How to Fight with a Longsword 11 - Krumphaw

[@JonathanWestwood]

Thank you

[@sinisterbohemian]

Thank you for the video! I have a question though... how did you arrive at the interpretation of the Ochs breaking krumphau with the steps you stated of core rotation to non-dom, point high and to non-dom, then step and cut? All other interpretations I've seen of this essentially start with a standard oberhau which then crosses although the wide step offline is a commonality which makes sense to avoid a counter thrust. Not saying you're wrong, but it is a unique interpretation that I haven't seen before.

[@LIERHEMA]

@John A good question! My interpretation also started from what you describe. The issue with that is that you only generate power from the rotation around your wrists when using that technique. That is not that strong of a cut especially as the rotation is around your wrists and not shoulders. Another issue is that, at least for me, a cut like this makes it very difficult to maintain edge alignment. Let's start with the power generation issue. The cut like you explained has, in my opinion, enough force if you only hit the fingers. They are a rather fragile target and easy enough to cut through. However I use the cut with other targets such as the forearms, elbows and the head. You might also unintentionally hit another target as your opponent is moving and trying to not get hit. In my experience a stronger cut also leaves me in a more beneficial bind in case I get parried. Other targets require much more force to case significant enough damage to guarantee an effect. That is to say I want to cause enough damage that even in the worst case it would be enough. That being cutting completely through a forearm through a padded jacket for example. Naturally I have not cut someone's forearm with a sharp sword but I have cut a range of fabrics and I have a generic idea how difficult meat and bone is to cut through. That being dead bone but at least I think I should be in the correct ball park with this. Even if I'm wildly of with my guess at least my version is a more powerful cut and thus it has more of a chance to cause significant damage. For those who are going to argue that not every cut needs to decapitate someone I would say that you can always reduce the power from the maximum. I still use this kind of a lighter krump every now and then. However it is not possible to magically hit harder than you can so my base line for training a technique is for maximum effectiveness for what I think I need the technique for. That is why I needed to increase the power generation for the cut so I could still confidently use it for what I think the cut can be used for. The edge alignment issue is rather simple. At least for me it is extremely difficult to maintain edge alignment if my wrists are rotating. This is even after a lot of practice. As such I need to move the rotation somewhere else. As I need to do this for power generation purposes anyways the edge alignment issue takes care of itself. So when I started to fix this I knew that I needed to move the rotation to my shoulders and my core to generate more power and to make maintaining edge alignment easier. From there I simply started from the end position and worked my way back to the starting position. As I knew both this was not too difficult. As the cutting portion of the cut needed to have a straight trajectory that was my first step. With this I ended up with my hands too far to my non-dominant side so I had to figure out the steps to getting to there from the starting position. The result is what you see in the video. You could also kinda do the same thing without rotating from the core and simply by bringing your arms to your non-dominant side. However this goes against the very important "keep your hands centered" basic principle of effective body mechanics. As such I think that the rotation towards the non-dominant side is necessary for maximum effectiveness. In my opinion this way of cutting a krump allows for a more powerful, and thus more widely usable, technique while still matching the sources. If you need you can also always reduce the core rotation to basically none and get back to the version you describe. As already mentioned this can be useful in many situations such as feinting or making a very accurate cut at the fingers. However now you also can generate more power when you need to or have the time to do so. As a note when you get to a very fluent movement pattern with my version it is very fast. In the end you are blending the core rotations and extending your arms for the cut so much that in the end you have rotated to your non-dominant side by the time your arms are extended. From the you simply cut down. This does require quite a lot of core control though. It is only marginally slower than the common version but it allows for a lot more power generation. The trajectory is also slightly different. When actually fighting the torso rotation is rather difficult to spot but it definitely can be. As such it is not the best choice for making an oberhaw feint to a krump to the hands. For more details please refer to my cutting series. You can find the krump video here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/moXZc31rpN-nos0 Here is a schiel video which explains my way of constructing interpretations for complex techniques: kzbin.info/www/bejne/lZ-tko2baN6Zfac

[@sinisterbohemian]

@@LIERHEMA cool beans, thank you for your reply! The core engagement is good, we know that's where a lot of the power comes from and not the arms. I like that this interpretation puts that into practice rather than just depending on the wrists to power. The speed was a concern of mine which you addressed. Perhaps it's just a matter of retraining those muscles to build up the fluid motion. When I was working this it felt clunky and disjointed, but that's pretty standard until you do it a couple hundred times. I'm working lichtenauer basics with some newbies in my club and I think I'll take the approach you're working here. Figure they learn this powered version first, they can always do the marginally quicker but less powered version in a high pressure situation, but at least we train the muscle memory from the onset and no retraining required later. Thanks for this series and the discussion!