Armored combat/buhurt has taught me so much about grappling i never would have known in bjj. Grappling multiple opponents, grappling with a weapon in your hand, realizing that double leg takedowns are actually very ineffective in a battlefield scenario. And holy hell is it good conditioning, now when i wrestle in bjj/judo i have such a deep gastank after getting accustomed to grappling in 60+ pounds of armor
@@inside_fightingjudo and grecco roman throws are king in armor, for 2 reasons; A. you want to throw your opponent to the ground without going to the ground yourself and B. its simply a bad idea to duck your head down when wearing a 16+ lb helmet and the risk of getting sprawled on is huge cus now you have a guy on top of you who has 60+lbs of gear plus the weight of your own gear. it really changes the game
@@HungarianWarHorse Exactly the problem us light guys face with takedowns. When all opponents are 30kg heavier, the risk to reward ratio of takedowns is not appealing.
The problem with codifying HEMA into one rule set is that in any rule set there are certain techniques which become more "meta" than others, and as a result the entirety of the system no longer is practiced because it is more advantageous to only train what works in sport. I actually really like that just about every HEMA tournament has its own rule set because that keeps the training non specific and the system as shown in the manual is more preserved because you don't know what you're getting into.
What if there wasn’t one theme per event but a series of them so that multiple different aspects could be covered. It’s rhetorical only way for it to become more popular in my view but maybe most HEMA people don’t want it popularized anyway.
@@inside_fightingthat sounds like people who do foil, epee, and sabre in Olympic fencing. There is logic to each ruleset. Meta strategies always evolve, and that's fine. Adapting the game to match the "ideal" is just a process. Ultimately though, it is just a game. I think it's more important to identify that a set of skills is sometimes only ideal within a meta. Like going to the ground is fine in a 1v1 match, but not really a good idea in a real situation with multiple people and broken glass on the ground. I think you do a good job of identifying the context. When we study martial arts, we study a language. It's an interpretation of what happened translated to words then translated to practice. That practice needs to be translated to instinct by another person. I think most paths that you can take are generally valid.
@@inside_fighting Check out SoCal Swords annual event...it s the larger event in the Americas and Worldwide right now. And it takes place in the US. It s a competitive event with over 300 Longsword fencers , 100 sabre fencers etc....but it also has events for Cutting with sharp blades...workshops, lectures, classes , vendors , demonstrations etc.
There's also no real governing body or bodies for HEMA that have evolved yet like many other arts have, so there is no universal agreed upon rule set for tournaments. Therefore it's up to whomever is throwing the event to decide the rules.
Most HEMA practioners are about unarmored combat. Armoured combat comes in 2 different types, Bohurt/HMB and harnischfechten. The armoured combat shown here would be Bohurt/HMB, which has routes in medieval tournaments, fairs and festivals (to the beat of my understanding). The other is harnischfechten, which is closer to fighting in armour in a real fight/battle scenario with real weapons. A big difference is Bohurt doesn't allow for thrusting so everything becomes a bludgeon regardless if it has a blade or point. Harnischfechten on the other hand is about taking in the context of both wearing armour, and what weapons you're using, and using techniques intended to bypass/defeat the armour. Some great examples of harnischfechten are from the channel Dequitem.
Basically the prejudice comes from the fact that people conflate hema with larp. And since fantasy is for nerds and history is for nerds, hema guys are probably nerds. And I have done Hema, and this is pretty much true. But the idea that nerds can't fight is wrong. Hema teaches you great timing, distance management, the importance of posture and structure and wrestling. My hema teacher was a scrawny dude but with blades he was easily twice as fast as me without using effort and strength. On the ground my odds were slightly better, but only slightly
That's one of the things I love about weapon martial arts. Since weapons are force multipliers, someone who's better trained will usually beat someone more athletic and less trained. It's great for the overweight, skinny, short, or aging. That said, athleticism+ training is still very hard to beat.
The guy who ran the first HEMA club I trained at had his thyroids removed due to cancer. Suffice to say he was a big boy. His foot work and swordplay were so fast it was almost like he was teleporting. His philosophy at that point was essentially "I don't have the stamina I used to, better be sure I can end it fast." That he did.
Great video! That guy in the funny clothes and silly mustache might be more dangerous than you think. 😜 Like all other martial arts, some HEMA folks train hard several times a week and are very skilled. Some do not and are not. Best way to judge a martial art is from the inside. Do it for two years, learn the basics and spar a lot. Then you will know. HEMA has a lot to offer, just find a school that takes safety seriously and get in the ring. You'll be glad you did.
Thanks for featuring me and my video at 6:00. The fight is a "buhurt" format fight. Buhurt teaches situational awareness and pressures tests twchniques where the entire body is used without much restriction to technique. Great for pressure testing. Glad you enjoyed my channel.
As a practitioner of HEMA and Asian arts, I always found it interesting that practitioners of Asian arts had no problem with the traditional uniforms but get turned off by HEMA dressing in historical clothing, since many of the historical techniques were designed with what people were wearing at the time in mind, just like some BJJ techniques basically requiring the gi to perform the technique. And just like Asian techniques can be adapted for modern clothing, so can HEMA techniques. In terms of HEMA empty hand, people seem to forget that boxing and wrestling are technically HEMA. Just like sword arts changed over the centuries as the "arms race" between weapons and armor kept changing, so has boxing and wrestling over the years, but so what. It's still HEMA that just happens to have a continuous lineage with limitations for safety in sport. Classical pugilism is also interesting if you looked at the Classical Pugilism manuals with your FMA background. Jogo do Pao is technically HEMA too :) HEMA dagger goes hand in hand with HEMA war wrestling from the manuals, especially Joachim Meyer and Fiore dei Liberi. Cool stuff.
Modern boxing and wrestling are about as historical as judo and point karate. They are modern sports built on a tiny sliver of older, much larger systems. Same as judo’s lineage, which starts at the end of the 1800’s, boxing and wrestling are, in my opinion, not unbroken traditions. You can see the influence of what came before, but it’s just not the same art. But I’m not going to tell an actual hema practitioner what is hema and what is not. If you consider olympic fencing hema, then all these apply as well.
There are certainly HEMA practitioners on both sides of this debate, some who say that boxing, wrestling and Olympic fencing are no longer HEMA because they are different than what came before them. Some will say that they aren't HEMA precisely BECAUSE they do have an unbroken lineage, as they all consist of practitioners who were taught by practitioners who were taught by practitioners, etc, etc, all the way back, with no breaks, and with each generation practicing the art as a mixture of what they were taught coupled with their own changes for their own relevancy. Those people will say that HEMA arts MUST be arts that completely died out and had to be resurrected from the treatises and manuals. I simply disagree with both of those types of people, because of arts like Jogo do Pao, which the entire community agrees is HEMA, but also has an unbroken lineage, and cannot be proven to be practiced 100% exactly like it always has, because no art can prove that claim because all people bring themselves to their art. And if that logic applies to Jogo do Pao, Scottish Backhold Wrestling, Cornish wrestling, etc, it applies everywhere. But this debate will never have a resolution.
@@MasterPoucksBestMan You are probably right in saying there will never be a resolution and there is no particular need for one either. Personally, I consider an art separate when its core purpose changes significantly - like when a practical martial art is cut down to produce a martial sport. It’s not a clear line, though, and there are a lot of arts in a grey area. Judo, sport karate and boxing for instance had a gradual change from an early more practical form to what we have today, which is almost purely a sport - both need combining with other arts to function well in practical applications. I did iaido for a long time and they called it koryu, which means it’s an unbroken line from the 1600’s. But I found out later that in the 1950’s, the grand master of the style threw away the hundreds of techniques, kept 15 and added around twenty from other styles to ”make it more approachable for modern people”. This dumpster fire is now called the same as the pre-1950’s style. No one from that time would recognize what we did. It’s not the same art and it does not serve the same purpose.
Pancratia technically falls under the HEMA umbrella and I know of at least 1 HEMA club that trains in it alongside the swords. Shileghlie is starting to grow in popularity as well
One of the toughest people I have ever met is a blacksmith and former MP. At well over 50 she puts on armor and spars full contact with metal weapons against guys who are much bigger.
People might not carry swords anymore, but sword techniques translate to walking sticks, umbrellas, & canes. Interestingly, single-stick & canes are also HEMA and can be found anywhere.
Thank you for being so open minded and ready to reconsider your initial opinion on a subject. Really makes me respect you more, especially as a martial artist. Hema deserves more credits.
I love HEMA. I've trained in nearly a dozen martial arts (move around a lot and hard to find good dojos in the same art from state to state sometimes) and Hema is one of my favorites. I got started with System de Armes in New Orleans, which is one of the older clubs in the country, and instantly fell in love. I even started teaching my kid. A buddy of mine who does BJJ asked me how it's practical in real life and my reply, aside from what's already been touched on here, is: reflexes, those swords move a LOT faster than a punch or kick; foot work, huge focus and that translates well in any system; and even with all the gear on using synthetic (non-metal) swords I have NEVER gotten bruises half as nasty as I have in HEMA. Like not even black and blue, straight green and yellow. Catch a couple of good full strength blows and you'll never be worried about getting punched again. Also, there really isn't much of a divide between the academics and practitioners. More just a personal preference. Most clubs, and members, are a mix of both and neither can achieve their goals without the other. Two sides of the same coin working together to improve their arts. Finally, there are guys who do literal cloak and dagger fighting. It's dope.
Hi! thanks for the great video! Long time HEMA competitor/Coach/Researcher. I think all your observations are pretty spot-on. I'd just like to maybe add to a few of the points. - HEMA is anarchists paradise with no tradition of how to train or dress, with total freedom comes the freedom to be great or a complete dweeb. - The constant competition and 0 respect for rank or experience mean we've made leaps and bounds since 2008 when I started. The leaps and bounds can sometimes be in weird directions until people realise it was a dumb direction. - Trying to give the roiling amorphous mass that is HEMA a consistent brand or messaging is like trying to get cats to do parade drill while singing acapella. Believe me, I've tried. - Most HEMAists dress like nerds. Despite a brave attempt by the French and Italian communities we have not yet been able to institute an effective fashion police. The Swedish were effective for a while by just winning everything and dressing snappy while doing it and taking everyone's women until others wised up, however, their top guys have now retired. - There is a lively debate around sportification and how much is good vs bad. Tournaments increase pressure testing but make people want easier, more technical, less realistic rulesets. See your video on BJJ on the street. We're trying to thread the needle. - HEMA meta evolves very quickly, we're currently in a very fast fleche heavy olympic fencing inspired phase, before we were in a cut heavy boxing inspired phase, projections are a grappling-heavy phase next provided rules aren't changed to prevent it. - 14 years of intense competition has shown that building manuscripts into your training and following the advice of people who trained people lived and died by these weapons wins you medals. Provided you combine it with physicality.
Only because a lot of the places we were doing tournaments had floors that we didn't want to damage, like basketball courts, and because some schools are not as vigilant about teaching their students how to fall correctly@@henrihamalainen300
Another good one, Ilan! Can you cover more on archery? Samurai, Comanche, and Mongols come to mind. Horseback arts are awesome too! Maybe even Old West knife/gunplay would be great. Just some ideas. Thank you, brother!
Comanche? The most feared and brutal slavers in North America? R*pists, cannibals and sadists? There are legion of fascinating Native American tribes from the Inuit down to the Ayacucho - and more.
My ex son inlaw was right into it, I too dismissed it as I have a thing against weapons but I had a closer look at Hema, and was really surprised, Bruce Lee incorporated fencing into Jeet Kun Do, leading with your strongest weapon your strongest arm. Whether you agree with him or not. These guys move really well, smooth, fast, even boxing clever. This would translate well to unarmed combat
As a 10 year practitioner of Escrima and only ½ year hema practitioner i'd say you're spot on! It is a valid martial art and it is divided in the theorists and the fighters. The M1 fights i don't think really counts as hema, or in the fringe, but they show how chaotic and hard it can get in that kind of setting. The overlap from FMA is big, especially in saber fencing, which have much of the same slash attacks as Escrima. Longswords have more stabs and the length make it surprisingly different.
Thank you for the kind words. @17:40 you absolutely want to wear full gear. A blunt sword is still a massive force multiplier, and cartilage takes a long time to heal. Hits to unprotected hands, elbows, and knees are no joke. That Polish sabre clip looks like an exhibition match to me - almost complete lack of gear, the exchange goes on for suspiciously long, they not moving around, and they are clearly pulling their hits when they do hit.
Oof. These clips remind me of a skirmish when I copped a halberd hit to my helm when younger. Probably my first ever concussion. Rung me like a bell. Wasn't long after that that I transitioned to the less brutal study of the rapier and longsword. I plan to have a good time for a long time.
@@relativisticvel Spears are definitely a scary weapon to be up against. Got seriously winded through my gambeson once thanks to a well timed spear thrust.
Glad you changed your mind about HEMA. I think it's a great martial art with a lot options depending on what someone's interests are. Just a small thing to point out, the clips you showed with the full armour is different to HEMA, I think it's generally referred to as M1 or medieval combat. I would say that it's more endurance focused and requires more stamina. Percussive force is used to subdue the opponent. HEMA sparring on the other hand uses protective gear not armour as such and is only their for protection not to represent full body armour or to rely on it for defence. Bouts are generally supposed to represent unarmoured fighting. Therefore technique is more important in HEMA as you can't just stand there and exchange blows. Anyhow, HEMA really helped me look at the weapons I practice in Aikido to make it more practical. I definitely recommend it for anyone who is interested in cross training. If you are interested in attending a HEMA event, I suggest you got Fight Camp in the UK, there are also plenty of good HEMA clubs there too.
Good video (as usual ^^) but their Is some lacking. I have been a Hema practionner for 2 year in France. The club was the biggest in the country. What you learn in hema largely depends about the club and the country you are into, because all of them don't have the same economical and cultural ressources. In my club, There was not this systema/ holistic appraoch you are talking about. For exemple My rapier instructor don't teachs us grappling because their Is no protection on thé ground when falling Also, the mentality may vary in each clubs : for somes, Hema Is a combat sport (were getting hurt Is considered as being normal), for others, Hema Is a martial arts (where getting hurt Is inacceptable). My experience in this club teach me that Hema fencing is a western martial art rather a sport, where being Athletic and being able to pressure is not a focus. An important thing Is western martial artiste differs of asian martial artiste in the way that they don't consider their art as a self defence tool. For exemple, i remember my instructor in grappling said once that his teaching don't apply in a self defence contexte.
