King Louis XIV Baroque replaced Renaissance. And now a cultural Change came. Among high Class people everthing causing sweat, for example Work, became unfine. May be the reason why in 1717 last important book of traditional german wrestling was printed ( Note: Ordinary people could buy No books then , they had been to poor).

[@TheGraeme17]

As a guy who has dabbled somewhat in HEMA, I'll be honest and say that I'm personally more into pointlessly fannying about with swords than I am in actually learning how to fight. My club actually did quite a lot of closes and grips and pugilism and I hated those weeks, and I think they were the main thing that left me a 'dabbler' rather than a commited attendee. The simple fact is that I have a real-life job that I have to do to keep a roof over the family's heads and I can't do that with breaks and strains and it's harder to do it with black eyes and fat lips, all of which arose much much more frequently from the 'proper fighting' lessons than from the 'messing with swords' lessons.

[@periguersestocada9844]

We are a HEMA club from France (Périgueux, Dordogne) and we have been preaching it since our beginnings. We study Fiore Dei Liberi and no one can start longsword classes if they don't come to our wrestling classes.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Fantastic!

[@asa-punkatsouthvinland7145]

Interesting how my personal history repeats itself. In the early 2000s at a sword seminar I heard essentially the same message; wrestling is the basis for all fighting (this includes wrestling with dagger) then the sword is the basis of all weapons. Wrestling has the footwork, closing, controlling, etc. Some aspects are more expandable concepts others directly aplicable across all fighting.

[@bubbagump2341]

I certainly agree that learning to wrestle and fight barehanded is the perfect foundation for learning martial arts. Also, HEMA needs to be taught like any martial art, meaning that you need to teach the foundations/basics first. Drill the stances, guards, defenses and basic strikes till they are muscle memory before moving on to more complex technique. How good is a boxer if they don't learn fundamentals before you make them spar? Most HEMA "practitioners" don't even know how to do the equivalent of jabbing! lol

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Agreed.

[@WilliamKeloren]

it is.. all schools starts with basics and fundamentals

[@bubbagump2341]

@@WilliamKeloren Then most of those schools don't teach the basics and fundamentals very well . . .

[@WilliamKeloren]

@@bubbagump2341 Well i guess than there is nothing easier for you than to win some high level competitions. Go ahead, people in HEMA are friendly bunch and it will be great time. edit: I mean you can't start a martial art based around competitions and non-cooperative fights, that gains worldwide recognition and following. Without it being good at someting and bringing something new to a table. World doesn't work that way. (that is why a lot of arts are dying out... because, well we don't need that label, they get incorporated into something else... yet HEMA only grows bigger) And fundamentals makes fights. So not only the people will gladly learn from you if you know how to do it better. But you should also do really well.

[@DinoOrison]

people are always rushing to the fancy stuff skipping the basics xD

[@channingb2577]

As someone with several years of unarmed fighting/grappling experience (BJJ, Wrestling for MMA, and MMA) who came to HEMA and Buhurt after all of that, I will state my personal experiences. While I must absolutely admit that fitness and knowledge of measure, stance, footwork, and grappling in general are quite useful and important, it took me quite a while to be able to hold my own in longsword and sword & buckler with folks who had trained only HEMA. Was I able to sometimes pull off grapples that they didn't expect? Sure. But it didn't make me good at sword fighting. Even after a few years of HEMA, I still am not a significantly better fighter with weapons than those who spent an equivalent total amount of time training only with the sword as opposed to my unarmed plus armed training time. In Armored fighting, the translation of my grappling skills was much more readily usable and did help a fair bit from the beginning. However, there was a lot of modification that had to be done. I think there are a lot of ways to become a good fencer/sword fighter, and while a base in grappling is certainly useful, it isn't the only way to go about it. But all that is just one man's experience. Your mileage may vary.

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

This makes sense & matches how Icy Mike & Sensei Seth aren't great at fighting with swords.

[@TheCCBoi]

Amen, this is also the problem with a lot of kenjutsu/kendo schools. They don’t want to use their jujutsu/grappling when sparring.

[@henriquenakamura5752]

What I hear is that anyone that takes this MA stuff seriously eventually learns that grappling is king 🤣 “I swear it upon Zeus, an outstanding runner cannot be the equal of an average wrestler.”

[@EnglishMartialArts]

I haven't yet managed to find proof that quite is genuine, but I hope to God it is...

[@mgunnermusic]

This is a really interesting perspective, I'd never realised! As someone who's just started wrestling, it's also sobering to know that I'm actually just at the START of my "losing every single time whatever I do" phase... This video is a helpful motivator!

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Looking back that was a really great phase for learning. Once you start to hold your own, then start to beat people it becomes very tempting to spend more time winning than deliberately putting yourself somewhere you will likely lose. But of course then you don't learn...

[@josiasarcadia]

I've been a serious grappler for about a year now, (feel free to debate how seriously you take American grappling/wrestling/BJJ, my school is the best in a state that is known for good grapplers) and my approach to longsword is heavily informed by grappling and the understanding of positioning informed by grappling. Since I started doing that, I rarely grapple when I fence because I don't *need* to. I keep my opponents at bay because I know well enough what I'm doing with fencing now to do so. I might make a response video at some point (I don't fit the talking head niche and don't want to) but I genuinely do think part of the reason "HEMA" is dead as a concept is because it's a dead end in and of itself. We can't and will never recreate Fiore, Meyer, Danzig or Marozzo perfectly. That said, my coach's (and therefore my) approach is to ask what *KdF* is trying to say, not some dead guy, so he has been able to advance the actual approach of fencing in a way that isn't clumsy bashing or crushing distance to a shitty close over and over. Peep my channel, my progress speaks for itself.

[@WaybackFencingClub]

How blessed we are that instead of looking to the weapons of our time for military action; that instead we can pretend to suffer as soldiers of ages past with such imaginative detail without need nor fear of conscription. This peace is a gift and the study of the martial serves a somber reminder of mutual respect to all. God bless

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Indeed.

[@VitruvianSasquatch]

We crosstrain a fair amount with a judo class, and so are quite happy to close into grappling. We also don't do sparring with new students until they've drilled cuts/stances a fair amount. The issue is that it's very hard to have students come along to a HEMA club and have them be content to do wrestling for most of it - they'd just not come or go somewhere else otherwise. And once you are fencing, good technique wins more than anything else almost all the time, unless you close or are even at skill level, so most people don't feel a motivation to get good at both aspects. Again, the only solution we've found is to interleave them, so people get exposed to 2 sessions, one of fencing and one of grappling. Recruiting people is hard enough as-is.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Yes, recruitment is an issue.

[@roberthaines8951]

Traditional Japanese jiujitsu is a grappling art that was designed for the o poop moment on the yhe battle field when you have to fight unarmed against an armed attacker. Pretty obvious that grabbling and sword arts have been hand and hand for a long time and across multiple cultures.

[@marcelozerbini5411]

I trained bohurt and even went to compete in Italy in the Battle of the Nations for Team Brasil Hema has a lot of structural problems. One of them is that most people seem to be more interested in the academic aspects and the recreating of the technics, instead of actually practicing them to make them work. Not only that but I had a lot of arguments in my team because people simply weren't fitness! They were concerned about a small detail on how you should swing a sword but weren't running, doing push ups, pull ups, etc. Overall I think hema attracts people who consider themselves more cerebral then fisical (a way of thinking that I absolutely abhor, I'm a firm believer and defender of MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO) and that messes everything up.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

None of that surprise me in any way. Sadly...

[@ulysses8910]

O que "mens sana in corpore sano" significa?

