I think HEMA has been very slow at taking advantage of the living martial arts of Europe, such as Jogo do Pao (portuguese stickfighting). I had the honor of learning briefly from a Jogo do Pao master, and he had amazing insights that most HEMAists simply lack.
So what insights are there to gain from Jogo du Pau regarding Absetzen in german longsword. What insights are there to be gained regarding the Halbe Stange of Meyer?
Amen to this. I've been trying since ages to tell HEMA people to look into German stage fencing. Even freaking Wikipedia lists it as a surviving part of medieval martial arts, yet most HEMA guys completely ignore it, which is freaking stupid, given that most practitioners are either old or almost dead.
The sad thing about CMA is how much potential it has but it is wasted. We have rich, diverse, systems of weaponry, but 99% of the CMA students just do forms with flabby weapons, and would get their ass kicked by HEMA guys, even though CMA is a "living" tradition and HEMA is a "ressurrected" one.
Yes, many modern wushu and tcma schools have neglected to practice things like sparring and test cutting so things won’t look good for them when push comes to shove.
@@thescholar-general5975I had a Wing Tsun master back then. He had great kung fu boxing teaching and approach and made us sparr often. He didn't made us spar at all with the weapons because the priority of the art was the boxing, also we don't often defend ourselves with knifes/staff anymore.
3:20 Well technically there are living weapons traditions in Western Martial Arts, but they tend to be little known and understudied. Some examples would the stick fighting traditions from Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy, knife fencing traditions from those last three, plus hussar saber and axe fighting from Hungary. In addition to all of that there is also Classical Fencing which is essentially the continuation of 19th century dueling traditions down to the present day.
Yeah, I accidentally skipped over some of those living traditions in europe. Many of these arts are not widely practiced in part due to the dominance of things like the longsword in Hema.
Having a living tradition is a double edged sword, outside of trying to figure out the "truthfulness" of the claims of age and use of the forms, you have the potential baggage of many traditional arts not always being keen on ideas like sparring or even sharing their art fully. And this isn't just CMA, arguable you see that more in the Japanese arts which also has living lineages and manuals as well.
I read old fencing manual as if they were chess books. I take what I like, disregard what I don't like, sometimes don't recommend some books because I don't like the approach, etc. Why should old material be stale? We should learn, try, test, adapt.
Thoughtful and thought-provoking stuff as usual. Having done a variety of Eastern and Western martial arts, the latter mainly some boxing and HEMA, I think that it is useful to critically compare in terms of fundamental movement principles, as in George Silver, and experientially, inasmuch as this is realistically possible. As Roland Warzecka stated, 'the technique is a container that conveys the principles' and the principles are what are used in actual combat. My 'theoretical' background is in physiotherapy and taking movement analysis from my training as a dancer, partly in terms o Laban-analysis and partly from the work of Alexander and the McLurg-Anderson 'Principles of Efficient Movement'. Applying these to patients, and to various martial arts, over the last forty-odd years or so. Sparring and competition are poor analogues for actual combat, although the best than can be done relatively safely. Often blunt swords are used more like poor clubs in actual sparring or competition, with people rushing into action in a way they would never do if facing an actual sharp weapon as their attack would most likely end in two deaths or severe injuries. We tried this experimentally and facing a sharp with a real risk of a mistake producing an injury had a definite psycholgical effect realised somatically; i.e. in terms of movement. Test cutting is essential but I have seen many people who appear to be technically excellent in cutting or choreographed demonstrations of techniques who do something largely different in sparring or competition. Observations from kick-boxing or karate sparring can be applied to HEMA and observations from HEMA can be applied to the form of Ju-Jitsu I do now. Both the similarities and differences are informative and each enriches the other. Modern HEMA is a very different beast, in many ways, to, say, Medieval combat training or even the 16th Century 'Schools of Defence' in London, which also seem to have had a 'networking' purpose in Elizabethan society. What I find strange in HEMA is the sometimes egocentric and heated arguments over minor points of interpretation of techniques from some treatise or other, as if it really matters. Also in some Eastern martial arts, the inability of the Sensei to explain the practicality of what is being done, other than it being traditional. As the author of 'The Martial Arts Delusion' notes most modern martial arts techniques and training may not be so useful in actual combat. However the practical utility of the underlying framework on principles, including the movement principles, do seem to be useful and seem to apply across time and place. That is my observation for what it is worth. Even so sparring is great fun. Also, breaking down, analysing and critiquing then experimenting with techniques, as an endless process of improvement, is both fascinating and fun, even for an old bloke like me. All the best.