2 year practitioner here. Just wanted to say excellent video. I especially like how you highlighted the takedown. The group I train with focus heavily on close plays, grapple and disarm.
Beautiful video! I especially enjoyed the group fighting part! It reminded me of Calcio Storico from Florence. Group fighting does need more attention, it is so true that we are missing something in modern days martial art events. Please make a video on Calcio Storico as well! Calcio Storico has a great historical background, but yet it's super alive!
Also, I want to point out a historical connection between Hema and Eskrima. Even though the phillipines had a rich martial tradition by the time the spaniards got there, the spanish ended up hiring filipino mercenaries for their other colonial endeavours. The spanish had a system for rapier and dagger - espada y daga - and you can bet your ass they spent some time training their mercs from the phillipines .
I did 5 years in FMA (not on a good level, but enough to recognize elements when i see them), and i started HEMA two years ago, mainly "messer" as a weapon which is a kind of one handed short sword. As a base i took the messer manuscript by johannes lecküchner. To my surprise, the later "messer nemen" techniques (which are disarm techniques) looked a lot like FMA stuff. To my added surprise, lecküchners manuscript is from 1482....
Thank you for standing up for HEMA. We do a lot of hard work and we rarely get taken seriously. Some of us have internalized that and stopped taking ourselves seriously. It's refreshing to get an outsider perspective that isn't immediately dismissive. I will say that HEMA armored fighting is different than HMB or Buhurt, which is the armored stuff you showed in the video. There is over lap but buhurt/hmb guys don't study sources.
Thank you Sir. I was a regular HEMA practitioner between the years of 2009 to 2017, and then with my Sons at home there after, it’s served them well. mostly grappling, pugilism and dagger, but some long sword as well. Many of the principles and moves transcend between the various disciplines with in HEMA. The reactions I would and still get from people when bringing up HEMA is mixed from, really??? to snickers to Really?!. As my old HEMA instructor would always say, ‘ The human body is basically the same around the world, people learned to figure out what worked independently.’ You’re right about the split, I tried to moderate my time but leaning heavily towards the doing aspect. Been looking into old combat Norse Glima recently. Thanks again, all the best:)
Cheers, grand video. You made some points I haven't thought about it doing Hema for 7 years now, being an instructor for 2 - The thing with the push forward winning the line (esp in some schools of fencing like laid out the close plays in Fior di Battaglia) was especially intriguing. I've been part of a club where they train kenjutso, Naginata and Hema now for a few months, to instruct the ones interested in hema and I found the Kenjiutso practioners to be very agile, very fast but sometimes if you drive through to a certain point they can be lacking (depends vastly on school though as far as I heard). Regarding the division between the "fighters" and the manuscript ppl: There is even more - there's the LARP bunch, the Landsknecht typa guys, a segment of martial artists (my own instructor did some mma on the side, mostly using grappling there) who just like the good fun of a hard longsword spar, the history nerds, who start reading secondary texts, the kid kinda living his knight fantasies lol etc. It is divided between different eras ppl focus on like scottish broadsword, saber which were in use a good 300 years after the first sword and buckler manuscript. We've got polish sabre, hungarian sabre, italian and spanish rapier, dagger, unarmed fighting, fighting with sticks, spears, batons and much more. But in the end we all come together, try out how our schools of fencing and preferred weapons work against others, and have a grand old time, while getting some bruises in (and grappling in full gear WILL get you fit, if you keep at it long enough). Thing between the practical and the more source oriented approach: I think - so do many others in HEMA - that there is a way to get to a synthesize of both worlds. The sources are our only way to learn about the art in the way it was laid out by the old masters. Some of the principles work beautifully. Others don't even though we try and try and try (struggled with Fiore's Bicorno quiet a bit and was presented to wildly different approaches by two different instructors. And there's this few moments of light, where a new interpretation of a technique and it's purpose unearths. Where we look at the pictures and descriptions from a different perspective. IE the portrayal of the guards in Joachim Meyers manuscripts look vastly exagerated. We made a fun game of reenacting some of the more extreme ones to see who could hold it the longest. But if you look at it as a depiction of a body in motion it all gets so much more dynamic, fast and dangerous if you apply it. HEMA other than Kenjutsu or Kali has the disadvantage of not being a continous art. It did die out in Europe, at least some parts did (some parts like some forms of sabre, HAVE an unbroken continuity though). Most prominently longsword, the thing that gets most ppl into the art, died out in europe in the 18th century. So we had no masters. Only our interpretations. We cannot fully do with the fighters approach, "just do what works" and compete at a tournament, as we couldn't unearth some of the finer, yet possibly still powerful principles of historic european combat. So we need the researchers, the readers, the one who interpret the sources and find ways to apply what we learn from it. But divorcing the source from material reality has its own risks. It needs to applyable after all.
Great video! I trained 3.5/4 years Hema now and I'm definitely on the "fighting/sparring" side. But I try to integrate the new theoretical techniques in my own system, sort of. So my learning is maybe: 20% theory, 80% sparring. Personally, I feel free to express myself, while being balanced and creating angles. This is what I like the most.
I’ve fenced all my life, beginning with the Olympic weapons as a young child…I have the dubious pleasure of not having to work these days, but professionally, I was a Crisis Interventionist/Behavioral Management Specialist, amd worked in that field for over 20 years…my favorite gig was at a state hospital on the Forensic unit; basically, I was assaulted for a living. Haha! I’ve been in Martial Arts since I was 5, and was lucky enough to be able to apply these skills in real life on an almost daily basis…(I’m so stoked you mentioned Kendo & Iado, both of which I’ve been a lifelong student of. Several years ago, I discovered HEMA, then Bohurt. (Fully armored combat wearing full plate using a variety of blunted weapons.) The only downside of HEMA is the expense in equipment, because lower income folk who are interested in it may be unable to afford it. Sir, it takes a man to admit his mistake, and it heartens me that the young folk of today (at least yourself) are mature and humble enough to say so publicly..outstanding, sir.
I wanted to follow up on daggers sonce you asked. I've been a HEMA practitioner for about 10 years, and I did several martial arts and combat sports before that. Its a pretty broad topic, as everything from rondel daggers from 1400s italy to Bowie knives in 1800s america could be considered HEMA. The main source I study has a specific context of people wearing heavy clothing/armor and basically stabbing each other with ice picks. You can get away with a lot more since the have to commit to actually stabbing you through awhats basically a parka at a minimum. We warn people that train it that it is not a modern practical knife system, but it does train certain skills. The first would be commiting to an attack and following through, the second is quickly transitionining to wrestling. The book our club studies, called the Flower of Battle, spends most of its length on dagger defense, and almost always assumes you are unarmed and getting jumped by a guy with a dagger. So while the techniques are out of context now, there's still a lot of reality. I think FMA guys would get a kick out of it as well, some of it is probably very familiar since FMA has a much more developed knife system.
Awesome video! Im apart of the LA Golden Knights for armored combat/buhurt (the full plate armor hema). I've done the whole boxing mma bjj route for about 8 years. And im at an age where im not so concerned with being the ultimate badass and i wanna just do stuff that looks fun and Buhurt is a great outlet. I highly recomend branching out to other martial arts on your journey.
HEMA instructor here. Great video. I love the respect. Thank you. I appreciate the good words. A few things. The full armored combat you see with steel plate armor is not strictly HEMA. It's called Buhurt or Steel fighting. It is historical so in that sense it could be technically HEMA, but it is a separate but parallel movement that grew out of Europe (Russia and Ukraine.) The steel fighting is emulating the old Knightly tournaments on foot. They do not focus on the historical techniques so much but bash bash bash with the idea that when a person hits the ground they are defeated. It's more wrestling with weapons and they do not focus on the old techniques so much. They use brute force and modern techniques in armor. I have a few friends who do it and they are hard core and nuts. Imaging what equipment failure looks like. It's as bad as you think. They go to the hospital when that happens. Expect staples, stitches, and bad knees doing Buhurt. Oh and the helmets are claustrophobic and the armor gets super hot inside and weighs 80 lbs. If they did use historical techniques for battlefield instead of tournament rules they would be stabbing into the armor gaps and eye slits with sword points and daggers to get past the armor. But they don't want to kill each other and Buhurt is a celebration of the old tournaments, not the battlefield, so thrusting with points is strictly forbidden. HEMA came out of old European libraries when language geeks found the old manuscripts in old Italian and old German and some in Shakespearean style English, showing and describing the mainly unarmored sword fighting aspect taught by the original sword masters. It is much more technical and mostly assumed unarmored combat- mostly duals. But for the longest time it was written in the old languages so it took a scholar to read them. Now they are translated into English so that helps a lot. But at the beginning only language PhDs even understood and wanted to piece it together for the rest of us. Thus HEMA came out of university, not the earthy dojos and studios of most other kinds of martial arts. And the type of people who practice HEMA tend to be more cerebral. Olympic fencing is also very highbrow. As it turns out learning the sword is a very cerebral martial art. Because you can't just smash, it's extremely strategic. All martial arts are but sword fencing is more so. Now HEMA has its divisions as you point out. Some tend to like the dress up and focus on drills with no pressure testing. They wouldn't even call it a sport. And more people like to drill and spar. And even others live for the tournaments. Keep in mind the old treatises were written so knights and other duelists could go kill people. So there's not a lot of McDojo or bullshito or mystic legends as it was a small world out there and people who lived by the sword knew their stuff before training with the masters who brought them to the next level. With any hand weapons art it takes vision to understand that in practice we can't wield the weapon with our sparring partners as we would in an actual death match because even through the safety gear we'd break something. It's easy to injure someone with a steel sparring sword so it takes a lot of trust and control. Even in tournaments we have to control the weapon. Hell even in a life and death duel one still has to master their fear and have ultimate control over the weapon to keep it supple and aggressive in the exact moments one needs them to be. There's a reason why modern Olympic fencing weapons turned into 400g kabob sticks, so the greatest cross section of people can master control of a sword in a strategic manner. HEMA is trying to avoid this though, in favor of keeping weapons at historical weights and lengths. Along with this will always follow a bit of pageantry because swords are beautiful and amazing and represent a specific time period and place, being cultural icons of different European regions. So the clothes naturally come with the sword if one wants to take it there. To sum up: most HEMA practitioners are a mix of people who like book research and who also like to spar with steel weapons. It's sort of niche- for now. And yes, because we all loved swords as children and knights are the stuff of fantasy and larp, it's hard to shake the stigma. But honestly everyone fears a knife in the hand of an aggressive street thug so why would a steel blade ten times the size in a persons hand be a thing to laugh at? It's weird how that works but it doesn't bother me anymore. Been doing it for a dozen years and still learning more and more. It's the rabbit hole I'm going to die in and I like it. I'll be buried with a sword when the time comes. Thanks for reading and I appreciate your video showcasing the martial art I love so much. Peace, brother.
A few points you may find interesting: 1. I Study HEMA and I think something you would enjoy is the Armizare by Fiore Dei Liberi. This is a hand to hand historical manual and it has a long of grappling in it and rondel dagger work. In other works, Fiore covered many other weapons such as poleaxes, etc. 2. Learning how to use these sword based weapons should always be pressure tested or you won't learn how to properly fight with them, as you already know. Most HEMA people I know spar a lot. It's core to the study. I can promise this, if you know how to use a stick as a weapon well enough there is nobody going to get close enough to you to take you down without broken hands, fingers, wrists, skull, jaw, clavicle bone, knee, ribs, etc. They won't be able to fight very well if you nail their head hard enough and it can easily be done when trained. I've learned how to look like I'm relaxed and not ready but really able to launch a super fast strike to the head or hands. Fast enough that people typically don't realize it until they're already hit. Stick weapons can screw your depth perception and make it easy to not understand the true reach of the weapon unless you train for it. I have been hit so hard wearing a padded cap and 14 gauge steel helm that I saw stars. Imagine what that stick would do unprotected in a street fight. Broom handle, steel pipe, rebar stick, etc. Lots of options to defend with all around us.
Some years ago me and a friend had duels everyday for more than a year with play swords...we got so into it that it was a automatic entrance to flow state. We sparred for hours, our bodies tired but our minds deep in flow. Was one of the best times of my life, my athletic capabilities into the highest it always had been, and it helped a lot in my unarmed fight.
I’m glad you pointed out that HEMA practitioners are trained to attack the opponent’s extremities. You touched on ot but I’d like to emphasize another thing about HEMA that’s relevant today. In the modern martial arts world we have this bugbear which is knife defense. And in most cases, they either train unarmed techniques against someone with a knife, and many teach very very impractical things that just won’t work, and the other extreme is martial arts instructors who’ll throw their hands up and say you can’t defend yourself against a knife attacker, you’re just going to get stabbed and die so just given them what they want. With the exception of Escrima, HEMA provides one of the only other feasible solutions to knife defense: HAVE YOUR OWN KNIFE! And if someone tries to attack you with a knife, and then cut at their hand.
@@TheVanguardFighter Do they “look” impractical? Or have you actually gone to a HEMA school, tried them under varying levels of resistance/pressure testing/sparring and found them to be impractical? As for specific examples, look back a few videos on this very channel and you’ll find a video about Italian special forces who trained knife fighting straight out of Fiore’s manuals and then used them to great effect in the trenches of WWI
@@alexanderren1097 Yeah Ive been to a couple different hema places and they didn't spar with knife/ dagger or do much resistance training. They also didn't do any of the grappling that is shown in the manuscripts. Most hema trains with the sword. Also i don't know if you read any of the hema sources like Fiore but they tend to focus way more on empty hand vs dagger than weapon vs weapon. Also his book and others don't really specify to attack the extremities, chest and head are the main targets for the dagger instead.
@@TheVanguardFighter well that’s disappointing. I’ve seen some HEMA schools like that too. HEMA isn’t centralized so there’s no oversight of individual schools and no standardized training curriculum, which can be good and bad depending on the individual school. Yes, I’m very familiar with the sources showing “complete” fighting systems with grappling/wrestling being the foundation of everything. I believe George Silver has a famous quote something to the effect of “If two evenly matched swordsman come to duel, the better wrestler will be the winner.” I actually started training European martial arts back when ARMA (American Renaissance Martial Arts) was the predominant organization prior to the formation of HEMA as an official organization but the instructor I first trained with had cone from a wrestling background, gone through a few different Japanese styles, then found the European stuff and he absolutely loved it. He’s of German ancestry so he primarily taught from the German sources but we did work with Fiore, Silver, and others too. We did a variety of weapons drills, pressure testing, and free sparring. In addition to matched weapons, we did quite a bit of unmatched weapons, i.e. longsword vs arming sword vs buckler, dagger vs arming sword (with and without bucklers, rapier vs longsword, etc. The craziest mismatched weapons we ever did was 8ft staff vs dagger just for $&@ts and giggles. That got pretty crazy especially when the dagger guy got past the staff and it did turn into a wrestling match!