[@badart3204]

@@ulysses8910excel both physically and mentally

[@marcelozerbini5411]

@@ulysses8910 it's in latim. "Strong mind in a strong body"

[@albertosmargiasso9585]

​@@ulysses8910 it's in Latin and its literal translation is "healthy mind in healthy body". Meaning if your body is healthy, your mind will follow

[@NuggetsForBrains5]

I am leaving HEMA after my next tournament. Not because I don’t love hema but because I love it too much. For the next 2 years I’m going to work solely on grappling. I’ll continue to study HEMA but I will exclusively devote myself to the grappling arts described in the books and I will practice my findings against experienced collegiate wrestlers and Brazilian Jiujitsuists. I hope that because of my hiatus from the armed art I can make it something better than it’s ever been

[@leonpeters-malone3054]

I'm not going to argue. Not at all. I'm in HEMA for the sword fighting and for the academics. I'm wanting to read the sources, discuss, debate and experiment. I want to see what happens you try stuff out. I also know that there's a gap in that. There's a context to the books that we're not training to the full extent as in the books. We're not training to kill, to have to defend ourselves against lethal intent. We're not using techniques with particularly lethal results. Which I will definitely argue is for the better. I do think that HEMA's trap is to fall into the trap of singular readings. Not just reading the sources in a single way, but working on a single source. When you're training a source, you're just training that source. In the case of Liechtenauer, part of the point of the master strokes is that those techniques aren't used against students with knowledge of. They're meant to be used against everyone else. If you're studying historic combat, yes, go ahead and learn a variety of things. Not just one source, on country. Learn some wrestling, some punching and kicking. If you're just learning rapier? Maybe not so much. Depends on what you want. There's your HEMA and then there's my HEMA. They're different, related, close and some of the time they intersect. Some of the time, they don't. Let's have the discussion to find how close they're are.

[@kevinlobos5519]

One of my favorite videos of yours up to date. I have been practicing kung fu quite intensively since december 2018 up to about the beggining of current year, 2023. The style I practiced had mainly striking and weapons, I sparred extensively in both, we had some grappling but it was very basic and 99% stand up wrestling. The only thing we learned about groundfighting was how to try and get back up as fast as posible. Back then I felt like a complete martial artist (so wrong I was lol) until the beggining of this year when I gave bjj a try. My training hasn't even been consistent or have I been training 3 or more days a week like I did with kung fu back then, but the handfull of months I already logged in make me see things SO differently now. Ever since day 1 of bjj I "discovered" new applications and perspectives for many things I have had learned in both unarmed and armed fighting before. I hope anyone that's from a non grappling martial art and it's on the fence about getting into a grappling art, finds a way to get over the fence and get in here with the rest of us. I can assure you'll be so much better as a martial artist in more ways than just grappling, and that while it may humble you and teach you that some of the basic wrestling you may have had in your previous style was poorly done, if you can take the ego blow as Oz said, it will in every other way improve your game and make you all the more capable in any aspect of martial arts. Fight teaaaam!!💪🏼

[@EnglishMartialArts]

It's like having your eyes opened!

[@tagg1080]

Too many "martial arts" schools have somehow gotten into an insane habit in claiming that wrestling somehow isnt the basis of human combat. Wrestling, is a basic feature of humanity, like developing language, it is a default human behavior in every single culture. I have been fighting this fight in karate circles for many years... good luck lol

[@ThatGuy182545]

I think the study of historical systems isn’t really about practical considerations. In that sense HEMA *is* a dead practice. You’re NOT ever going to find yourself in a situation where you are going to fight someone in real life, “for keeps,” with a sword. You can’t carry a sword day to day, and even if you CAN, you don’t and nobody else ever does either. If you were to engage in a fight with such weapons, you would likely end up in prison. HEMA isn’t a “dead” art because it’s not practically taught. It’s a dead art because it’s archaic and no longer useful. That being said, we can still study for the benefit of understanding our history and our ancestors. That is what archaeology is really about.

[@aaiidt5770]

I am looking to study Kenjutsu and this I feel is incredibly insightful and a powerful addition to where I going. Liked, Subscribed, and looking forward to the journey.

[@BeepBoop2221]

One thing that has annoyed me about HEMA is the substitution of techniques from other systems that have no historical or regional link to the background of HEMA. I.e A pretty high up guy in the HEMA community saying this technique is like this technique from wing chun.

[@twincreeks5856]

This is increasingly common, the E is ignored too often & some places like Reddit prefer to use "WMA" instead of HEMA to side-step issues of inaccuracy.

[@Maodifi]

Man this is so good!!!! It makes me wonder if other "broken" martial arts could have hidden solutions from within.

[@MarcRitzMD]

I really wished you linked the videos you were taking clips from because they intrigued me a lot. I am not sure I could find them

[@ArmchairViolence]

"Let go of the arrogant view that you must only use historical techniques to help you learn..." and start learning from modern combat sports? I feel like this agrees pretty well with what I said

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Well yeah, but I'm not gonna come right out and say that! 🤣 Plus I say to do it because of a medieval book...

[@ArmchairViolence]

@@EnglishMartialArts Alright, fair. 🤣 We are now perilously close to having a religious discussion. 😂 "We may have the same ethics, but yours are informed by modern, societal best practices, and mine are informed by the holy texts!"

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Oh, you know that video we talked about for here? I think you just nailed it...

[@charlesreed5839]

This is a fundamental truth. Not just for HEMA, but for martial arts in a general sense.

[@danielgrigg3426]

Done Judo for more than two decades now, only recently tried HEMA, haven't been able to go as much as I like because of how expensive the gear is. However when I have gone I'm always surprised how I'm able to keep up, and I think a lot of what you've said rings true, the fight IQ you get from wrestling is amazing. However another thing to keep in mind is unlike today, they couldn't train the same with swords as we do now. They didn't have the same saftey gear or injury treatment as we do now, so it could just be they recommended wrestling so strongly for safety reasons. I think the skill issue has is a lot to do with the crowd HEMA typically attracks, you tell a bunch of sword people they need to do hard cardio for 2 hours while under stress they're not going to come back next week. They just don't want to learn to fight.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

The safety issue is an interesting one, I'm not sure it's something that would have ranked highly in the middle ages, but it's a fair point nonetheless.

[@Nala15-Artist]

​@@EnglishMartialArts I found a quote from a (EDIT: I meant to say "Book of sayings") (1600s, i believe?) that said "... und ein Fechter ohne Beulen [ist] nicht zu gebrauchen.", "... and a fencer without bumps is useless." So this quote definitely expects people who fence earnestly to at least have bumps and bruises.

[@danielgrigg3426]

@@aa1589 you seem to agree with me but are defending it anyway? You don't have to say that about any other practical martial art or sport so why does arguing that for hema make sense. Go to any boxing, bjj, judo club and for the most part even people who have only been going a couple months will give you at least give you a hard time. Hema just doesn't have the same focus.

[@davewengraf7206]

Just to say - we train in Fiore, and spend about equal time on abrazare/wrestling, dagger and sword. It's also constantly pointed out by the instructors that Fiore teaches one system, so the same move appears in all 3, and in half-sword and poleaxe. The instructors all know at leastone other art.

[@strawbilly]

@EnglishMartialArts What video is the interview from Barnett from?

[@donovanmccain]

Really appreciate this video. It's helps solidify some of my own pondering. For example, I love training in Filipino martial arts, and I think they improve my ability as martial artist and swordsman which in turn helps me in my study of HEMA (especially systems that have pairs of weapons, i.e. sword and dagger). Why turn your nose at up at something that will make you more of the thing you are trying to become?