Great video. There seem to be fewer old historical Asian martial arts manuals. This is one reason I like Jack Chen’s Chinese Longsword - Ancient Martial Arts Manuals project. It would be cool to have a bibliography of English translations of historical Asian martial arts manuals.
Can't wait for Shad to make an hour long reply video to this one....... Jk. Found your channel because of your reply to the flail. Excellent vid and channel overall. I will pray for your channel to get a much larger audience, man. Take care.
I have done hema for a long time and I am always extremely disappointed when I see a hema purist talk down on other traditions. I think your take on the difference of having to work with a written source great. Personnally, I would also add than when you have a pass down system with a rigid pedagocic aproach, why you are approaching the techniques this way is relevant to the system. I have learned some Wing Tsun and they have quite a good pedagogical approach to cut down the content.
You just got a new subscriber. I've been debating whether or not to get in to HEMA or study Kung Fu from fighting manuals from the Ming Dynasty. I used to study Wing Chun about ten years ago and I want to get back into practice.
@@NayrbRellimer Thanks for the sub! HEMA is definitely worth doing in conjunction with Chinese sword arts if possible. There are of course key differences, but the timing and some of the primary techniques will be similar across systems.
Living traditions are a ‘double edged sword’(cough*) from a historical perspective, as they tend to change and evolve with the times. In my case I practice the Chen style taijiquan sword form, which has supposedly been passed down for ‘hundreds of years’ in the Chen village, yet my teacher can’t be certain what the applications of the movements are, or which ones are the more historical moves and which ones are more recent additions or changes. That becomes a hindrance as much as an aid to someone like me who is interested in the historical aspect of what I am learning.
Yeah I know what you’re talking about, I KNOW a master adding stuff to old forms because it looks cool and afterwards thinking about an application for the fancy tricks but still communicating he is teaching traditional Chinese martial arts. Absolute horror in my point of view.
Great video, instructor of HEMA, specifically Bolognese system and student of Taiwan system Baji Quan here. To me, I think a problem with living tradition in HCMA is that ppl sometimes just try to apply their style’s understanding and be quite dogmatic in some ways which happened to me quite a few times
@@thescholar-general5975 Personally, when I teach the polearms, especially spear of the Bolognese school I infuse some Chinese techniques in it to try to broaden the more advanced curriculum
Hello, have you done a survey video of the oldest Chinese manuals? I know you have done excellent deep dives into techniques, but how about an overview of manuals? Thank you. 🙏🥋
How old are the chinese living traditions actually? Have the living traditions been documented? Even from Japan, it is very hard to find many Ryuha which have solid documentation for unbroken teaching down to the middle ages, that is, 16th century and before.
This is an important point that I kind of glossed over when I was talking about researching one's own lineage. The truth is that most CMA go back to the 19th century at the latest. We do have documented evidence for some styles going back into the 18th century. A number of living traditions have notes or texts written by practitioners of various arts. But you have to have the languages skills and know the right people to find them. The Brennan Translation site is a good place to read English translations of this type of thing. We also have military manuals which date to the 16th century and outline techniques for a few weapons. There are a couple treatises too which attempt to explain a whole system. One thing I did not mention in this video is how the living tradition can and should complement textual reading. For example, if we wish to practice Ming dynasty spear, than it is fool hardy to simply read a handful of Ming spear manuals and then create a system without also studying at least one living spear tradition. Doing this certainly does not open the door to all understanding, but the advantages of doing so greatly outweigh the disadvantages.
@@thescholar-general5975 Yes my impression is that there are no documented Chinese living traditions going back to middle ages (17th century or before). It would be great to find one.
@@thescholar-general5975 where are these living traditions? I really doubt that these kinds of traditions survived the culture revolution in mainland China.
Eric I should make a video topic on this. The cultural revolution definitely had a negative impact on chinese martial arts, but many of these traditions were able to survive it. I would actually argue that the invention of modern wushu has done more harm to kung fu’s effectiveness as a martial art then the cultural revolution.