@@alexanderren1097 Yeah I remember when ARMA was around, i leaned about it and Fiore's text at a reenactment even back in 2008/09. I think it dissolved shortly after so i never trained that system. I mostly train BJJ/ judo but i am familiar with historical sources and tried various weapon systems. One of my bjj instructors also teaches an escrima style but they don't spar and he admits it isn't practical for fighting.
The dagger systems are usually centered around what are called rondels & there are a ton of parallels between rondel systems & contemporary knife fighting systems.
HEMA is a lot of fun, I think a lot of practitioners like myself don't do it for the real world self defense aspect, we do it because we want to learn how to fight with medieval weapons, in the same way kendo and fencing practitioners enjoy their sports. Also whacking someone across the torso with a longsword is a heck of a lot more satisfying than landing a roundhouse kick on someones leg so there's that. I also like the fact that people are studying the manuscripts, it is a living martial art growing by the day as new information and techniques come to light and that history is being preserved where previously it was lost. In HEMA you have both the regular sparring like you saw at the start and it can get pretty tough, most is done unarmoured with just leather gloves and helmet and some clubs will put down rubber mats and allow full force take downs as you often end up in a clinch. Then you have the tournament points based sparring which resembles more like fencing where the bout stops each time someone is hit, but as you are fighting with weapons there is a small window where if the opponent huts you back your point is nullified as you are dead too. It is a really cool adpect that keeps it realistic and saves someone from going in with reckless abandon where in real life they would be dead after the first strike or unable to continue attacking. Lastly you have war of the nations, which is arguably less individual skill based as you have two teams fight each other in full armor and heavy weapons like maces and axes and it becomes an all out melee. You see a lot of knock outs and incapacitations in there, it is quite brutal.
Hello, we are the ones doing the unarmed in your video, everything you see is from the original barefist system of the 18th and 19th centuries, there is nothing from any other martial art. I have just put up a new video on pugilism if you watch this, you will get a better sense of what we do. Thanks for having us in your video.
I actually think the perception of hema not being a thing or only for nerds is not necessarily the Historical part of it, I think it's the European part of it. The general population hears martial arts and the first thought is eastern fighting systems. To them because it's an European martial art it automatically sounds like a larp 6:19 pretty similar to what they did hundreds of years ago. Winners of these tournaments would be sought after by lords and kings to train their forces and fight for them
I have a judo background and started getting in to euro Armour combat years ago and was told you cant do throws or grapples back then , now I looking at the stuff they do and can clearly see judo throws or grapple's and a few leg sweeps arm bars ect ect , and some of the old euro grapples like leg grabs are coming back in the judo mat
I'm a full blown SHTF doomsday prepper of German descent, so I train medieval German longsword, sword & shield, dagger, unarmed knightly wrestling, euro-tomahawk, throwing knives and crossbow use. I'm preppinf doe during & after SHF, when ammo runs out for almost everyone, and we're all forced back to older forms of defensive warfare against what will eventually be army-sized looter gangs and the like. HEMA is among the very best veins of apocalyptic defense training, and yes I do own a fulll arsenal of medieval weapons (real and sharpened) which I will be wearing I using in battle AFTER all rule of law is gone forever in the SHTF chaos to come. Civil unrest & new civil wars against martial law, post-nuclear war wasteland survival, etc - I see it all coming, and I train medieval German HEMA melee weapon use for this very reason. Thank you.
PTK sparring frequently went to ground but the problem is that sometimes there were dedicated backstabbers moving through the spar so if you go to ground, one of you is now facing two opponents. Teaches takedown awareness but discourages ground game.
I've worn full armor with a gambeson and let someone hit me full force with a training sword. It still hurts and leaves bruise. Hema training is no joke.
I love HEMA! Have done it for years in addition to FMA. FMA has a lot of basis in Spanish sword and dagger, so no surprise some of the same techniques are found in HEMA.
The interesting thing is that wrestling was very popular in medieval and Renaissance Europe. So much so that it was assumed that you would at least know about grappling when you started training with weapons. Several of the masters who wrote those fechtbuch said that wrestling prepared you for the sword by teaching timing, pressure, aggression, etc. "Ringen am schwert" (wrestling at the sword) was a very real thing. There's a reason why the Japanese emphasized jiujitsu rather than striking in their old fighting systems. Like medieval Europe and its knights, those systems were created for armored professional soldiers who were trying to kill each other with sharp metal bits...
Got into HEMA and JKD when I went to college back in 2002. I still practice them to this day off and on because well they are fun, and I don't care if I look a nerd.
I do hema and a lot of the time I end up close and grappling in which I win a lot of them. Sadly we aren’t allowed to take down our opponent at my club because the floor is stone so it wouldn’t be the nicest to fall on, but I try to practice the ones I e learned as much as I can
Those really fast dudes you were talking about around 9 minutes in are actually doing what would be unarmored dueling. Similar to fencing. That's another thing to keep in mind when looking at hema stuff. Is it supposed to be with or without armor.
HEMA disciplines deserve just as much respect as any of the other martial arts. It requires time, patience, dedication and grit. Those armored combat guys are tough as nails, too. A lot of people mistakenly think that a suit of armor makes you invincible. It really doesn’t, it just minimizes the chances of receiving a flesh wound. I once wore a helmet and took a whack to the head from a mace and man, it f***in’ HURT!!! So, props to those guys.
@@inside_fighting without a doubt, it does. If you consider the fact that actual knights trained for combat since they were like six or seven - running, lifting, calisthenics, riding, boxing, grappling, archery, fencing, etc. - it’s not at all hard to imagine that they were the champion athletes of their day. Just ridiculously hard dudes.
I'm sure you know by now but Buhurt and HEMA are separate things with the same roots. HEMA tends to favor rulesets assuming the fighters are both unarmored. As such any cuts to the limbs and the hands especially are scored. Buhurt is of course the armored form and you just need to get someone to have one knee on the ground for them to be out. As such grappling, striking and sweeping the legs, tend to be more favored techniques in Buhurt. Buhurt also allows incorporating MMA techniques. Some grappling techniques may not be allowed in some HEMA tournaments depending on the group hosting the tourney and their safety concerns.
Please look up and do a video revolving around: Ryu Jiu Jitsu, and Soke Haisan Kaleak . Looks like a derivative of Silat< Jiujitsu and Kempo. Great video as usual!
You have to wear HEMA armor when you fence full contact with metal weapons of historically accurate weight. Thanks for doing this twenty five years FMA, ten years HEMA, they complement each other.
HEMA is how is started watching youtube,with Skallagrim videos about Lightsabers and Bronze weapons,years and years ago 7:13 i may not carry it around,but i have a steel heater next to my bed,you never know😂 Funnily enough,people underestimate the shield and don't consider it a weapon,to the point that a cop told me that i could carry one in the car trunk if i wanted. While a stick of wood or a lenght of chain could get you to jail. 9:35 i have seen it called Mikiri in japanese martial arts,at least a similar concept. 15:26 i would love to see your grappler take on german Kampfringen,or Abrazare. How much has in common with modern grappling.
Well. You speaking about two somewhat different disciplines HEMA is very different from buhurt, despite both using weapons and armor. Buhurt focuses on armored combat with limited weapon range to make it relatively safe, it has skirmishes, and it is more or less a combat sport. HEMA is mostly focused on unarmored one on one combat, there is harnishfechten, but it is relatively rare due to the entrance cost. I can speak for a club I attend, there is a sparring session every training, and we try to implement whatever quirky technique we learned today in sparring all the time. Regarding of unification of the governing body and ruleset, think it might bring more harm than good. It is nice that every tournament has differences in rules, so one cannot over-optimize their fighting style to it. That promotes being well-rounded fighter IMHO.
There are plenty of us that both study manuscripts & train the real deal. I started out in other martial arts but got into HEMA about 20 yrs ago & it saved my life when i got attacked with a bladed weapon. Yes i did get cut etc but i still managed to close, grapple the guy & survive the encounter. Our ancestors weren't dumb, they were well trained, serious warriors with conplex systems for both armed & unarmed combat.
From a documentary, I learned that the Polish learned some of their fighting moves from the Mongols when the Mongols invaded Poland. I don't remember whether it was sword fighting or wrestling.
As many have propably already pointed out, you are showing videos of several different approaches / styles / sports of medieval weapons fighting. Many do all of them. HEMA is the formal training of the old manuscripts. It's the ones with the people with the modern day fencing mask and protective fabric armours doing all those fast paced matches. That is the same as the so called nerdy guys that go for the manuals and formal historic stuffs. The same groups often have people who take part in official tournaments held in many clubs. Lots of national, continental and global tournaments in that sport. Different weapons categories, mostly with swords. The one with the MMA approach in full harness of plate armours and knockouts in the ring IS (or was at least untill the recent events that I am not sure if it's ok to talk about on youtube) a huge thing in Russia. Started as a one time halftime show between MMA fights in the K-1 series. People loved it and it sort of became it's own sport. That is Bohurts' profight category. some limitations to it though. No stabbing (unlike HEMA, they do allow and very widely do stabbing), no hits behind the knee or the back of the neck and so on, just to avoid people getting paralyzed, really badly injured due to serious injury to their knees/ tendons and no joint locking (for the same reason of not breaking the other guy seriously for snapping their joints really badly). For the fight part, it is pretty much like MMA or other ring fight sports, points are counted, both try to win with a KO but often end in a points judging. Most profights are with sword and shield combo due to it's effectiveness and versitile usage. Bohurt also has the singles fight categories that have points based fights but no kicks or such are awarded points. It's more of a skill based sport. Points count and they are not going for knockouts. And then there are the mass battles categories. 5vs5 (or 7vs7, depending on the organization holding the event) is the most entertaining as it's very fast paced and highly tactical. The idea is basicly like sumo wrestling meets rugby with weapons and skip that fucking ball already. Get the guy down however you can to get your team win the round. Like sumo, 3 points of contact to ground will do. But so does punching the lights out of the opponent, which also happends very often. You saw the fights. Bohurt has 2 international leagues, both with some potential to make it big but since the global political situation and one of the leagues founded in Russia.. You know. Anyhow you are right that it is in a way lacking the right sort of branding. Actually all of the styles. And there is some level of division as some really want to bash their enemy to the head with a huge axe (Bohurt approach) and others are more into the technical fight aspect with the option of tournaments. (The actual HEMA) Long post, sorry. I am a martial artist with the main background in melee weapons and fighting with them. Dipped my toes in all of these and some asian styles too. I also have done some MMA with heaviest emphasis on the groundworkand punching as those strengthen my techniques with the melee weapons. Great video, just needed to point it out and open a bit more about the diverse world of european martial arts. Not to be underestimated like you graciously put it. I know how to swing anything from a 10cm knife to a 2+m polearm and also back it up with the use of my fists, grappling and kicks. Master of none, adept at some. Know some of everything.
One of the German manuals says: "alles fechten kompt vom ringen" or "all fencing comes from wrestling", which explains why there is so much "up close and personal" in a lot of early period HEMA fencing. The tactile sensitivity gained from grappling is very helpful in learning how to respond to blade pressure when armed. Later period styles for the most part greatly de-emphasized unarmed actions while using weapons. Personally, I think the schism between the historians and the competitors in HEMA is overstated. I've been doing HEMA for just under 20 years, and have competed quite often, at one point being ranked 8th in Canada on HEMA ratings, which is not too bad. I've also spent years poring over the manuals, refining my interpretations of the techniques, and also took up classical Japanese swordsmanship and Judo. There is an issue with skill level in HEMA, but not necessarily in the rank and file, which for the most part can handle themselves as well as any other weapons-based practitioners of similar experience, if not better. It's that the upper levels of the HEMA world are not as skilled as the upper levels of other martial arts, which is due to the amount of time HEMA has been around. At 20 years in, I'm considered part of HEMA's "old guard" by some, but compared to my colleagues in the Japanese sword world, I'm still a baby. There is no Imai Masayuki Nobukatsu, Dan Inosanto, or GSP of HEMA yet. There's still a significant number of HEMAists who don't know what they don't know, even if they're fairly competent. There's a level of insight that comes from practicing an art for 40+ years that you can't really get in 5 years, no matter how much you train or compete. Once HEMA has that, look out!
As a side note the reason why even “unarmored” fencing styles wear at least some armour/protective gear is because it’s very easy to break fingers or cause concussions without it when fighting full contact with a metal stick
i joined local hema community these past months 😅 learn a lot.... actually i understands most of their stuff from internet but learning irl by group is more fun and interesting also i can spar bit (with pretty little protective gears
14:07 This is a Buhurt match and afaik the rules are that you‘re out when your hand or knee touches the ground. So the people lying on the ground are not actually unconscious, they’re just chilling because they’re out of the game. Ofc the sport is still dangerous and you can get hurt, but when that happens the match usually gets paused right away to get medical care in. They don’t just leave each other lying unconscious on the ground.
Just FYI, there are a *lot* of us who like to both do the historical and the compeition stuff. There are some who are very biased either way, but most are just training and having fun in the middle ground :-)
The main thing to keep in mind looking at these sparring matches, especially the heavy armour, is the weapons are still blunt, and axes and swords are NOT anti-armour weapons. These fighters want to go home at the end of the day to see their families. When you are wearing mask and padding, again the weapons are for unarmored fighting, and in the German system would be called Blousefecten, or shirt fighting. Against armour you would use pole-arms such as the poleaxe, halberd etc, but there is almost no way to "simulate" these weapons without wearing a lot more armour than was historical, because those weapons were specifically used to smash armour and kill the squishy human inside. Basing systems on the original manuscripts is the point, we have to recreate what the intent was, and often the "manuals" are not beginner guides, they sometimes assume you already know how to fight, and the manual just describes how to beat practitioners of those systems with techniques known was Master-Strikes. Some of the manuals were also written for specific clients of those teachers. And not all manuals have everything. But, in the end, what they were trying to beat hasn't changed. People still have two legs, two arms, a body and a head to strike at, and most can be broken in the same way today as they were 600 years ago.
Some people practice HEMA purely as a sport, just for exercise, for understanding history but some approach it as a combat/self defense art; especially those who practice unarmed arts. As an umbrella term HEMA covers more things than MMA (MMA is mostly unarmed fighting where HEMA can cover unarmed, armed, armed & armored, ranged weapons, early firearms, etc) even though the total number of practitioners in MMA is probably much higher than HEMA practitioners. HEMA can loosely be used to cover arts from ancient Greece to WWI cavalry sword. However most usually study in a time frame from the 1st fight book in 1290 up to military saber of the 1800s.