[@tsafa]

"Let go of that arrogant view that you must only use historical techniques to learn" -These are the wisest words ever spoken in HEMA. Historical Manuel's were meant for people that already knew how to fight. People should probably do a few years of wrestling, boxing and basic swordplay (fighting for control of the Centerline) before they look at historical manuals. People must also Embrace Brutality. Put on some boxing gloves and headgear and take a few punches to the face. FightTeam !!!

[@tsafa]

This is a video where I'm fighting with a Poleaxe and when we get tied up, I dropped the polearm and start boxing with the steel gauntlets. A punch to the face with Steel Gauntlet is deadly. A few years of boxing made this second nature for me. kzbin.infoskRTRtEWdns?feature=share

[@tisucitisin1]

I wanted to start HEMA since 2009. It's just that back then there were no clubs where I live and I wasn't a martial artist to start it on my own. So I trained kickboxing for 3 years, swimming for a year, MMA for a year, BJJ for 3 and a half years, and got a blue belt. Now that I'm finally in a HEMA club I see how all those things are influencing my progress with longsword. Sadly I don't have time and opportunity to cross-train BJJ. But I reached out to a HEMA wrestler from York and hopefully, he can help me to start wrestling sessions at my school, even if we did it once a month, it would be beneficial compared to not doing it at all.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Is that Chris from York?

[@tisucitisin1]

@@EnglishMartialArts yes, we met at workshop a couple of months ago. He helped me with some books and some tips, I'm hoping we can start incorporating wrestling in my hema club soon, so I can contact him again for tips, ideas etc.

[@SirKanti1]

I do agree with you. Wrestling is important to develop as a fighter I've been saying this to people for a while, but is wrestling important to be a HEMAist? When sparring days don't have crash mats, when tournaments don't allow for grappling, jocks, throws, etc. (Even a firm push could land you in trouble with the judges), and we don't know if the person we are fighting knows how to break-fall correctly or won't panic and arm bar us at full force, what's the immediate benefit to wrestling in the fight? And my school does teach grappling and wrestling, break falling etc. Nothing to a level where we could beat people from a local MMA or BJJ club, but we certainly have a reputation as "That club that likes to grapple" but we rarely ever get to use it fully. We get those intangible benefits, sure, but we can't do those throws we want too. All that being said thro, I do think that not grappling and wrestling is a bit of a unique selling point to some people. Someone who wants to do a martial art and not be punch, elbowed, kneed, thrown, chocked etc. I think if you force a beginner (who came to learn how to use a sword) to wrestle for 6 months before you give them a sword, your school isn't going to have any students stick around. From a business POV it's not a good strategy. Personally, I don't see why we can't have a bit of both. Introduce wrestling and grappling later than the masters would have but just to those who want it. Have no physical touch tournaments, and full on tournaments. Have some matts out at events for people to roll.

[@formlessone8246]

I think the issue is that even the historical masters couldn't give a definitive reason that they considered wrestling and grappling so important. It certainly was a common enough opinion in the medieval period that we should give it credence, but the question is what kind of wrestling? I don't think that just any kind of grappling will have the benefits that they list, especially if the system is too focused on ground fighting. The historical masters don't focus on it, and folk wrestling styles don't either. A lot of people suspect that the students of the masters would have already had some wrestling knowledge before studying at a fencing school, but if they started at a young age it couldn't have been something as violent as kampfringen. And historical artwork shows a lot of close grip wrestling in a folk context. My theory, based on watching Glima and trying to understand how such a strange wrestling system could connect to medieval Norse combat, is that the real reason they considered it so important was that it taught footwork. Footwork is notorious for being absent from a lot of the medieval manuscripts, while after a certain century, it's wrestling that is absent from fencing manuals. That doesn't mean fencers wouldn't have studied both even in the 19'th century, but I think there is a disconnect, and I think it must be a change in how they were training something essential to swordsmanship. And it doesn't get much more essential than footwork.

[@SirKanti1]

@@formlessone8246 Pietro Monte at the beginning of his 2nd Book goes into great detail about wrestling. Not only is it important for strength training but also control over one's body. It's an intersting read.

[@formlessone8246]

​@@SirKanti1that would make an interesting case for why the two practices might have dissociated towards the later centuries-- towards the 19'th century the physical culture movement really starts to take off, and it wouldn't be surprising if the main benefits of wrestling were supplanted by newer fitness regimes such as weightlifting and calisthenics. After all, if the wrestlers themselves are doing deliberate strength training to prepare for wrestling rather than the other way around, no wonder fencers and boxers stopped practicing grappling!

[@ruiseartalcorn]

Interesting views. Hard to disagree :) One of the systems that I practice is Pencak-Silat. It is very similar in many ways to Filipino martial arts, except that rather than learn weapons first, we had to develop a reasonable level of unarmed fighting before extending this to weaponry. I realise that your point was re wrestling/HEMA but it's kinda the same. Many thanks for a thought provoking video :)

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Very similar indeed!

[@mihokspawn]

What does wrestling have to do with sword fighting? Well the middle, and the ends too :)

[@Xzontyr]

This is extremely coincidental to what iv encountered just days ago. I got into a rather heated arguement with a HEMA practitioner over a throw technique that was posted on an mma channel. He figured he knew the bread and butter of it, and basically told everyone were all fools. I train in combat sambo. So I asked him to describe what he intended to do. Well, what he did was just make things very hard for himself and he's never encountered anyone that can use framing and counter grappling to their advantage. I seriously became a tea kettle ready to blow because I just wanted to help him out so badly and jump through the screen and say "buddy guy, let us break this down." But no, his ego filled with air, and he took off like a balloon with it to lands unknown. Been adding alot of catch wrestling to Mt grappling game. Some gems indeed. Mark hatmaker has some good content aswell.

[@robertfoley8414]

In my case, I'm pushing 69, I don't actively wrestle. However my brief soujorns into Judo and Kempo Karate in my younger, bendyier years gave me a foundation and insite to this thesis. Wrestling not only gives stamina, strength etc, but a.so simply how to fall! To be thrown or taken down, and to be abe to give back the same would make HEMA historically more accurate and safer.

[@warcreed5658]

Well done, good video. I never practiced HEMA, but I did study both history and other martial arts, so I think I have some idea. The problems I noticed in HEMA mostly came down to the community and the way it is practiced. In theory, HEMA cover all martial arts from the ancient Spartans to the modern SAS fighting styles. So it sounds kinda cool, who doesn't dream about learning the fighting styles of the best european warriors in history, like the Macedonians, the Romans, the Vikings and the Normans? However, in reality the community mostly puts all it's weight on the "historical" side, and is too restrictive about what they consider to be "historically accurate". In my country for example, they only use writen manuscripts, which we only got from the 11th century, the time that europe wasn't in it's best militarily. There are way too many scripts about longsword, and thus this is the most common weapon in HEMA, but ironiclly there probably more HEMA students practicing it today than actually people of medieval time using it, as it was far less common in battle than arming sword for example. As the community mostly don't accept re-inactments and archeological experiments, they stuck only with old scripts, which can't teach us everything by reading it. Every martial art I know has a perpuse. Mostly it is to make the student a better fighter so he can defend himself or perform some military actions. Some martial arts are designed to focus and work on the mind, and some are just to get points in the olympics. So in most cases it involves some modern changes if necesary. What is HEMA's goal? Is to learn how to fight or to learn history? Because you can't realy have them both by just reading a book. So to conclude, HEMA themselves sound cool as a base for lots of martial arts. But in practice, it too restrictive by the community. Maybe we should replace the "historical" with "enhanced" and all will be fine in time.