Well HEMA isn't limited to the sources. Everbody can make what he wants, the sources are just one pillar. I.E when I go to olympic fencing I learn a lot from a living european tradition and my longsword fencing will become much better (I am talking about things like speed, and precision and general fitness training. I am aware, that the footwork is a little bit different) Yes the H in HEMA is important and some poeple think it is the most important thing, but the best of us know, its the sparring culture and the testing and questioning what makes HEMA so good. If I have to choose between the sources and the sparring culture I would choose the last one. Luckly I dont have to coose. :)
I also believe that the sparring culture is extremely important in HEMA however, without the history, the practice is no longer a martial art and more of a sport like fencing or lightsaber fighting. It is like training for firearms but only having airsoft fights. You will definitely pick up some skills, but the practice needs to be contextualized in order to function as a martial art.
A good analysis. I personally have experience in both fields. I have a nylon European great sword that I've been practicing with for 2 years, and i more recently purchased a nylon two-handed Ming-style Jian that I just started using. Both I got from Purple Heart Armory
The approach you described in HCMA is similar to what they are doing with HAMA (historical african martial arts). Using living traditions as a source for critical analysis.
Might also be worth pointing out that the military application of sword based martial arts lasted well into the 20th century with China employing units of swordsmen during WW2. Whereas in other parts of the world martial arts had turned more into performance or pastime, in China out of necessity there was still a military component to it. The recent border clashes with India saw some pu dao being deployed... in 2020.
The people who used single sided swords/daos during WW2 used them as backup weapons, and many of those swords were basically mass produced thick cleavers that could be used by anyone with minimal training. Furthermore, the government of mainland China has been promoting Wushu in the 20th-21st century, which is acrobatics-performance style martial arts that has no application in real life combat. There is still a decent level of disconnect between modern Chinese performance sword arts and historical sword fighting styles.
@@Intranetusa I think I largely agree. Firearms even to the Chinese were infinitely preferable to swords. Like I mentioned, the deployment of Chinese sword troops was out of necessity rather than preference. However it is incorrect to say that these weapons were used as backup, particularly in the "Big Sword" units. They might be also handed pistols and grenades, but their tactics were developed largely around close-in sword attacks in favourable terrain. This also prevented the Japanese from employing their main advantages in artillery, air support, and motorised/mechanised/armoured forces. If you think about it from a strategic perspective it makes sense; deny an industrialised enemy of their advantages while taking advantage of your own large local population base. Furthermore there was (and is) a good deal of training behind the Da Dao. Certainly you can have untrained people wielding them, but you can have untrained people hacking away with any sword from a katana to a longsword. The Chinese forces using the Da Dao did train fairly extensively with them, both in terms of physical endurance training and actual swordsmanship. I have a 152 page manual (including translations and pictures) from 1933 on the Da Dao, which does indicate serious training for the weapon (rather than the typical view that it was nothing more than a machete). The manual clearly states that while it is descended from the two-handed sabre techniques, it also reflects lessons from the battlefield after initial Big Sword unit victories against the Japanese. So I would say that with respect to the Da Dao techniques, it has far more application to real life combat than any HEMA tradition, especially considering it attempts to answer the question of "how do you use a sword to fight against a machinegun or bayonets".
@@colonelchingles Interesting, I wasn't aware that they had a 152 page training manual for the da dao in the 1930s. Yeh, in that case the techniques would be more real life appropriate. Thanks for the information. Do you know if the training retained a lot of the earlier sword vs sword/spear/etc techniques, or did it evolve mostly into sword vs early guns type training?
@@Intranetusa Some of it seems specifically geared towards opponents with firearms, typically bayonets. I'd estimate 60-75% seems "new" in the sense it is made for 20th century warfare. A few excerpts: "Using the middle portion of the blade I shall strike down aggressively on the enemy’s front-hand that’s holding the rifle." "The enemy’s rifle shall then be scraped to my right-side. Seize the opportunity to strike at the enemy’s chest Or his front-hand holding the rifle." Pretty much out of the 12 stances, all of them are mentioned as being used against rifles. There are very clearly some artefacts from earlier martial arts and likely much of it is similar to fighting against a spear (which a bayoneted rifle most closely approximates). But in particular attacking the hands on a rifle is a bit different than the hands on a spear so that seems fairly unique to this manual.
Definitely having access to oral history is an advantage more common in my T & H CMA practice then my HEMA practice so I agree in general but I think there are a few more arts with living lineage then just those... savate and La Cain come to mind plus it's worth mentioning there is more then one style of wrestling with independent lineage.