In my club we like to say we teach hot to fight with a sword, not swordfighting. The basis of every martial art is grappling and wrestling. Dagger fighting is basically grappling with daggers.
The video of the skirmish with people in armour rumbling is a big event called "Battle of the nations" look it up on youtube. For safety reasons they don't have ambulances, they just helicopter out the injured.
(I know I'm late to this conversation.) HEMA is a broad category, akin to saying, "Asian Martial Arts". That said, in broad categories, there are unarmored combat (sometimes called blossfechten - shirt fighting), armored combat (harnischfechten - harness fighting), mounted fighting (rossfechten), jousting, and buhurt. I've done all of these to some extent but jousting and I'm working on getting there. Buhurt is the super violent armored fighting you show a lot of here and is a modern recreation of tournament fighting on foot rather than warfare. It can be full force full speed because the moves are restricted to moves that won't normally kill, and armor, especially with modern metals, /works/. The old manuals HEMA purports to use teach in a unique manner. Rather than showing how to perform this attack or that one, the manuals have a series of "plays" much like short katas, usually 4-6 moves to teach flow and body mechanics. That's what you see people doing when they are moving slowly and often awkwardly. They are learning these plays. From these, you can put the moves together in your own flow for stress testing under competitive environments. There is also a LOT of modern sports mentality in this and competition rules are often unique to a single event. This allows for testing one aspect or another in a relatively safe environment. While some "game the rules", most are studying if they "got it right" since these martial arts have not survived intact over the centuries. Getting a play "right" is a real "A-HA!" moment because you can see how you are defending and attacking and controlling your opponent all at once. If you'd like to explore some of the old manuals used in HEMA, I highly recommend looking at wiktenauer.com where many are archived along with side by side translations into modern English, often translated by people who are also practitioners. It really is a fun mental exercise working out what these manuals are saying and then trying these moves with minimal protective gear (appropriate to how hard you're doing this practice round). You can see the mechanics and flow and then jump into a sparring or competition ring and see if you can use what you learned. If you want to try some of these yourself (highly recommended!) I'd suggest looking into the works on that site by Joachim Meyer, Paulus Hector Mair, The latter provides the most materil, but many HEMA practitioners have trouble with some parts and he did copy from other masters, making his work more a compilation than an original work. Among other things, Mair does cover unarmed, dagger, mixed weapons, and dussack. You might find dussack interesting because it is essentially a training weapon very similar to a machete.
Just for clarities sake you showed 2 different things here 1 is hema sparring the other is buhurt they're both great and have a lot of overlap but they differ greatly have different focuses and different governing bodies. Buhurt is really a combat sport with teams and leagues. Hema is more broad and the competitive side of it is almost exclusively 1v1 duels with protective equipment simulating being unarmoured
@@inside_fighting no buhurt doesnt really have any historical rots or effective combat for real armoured fighting (not to say that hitting someone with a big sword doesnt hurt) but it is completlly ineffective against real armour, all the historical weapons or techniqes that were actaually used are banned in buhurt since it literally could severely injure or kill someone (such as thrusting into gaps in the armour or the eye slit/opening). If you wanna see better representation of hema/historical combat in armour i´d reccomend this channel www.youtube.com/@dequitem
@@inside_fighting so theres a lot of overlap especially in the practitioners many do both its like boxing and karate but many don't. Yes technically if you consider the blanket of of historical and European you could consider buhurt which aims to base itself on the foot combat tournaments of France (thats where the word buhurt comes from it translates to smash pretty much) but you would never go to a hema tournament and see buhurt nor a buhurt tournament and see hema they generally organize themselves separately.
You make a really good point about how poor HEMA's marketing and branding is. Like the fact that even after looking into HEMA you were still confusing it with adjacent practices like HMB really hammers home how badly communicated just how badly HEMA has done about differentiating itself from other practices reconstructing European sword fighting (and other martial arts). For reference the main practices reconstructing European sword fighting are HEMA, HMB/Buhurt, re-enactment, the SCA, and also LARP (kinda), all are kinda sparring based but the differences in outcome kinda communicate that sparring isn't the only part of developing quality in martial arts. With the SCA, re-enactment and LARP it is very much about the costume, like their practice mostly revolves around wearing costume and playing with the objects, but their fight training is typically limited to safety training and they actually don't use historical manuals very much in their practice in spite what it probably looks like. HMB/Buhurt (the terms are used interchangeably for the same hobby) is the armoured combat stuff you showed footage of, it's a different activity to HEMA (though it's awesome and you should look more into it as well). Buhurt is the practice of using sports science to train for the various divisions of a specific sport that recreates medieval tournaments as best it can. HEMA by contrast is a combat sport that uses a combination of modern and historical gear to allow for comprehensive sparring, for which interpretation of historical manuals as one of the main pillars of training. I suspect this is why it also feels like the people fighting and the people reading the manuals are separate groups, since HMB practitioners only occasionally use manuals in their training, but the thing is most HEMAists utilise interpretation in their practice, especially the people out there winning tournaments. It's also worth noting that in the HEMA community the idea that tournaments don't use the techniques in the manuals is basically the equivalent of "doesn't work in the streets" in unarmed fighting, like it's basically a cope for losing, but of all the best tournament fencers I've met they all read and advocate reading historical manuals, and even talk a lot about how to use them to improve your fencing.
I have to respectfully disagree with you about the SCA. Sca fighters run the gamut from those who use the manuals as a basis for their fighting and those who practice the SCA specific styles of sport fighting. For the armored combat, we use rattan as a substitute for the metal weapons, but that combat is done full force and full contact. The sca is also doing a lot more rapier and cut and thrust fighting with steel weapons nowadays as well. One of the things the sca does extremely well is simulate melee combat. It's not uncommon to have dozens or even hundreds of combatants on the field wailing away at each other full force. Up to a couple thousand at the bigger war events. Yes, there's the costume part. Yes there's the material culture part. But to say that sca's training is just safety training and they don't do sparring and what not is inaccurate. As I said earlier, we go out at full force and definitely pressure test our technique.
@@BudgetGunsandGearReviews That's a fair critique. I suspect it might depend on your locality a bit. I'm in Australia where there is some SCA, but it's no where near as big as it is in the states, and it's much more like a combination of re-enactment and larp group out here.
Empty-hand HEMA is all grappling, I don't know that there's any kind of boxing manual we use. The clip in here for empty hand wasn't very representative. A lot of HEMA grappling online will be called 'Ringen' - if you have a look, there's a lot in common with other grappling systems like Judo, Pankration, etc.
@@inside_fighting yes, but it's considered pretty late period (19th to 20th century) Technically WW2 fighting systems also count- and some HEMA clubs will train these too. There's a manual from one Colonel Monstery (Includes a biography and is totally worth a read) which covers a few weapons and includes an unarmed section. It's notable because it's from around the time they were discussing the establishment of boxing rules, and were having the exact same discussion about gloves that's happened in recent years with MMA and bareknuckle.
Wrestling, grappling, striking, weapons; if you're deficient in any then there's more you can learn. HEMA is great and like everything else is evolving. No one does just one thing anymore. I'd love to see martial arts competitions with like ten events where you have to compete in at least five and winning is based on overall score.
i have a friend in Carmiel, that teaches and compete in hema (or a sort of hema), so when you are here, if you want, i can try and make the contact maybe even some training :) you said it reminds you ilustrisimo, well, haven't the Filipino martial arts derived from, Spanish sword fighting? that was derived for, at-that-time-non-historical- European martial arts?
Hey man, the best way to look at HEMA is that its regional in its nature, just like asian martial arts. thats why theres so many flavours of it.The manuals and old texts where written mostly, especialy the older ones (14th and 15th century) by men who fought and died by the blade. Fiore is one of the old Masters who is actually documented to have fought in wars and fought in at least 5 duals with a "long" sword. Other Masters origins arent quite so well documented. A lot of the techniques across every system of weapon arts, European AND asian are very similar, ( theres only so many ways the human body can move holding a sharp blade in two hands) and throughout recorded history the Human race has been constantly at war with itself, (the modern era being the most peacefull era in history) so the stuff written in the manuals, if applied correctly, absolutely do work, because they were written by people who've been there, done that, and survived to write about it. One must remember that the old texts are TRAINING manuals, not Fighting manuals, they are manuals on how to safely train with the weapons. Some elaborate on how to actually kill people using the techniques but most dont.Thats why we have the big divisions in HEMA between the "historical" people and the sparring people. If you use the training techniques to actually spar with without tweaking them a bit, they dont really work all that well in a fight. BUT....if you tweak them just a little, turn the blade a little. hold the handle a little differently, go a little further or harder than the manuals say to do, use a blade that is representative of the time period your studying instead of a blade thats 6 inches longer than it should be....everything in the manuals works a whole lot better. Im one of the historical camp people, but i like to spar... a lot... and Im not a bad fighter. I try to use the techniques as written but I DO tweak them to make them work... and ive really, really ,really , preasure tested them over 25 years. I dont think the sparring only crowd has the right mind set when it comes to fighting with swords, they treat it like modern sport fencing, tag with whippy antenaes, they do all sorts of stuff youd never do if your life was really on the line, because thers really only 3 outcomes you can get when fighting with swords, you kill your opponent, he kills you, or you both die. So going into the fight you only have a 30% chance of even surviving, I love to spar and will do it at every chance I get. but if we were using sharp swords, my defence would be a lot more prevalent than my offence.
The one thing I see that tends to hold HEMA back from being a commercialized martial art is that there's no money in it. Top level guys in MMA and boxing and the like can make training and conditioning their full time job. People who are really serious about HEMA (and I'm lumping in various disciplines like SCA, buhurt, HEMA schools, etc) train several times a week, but they still have lives and work outside of their martial art, and it's still a hobby. It might be a serious hobby, but it's still a hobby. It's a damned expensive one, too. My cheapest sparring sword was $200 (plus another $500 in mods and upgrades because I can't leave well enough alone), and my wife, who's way more into it than me, has ten times that in armor, gear, etc. And the hell of it is, all of these things are consumables. They break and wear down over time. It takes money to keep up with, and very few people have the privilege of doing HEMA professionally. There are leagues and tournaments and so on, and if you're in the know, you know who's good at what. But outside of a few videos floating around RUclips, there's no wider coverage of HEMA, and no real interest in making it commercial. Until someone with money comes in to make a promotional league that can actually let people devote their time to being athletes, that's likely not going to change.
HEMA is fascinating to me, in large part because its very much in a transitional period, and in the next 5-10 years, we'll probably see a schism of sorts between Sports HEMA and reconstruction HEMA. Right now, I think its pretty fair to compare it to Keysi- its much more streetfighting than it is a sport.
As a hema guy, we mostly do takedowns when someone is wearing armor, or some form of protective gear, as swords aren't particularly good at cutting through metal. Also, I can assure you, most of the sword fighting you see in fantasy games and movies aren't how they would be used historically. I honestly can't watch most sword fighting scenes without cringing a bit 😂. But loved your analysis.
Also, when dealing with armored opponents, we either use grappling or halfswording, which is when someone grabs their sword about halfway and use it as how they would use a dagger, and there's no need to worry about cutting their hand open, as swords only cut if someone actively does a cut, and swords don't have to be razer sharp to cut, though wearing some sort of plated gloves is still preferred.
They had to have something to offer. Look at how the small country of England was able to rule the world for hundreds of years. Or the Spanish when they went to south America and took over with just a small group. The western arts were based on pure practicality of use.
Armored combat/buhurt has taught me so much about grappling i never would have known in bjj. Grappling multiple opponents, grappling with a weapon in your hand, realizing that double leg takedowns are actually very ineffective in a battlefield scenario. And holy hell is it good conditioning, now when i wrestle in bjj/judo i have such a deep gastank after getting accustomed to grappling in 60+ pounds of armor
That’s something j never thought about!
@@inside_fightingjudo and grecco roman throws are king in armor, for 2 reasons; A. you want to throw your opponent to the ground without going to the ground yourself and B. its simply a bad idea to duck your head down when wearing a 16+ lb helmet and the risk of getting sprawled on is huge cus now you have a guy on top of you who has 60+lbs of gear plus the weight of your own gear. it really changes the game
@@HungarianWarHorse Exactly the problem us light guys face with takedowns. When all opponents are 30kg heavier, the risk to reward ratio of takedowns is not appealing.
Absolutely agree, that’s why historical grappling arts focus on upper body takedowns and remaining on your feet :)
@@inside_fightingvery true, headgear teaches you to economize breathing while fighting
The problem with codifying HEMA into one rule set is that in any rule set there are certain techniques which become more "meta" than others, and as a result the entirety of the system no longer is practiced because it is more advantageous to only train what works in sport. I actually really like that just about every HEMA tournament has its own rule set because that keeps the training non specific and the system as shown in the manual is more preserved because you don't know what you're getting into.
What if there wasn’t one theme per event but a series of them so that multiple different aspects could be covered. It’s rhetorical only way for it to become more popular in my view but maybe most HEMA people don’t want it popularized anyway.
@@inside_fightingthat sounds like people who do foil, epee, and sabre in Olympic fencing. There is logic to each ruleset. Meta strategies always evolve, and that's fine. Adapting the game to match the "ideal" is just a process. Ultimately though, it is just a game.
I think it's more important to identify that a set of skills is sometimes only ideal within a meta. Like going to the ground is fine in a 1v1 match, but not really a good idea in a real situation with multiple people and broken glass on the ground.
I think you do a good job of identifying the context.
When we study martial arts, we study a language. It's an interpretation of what happened translated to words then translated to practice. That practice needs to be translated to instinct by another person. I think most paths that you can take are generally valid.
@@inside_fighting Check out SoCal Swords annual event...it s the larger event in the Americas and Worldwide right now. And it takes place in the US. It s a competitive event with over 300 Longsword fencers , 100 sabre fencers etc....but it also has events for Cutting with sharp blades...workshops, lectures, classes , vendors , demonstrations etc.
This.
There's also no real governing body or bodies for HEMA that have evolved yet like many other arts have, so there is no universal agreed upon rule set for tournaments. Therefore it's up to whomever is throwing the event to decide the rules.