[@simonacerton3478]

This is absolutely correct historically . Its also quite useful to know how to grapple in case of a real world emergency and its liable be far more use to a person than sword and buckler

[@allengordon6929]

8:50 I don't think it's exclusively arrgoance, it's liable to be logistics. Some of us want all our fighting fix in one place.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Why wouldn't they be?

[@allengordon6929]

@@EnglishMartialArts My previous and only teacher used to harp on about wrestling foundations but never taught it. Though to be honest I think HEMA clubs sharing space with gyms (or just gyms teaching HEMA) would mitigate this problem as much as it can.

[@intheshadows1623]

I do practice BotN style combat for close to two years now, and we do wrestle as part of our warm up program in nearly every training. And it is optimal to build strength and endurance, like you said. But I did do a beginner course in Longsword at my local HEMA club, and those guys did teach wrestling and grappling in each of the trainings too. So I think it depends on the local HEMA club/ppl how the quality of your practice is. In order to get to fight more ppl, try to train with other clubs too...

[@Irishwhitewater257]

So good, I'm just starting with my local sword club and my sons BJJ club, this makes me feel even more stoked.

[@BlueMageWithSoulEdge]

YES! [Slow clap.] I got kicked out of my HEMA social club by saying something similar to this. The sword isn't apart from defense. There are huge chances the soldier that could afford classes and books bought more than one, and used all of them on the field, and shared with his mates, and if high rank taught his men. They were fighting for their lives and their families lives, I doubt they would call "foul" on a charge because the mount didn't use the correct grip and stepped out of bounds. More than Fight Team, English Martial Arts Team!

[@ZHADOMArchon-hy5gs]

Our school did no grappling training but allowed it in sparrin. This only resulted in bigger students dominating the smaller ones. You werent allowed to strike in grappling so it felt arbitrary and annoying,.as i wanted mainly practice sabre Cardio is the heart of all combat,.not wrestling

[@Stephen_Curtin]

I suppose part of the problem is that most HEMA practitioners train only once or twice a week. I mean ideally if people were training 4, 5, or 6 times a week then they could better split up their training days up like they do MMA gyms. Say sword practice Monday and Wednesday, grappling and dagger Tuesday and Thursday, and Spear on Friday, something like that. FIGHT TEAM!

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Yes, and that is a very important point. One that might make another clickbaity video! 😆

[@davidwhiteley3879]

Brilliant!! The wrestlers in most high schools usually have the best combination of endurance and strength of any athlete in another high school sport. I heard or read somewhere that a wrestler can win most any fight against a non-wrestling opponent by running around until his opponent tires and then come in for the win. I think many boxers use this approach as well.

[@kamillipa7679]

I'm here outside of hema bubble. As I'm doing kendo for almost 15 years I find it interesting that almost everything you mention important about wrestling is put at the forefront in kendo. Which makes sense, when you consider that original purpose of kendo was to keep samurai in mental and physical shape in the time of peace.

[@ShimmeringShamrockSharkey]

I'm a former club level wrestler who now does Hema. It's super important to have the ability to close with a opponent that is out pointing you and give them something else to worry about. Now most events here (Canada) won't let you ground a opponent, so I stick to the elbow pushes or feed them the pommel

[@BernasLL]

My club doesn't have HEMA wrestling, and going hard on giocco stretto is mostly forbidden, but the reason is not one of the ones mentioned, and is in fact the opposite of downplaying wrestling: If your instructor isn't pro at wrestling, there's a very good chance he's going to get you or somebody else hurt. Good fencing instructors that lack wrestling knowledge, are also good enough to keep it out of your HEMA class, for your own sake. This being said, from time to time we do get other instuctors to come in and give us lessons on that, which is a lot of fun!

[@JK-cd6zr]

If we still lived in the middle ages, I would agree. But now, I don't think swordfighting is really all that important. HEMA is bigger than ever and there's nothing wrong with it. People are going outside, getting some excercise, making friends, and there are businesses thriving in a new industry. That's more than enough reason for it to exist. If I cared about efficacy then I wouldn't be doing HEMA in the first place. I'd be better off doing wrestling exclusively, or better yet going to a shooting range.

[@Genktarov]

This isn't just true of HEMA, but even of modern armed arts. Most of the best MMA fighters, especially those who fully excel in the sport, are people with a very solid foundation of grappling with striking layered on top of it. Whether we're using fists or knives or guns as our standoff weapons, a fundamental understanding of wrestling is always going to be important. Most historically competent gunfighters as well were not just excellent gunfighters but also were at least competent wrestlers. People also forget that in all pre-modern contexts, and even less modern areas of the world today e.g. Dagestan, developing competent wrestling was something almost all boys do simply as a part of living in the culture growing up. If you don't have any real wrestling experience and you're approaching a real fight, you (or at least this was true of me) are going to have a fundamental insecurity about measuring physical strength against physical strength. This sometimes manifests itself as ridiculous over-confidence or obsession with violence, but at its core it is still an insecurity. When we're talking about firearms, this becomes a deadly serious manner. From what I have seen, a large portion of firearms misuse, be it attempts to coerce or firing weapons when not necessary, arises from an unaddressed insecurity to do with resisting a violent attempt to overpower oneself. This is worsened by the fact that the entire reason many people want to acquire and carry firearms or even become police officers with the right to carry weapons is to compensate for this insecurity, and even many high-level instructors have obvious fears and insecurities in this regard. As an aside, this in my opinion is why it is extremely valuable for women's self-defense for women to do some BJJ or other grappling art to at least basic competence. Most women will not out-wrestle a man, but having a realistic understanding of grappling and getting over the psychological insecurities surrounding the power difference is critical to developing the discernment needed to carry weapons and deploy them appropriately to overcome physical disadvantages. Real wrestling is also critical to proper handling of weapons because it teaches dynamic structure and builds dynamic strength throughout ranges of motion. One of my training partners wrestled in high-school, and while I'm the more technically sound fencer, he has an ability simply from his wrestling experience to brace his sword such that he wins almost every bind. Stiffening the core dynamically to resist pressure, and then using that resistance to project force onto another person or object, is taught by grappling in a way that nothing else can teach. To whatever degree some sources do not mention wrestling directly, we should all remember that the societies in which these treatises were written had a much higher assumed general competence with wrestling and the projection of physical force. If we aren't fully competent and projecting physical force, no amount of technique training will compensate. This even goes into the interpretation of techniques. Many techniques in e.g. Fiore I think are hard to understand because they're being practiced in a sport context, without either party really fully attempting to project physical force. It's very telling I think just how different most HEMA practitioners look in throwing cuts in sparring vs. throwing cuts in the context of cutting practice.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Well said!

[@Yeknodathon]

That is interesting. I went a different path to gain some balance with the martial. Although it does not teach fighting or engage the fighting spirit I experience discipline, conditioning, timing and sense of nuance. Does it make me a better fencer? Probably the wrong question.. it makes me enjoy life.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

If you're happy with it, then it was the right choice. But that doesn't make it the most effective, or most authentic choice...

[@Yeknodathon]

@@EnglishMartialArts I'd agree it may not be the most effective but it is certainly the most authentic.

[@mnk9073]

I mean the main thing standing between HEMA and it being a proper sport/martial art is the big problem that 99% of what's in the codizes and manuals is straight up designed to unalive your opponent who is actively trying to unalive you. Translating this into a functional sport while avoiding watering down the techniques and encouraging cheesing is as good as impossible.

[@iantheduellist]

It heavily depends on the sword and style one is usning, for example, if I'm fencing with a rapier as described in Capo Ferro, wrestling isn't going to be of much help, but if I'm doing Leckuchnner messer, then you better know how to grapple.

[@rangda_prime]

Very interesting. I just did the reverse of this in the dojo tonight. We were doing a trapping to push in an opponents guard and open them up for a strike. I trained with a girl of slight build and gave her some pointers on how to to use body mechanics to defeat my superior strength. My analogy was how you use a sword in the bind to overcome the opponent's guard. What I'm saying is I think you are absolutely right, and that the skill set goes both ways. But it starts with Abrazare, with the body. Fiore was one of the true GOATS in the period. His books are very well thought out from a pedagogical standpoint, but most people just skip past the wrestling and jujutsu-like parts of his work and get into the swords, because swords are cool. Which is a shame.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

I mean swords really are cool. But using them as well as possible is even cooler...

[@tonk84]

Dont know how relevant this would be, but the little bit of wrestling and grappling ive done made me a much better rugby player. But also i think the fact ive played a contact competitve sport for a while probably meant when i started wrestling i wasnt as hesitent as i might have been. Learning how to fall, how to take a hit, how to keep pushing when youre just dead is a great skill for not just wrestling, hema, rugby or any other sport. But a great lesson for life in general

[@TonberryV]

There is probably no more pure a form of a study of leverage and body mechanics than grappling. I'm absolute dogshit at it, but the understanding it beats into you is fundamental. Forces you to become intimately aware of what your body can and cannot do and, if you get good, why that is. YMMV, but I found my sport karate improved significantly after dabbling with BJJ.

[@lyooyiylklykyokyklky]

I don't think I completely agree, but I don't completely disagree either. I used to do jiu jitsu and kickboxing, now I just do HEMA. There are folk at my club that have only done HEMA, and there are some that have done some kind of martial arts, ranging from wanky to full contact sparring. I don't notice any major difference in the two groups. My previous background is sometimes useful, but not often. I definitely agree that there is value in it, both in directly applying skills used to fencing, and the psychological benefit of getting punched in the face a lot and realising that it isn't the end of the world. But we all have a finite amount of time to dedicate to training - would sacrificing 50% of my time spent learning HEMA directly to go to a judo class really benefit my fencing more? I'm not wholly convinced.

[@formlessone8246]

Nor am I. I think the critical flaw in his argument is that you won't learn any of the things proposed by the historical masters from learning just any form of grappling. BJJ is so focused on ground work that there is no way it will teach you the distance management aspect, nor is it the most aggressive style in the world. Indeed, I have to say that submission grappling arts in general probably would seem alien to the old masters, who all seem to teach throws and takedowns foremost, since at the time any fight that went to the ground was liable to end in a stabbing. I think that the evidence points to folk systems like back hold, collar and elbow, or if you must go for an Asian style, go for judo or even Aikido. Judo focuses on the throws, and Aikido for all the complaints it receives is explicitly weapons oriented and has loads to teach people about distance management. The thing that opened my eyes on this topic is that no one could come up with a definite reason why the masters considered wrestling so important, and the masters themselves don't seem to have a single definitive reason so much as a list. Then I watched Jackson Crawford and Ian McCollum try Glima, and it clicked. Ian thought it was less like wrestling and more like combat waltz. The belt grips force a very foot oriented fight, with focus on tempo, center, and balance, just like swordplay. Which makes sense given the claim that Glima has medieval origins as the Nordic fighting system. It's almost certainly evolved, since earlier writings seem to describe a back hold system, but the principles would be the same. No, I think the real reason we are meant to learn wrestling first is none of the reasons people think. It's not about the conditioning or violence. It's about the footwork, an aspect of the art that the medieval manuscripts are notorious for leaving out. It would also explain why later manuscripts from the Renaissance to the 19'th century more and more deemphasize wrestling. At a certain point, the manuals get better and better at describing footwork as the training methodology changed, leading eventually to the modern Olympic fencing system where most of the time spent in training is footwork drills. If grappling is prohibited, you need a different model for learning that. But the good news is you can learn it. You actually don't have to spend time with a wrestling coach if that doesn't sound like a pleasant use of your time. But you do need the patience for tedious drilling until your feet can lunge or sidestep instinctively. 😅

[@JT-op3vr]

What do you think about reenactment fighting, such as the large scale Viking battles in Denmark, Germany and Poland? Have you any experience with it, and is it a part of HEMA? I feel that it has much of the same problems as HEMA, but with perhaps a higher ratio of people who refuse to even acknowledge that it is a martial art at all.

[@ramblingkern]

I couldn't agree more and have done videos on the topic myself. I do Irish stick fighting and train with the dog brothers as the lack of interest in sparring and wrestling led me to look well outside of the regular hema circles. I would love to do some videos with you one day mate. Thanks for the good videos as usual.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Drop me an email, let's talk!

[@Stephen_Curtin]

@@EnglishMartialArts would love to see you two discussing faction fighting on here

[@ramblingkern]

@@EnglishMartialArts Sounds like a plan.

[@WhatIfBrigade]

I did a year or two of wrestling in middle school and view it as foundational to understanding Kung Fu, Kendo, HEMA, etc. First the competitive opposition to my techniques taught me how to evaluate effectiveness. And the principles of leverage, quickness and strength translate well to all martial arts. All HEMA arts sources were created in a context where wrestling was commonplace. Therefore to understand the context, you need to grapple. Maybe you can be a smallsword expert without ever wrestling, but I'd view such a fighter or competitor as not very complete or well rounded compared to one who did. In the same way, a wrestler who has never trained with weapons isn't going to understand martial arts that do have weapons because they do many things that are completely unnecessary in unarmed combat, but crucial if swords are in that context.

[@TrueFork]

When I started out in Japanese martial arts, I would open books at the techniques and skip the intros. Now that I'm a bit older I tend to only read the intros.

[@dhalav]

you can see this polytechnical approach in french martial arts of the 19th century. Practicing la canne helped improving boxe française, which improved the practice of the staff, which improved the practice of the saber and épée. All were built around common principles and were thought as a whole

[@matthewsteen9789]

The arguments against the fundamentals of wrestling for HEMA, would be the historical equivalent of someone saying. I don't need to learn de-escalation or physical defensive strategies. I have a gun

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Sadly a lot of people do seem to believe that in both cases.

[@baoxidiaoyu]

HEMA wo/ wrestling might as well be pre electric Olympic fencing

[@nighttimeaudio]

To me HEMA looks to atract people equally or more interested in Larping as in learning how to really fight . Wrestling is hard , so it might actually be detrimental to recruitment if HEMA was "fixed" Disclaimer: I have not been involved in HEMA ,( I have only dabbled in dagger and longsword from Fiore with a mate whos a fellow Boxer/grappler )so these are only the impression I have from the outside looking in.

[@Cavouku]

Even if I don't have as romantic a perspective on wrestling, it would be silly to deny that the principles and techniques of wrestling are foundational to combat. Moreover, even if you were to isolate and discuss the principles to be applied however you want, I would still contend that it's better to practice the technique through wrestling before doing so through swordsmanship. I *can* explain the principles and idioms of things like centerline, "where the head goes the body follows", strong-and-weak planes, leverage, torque, conservation of momentum, center of mass, frames and posts--all through swordsmanship. But I just think it would reduce the complexity to start learning them through wrestling techniques. In short: explain a principle, demonstrate it through one or two techniques, have the students apply the techniques, then maybe demonstrate how the principle can let you modify the same technique for a different scenario. Maybe use the same technique to teach more than one principle. And do all of that through wrestling and grappling until you have a foundation. *Then*, play with the swish-swish stabby bits. Also do your exercise; technique isn't a magic wand, it's efficient and/or multiplicative application of force, but improving 0% by 100% or x100 is still gonna be 0.