Most HEMA practioners are about unarmored combat. Armoured combat comes in 2 different types, Bohurt/HMB and harnischfechten. The armoured combat shown here would be Bohurt/HMB, which has routes in medieval tournaments, fairs and festivals (to the beat of my understanding). The other is harnischfechten, which is closer to fighting in armour in a real fight/battle scenario with real weapons. A big difference is Bohurt doesn't allow for thrusting so everything becomes a bludgeon regardless if it has a blade or point. Harnischfechten on the other hand is about taking in the context of both wearing armour, and what weapons you're using, and using techniques intended to bypass/defeat the armour. Some great examples of harnischfechten are from the channel Dequitem.
Seems very cool. I’d love to learn more about it!
@@inside_fighting Dequitem is amazing. Think you'd really like his stuff. Also showcases the incredible variety available in HEMA.
@@KickinItStudios gonna.cHeck him out
Outstanding channel
@@codycarter7638superb!
Basically the prejudice comes from the fact that people conflate hema with larp. And since fantasy is for nerds and history is for nerds, hema guys are probably nerds. And I have done Hema, and this is pretty much true. But the idea that nerds can't fight is wrong. Hema teaches you great timing, distance management, the importance of posture and structure and wrestling. My hema teacher was a scrawny dude but with blades he was easily twice as fast as me without using effort and strength. On the ground my odds were slightly better, but only slightly
Nerds can fight sums it up perfectly 😅
That's one of the things I love about weapon martial arts. Since weapons are force multipliers, someone who's better trained will usually beat someone more athletic and less trained. It's great for the overweight, skinny, short, or aging. That said, athleticism+ training is still very hard to beat.
@inside_fighting as a hema practitioner I can tell you I love that hema is finally getting some love from the outside
The guy who ran the first HEMA club I trained at had his thyroids removed due to cancer. Suffice to say he was a big boy. His foot work and swordplay were so fast it was almost like he was teleporting. His philosophy at that point was essentially "I don't have the stamina I used to, better be sure I can end it fast." That he did.
Great video! That guy in the funny clothes and silly mustache might be more dangerous than you think. 😜 Like all other martial arts, some HEMA folks train hard several times a week and are very skilled. Some do not and are not. Best way to judge a martial art is from the inside. Do it for two years, learn the basics and spar a lot. Then you will know. HEMA has a lot to offer, just find a school that takes safety seriously and get in the ring. You'll be glad you did.
Thanks for featuring me and my video at 6:00. The fight is a "buhurt" format fight. Buhurt teaches situational awareness and pressures tests twchniques where the entire body is used without much restriction to technique. Great for pressure testing. Glad you enjoyed my channel.
I’ll link you in the description!
As a practitioner of HEMA and Asian arts, I always found it interesting that practitioners of Asian arts had no problem with the traditional uniforms but get turned off by HEMA dressing in historical clothing, since many of the historical techniques were designed with what people were wearing at the time in mind, just like some BJJ techniques basically requiring the gi to perform the technique. And just like Asian techniques can be adapted for modern clothing, so can HEMA techniques. In terms of HEMA empty hand, people seem to forget that boxing and wrestling are technically HEMA. Just like sword arts changed over the centuries as the "arms race" between weapons and armor kept changing, so has boxing and wrestling over the years, but so what. It's still HEMA that just happens to have a continuous lineage with limitations for safety in sport. Classical pugilism is also interesting if you looked at the Classical Pugilism manuals with your FMA background. Jogo do Pao is technically HEMA too :) HEMA dagger goes hand in hand with HEMA war wrestling from the manuals, especially Joachim Meyer and Fiore dei Liberi. Cool stuff.
Modern boxing and wrestling are about as historical as judo and point karate. They are modern sports built on a tiny sliver of older, much larger systems. Same as judo’s lineage, which starts at the end of the 1800’s, boxing and wrestling are, in my opinion, not unbroken traditions. You can see the influence of what came before, but it’s just not the same art. But I’m not going to tell an actual hema practitioner what is hema and what is not. If you consider olympic fencing hema, then all these apply as well.
There are certainly HEMA practitioners on both sides of this debate, some who say that boxing, wrestling and Olympic fencing are no longer HEMA because they are different than what came before them. Some will say that they aren't HEMA precisely BECAUSE they do have an unbroken lineage, as they all consist of practitioners who were taught by practitioners who were taught by practitioners, etc, etc, all the way back, with no breaks, and with each generation practicing the art as a mixture of what they were taught coupled with their own changes for their own relevancy. Those people will say that HEMA arts MUST be arts that completely died out and had to be resurrected from the treatises and manuals. I simply disagree with both of those types of people, because of arts like Jogo do Pao, which the entire community agrees is HEMA, but also has an unbroken lineage, and cannot be proven to be practiced 100% exactly like it always has, because no art can prove that claim because all people bring themselves to their art. And if that logic applies to Jogo do Pao, Scottish Backhold Wrestling, Cornish wrestling, etc, it applies everywhere. But this debate will never have a resolution.
@@MasterPoucksBestMan You are probably right in saying there will never be a resolution and there is no particular need for one either. Personally, I consider an art separate when its core purpose changes significantly - like when a practical martial art is cut down to produce a martial sport.
It’s not a clear line, though, and there are a lot of arts in a grey area. Judo, sport karate and boxing for instance had a gradual change from an early more practical form to what we have today, which is almost purely a sport - both need combining with other arts to function well in practical applications.
I did iaido for a long time and they called it koryu, which means it’s an unbroken line from the 1600’s. But I found out later that in the 1950’s, the grand master of the style threw away the hundreds of techniques, kept 15 and added around twenty from other styles to ”make it more approachable for modern people”. This dumpster fire is now called the same as the pre-1950’s style. No one from that time would recognize what we did. It’s not the same art and it does not serve the same purpose.
Pancratia technically falls under the HEMA umbrella and I know of at least 1 HEMA club that trains in it alongside the swords. Shileghlie is starting to grow in popularity as well
Most people think of the LARP folks when they think of HEMA.
There's even some overlap in the crowds. There's larpers in my club. Great people having fun, but one is a martial art and one is not.
LARP fighting is a fun and useful addition to real historical martial arts training. Many of the best fighters I know also LARP.
One of the toughest people I have ever met is a blacksmith and former MP. At well over 50 she puts on armor and spars full contact with metal weapons against guys who are much bigger.
"So you guys dress up, that's nerdy." =proceeds to wear hakama to pizza hut dojo party=
😂😂😂
It's great to see coverage of HEMA. My karate sensei took a lot of heat 20 years ago when he got into this.
I feel it has a lot of potential to be a cool event people watch internationally
Karate is often a cult. i.e......we are good....everybody else is wrong.
People might not carry swords anymore, but sword techniques translate to walking sticks, umbrellas, & canes. Interestingly, single-stick & canes are also HEMA and can be found anywhere.
Thank you for being so open minded and ready to reconsider your initial opinion on a subject. Really makes me respect you more, especially as a martial artist. Hema deserves more credits.
I had no idea how cool it actually is
I love HEMA. I've trained in nearly a dozen martial arts (move around a lot and hard to find good dojos in the same art from state to state sometimes) and Hema is one of my favorites. I got started with System de Armes in New Orleans, which is one of the older clubs in the country, and instantly fell in love. I even started teaching my kid. A buddy of mine who does BJJ asked me how it's practical in real life and my reply, aside from what's already been touched on here, is: reflexes, those swords move a LOT faster than a punch or kick; foot work, huge focus and that translates well in any system; and even with all the gear on using synthetic (non-metal) swords I have NEVER gotten bruises half as nasty as I have in HEMA. Like not even black and blue, straight green and yellow. Catch a couple of good full strength blows and you'll never be worried about getting punched again. Also, there really isn't much of a divide between the academics and practitioners. More just a personal preference. Most clubs, and members, are a mix of both and neither can achieve their goals without the other. Two sides of the same coin working together to improve their arts. Finally, there are guys who do literal cloak and dagger fighting. It's dope.
Hi! thanks for the great video! Long time HEMA competitor/Coach/Researcher.
I think all your observations are pretty spot-on. I'd just like to maybe add to a few of the points.
- HEMA is anarchists paradise with no tradition of how to train or dress, with total freedom comes the freedom to be great or a complete dweeb.
- The constant competition and 0 respect for rank or experience mean we've made leaps and bounds since 2008 when I started. The leaps and bounds can sometimes be in weird directions until people realise it was a dumb direction.
- Trying to give the roiling amorphous mass that is HEMA a consistent brand or messaging is like trying to get cats to do parade drill while singing acapella. Believe me, I've tried.
- Most HEMAists dress like nerds. Despite a brave attempt by the French and Italian communities we have not yet been able to institute an effective fashion police. The Swedish were effective for a while by just winning everything and dressing snappy while doing it and taking everyone's women until others wised up, however, their top guys have now retired.
- There is a lively debate around sportification and how much is good vs bad. Tournaments increase pressure testing but make people want easier, more technical, less realistic rulesets. See your video on BJJ on the street. We're trying to thread the needle.
- HEMA meta evolves very quickly, we're currently in a very fast fleche heavy olympic fencing inspired phase, before we were in a cut heavy boxing inspired phase, projections are a grappling-heavy phase next provided rules aren't changed to prevent it.
- 14 years of intense competition has shown that building manuscripts into your training and following the advice of people who trained people lived and died by these weapons wins you medals. Provided you combine it with physicality.
Saw a HEMA event in Vegas and was stunned! They kick the ish out of each other.
Yes just wouldn’t have guessed lol
It’s interesting how HEMA developed the right attitude where fights are not getting stopped for grappling or for striking the feet.
Yes it’s rare in martial arts especially weapons systems to see this
That developed because people were trying to copy the various rulesets for 16th century judicial duels, and expanded from there.
@@inside_fightingMost weapon based systems had grappling and take downs but those were removed when it turned into sport.
Only because a lot of the places we were doing tournaments had floors that we didn't want to damage, like basketball courts, and because some schools are not as vigilant about teaching their students how to fall correctly@@henrihamalainen300
Another good one, Ilan! Can you cover more on archery? Samurai, Comanche, and Mongols come to mind. Horseback arts are awesome too! Maybe even Old West knife/gunplay would be great. Just some ideas. Thank you, brother!
Great ideas!
Comanche? The most feared and brutal slavers in North America? R*pists, cannibals and sadists? There are legion of fascinating Native American tribes from the Inuit down to the Ayacucho - and more.
@@handroids1981I’m pretty sure Europeans were the most brutal slavers of north and South America 😅
Aztecs
@@LiShuBen The Spainish and Portuguese? A close second.
My ex son inlaw was right into it, I too dismissed it as I have a thing against weapons but I had a closer look at Hema, and was really surprised, Bruce Lee incorporated fencing into Jeet Kun Do, leading with your strongest weapon your strongest arm. Whether you agree with him or not. These guys move really well, smooth, fast, even boxing clever. This would translate well to unarmed combat
Agree fully
As a 10 year practitioner of Escrima and only ½ year hema practitioner i'd say you're spot on! It is a valid martial art and it is divided in the theorists and the fighters.
The M1 fights i don't think really counts as hema, or in the fringe, but they show how chaotic and hard it can get in that kind of setting.
The overlap from FMA is big, especially in saber fencing, which have much of the same slash attacks as Escrima. Longswords have more stabs and the length make it surprisingly different.
You are lucky you get to train both
Thank you for the kind words.
@17:40 you absolutely want to wear full gear. A blunt sword is still a massive force multiplier, and cartilage takes a long time to heal. Hits to unprotected hands, elbows, and knees are no joke. That Polish sabre clip looks like an exhibition match to me - almost complete lack of gear, the exchange goes on for suspiciously long, they not moving around, and they are clearly pulling their hits when they do hit.
About 45 seconds into your first Kendo sparring session and you'll be a believer in that too
Oof. These clips remind me of a skirmish when I copped a halberd hit to my helm when younger. Probably my first ever concussion. Rung me like a bell.
Wasn't long after that that I transitioned to the less brutal study of the rapier and longsword. I plan to have a good time for a long time.
Yes that’s too nuts for me lol
@@relativisticvel Spears are definitely a scary weapon to be up against. Got seriously winded through my gambeson once thanks to a well timed spear thrust.
Ilustrisimo is the HEMA of FMA, as it does have roots in Destreza,
a Spanish Rapier system
This is true. Which is interesting considering it’s one of my favorite systems
@@inside_fighting Mine too, at least as far as bladed FMA systems go. It is also very elegant compared to other styles.
How do you feel about HEMA?
Love it. A friend and I train it a bit for fun.
@@jrlonergan6773 i would too if there was a place nearby. Looks way more fun than i realized
Glad you changed your mind about HEMA. I think it's a great martial art with a lot options depending on what someone's interests are.
Just a small thing to point out, the clips you showed with the full armour is different to HEMA, I think it's generally referred to as M1 or medieval combat. I would say that it's more endurance focused and requires more stamina. Percussive force is used to subdue the opponent. HEMA sparring on the other hand uses protective gear not armour as such and is only their for protection not to represent full body armour or to rely on it for defence. Bouts are generally supposed to represent unarmoured fighting. Therefore technique is more important in HEMA as you can't just stand there and exchange blows.
Anyhow, HEMA really helped me look at the weapons I practice in Aikido to make it more practical. I definitely recommend it for anyone who is interested in cross training.
If you are interested in attending a HEMA event, I suggest you got Fight Camp in the UK, there are also plenty of good HEMA clubs there too.
Good video (as usual ^^) but their Is some lacking.
I have been a Hema practionner for 2 year in France.
The club was the biggest in the country.
What you learn in hema largely depends about the club and the country you are into, because all of them don't have the same economical and cultural ressources.
In my club, There was not this systema/ holistic appraoch you are talking about.
For exemple My rapier instructor don't teachs us grappling because their Is no protection on thé ground when falling
Also, the mentality may vary in each clubs : for somes, Hema Is a combat sport (were getting hurt Is considered as being normal), for others, Hema Is a martial arts (where getting hurt Is inacceptable).
My experience in this club teach me that Hema fencing is a western martial art rather a sport, where being Athletic and being able to pressure is not a focus.
An important thing Is western martial artiste differs of asian martial artiste in the way that they don't consider their art as a self defence tool.
For exemple, i remember my instructor in grappling said once that his teaching don't apply in a self defence contexte.
2 year practitioner here. Just wanted to say excellent video. I especially like how you highlighted the takedown. The group I train with focus heavily on close plays, grapple and disarm.
Beautiful video!
I especially enjoyed the group fighting part!
It reminded me of Calcio Storico from Florence. Group fighting does need more attention, it is so true that we are missing something in modern days martial art events. Please make a video on Calcio Storico as well!
Calcio Storico has a great historical background, but yet it's super alive!