[@Kunstdesfechtens]

I took up Judo specifically to be able to understand Ringen. Currently a Brown Belt. Does grappling do what is says on the tin? Absolutely. The last tournament I won was pre-pandemic while I was doing Judo. I got double gold: longsword and messer, and overall tournament champion points-wise at 45 years old. Couldn't have done that without Judo. We do some grappling almost every class, as well as breakfalls. At any given time we had me, a wrestling coach, or a BJJ guy there.

[@tomdegisi]

I know a great amateur boxing coach, John Brown, over here in the US. You might know him as Tommy Morrison's coach, or as the President of USA Boxing. He loves coaching wrestlers to box.

[@ajax31990]

I agree that wrestling is an important primary physical skill in fighting with weapons. I think there are traps of focusing on wrestling when using weapons. There are a lot of times where wrestling has incorrect responses to dealing with weapons, and I think it's important to communicate that. That said, a skilled wrestler will adapt faster than someone who is not. I'm an OK wrestler, and I've defeated a number of superior wrestlers by using the devices of the sources you mentioned. They think that it is about wrestling your opponent, not using wrestling to position your weapon to use it on your opponent. They chase weapons and get hit, they put themselves in what would be a superior wrestling position but it gets them hit by in the tempo it took to acheive it. Sometimes they even just get hit on the way in trying to wrestle you. I actually think most HEMA practioners mistake the material as foundational, when it is really for dealing with dudes like Icy Mike or Armchair Violence who are martially competent but not comprehensively trained with these weapons. The key is you already have to be willing and able to rumble like those dudes, but what they do is ultimately extremely predictable and easily beaten because just in the way I'm a mediocre wrestler, they are poor to mediocre swordsmen.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Yeah, I wouldn't say that wrestling makes you a better swordsman. But that wrestling first, then fencing makes you significantly better than just fencing.

[@ajax31990]

It's why our club tends to train Fiore in sequence, since as I'm sure you're aware the first 2/3rds of the book are wrestling and dagger. Since most people want to sword fight and not wrestle otherwise they would go to BJJ if they were, we end up teaching 3-5 plays that they can get to work under pressure. Then we just do a lot of fighting. It tends to take care of most bad situations they would encounter if they get into close measure plays. I think there's a certain amount of practicality that needs to be embraced, as most people are there to sword fight and not to wrestle. Even though wrestling is one of the smaller eventualities, it is extremely complex and demanding. It's why Fiore spends a ton of ink on it. We mainly let people fight and then they realize there is a skill gap in wrestling, and then train them as part of ongoing sparring. If we told people with no Martial arts experience that they need to be a good wrestler and then sword fight, People wouldn't stick around because there are places who specialize in that and it's not what they come for. It's a little bit of cart before the horse in this case. It would be like if we taught a Firearms course and told people they needed to get in shape for a competitive 40 meter sprint before they developed practical shooting skills. While related and useful, it doesn't make you better at the primary task, which is Shooting, and people will drop because they aren't getting the instruction for the skill they wanted.

[@Fred-px5xu]

Sir I agree with your assessment of HEMA. They should study the section on wrestling, since in my humble opinion, it is the foundation of most combat arts. Next to pugilism, a necessity, if one is to lean on the sound use of weaponry. Only a fool would try learn to swim bye looking at drawings. Once again you Sir have struck the proverbial nail on its head . Let me end this refrain by saying thank you for the brilliant video lecture on the topic repairing HEMA. Bless you and family!👊👍

[@littlestoneliontraditional9838]

As a wrestler and a HEMA nerd/dirty fiore lover I agree strongly. 👍🤷

[@fennec812]

Not part of HEMA at all, but worth pointing out that pretty much all weapons schools in Asia have a similar sort of thing going on. It’s just whether or not that modern school emphasizes it or not… and many don’t. One part of me wants to blame the school for sure, but I think it’s tough when demand is “I want to learn swordsmanship” and then you don’t let them touch a sword for 6 months while you wrestle. Or don’t promote them because they don’t wrestle, etc. Practically speaking, I agree. I just also think it’s going to be a tough sell to the more “academic” crowd that this must be so. And I say that as both an academic and Judo athlete. You could turn up your nose at them, but I do genuinely believe that martial arts need finances in the modern day to stay healthy. So what is really being proposed here is to build a whole new HEMA community because I have sincere doubts the current one will accept reforms. And that’s fine, but that could well be a long term project that will require several high level teachers in both grappling and weaponry to be on the same page. Possible? Surely. Easy? Not at all.

[@dfrench3242]

I agree with your point that wrestling is an ideal tool to get to know your body in a combative context, as well as it getting you fit. In the context of HEMA I think there are more ways to achieve those attributes. In general I feel it has more to do with athleticism period. Many HEMA clubs do indeed not train the way other martial arts train, but there are exceptions. Lack of fitness and athleticism will invariably produce worse fencing results, as the required structure and explosive capacity required from the body is simply not there. That said I think the problem many clubs struggle with is the crowd that HEMA attracts. Very often when you get new people through the door they tend to be very physically unfit, and they tend to find the harsher training methods too confrontational. It's strange how people get surprised that you're thought to fight and that kicks, throws and wrestling etc. all happen and have to be trained. When clubs try to put too much emphasis on making people feel at home there is significant risk of the aspect of teaching people to fight suffering as a result. I can understand the tightrope clubs have to try to walk sometimes, and HEMA is certainly not the only martial art with this problem.

[@lewisb85]

One name daniele bolelli he's a historian and a martial artist (black belt in judo, bjj and several others) also a pankration practitioner he talks about the "instinctiveness of combat" where make it too complicated the person is not going to remember under pressure. Hence why I like M-1 Medieval because it is a combat sport but also historical and instinctive.

[@thescholar-general5975]

Yeah there is a reason I love training Judo and BJJ in tandem with fencing. However, I do feel that the topic is a little more nuanced than you present here, and I already have a response video in the works!

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Undoubtedly it is. There was so much I could say but didn't, and so much that can be debated. Make sure I get a link to your video!

[@formlessone8246]

I have a theory on this too. I think that you don't need to learn wrestling to know how to sword fight. I mean, later systems seem to disconnect the two things more and more until the modern Olympic system comes about and wrestling is completely banned from competition. Yet many of the best HEMA fencers have an Olympic style background. With no definitive reason given even by the historical masters for why they considered wrestling so important, it must have served a function in their training that later curriculum replaced with different training methods. If so, we should be wary of thinking that just any kind of grappling will give insight into fencing, historical or from other parts of the world. I think it's obvious from looking at the manuscripts that they spent almost no time on the ground, for instance. What does that tell us? Lots of artwork depicts close grip wrestling. What does that tell us? My theory, and I would love to have input on this from someone experienced in both grappling and swordplay, is that the missing clue is the lack of footwork information in earlier manuscripts, but the dissociation of wrestling from fencing in later manuscripts. As time went on, the fencing schools learned how to teach footwork and distance management separately from wrestling, thus leading to fencing systems of today where most of the time spent in class is drilling footwork endlessly until you can lunge in your sleep. Meanwhile, folk wrestling systems like Glima and back hold in the West and Aikido and Judo in the east are what we should look at for learning to improve your footwork. That, or you do what modern fencers and boxers do and spend most of your training time devoted to the less organic but nonetheless effective way of learning it through repetitive drilling. Am I on to something? Is there some other reason later manuscripts deemphasize wrestling in a fencing context? I admit that a lot of these thoughts come from watching Glima wondering how the Norse could have possibly gotten so much out of such a strange wrestling system and thinking about Aikido and what it must have been for if it's so ineffective in unarmed combat. I really want to hear what you have to say on the topic.