I love calico storico. It’s crazy!
Also, I want to point out a historical connection between Hema and Eskrima. Even though the phillipines had a rich martial tradition by the time the spaniards got there, the spanish ended up hiring filipino mercenaries for their other colonial endeavours. The spanish had a system for rapier and dagger - espada y daga - and you can bet your ass they spent some time training their mercs from the phillipines .
Espada y daga is my favorite to train in fma
I did 5 years in FMA (not on a good level, but enough to recognize elements when i see them), and i started HEMA two years ago, mainly "messer" as a weapon which is a kind of one handed short sword. As a base i took the messer manuscript by johannes lecküchner. To my surprise, the later "messer nemen" techniques (which are disarm techniques) looked a lot like FMA stuff. To my added surprise, lecküchners manuscript is from 1482....
Thank you for standing up for HEMA. We do a lot of hard work and we rarely get taken seriously. Some of us have internalized that and stopped taking ourselves seriously. It's refreshing to get an outsider perspective that isn't immediately dismissive. I will say that HEMA armored fighting is different than HMB or Buhurt, which is the armored stuff you showed in the video. There is over lap but buhurt/hmb guys don't study sources.
Thank you Sir. I was a regular HEMA practitioner between the years of 2009 to 2017, and then with my Sons at home there after, it’s served them well. mostly grappling, pugilism and dagger, but some long sword as well. Many of the principles and moves transcend between the various disciplines with in HEMA.
The reactions I would and still get from people when bringing up HEMA is mixed from, really??? to snickers to Really?!. As my old HEMA instructor would always say, ‘ The human body is basically the same around the world, people learned to figure out what worked independently.’ You’re right about the split, I tried to moderate my time but leaning heavily towards the doing aspect. Been looking into old combat Norse Glima recently.
Thanks again, all the best:)
Cheers, grand video. You made some points I haven't thought about it doing Hema for 7 years now, being an instructor for 2 - The thing with the push forward winning the line (esp in some schools of fencing like laid out the close plays in Fior di Battaglia) was especially intriguing. I've been part of a club where they train kenjutso, Naginata and Hema now for a few months, to instruct the ones interested in hema and I found the Kenjiutso practioners to be very agile, very fast but sometimes if you drive through to a certain point they can be lacking (depends vastly on school though as far as I heard).
Regarding the division between the "fighters" and the manuscript ppl: There is even more - there's the LARP bunch, the Landsknecht typa guys, a segment of martial artists (my own instructor did some mma on the side, mostly using grappling there) who just like the good fun of a hard longsword spar, the history nerds, who start reading secondary texts, the kid kinda living his knight fantasies lol etc. It is divided between different eras ppl focus on like scottish broadsword, saber which were in use a good 300 years after the first sword and buckler manuscript. We've got polish sabre, hungarian sabre, italian and spanish rapier, dagger, unarmed fighting, fighting with sticks, spears, batons and much more.
But in the end we all come together, try out how our schools of fencing and preferred weapons work against others, and have a grand old time, while getting some bruises in (and grappling in full gear WILL get you fit, if you keep at it long enough).
Thing between the practical and the more source oriented approach: I think - so do many others in HEMA - that there is a way to get to a synthesize of both worlds. The sources are our only way to learn about the art in the way it was laid out by the old masters. Some of the principles work beautifully. Others don't even though we try and try and try (struggled with Fiore's Bicorno quiet a bit and was presented to wildly different approaches by two different instructors.
And there's this few moments of light, where a new interpretation of a technique and it's purpose unearths. Where we look at the pictures and descriptions from a different perspective. IE the portrayal of the guards in Joachim Meyers manuscripts look vastly exagerated. We made a fun game of reenacting some of the more extreme ones to see who could hold it the longest. But if you look at it as a depiction of a body in motion it all gets so much more dynamic, fast and dangerous if you apply it.
HEMA other than Kenjutsu or Kali has the disadvantage of not being a continous art. It did die out in Europe, at least some parts did (some parts like some forms of sabre, HAVE an unbroken continuity though). Most prominently longsword, the thing that gets most ppl into the art, died out in europe in the 18th century. So we had no masters. Only our interpretations. We cannot fully do with the fighters approach, "just do what works" and compete at a tournament, as we couldn't unearth some of the finer, yet possibly still powerful principles of historic european combat. So we need the researchers, the readers, the one who interpret the sources and find ways to apply what we learn from it. But divorcing the source from material reality has its own risks. It needs to applyable after all.
Thank you! Your argument resonates with me because this is what I have been saying as well.
Beautiful video! I especially enjoyed the group fighting part. It reminded me of calcio storico from Florence. Please make a video on that too!
Great video! I trained 3.5/4 years Hema now and I'm definitely on the "fighting/sparring" side. But I try to integrate the new theoretical techniques in my own system, sort of. So my learning is maybe: 20% theory, 80% sparring. Personally, I feel free to express myself, while being balanced and creating angles. This is what I like the most.
I’ve fenced all my life, beginning with the Olympic weapons as a young child…I have the dubious pleasure of not having to work these days, but professionally, I was a Crisis Interventionist/Behavioral Management Specialist, amd worked in that field for over 20 years…my favorite gig was at a state hospital on the Forensic unit; basically, I was assaulted for a living. Haha! I’ve been in Martial Arts since I was 5, and was lucky enough to be able to apply these skills in real life on an almost daily basis…(I’m so stoked you mentioned Kendo & Iado, both of which I’ve been a lifelong student of. Several years ago, I discovered HEMA, then Bohurt. (Fully armored combat wearing full plate using a variety of blunted weapons.)
The only downside of HEMA is the expense in equipment, because lower income folk who are interested in it may be unable to afford it.
Sir, it takes a man to admit his mistake, and it heartens me that the young folk of today (at least yourself) are mature and humble enough to say so publicly..outstanding, sir.
I wanted to follow up on daggers sonce you asked. I've been a HEMA practitioner for about 10 years, and I did several martial arts and combat sports before that. Its a pretty broad topic, as everything from rondel daggers from 1400s italy to Bowie knives in 1800s america could be considered HEMA. The main source I study has a specific context of people wearing heavy clothing/armor and basically stabbing each other with ice picks. You can get away with a lot more since the have to commit to actually stabbing you through awhats basically a parka at a minimum. We warn people that train it that it is not a modern practical knife system, but it does train certain skills. The first would be commiting to an attack and following through, the second is quickly transitionining to wrestling. The book our club studies, called the Flower of Battle, spends most of its length on dagger defense, and almost always assumes you are unarmed and getting jumped by a guy with a dagger. So while the techniques are out of context now, there's still a lot of reality. I think FMA guys would get a kick out of it as well, some of it is probably very familiar since FMA has a much more developed knife system.
Awesome video! Im apart of the LA Golden Knights for armored combat/buhurt (the full plate armor hema). I've done the whole boxing mma bjj route for about 8 years. And im at an age where im not so concerned with being the ultimate badass and i wanna just do stuff that looks fun and Buhurt is a great outlet. I highly recomend branching out to other martial arts on your journey.
It sounds pretty cool to get dressed in armor and fight 😅
Great video been looking forward to you reviewing HEMA I very interested to see you practicing HEMA look forward to more of this ta.
HEMA instructor here. Great video. I love the respect. Thank you. I appreciate the good words.
A few things. The full armored combat you see with steel plate armor is not strictly HEMA. It's called Buhurt or Steel fighting. It is historical so in that sense it could be technically HEMA, but it is a separate but parallel movement that grew out of Europe (Russia and Ukraine.)
The steel fighting is emulating the old Knightly tournaments on foot. They do not focus on the historical techniques so much but bash bash bash with the idea that when a person hits the ground they are defeated. It's more wrestling with weapons and they do not focus on the old techniques so much. They use brute force and modern techniques in armor. I have a few friends who do it and they are hard core and nuts. Imaging what equipment failure looks like. It's as bad as you think. They go to the hospital when that happens. Expect staples, stitches, and bad knees doing Buhurt. Oh and the helmets are claustrophobic and the armor gets super hot inside and weighs 80 lbs.
If they did use historical techniques for battlefield instead of tournament rules they would be stabbing into the armor gaps and eye slits with sword points and daggers to get past the armor. But they don't want to kill each other and Buhurt is a celebration of the old tournaments, not the battlefield, so thrusting with points is strictly forbidden.
HEMA came out of old European libraries when language geeks found the old manuscripts in old Italian and old German and some in Shakespearean style English, showing and describing the mainly unarmored sword fighting aspect taught by the original sword masters. It is much more technical and mostly assumed unarmored combat- mostly duals. But for the longest time it was written in the old languages so it took a scholar to read them. Now they are translated into English so that helps a lot.
But at the beginning only language PhDs even understood and wanted to piece it together for the rest of us. Thus HEMA came out of university, not the earthy dojos and studios of most other kinds of martial arts. And the type of people who practice HEMA tend to be more cerebral. Olympic fencing is also very highbrow. As it turns out learning the sword is a very cerebral martial art. Because you can't just smash, it's extremely strategic. All martial arts are but sword fencing is more so.
Now HEMA has its divisions as you point out. Some tend to like the dress up and focus on drills with no pressure testing. They wouldn't even call it a sport. And more people like to drill and spar. And even others live for the tournaments.
Keep in mind the old treatises were written so knights and other duelists could go kill people. So there's not a lot of McDojo or bullshito or mystic legends as it was a small world out there and people who lived by the sword knew their stuff before training with the masters who brought them to the next level.
With any hand weapons art it takes vision to understand that in practice we can't wield the weapon with our sparring partners as we would in an actual death match because even through the safety gear we'd break something. It's easy to injure someone with a steel sparring sword so it takes a lot of trust and control.
Even in tournaments we have to control the weapon. Hell even in a life and death duel one still has to master their fear and have ultimate control over the weapon to keep it supple and aggressive in the exact moments one needs them to be. There's a reason why modern Olympic fencing weapons turned into 400g kabob sticks, so the greatest cross section of people can master control of a sword in a strategic manner.
HEMA is trying to avoid this though, in favor of keeping weapons at historical weights and lengths. Along with this will always follow a bit of pageantry because swords are beautiful and amazing and represent a specific time period and place, being cultural icons of different European regions. So the clothes naturally come with the sword if one wants to take it there.
To sum up: most HEMA practitioners are a mix of people who like book research and who also like to spar with steel weapons. It's sort of niche- for now.
And yes, because we all loved swords as children and knights are the stuff of fantasy and larp, it's hard to shake the stigma. But honestly everyone fears a knife in the hand of an aggressive street thug so why would a steel blade ten times the size in a persons hand be a thing to laugh at? It's weird how that works but it doesn't bother me anymore. Been doing it for a dozen years and still learning more and more.
It's the rabbit hole I'm going to die in and I like it. I'll be buried with a sword when the time comes.
Thanks for reading and I appreciate your video showcasing the martial art I love so much. Peace, brother.
9:41 thank you for talking about Illustrisumo.
A few points you may find interesting:
1. I Study HEMA and I think something you would enjoy is the Armizare by Fiore Dei Liberi. This is a hand to hand historical manual and it has a long of grappling in it and rondel dagger work. In other works, Fiore covered many other weapons such as poleaxes, etc.
2. Learning how to use these sword based weapons should always be pressure tested or you won't learn how to properly fight with them, as you already know. Most HEMA people I know spar a lot. It's core to the study. I can promise this, if you know how to use a stick as a weapon well enough there is nobody going to get close enough to you to take you down without broken hands, fingers, wrists, skull, jaw, clavicle bone, knee, ribs, etc. They won't be able to fight very well if you nail their head hard enough and it can easily be done when trained. I've learned how to look like I'm relaxed and not ready but really able to launch a super fast strike to the head or hands. Fast enough that people typically don't realize it until they're already hit. Stick weapons can screw your depth perception and make it easy to not understand the true reach of the weapon unless you train for it. I have been hit so hard wearing a padded cap and 14 gauge steel helm that I saw stars. Imagine what that stick would do unprotected in a street fight. Broom handle, steel pipe, rebar stick, etc. Lots of options to defend with all around us.
Some years ago me and a friend had duels everyday for more than a year with play swords...we got so into it that it was a automatic entrance to flow state. We sparred for hours, our bodies tired but our minds deep in flow. Was one of the best times of my life, my athletic capabilities into the highest it always had been, and it helped a lot in my unarmed fight.
Thanks, I was among those calling for this!
Hope you like it!
Great video as always brother!
I’m glad you pointed out that HEMA practitioners are trained to attack the opponent’s extremities. You touched on ot but I’d like to emphasize another thing about HEMA that’s relevant today.
In the modern martial arts world we have this bugbear which is knife defense. And in most cases, they either train unarmed techniques against someone with a knife, and many teach very very impractical things that just won’t work, and the other extreme is martial arts instructors who’ll throw their hands up and say you can’t defend yourself against a knife attacker, you’re just going to get stabbed and die so just given them what they want.
With the exception of Escrima, HEMA provides one of the only other feasible solutions to knife defense: HAVE YOUR OWN KNIFE! And if someone tries to attack you with a knife, and then cut at their hand.
Can you be more specific? Im familiar with Fiore and a couple other hems sources and the techniques shown look impractical
@@TheVanguardFighter Do they “look” impractical? Or have you actually gone to a HEMA school, tried them under varying levels of resistance/pressure testing/sparring and found them to be impractical?
As for specific examples, look back a few videos on this very channel and you’ll find a video about Italian special forces who trained knife fighting straight out of Fiore’s manuals and then used them to great effect in the trenches of WWI
@@alexanderren1097 Yeah Ive been to a couple different hema places and they didn't spar with knife/ dagger or do much resistance training. They also didn't do any of the grappling that is shown in the manuscripts. Most hema trains with the sword. Also i don't know if you read any of the hema sources like Fiore but they tend to focus way more on empty hand vs dagger than weapon vs weapon. Also his book and others don't really specify to attack the extremities, chest and head are the main targets for the dagger instead.
@@TheVanguardFighter well that’s disappointing. I’ve seen some HEMA schools like that too. HEMA isn’t centralized so there’s no oversight of individual schools and no standardized training curriculum, which can be good and bad depending on the individual school.
Yes, I’m very familiar with the sources showing “complete” fighting systems with grappling/wrestling being the foundation of everything. I believe George Silver has a famous quote something to the effect of “If two evenly matched swordsman come to duel, the better wrestler will be the winner.”
I actually started training European martial arts back when ARMA (American Renaissance Martial Arts) was the predominant organization prior to the formation of HEMA as an official organization but the instructor I first trained with had cone from a wrestling background, gone through a few different Japanese styles, then found the European stuff and he absolutely loved it. He’s of German ancestry so he primarily taught from the German sources but we did work with Fiore, Silver, and others too.
We did a variety of weapons drills, pressure testing, and free sparring. In addition to matched weapons, we did quite a bit of unmatched weapons, i.e. longsword vs arming sword vs buckler, dagger vs arming sword (with and without bucklers, rapier vs longsword, etc. The craziest mismatched weapons we ever did was 8ft staff vs dagger just for $&@ts and giggles. That got pretty crazy especially when the dagger guy got past the staff and it did turn into a wrestling match!
@@alexanderren1097 Yeah I remember when ARMA was around, i leaned about it and Fiore's text at a reenactment even back in 2008/09. I think it dissolved shortly after so i never trained that system. I mostly train BJJ/ judo but i am familiar with historical sources and tried various weapon systems. One of my bjj instructors also teaches an escrima style but they don't spar and he admits it isn't practical for fighting.
The dagger systems are usually centered around what are called rondels & there are a ton of parallels between rondel systems & contemporary knife fighting systems.
HEMA is a lot of fun, I think a lot of practitioners like myself don't do it for the real world self defense aspect, we do it because we want to learn how to fight with medieval weapons, in the same way kendo and fencing practitioners enjoy their sports. Also whacking someone across the torso with a longsword is a heck of a lot more satisfying than landing a roundhouse kick on someones leg so there's that.
I also like the fact that people are studying the manuscripts, it is a living martial art growing by the day as new information and techniques come to light and that history is being preserved where previously it was lost.
In HEMA you have both the regular sparring like you saw at the start and it can get pretty tough, most is done unarmoured with just leather gloves and helmet and some clubs will put down rubber mats and allow full force take downs as you often end up in a clinch.
Then you have the tournament points based sparring which resembles more like fencing where the bout stops each time someone is hit, but as you are fighting with weapons there is a small window where if the opponent huts you back your point is nullified as you are dead too. It is a really cool adpect that keeps it realistic and saves someone from going in with reckless abandon where in real life they would be dead after the first strike or unable to continue attacking.
Lastly you have war of the nations, which is arguably less individual skill based as you have two teams fight each other in full armor and heavy weapons like maces and axes and it becomes an all out melee. You see a lot of knock outs and incapacitations in there, it is quite brutal.
Hello, we are the ones doing the unarmed in your video, everything you see is from the original barefist system of the 18th and 19th centuries, there is nothing from any other martial art. I have just put up a new video on pugilism if you watch this, you will get a better sense of what we do. Thanks for having us in your video.
I’ll add you guys to the description!
I actually think the perception of hema not being a thing or only for nerds is not necessarily the Historical part of it, I think it's the European part of it. The general population hears martial arts and the first thought is eastern fighting systems. To them because it's an European martial art it automatically sounds like a larp
6:19 pretty similar to what they did hundreds of years ago. Winners of these tournaments would be sought after by lords and kings to train their forces and fight for them
I have a judo background and started getting in to euro Armour combat years ago and was told you cant do throws or grapples back then , now I looking at the stuff they do and can clearly see judo throws or grapple's and a few leg sweeps arm bars ect ect , and some of the old euro grapples like leg grabs are coming back in the judo mat
not long ago I met a 70 year old judoka and I would like to try some of the euro grappleling stuf with him on the mat just to see how things work.
I'm a full blown SHTF doomsday prepper of German descent, so I train medieval German longsword, sword & shield, dagger, unarmed knightly wrestling, euro-tomahawk, throwing knives and crossbow use. I'm preppinf doe during & after SHF, when ammo runs out for almost everyone, and we're all forced back to older forms of defensive warfare against what will eventually be army-sized looter gangs and the like.
HEMA is among the very best veins of apocalyptic defense training, and yes I do own a fulll arsenal of medieval weapons (real and sharpened) which I will be wearing I using in battle AFTER all rule of law is gone forever in the SHTF chaos to come.
Civil unrest & new civil wars against martial law, post-nuclear war wasteland survival, etc - I see it all coming, and I train medieval German HEMA melee weapon use for this very reason.
Thank you.
Since you showed kendo in this video will you do a kendo video in the future?
PTK sparring frequently went to ground but the problem is that sometimes there were dedicated backstabbers moving through the spar so if you go to ground, one of you is now facing two opponents. Teaches takedown awareness but discourages ground game.
I've worn full armor with a gambeson and let someone hit me full force with a training sword. It still hurts and leaves bruise. Hema training is no joke.
Very interesting and educational video. Would have been cool if hema got more coverage.
I love HEMA! Have done it for years in addition to FMA. FMA has a lot of basis in Spanish sword and dagger, so no surprise some of the same techniques are found in HEMA.
Hema is especially effective in Kansas since swords are legal to carry in public without a permit or anything
Lol where do I get a visa?
@@MartyDee133you can open can swords in a lot of America. Don’t go to Kansas just for that, the place is a shithole lol
😂
Same in Texas and Arizona.
@@MartyDee133 I think you can get to Kansas if you click your heels three times while wearing the national shoes of Kansas.
Upvote just for the intro, but also because HEMA rocks.
The thing is in high level hema we rarely see any close combat because when someone is efficient with a sword you cant get close at all
The interesting thing is that wrestling was very popular in medieval and Renaissance Europe. So much so that it was assumed that you would at least know about grappling when you started training with weapons. Several of the masters who wrote those fechtbuch said that wrestling prepared you for the sword by teaching timing, pressure, aggression, etc. "Ringen am schwert" (wrestling at the sword) was a very real thing.
There's a reason why the Japanese emphasized jiujitsu rather than striking in their old fighting systems. Like medieval Europe and its knights, those systems were created for armored professional soldiers who were trying to kill each other with sharp metal bits...
Got into HEMA and JKD when I went to college back in 2002. I still practice them to this day off and on because well they are fun, and I don't care if I look a nerd.
A bad ass nerd 🙏🏼💪🏽
I do hema and a lot of the time I end up close and grappling in which I win a lot of them. Sadly we aren’t allowed to take down our opponent at my club because the floor is stone so it wouldn’t be the nicest to fall on, but I try to practice the ones I e learned as much as I can
Ended up on a concrete floor at HEMA tournament. Either broken or bruised ribs...Took few weeks to fully recover. 😅
@@Machineheart500cc that must’ve hurt like hell
Those really fast dudes you were talking about around 9 minutes in are actually doing what would be unarmored dueling. Similar to fencing. That's another thing to keep in mind when looking at hema stuff. Is it supposed to be with or without armor.
HEMA disciplines deserve just as much respect as any of the other martial arts. It requires time, patience, dedication and grit. Those armored combat guys are tough as nails, too. A lot of people mistakenly think that a suit of armor makes you invincible. It really doesn’t, it just minimizes the chances of receiving a flesh wound. I once wore a helmet and took a whack to the head from a mace and man, it f***in’ HURT!!! So, props to those guys.
I feel like the armor makes it even tougher. It’s heavy, hot and limits movement. It makes you tougher
@@inside_fighting without a doubt, it does. If you consider the fact that actual knights trained for combat since they were like six or seven - running, lifting, calisthenics, riding, boxing, grappling, archery, fencing, etc. - it’s not at all hard to imagine that they were the champion athletes of their day. Just ridiculously hard dudes.
I'm sure you know by now but Buhurt and HEMA are separate things with the same roots. HEMA tends to favor rulesets assuming the fighters are both unarmored. As such any cuts to the limbs and the hands especially are scored. Buhurt is of course the armored form and you just need to get someone to have one knee on the ground for them to be out. As such grappling, striking and sweeping the legs, tend to be more favored techniques in Buhurt. Buhurt also allows incorporating MMA techniques. Some grappling techniques may not be allowed in some HEMA tournaments depending on the group hosting the tourney and their safety concerns.
@@Ember_EX yes thanks for sharing :) was educated by some after this video. Both seem great
Please look up and do a video revolving around: Ryu Jiu Jitsu, and Soke Haisan Kaleak . Looks like a derivative of Silat< Jiujitsu and Kempo. Great video as usual!
You have to wear HEMA armor when you fence full contact with metal weapons of historically accurate weight. Thanks for doing this twenty five years FMA, ten years HEMA, they complement each other.
I know this video is 5 months old but anyway, another thing about hema that can be cool depending on your view: no weightclasses
HEMA is how is started watching youtube,with Skallagrim videos about Lightsabers and Bronze weapons,years and years ago
7:13 i may not carry it around,but i have a steel heater next to my bed,you never know😂
Funnily enough,people underestimate the shield and don't consider it a weapon,to the point that a cop told me that i could carry one in the car trunk if i wanted.
While a stick of wood or a lenght of chain could get you to jail.
9:35 i have seen it called Mikiri in japanese martial arts,at least a similar concept.
15:26 i would love to see your grappler take on german Kampfringen,or Abrazare. How much has in common with modern grappling.
Well.
You speaking about two somewhat different disciplines HEMA is very different from buhurt, despite both using weapons and armor.
Buhurt focuses on armored combat with limited weapon range to make it relatively safe, it has skirmishes, and it is more or less a combat sport.
HEMA is mostly focused on unarmored one on one combat, there is harnishfechten, but it is relatively rare due to the entrance cost.
I can speak for a club I attend, there is a sparring session every training, and we try to implement whatever quirky technique we learned today in sparring all the time.
Regarding of unification of the governing body and ruleset, think it might bring more harm than good.
It is nice that every tournament has differences in rules, so one cannot over-optimize their fighting style to it.
That promotes being well-rounded fighter IMHO.
There are plenty of us that both study manuscripts & train the real deal. I started out in other martial arts but got into HEMA about 20 yrs ago & it saved my life when i got attacked with a bladed weapon. Yes i did get cut etc but i still managed to close, grapple the guy & survive the encounter. Our ancestors weren't dumb, they were well trained, serious warriors with conplex systems for both armed & unarmed combat.
I like how Meyer techniques with the quarterstaff translate to Two Handed Swords. I think you train with quarterstaff before using swords or halberds.
Most Meyer people start with longsword because it is the first weapon covered in his 1570 manual, and easier to control than one handed swords.
From a documentary, I learned that the Polish learned some of their fighting moves from the Mongols when the Mongols invaded Poland. I don't remember whether it was sword fighting or wrestling.
That’s super cool
As many have propably already pointed out, you are showing videos of several different approaches / styles / sports of medieval weapons fighting. Many do all of them. HEMA is the formal training of the old manuscripts. It's the ones with the people with the modern day fencing mask and protective fabric armours doing all those fast paced matches. That is the same as the so called nerdy guys that go for the manuals and formal historic stuffs. The same groups often have people who take part in official tournaments held in many clubs. Lots of national, continental and global tournaments in that sport. Different weapons categories, mostly with swords.
The one with the MMA approach in full harness of plate armours and knockouts in the ring IS (or was at least untill the recent events that I am not sure if it's ok to talk about on youtube) a huge thing in Russia. Started as a one time halftime show between MMA fights in the K-1 series. People loved it and it sort of became it's own sport. That is Bohurts' profight category. some limitations to it though. No stabbing (unlike HEMA, they do allow and very widely do stabbing), no hits behind the knee or the back of the neck and so on, just to avoid people getting paralyzed, really badly injured due to serious injury to their knees/ tendons and no joint locking (for the same reason of not breaking the other guy seriously for snapping their joints really badly).
For the fight part, it is pretty much like MMA or other ring fight sports, points are counted, both try to win with a KO but often end in a points judging. Most profights are with sword and shield combo due to it's effectiveness and versitile usage.
Bohurt also has the singles fight categories that have points based fights but no kicks or such are awarded points. It's more of a skill based sport. Points count and they are not going for knockouts.
And then there are the mass battles categories. 5vs5 (or 7vs7, depending on the organization holding the event) is the most entertaining as it's very fast paced and highly tactical. The idea is basicly like sumo wrestling meets rugby with weapons and skip that fucking ball already. Get the guy down however you can to get your team win the round. Like sumo, 3 points of contact to ground will do. But so does punching the lights out of the opponent, which also happends very often. You saw the fights.
Bohurt has 2 international leagues, both with some potential to make it big but since the global political situation and one of the leagues founded in Russia.. You know.
Anyhow you are right that it is in a way lacking the right sort of branding. Actually all of the styles. And there is some level of division as some really want to bash their enemy to the head with a huge axe (Bohurt approach) and others are more into the technical fight aspect with the option of tournaments. (The actual HEMA)
Long post, sorry. I am a martial artist with the main background in melee weapons and fighting with them. Dipped my toes in all of these and some asian styles too. I also have done some MMA with heaviest emphasis on the groundworkand punching as those strengthen my techniques with the melee weapons.
Great video, just needed to point it out and open a bit more about the diverse world of european martial arts. Not to be underestimated like you graciously put it. I know how to swing anything from a 10cm knife to a 2+m polearm and also back it up with the use of my fists, grappling and kicks. Master of none, adept at some. Know some of everything.
Hema gets hate from TMA and MMA but it always seemed mostly legit to me.
One of the German manuals says: "alles fechten kompt vom ringen" or "all fencing comes from wrestling", which explains why there is so much "up close and personal" in a lot of early period HEMA fencing. The tactile sensitivity gained from grappling is very helpful in learning how to respond to blade pressure when armed. Later period styles for the most part greatly de-emphasized unarmed actions while using weapons. Personally, I think the schism between the historians and the competitors in HEMA is overstated. I've been doing HEMA for just under 20 years, and have competed quite often, at one point being ranked 8th in Canada on HEMA ratings, which is not too bad. I've also spent years poring over the manuals, refining my interpretations of the techniques, and also took up classical Japanese swordsmanship and Judo. There is an issue with skill level in HEMA, but not necessarily in the rank and file, which for the most part can handle themselves as well as any other weapons-based practitioners of similar experience, if not better. It's that the upper levels of the HEMA world are not as skilled as the upper levels of other martial arts, which is due to the amount of time HEMA has been around. At 20 years in, I'm considered part of HEMA's "old guard" by some, but compared to my colleagues in the Japanese sword world, I'm still a baby. There is no Imai Masayuki Nobukatsu, Dan Inosanto, or GSP of HEMA yet. There's still a significant number of HEMAists who don't know what they don't know, even if they're fairly competent. There's a level of insight that comes from practicing an art for 40+ years that you can't really get in 5 years, no matter how much you train or compete. Once HEMA has that, look out!