[@towardstar]

@@formlessone8246 I can't speak for Glima but for Aikido the internal woo woo element in the system that people shit on as not being real is whats missing and generally really difficult to find. When its not missing people have their biases and wouldn't recognize whats going on anyway unless they subjected their self to it which is unlikely when they're too busy sneering.

[@andrewk.5575]

An interesting idea, I see arguments for and against it. Pro: If you want to reconstruct Medieval fencing and learn it the way they learned it, yes you will have to know how to wrestle, because Medieval people loved wrestling and all of the quotes in the video are just a small sample of how many authors of this period extoll the benefits of wrestling. This is especially true if you want to study Fiore or Silver as they are more explicit than most about how their systems are founded on wrestling. I know that at least one gentlemen on the fringe of the HEMA world, Bob Charron, who had been saying this for years, but I believe he finally gave up and retired from teaching. As another plus this approach gains further credence from examining other cultures where we see that wrestling was considered the foundation of all combat in places like Mongolia and that the idea that bare hand proceeds weapons training comes up in most Chinese and Okinawan arts. Con: All of those comments about how wrestling is the foundation of fencing stop after 1700. The Italians lose interest in wrestling in the 17th century, the Spanish Destreza masters ignore the subject completely, the average maître d'arms of the French school would rather die than do something so uncouth as wrestle, the last German fencer to discuss wrestling in his work was Johann Andreas Schmidt in the late 18th century (his book also includes a section on pommel horse, so the wrestling might have just been for exercise), and even the British sources stop talking about grappling in relation to fencing by the Napoleonic Wars. Clearly, hardly anybody in Western Europe in the last 300 hundred years believed you needed to wrestle first to be good at fencing. Zooming out again, we also see that while there are plenty of cultures where wrestling or hand to hand more broadly is considered foundational to weapons play, the opposite attitude seems to have been just as common. Koryu Bujutsu from Japan, Kali from the Philippines, and Kalaripayattu from India all teach weapons first and only later show the student how to apply those techniques to the empty hand. In conclusion, to answer the question "Do HEMA people need to learn to wrestle to be good at fencing?" we once again run into the problem of "What is HEMA?". If HEMA is what most people seem to say it is "All martial arts historically practiced in Europe", then the answer is "No", because many of those arts do not seem to be built on wrestling. On the other hand if HEMA is what is almost always seems to be in practice "Italian, German, and maybe English or Spanish fencing from 1400-1600", then the answer is probably "Yes".

[@Stephen_Curtin]

This is a fair point. In 1713 Sir Thomas Parkyns published his book on wrestling in which he laments about the lack of interest in wrestling amongst his fellow English gentlemen. From this time onwards wrestling mostly gets treated as a separate sport rather than the foundation for, or even supplement to, swordsmanship.

[@Nala15-Artist]

The Nuernberger Hausbuch also has Meister Liechtenauer stating "Alles Fechten kommt aus Ringen", "All fencing comes from wrestling".

[@willaumep]

Hello yes i do, fundamentally HEMA is about fighting. Now I think that both part of the arguments are not mutually exclusive. I coming from MA (aikido and Thai boxing). Weapons and open hand on foot needs you to have experience in fighting/sparing to same extend as if you want to joust or wrestle on horse, you need to know how to ride beforehand, then adapt your riding style, reading old riding manuals, to make your more conducive to fighting on a horse. MMA-BJJ-boxing are not necessarily directly usable both in terms of techniques and paradigm but they will give you the basis to build your understanding (and you need to have a reason why we don't use it). I would say the notion of BJJ of gradually improving your position, is not that dissimilar to how the Ringeck works from the bind, the difference being that the dominant position is more volatile. I could even say that lots of the wrestling is common to plenty of martial tradition. i.e. you have ikkio/gokio, nikio- sankio (and they make sense when in armour), kote-gaeshi, shio-nague, the DLT and counters in the manual are either kaiten-nage or sprawling with a reverse Heimlich manoeuvre (if we believe the drawings), the sweep and the sweep counter are basically judo and Zulaufen ringen is very close to aki-jujitsu or fluffy aikido. Don't get me wrong, modern stuff needs to be contextualised in the paradigm of the period and the manual so you understand the limitations and the actual technique needs to match the description. Just as we need to do test cutting and understand the effect of the clothing at the time to inform what our cut ought to look like and understand if cutting with the center of percussion or the last 20 cm of the blade is best for the weapon and the period. IE yes cutting with the centre of percussion, gives nicer cuts, disturbs the target much less and promotes finishing with a slice (and tip cutting request a degree of flexibility) Now we need to recognise that modern Shinken are not really the same weapon than koto katana and that slice-chop does not really work nearly as well as tip cuts when you have 2 layers of loose jeans on the target. (and the target holder is not ultra heavy or pinned to the ground) or we can't really ignore with modern martial or combat sport, we bypass the "coming to fence" (Zufechten) or that there are significant differences between how Fiore, Ringeck, Meyer saviolo or Swetnham organise the fights (i am not sure it is even the same in the goliath and the original VD)

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Hi Phillipe, good to see you here!

[@willaumep]

@@EnglishMartialArts all the pleasure is mine :-)

[@croatianwarmaster7872]

This is one of the best videos I ever watched. Liked. Wrestling (grappling) is the queen of martial skills.

[@TITANia69420]

But what about those who actually went out there and actually trained, drilled, sparred, and actually went to tournaments? What about those who... actually went out there and actually fenced? Be it wrestling included or not. Are they an example to follow? Is it not enough?

[@casper1a11]

25 year old news as far as I'm concerned, almost word for word, but it's unfortunately still 100% factual and relevant. "HEMA" is almost invariably martial laymen that want to swordfight, reinventing the wheel, usually into something other than a circle.

[@garymurphy8969]

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp. Terry Pratchett

[@biobomb93]

The problem, at least where i live, is a legal one: a historical fencing instructor is different from a martial arts instructor, so is the sport we practice and this changes a lot for the insurance and for the abilitation to teach things. Nevertheless, "abbrazzare" is done during sparring, it is just inevitable.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

I see this more as a symptom of the problem rather than a cause. It's classed as Historical Fencing because when we started doing it we'd already started doing it wrong. If back in the day we'd started with wrestling, then added in the weapons then the whole art would be classed differently.

[@biobomb93]

@@EnglishMartialArts Maybe you are right, i've joined HEMA just a few years ago, things won't change quickly so i think the only way to do it is just learn wrestling as you said.

[@Nala15-Artist]

All in all, my opinion is that this is a problem ALL martial arts have. You have those that don't want to or can't go hard for a myriad of reasons, and you have those that want to and can go hard (hard being the level of athleticism trained for and achieved). I personally think you NEED both. The cadre of hard people will always be smaller, and you need a big cadre of not hard people to recruit the hard people from. Because at any point, someone who could not or did not want to go hard can or will later. Personally, I would love to see wrestling at least drilled and LIGHTLY sparred just like people with minimal gear spar lightly at first and drill most of the time. Leave the hard stuff for the people who are ready for it, and if you lead the average western lifestyle, it will take months at LEAST before you are ready for it. Meanwhile keep it engaging, or else your pool just shrinks, and that just means the art dies eventually. (This also means that people who ARE going hard necessarily need to hang back and go easier on some people and can't have a 100% of their time going as hard as they'd like to. Because if you don't, all that means is that eventually, no more new hard OR not hard people will be available for you to spar to begin with, cause you scared all the recruits off.)