As a side note the reason why even “unarmored” fencing styles wear at least some armour/protective gear is because it’s very easy to break fingers or cause concussions without it when fighting full contact with a metal stick
i joined local hema community these past months 😅 learn a lot.... actually i understands most of their stuff from internet but learning irl by group is more fun and interesting also i can spar bit (with pretty little protective gears
14:07 This is a Buhurt match and afaik the rules are that you‘re out when your hand or knee touches the ground. So the people lying on the ground are not actually unconscious, they’re just chilling because they’re out of the game. Ofc the sport is still dangerous and you can get hurt, but when that happens the match usually gets paused right away to get medical care in. They don’t just leave each other lying unconscious on the ground.
A great movie centered around Polish saber fighting is "Zrodzeni do szabli"
Just FYI, there are a *lot* of us who like to both do the historical and the compeition stuff. There are some who are very biased either way, but most are just training and having fun in the middle ground :-)
The main thing to keep in mind looking at these sparring matches, especially the heavy armour, is the weapons are still blunt, and axes and swords are NOT anti-armour weapons. These fighters want to go home at the end of the day to see their families. When you are wearing mask and padding, again the weapons are for unarmored fighting, and in the German system would be called Blousefecten, or shirt fighting. Against armour you would use pole-arms such as the poleaxe, halberd etc, but there is almost no way to "simulate" these weapons without wearing a lot more armour than was historical, because those weapons were specifically used to smash armour and kill the squishy human inside.
Basing systems on the original manuscripts is the point, we have to recreate what the intent was, and often the "manuals" are not beginner guides, they sometimes assume you already know how to fight, and the manual just describes how to beat practitioners of those systems with techniques known was Master-Strikes. Some of the manuals were also written for specific clients of those teachers. And not all manuals have everything. But, in the end, what they were trying to beat hasn't changed. People still have two legs, two arms, a body and a head to strike at, and most can be broken in the same way today as they were 600 years ago.
Some people practice HEMA purely as a sport, just for exercise, for understanding history but some approach it as a combat/self defense art; especially those who practice unarmed arts.
As an umbrella term HEMA covers more things than MMA (MMA is mostly unarmed fighting where HEMA can cover unarmed, armed, armed & armored, ranged weapons, early firearms, etc) even though the total number of practitioners in MMA is probably much higher than HEMA practitioners.
HEMA can loosely be used to cover arts from ancient Greece to WWI cavalry sword. However most usually study in a time frame from the 1st fight book in 1290 up to military saber of the 1800s.
In my club we like to say we teach hot to fight with a sword, not swordfighting. The basis of every martial art is grappling and wrestling. Dagger fighting is basically grappling with daggers.
What does the MA stand for?
The video of the skirmish with people in armour rumbling is a big event called "Battle of the nations" look it up on youtube. For safety reasons they don't have ambulances, they just helicopter out the injured.
(I know I'm late to this conversation.) HEMA is a broad category, akin to saying, "Asian Martial Arts". That said, in broad categories, there are unarmored combat (sometimes called blossfechten - shirt fighting), armored combat (harnischfechten - harness fighting), mounted fighting (rossfechten), jousting, and buhurt. I've done all of these to some extent but jousting and I'm working on getting there.
Buhurt is the super violent armored fighting you show a lot of here and is a modern recreation of tournament fighting on foot rather than warfare. It can be full force full speed because the moves are restricted to moves that won't normally kill, and armor, especially with modern metals, /works/.
The old manuals HEMA purports to use teach in a unique manner. Rather than showing how to perform this attack or that one, the manuals have a series of "plays" much like short katas, usually 4-6 moves to teach flow and body mechanics. That's what you see people doing when they are moving slowly and often awkwardly. They are learning these plays. From these, you can put the moves together in your own flow for stress testing under competitive environments. There is also a LOT of modern sports mentality in this and competition rules are often unique to a single event. This allows for testing one aspect or another in a relatively safe environment. While some "game the rules", most are studying if they "got it right" since these martial arts have not survived intact over the centuries. Getting a play "right" is a real "A-HA!" moment because you can see how you are defending and attacking and controlling your opponent all at once.
If you'd like to explore some of the old manuals used in HEMA, I highly recommend looking at wiktenauer.com where many are archived along with side by side translations into modern English, often translated by people who are also practitioners. It really is a fun mental exercise working out what these manuals are saying and then trying these moves with minimal protective gear (appropriate to how hard you're doing this practice round). You can see the mechanics and flow and then jump into a sparring or competition ring and see if you can use what you learned.
If you want to try some of these yourself (highly recommended!) I'd suggest looking into the works on that site by Joachim Meyer, Paulus Hector Mair, The latter provides the most materil, but many HEMA practitioners have trouble with some parts and he did copy from other masters, making his work more a compilation than an original work. Among other things, Mair does cover unarmed, dagger, mixed weapons, and dussack. You might find dussack interesting because it is essentially a training weapon very similar to a machete.
Its pretty realistic hard-core and fun to watch
Just for clarities sake you showed 2 different things here 1 is hema sparring the other is buhurt they're both great and have a lot of overlap but they differ greatly have different focuses and different governing bodies. Buhurt is really a combat sport with teams and leagues. Hema is more broad and the competitive side of it is almost exclusively 1v1 duels with protective equipment simulating being unarmoured
I thought buhurt is part of hema?
@@inside_fighting no buhurt doesnt really have any historical rots or effective combat for real armoured fighting (not to say that hitting someone with a big sword doesnt hurt) but it is completlly ineffective against real armour, all the historical weapons or techniqes that were actaually used are banned in buhurt since it literally could severely injure or kill someone (such as thrusting into gaps in the armour or the eye slit/opening). If you wanna see better representation of hema/historical combat in armour i´d reccomend this channel
www.youtube.com/@dequitem
@@inside_fighting so theres a lot of overlap especially in the practitioners many do both its like boxing and karate but many don't. Yes technically if you consider the blanket of of historical and European you could consider buhurt which aims to base itself on the foot combat tournaments of France (thats where the word buhurt comes from it translates to smash pretty much) but you would never go to a hema tournament and see buhurt nor a buhurt tournament and see hema they generally organize themselves separately.
@@inside_fighting its hema under a very specific context, that being trying to simulate historical tourneys rather than actual battles or duels iirc
Is it also correct that HEMA is the one of the only systems that practice "Faction Small Unit Fighting"? What other systems train in faction fighting?
You make a really good point about how poor HEMA's marketing and branding is. Like the fact that even after looking into HEMA you were still confusing it with adjacent practices like HMB really hammers home how badly communicated just how badly HEMA has done about differentiating itself from other practices reconstructing European sword fighting (and other martial arts).
For reference the main practices reconstructing European sword fighting are HEMA, HMB/Buhurt, re-enactment, the SCA, and also LARP (kinda), all are kinda sparring based but the differences in outcome kinda communicate that sparring isn't the only part of developing quality in martial arts. With the SCA, re-enactment and LARP it is very much about the costume, like their practice mostly revolves around wearing costume and playing with the objects, but their fight training is typically limited to safety training and they actually don't use historical manuals very much in their practice in spite what it probably looks like. HMB/Buhurt (the terms are used interchangeably for the same hobby) is the armoured combat stuff you showed footage of, it's a different activity to HEMA (though it's awesome and you should look more into it as well). Buhurt is the practice of using sports science to train for the various divisions of a specific sport that recreates medieval tournaments as best it can. HEMA by contrast is a combat sport that uses a combination of modern and historical gear to allow for comprehensive sparring, for which interpretation of historical manuals as one of the main pillars of training.
I suspect this is why it also feels like the people fighting and the people reading the manuals are separate groups, since HMB practitioners only occasionally use manuals in their training, but the thing is most HEMAists utilise interpretation in their practice, especially the people out there winning tournaments. It's also worth noting that in the HEMA community the idea that tournaments don't use the techniques in the manuals is basically the equivalent of "doesn't work in the streets" in unarmed fighting, like it's basically a cope for losing, but of all the best tournament fencers I've met they all read and advocate reading historical manuals, and even talk a lot about how to use them to improve your fencing.
I have to respectfully disagree with you about the SCA. Sca fighters run the gamut from those who use the manuals as a basis for their fighting and those who practice the SCA specific styles of sport fighting. For the armored combat, we use rattan as a substitute for the metal weapons, but that combat is done full force and full contact. The sca is also doing a lot more rapier and cut and thrust fighting with steel weapons nowadays as well. One of the things the sca does extremely well is simulate melee combat. It's not uncommon to have dozens or even hundreds of combatants on the field wailing away at each other full force. Up to a couple thousand at the bigger war events. Yes, there's the costume part. Yes there's the material culture part. But to say that sca's training is just safety training and they don't do sparring and what not is inaccurate. As I said earlier, we go out at full force and definitely pressure test our technique.
@@BudgetGunsandGearReviews That's a fair critique. I suspect it might depend on your locality a bit. I'm in Australia where there is some SCA, but it's no where near as big as it is in the states, and it's much more like a combination of re-enactment and larp group out here.
Empty-hand HEMA is all grappling, I don't know that there's any kind of boxing manual we use. The clip in here for empty hand wasn't very representative. A lot of HEMA grappling online will be called 'Ringen' - if you have a look, there's a lot in common with other grappling systems like Judo, Pankration, etc.
Isn’t bartitsu and old school pugilism technically part of Hema?
@@inside_fighting yes, but it's considered pretty late period (19th to 20th century) Technically WW2 fighting systems also count- and some HEMA clubs will train these too. There's a manual from one Colonel Monstery (Includes a biography and is totally worth a read) which covers a few weapons and includes an unarmed section. It's notable because it's from around the time they were discussing the establishment of boxing rules, and were having the exact same discussion about gloves that's happened in recent years with MMA and bareknuckle.
Wrestling, grappling, striking, weapons; if you're deficient in any then there's more you can learn. HEMA is great and like everything else is evolving. No one does just one thing anymore. I'd love to see martial arts competitions with like ten events where you have to compete in at least five and winning is based on overall score.
i have a friend in Carmiel, that teaches and compete in hema (or a sort of hema), so when you are here, if you want, i can try and make the contact maybe even some training :)
you said it reminds you ilustrisimo, well, haven't the Filipino martial arts derived from, Spanish sword fighting? that was derived for, at-that-time-non-historical- European martial arts?
An Ausie tried to get it main stream with a thing called "lorica" check my spelling but it never took off. Fiore wrote a lot about dagger fighting.
Hey man, the best way to look at HEMA is that its regional in its nature, just like asian martial arts. thats why theres so many flavours of it.The manuals and old texts where written mostly, especialy the older ones (14th and 15th century) by men who fought and died by the blade. Fiore is one of the old Masters who is actually documented to have fought in wars and fought in at least 5 duals with a "long" sword. Other Masters origins arent quite so well documented. A lot of the techniques across every system of weapon arts, European AND asian are very similar, ( theres only so many ways the human body can move holding a sharp blade in two hands) and throughout recorded history the Human race has been constantly at war with itself, (the modern era being the most peacefull era in history) so the stuff written in the manuals, if applied correctly, absolutely do work, because they were written by people who've been there, done that, and survived to write about it.
One must remember that the old texts are TRAINING manuals, not Fighting manuals, they are manuals on how to safely train with the weapons. Some elaborate on how to actually kill people using the techniques but most dont.Thats why we have the big divisions in HEMA between the "historical" people and the sparring people. If you use the training techniques to actually spar with without tweaking them a bit, they dont really work all that well in a fight. BUT....if you tweak them just a little, turn the blade a little. hold the handle a little differently, go a little further or harder than the manuals say to do, use a blade that is representative of the time period your studying instead of a blade thats 6 inches longer than it should be....everything in the manuals works a whole lot better.
Im one of the historical camp people, but i like to spar... a lot... and Im not a bad fighter. I try to use the techniques as written but I DO tweak them to make them work... and ive really, really ,really , preasure tested them over 25 years.
I dont think the sparring only crowd has the right mind set when it comes to fighting with swords, they treat it like modern sport fencing, tag with whippy antenaes, they do all sorts of stuff youd never do if your life was really on the line, because thers really only 3 outcomes you can get when fighting with swords, you kill your opponent, he kills you, or you both die. So going into the fight you only have a 30% chance of even surviving,
I love to spar and will do it at every chance I get. but if we were using sharp swords, my defence would be a lot more prevalent than my offence.
I agree , I also believe comparing martial arts is a waste of time unless you pressure tested till you are sure it's useless .
The one thing I see that tends to hold HEMA back from being a commercialized martial art is that there's no money in it. Top level guys in MMA and boxing and the like can make training and conditioning their full time job. People who are really serious about HEMA (and I'm lumping in various disciplines like SCA, buhurt, HEMA schools, etc) train several times a week, but they still have lives and work outside of their martial art, and it's still a hobby. It might be a serious hobby, but it's still a hobby. It's a damned expensive one, too. My cheapest sparring sword was $200 (plus another $500 in mods and upgrades because I can't leave well enough alone), and my wife, who's way more into it than me, has ten times that in armor, gear, etc. And the hell of it is, all of these things are consumables. They break and wear down over time. It takes money to keep up with, and very few people have the privilege of doing HEMA professionally.
There are leagues and tournaments and so on, and if you're in the know, you know who's good at what. But outside of a few videos floating around RUclips, there's no wider coverage of HEMA, and no real interest in making it commercial. Until someone with money comes in to make a promotional league that can actually let people devote their time to being athletes, that's likely not going to change.
HEMA is fascinating to me, in large part because its very much in a transitional period, and in the next 5-10 years, we'll probably see a schism of sorts between Sports HEMA and reconstruction HEMA.
Right now, I think its pretty fair to compare it to Keysi- its much more streetfighting than it is a sport.
15:50 its been heading that way in Russia for a while - have a look at Knight Fights, literally armoured hema in an MMA cage or roped ring
As a hema guy, we mostly do takedowns when someone is wearing armor, or some form of protective gear, as swords aren't particularly good at cutting through metal. Also, I can assure you, most of the sword fighting you see in fantasy games and movies aren't how they would be used historically. I honestly can't watch most sword fighting scenes without cringing a bit 😂. But loved your analysis.
Also, when dealing with armored opponents, we either use grappling or halfswording, which is when someone grabs their sword about halfway and use it as how they would use a dagger, and there's no need to worry about cutting their hand open, as swords only cut if someone actively does a cut, and swords don't have to be razer sharp to cut, though wearing some sort of plated gloves is still preferred.
They had to have something to offer. Look at how the small country of England was able to rule the world for hundreds of years. Or the Spanish when they went to south America and took over with just a small group. The western arts were based on pure practicality of use.