[@EvilWeiRamirez]

I think learning from as many different fighters can only help, but you need a basis of understanding that has to come from commitment to a thing. You learn another thing in context of the first one.

[@saltyyankee5149]

nailed it absolutely square on the head. My background in armor is SCA, so it's a quirky ruleset, but prior to SCA, I did middle school wrestling , 3 years of judo, 12 years of Okinawan Karate and 2 years of 80's TKD (before it became social distance Karate)... VCR tapes of my sparring showed me doing a LOT of stance work from judo and karate inside my sword techniques.. it was scary how much translated over... the other background that could also help would be American Football linemen or some rugby positions. if you want to see the ugly side of 'historical fighting' see the History Channel's 'documentary' on who would win in the fight: Jean D'Arc or William Wallace.' It is a complete cringefest.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

That sounds like a reaction video in the making!

[@saltyyankee5149]

@@EnglishMartialArts just do it, brother. The core of the video is that a 120 pound girl in tempered steel beats a 250 beast in leather and iron plate..(working from memory) Correction, wrong William. Deadliest Warrior Season 3 episode 2: William the Conqueror v Joan of Arc.. could get some Brit v French ribbing in along the way..

[@bitmyffed6056]

I'm a big fan of your channel, and I appreciate the straightforward frankness of this video. In that spirit, I have to ask: If wrestling is the answer, and you're a HEMA practitioner with extensive knowledge of both modern and historical wrestling, are you saying you're the chosen one?

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Well they're your words, not mine... But if the cap fits 😆

[@PunchCatcher]

@@EnglishMartialArts In the end there can be only one.

[@tichtran664]

You mean in the end there can only be ONE to receive the quickening. From The Highlander. LOL 😂.

[@corrugatedcavalier5266]

I came here expecting a somewhat typical kind of these videos, no offense. But yes, I completely agree, and our club now spends 50% of our time on wrestling. That said, different people also have different intent with HEMA. If they're not particularly concerned with being a good martial artist and mostly want to have some fun hitting their friends with swords, I understand that mentality as well. FIGHT TEAM!

[@EnglishMartialArts]

I like to surprise folk!

[@hiltonian_1260]

I wish I could remember the writer; I think from the 17th c. He wrote that if two men are equally matched in swordsmanship, the better grappler will prevail. It also reminds me of the practice of classical fencing schools in Europe, where students would spend a year on footwork before ever touching a sword. The rest of the body had to be fit and able to move automatically before the sword technique would do any good.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

I have read that somewhere too.

[@andyedwards9222]

We have a tendency to lump all HEMA into a single catch all system. Which it isn't. I agree that wrestling/grappling is the foundation skill of all historical fighting systems. Wrestling would be practiced before children were old enough to be trusted with pointy things. This is one possible reason why grappling techniques are sketchy at best or absent entirely from the treatises. Everybody was well versed in the basics, so writing about the techniques was teaching an elderly relative to slurp eggs.

[@CraigAB69]

I agree 100%. I was taught a long time ago that a weapon is just an extension of my taijutsu (unarmed techniques). Bad taijutsu = bad ability to use weapons. How else would you understand, distancing, angling, breaking balance and joint manipulation, it is the biomechanics of movement.

[@Thesandchief]

MENA martial arts or Islamicate martial arts are about 20 years behind HEMA in terms of development or reconstruction so i pay very close attention to the things HEMA got right and where it fell short. my specialty within MENA historical martial arts is arabian arts because I can understand arabic so the manuscripts are accessible to me unlike Persian, Ottoman turkish or urdu. but one thing I learned recently is that there is a surviving living lineage of arab folk wrestling that is still going and is likely the last living lineage. the guys that preserve and teach it have gone all in on testing it against other systems so they now compete in world level belt wrestling tournaments. as part of my training to learn and reconstruct the sword and shield from manuscripts that have few illustrations I will incorporate this belt wrestling style into my training.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Good luck, sounds like a fascinating journey!

[@ahmedsameh4408]

Keep going my friend, awesome video

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Thanks buddy.

[@ahmedsameh4408]

@@EnglishMartialArts You're very welcome mate

[@MartinGreywolf]

First of all, not all period swordsmen agree on wrestling first or include it. Thibault set out to write the most detailed fighting treatise and didn't include or mention it much - and he has an entire chapter on how to fight a musket with a rapier! Godinho tells you to pack two pockets of fine sand to throw in the eyes but says nothing about wrestling. I.33 has a grand total of one play that ends with "and now you will have to wrestle" in the text and a handful more where it can be inferred from context. All Codex Dobringer tells us is to "Wrestle well; grab the lance, spear, sword and falchion" without putting a special emphasis on any one of them. Jixiao Xinshu, written by a Chinese general as a handbook on how to train recruits has this to say: "This craft does not really concern itself with military weapons, but acquiring excess strength is also something which those in the military field ought to practice." (so, wrestling is good for physical conditioning and little else) Musashi mentions grappling a grand total of one time in very general terms. I will concede that Fiore at least absolutely does tell you to buckle up and learn wrestling first, but this isn't a universal opinion. A tentative conclusion to be drawn is that wrestling is critical to fighting a duel in armor, and further you go from there, the less useful it is. A battlefield makes grappling less attractive, lack of armor does as well and combination of the two is even worse. It is still useful, occasionally critical even, but even then, there is no special requirement to start learning from wrestling to swordplay rather than the other way around. And absolutely none of that matters. Because if someone comes to your sword club, eyes all shining with excitement after he saw Princess Bride/Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones and you tell him that he now has to train wrestling for two to four years before you let him touch a sword, the only response you will get the vast majority of the time is: "Fuck that!" And while I can already see the deluge of kids these days and "then we don't want them" responses, you do not make a thing popular by taking what is unique about it and gatekeep it behind multiple years of effort. You do stuff like that with medical degrees, so unless you are prepared to pay people training HEMA six figures plus, you need another solution.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Well if I were in a provocative mood I might say you have one source that says nothing about wrestling, and several that seem to assume you already know it. That doesn't feel like a contradiction to me. As to you point about getting people involved, 100% agree. But where does the trend to dumb down an art to make it saleable to the masses end?

[@hailhydreigon2700]

You don't need to gatekeep it. But you do need to spend time on it. Put the sword in their hands, yes. But put the grappling jacket on them as well. Or if not that, at least have it as an option available at certain hours/days.

[@Stephen_Curtin]

I might be wrong on this, but I don't think that Chinese source you mentioned, the Xixiao Jinshu, wasn't talking about wrestling, but about a form of unarmed Kung Fu. So not sure how relevant it is to your point. Also, even though the general thought that this art was impractical for the battlefield, he still saw it as an essential component of training for soldiers. This actually fits in fairly nicely with what the video was saying IMO.

[@MartinGreywolf]

@@Stephen_Curtin Quote: "Hooking the leg and locking the arm do not allow the opponent to break away; The one above is startled and the one in the lower stance causes him to fall." It's both strikes and grapples. As for it being essential, the general *tells us why*, it's in my initial quote, he considers it a good tool for physical conditioning.

[@Stephen_Curtin]

@@MartinGreywolf right as I said it's a form of unarmed Kung Fu rather than strictly wrestling. And yes essential for strength and conditioning rather than practicality on the battlefield, so we agree on these. This is also what the video is saying though isn't it? That wrestling is essential to HEMA for the physical and mental qualities it gives those who practice it.

[@flyfin108]

thank you