Yes for sure. It is an oversimplification to just talk about fencing, boxing, and wrestling. That being said, it seems like a majority of HEMA practitioners are interested in the older stuff which is unfortunately disconnected from any lineage.
Well there is a trend of Historical Asian Martial Arts or HAMA and also Historical African Martial Arts also HAMA I guess lol. Have you seen the videos from Dr. Kono?
It's kind of pointless to make geographic distinctions like that. All of these fighting styles are in essence the same thing with different equipment, aren't they? And if there was a big difference between fighting styles, it makes even less sense to lump Arabs into the same group as Southern Africans and so on. Just get rid of the place name and you are good to go. Whichever technique works best is what people will stick to.
Did you find that the studying of living lineages helped you in your sparring? It seems like a lot of what we see today comes from stage combat. I'd imagine that the best masters of the most renowned and practical lineages would have been purged during the Cultural Revolution, so it must be hard to find the lineages that would help in practical sparring
I am not sure it is possible to say. Ultimately reconstructing any past system is going to be very difficult and require a lot of historical and martial knowledge.
I really like this video. I thought there'd be more people practicing with real weapons in China? But I can see that replicas or antiques might be expensive and hard to get. Also training with them might not be good because it'd be too easy to make serious errors. I remember hearing about a master of Kajukenbo ( a Hawaiian martial art with Chinese influences) who seriously cut his arm practicing a double sword form with sharp swords. I learn a lot from your videos. I think they're great.
Great content as always mate. Many of the Westerners don't like the oral transmission of the techniques in Asian martial arts. Not everything was written down back then. Some things were secret, only past down from master to apprentice. The Western mindset calls this lack of evidence. I believe Eastern and Western way of thinking are quite different. A european person can say "this is not a real martial art, your teacher is lying, there are no documents" and the asian practitioner would think like "why would my master lie?". The oral traditions give birth to many great techniques or shape the old ones into something different. It is really hard to explain it to the Western audience.
Just don’t lump the Japanese into this ’Asian’ category. They customarily did a very extensive written documentation. Problem is a lot of it was lost in the wars over time, but some remain. They even had traceability in the documents, who copied which text and to whom the copy was given.
@@Tsurukiri as a practitioner of japanese martial arts since 2009, I agree completely. However like I said before, most of the Westerners don't like re-written denshos and makimonos of the masters. I know that a lot of documents were destroyed in fires during Meiji restoration and WWII. Many masters had their copies of original documents. Some of them even added their own understanding or henka. But if it isn't carbon dated to 15th century, the people go mad and say those documents are fake. They don't even know what is a densho and how/why it is written.
I think that incredulity about oral transmission largely arises from two sources. The first is the sub optimal state of Chinese martial arts at large and the second is that a number of HEMA practitioners know how to analyze texts critically, but do not understand alternative methodologies. To be fair, I have met many wonderful HEMA people who are not this way. Academic fields like anthropology have a refined and nuanced way to analyze phenomenon like living traditions, but most HEMA practitioners have not been exposed to these alternative approaches to technical transmission.
@@Tolabay Well, maybe we should tell the doubters that the age of a document does not prove the contents in it to be fake or not fake. The forgery could have happened a long time ago. Certainly, some of the European manuals contain weird stuff. Fake or not, hard to say, but it’s seems to be that some of the European schools were also businesses and you definitely needed good marketing material to stand out from the crowd. And why are many of the manuals dedicated to important persons? Some of the Japanese schools were businesses, too. And they too furiously marketed their ’goods’ to important people and protected their ’intellectual properties’. They even used clever encryption in the documents. No idea how this went with the Chinese. Perhaps in a slightly similar way? Business first, techniques second :)
@@Tsurukiri the fact that most fencing books were written and published by jewish people in europe also proves that money was important for these stuff. Printing and handwriting books were expensive. That probably limited the amount of techniques we have today. Many fantastic fighters didn't have enough money to spread their knowledge.
There is a y Gap from European martial arts still Asian martial arts cuz gunpowder was invented that's sad thing about it that we have to play catch up I think I'll martial arts are good I like them both a very honorable
First of all the word martial arts comes from the word mars god of war. 2nd martial arts changed over the past 10.000 years. Each tribe , people got good at certain aspects of the arts of war. as technologie advanced so did the styles. what might be obsolete now was cutting edge in the past . Hema is a colection of thousends of years of combat styles based on what tactics where used in the day. There are many books images and records on the different fighting styles used in europe . Most weapons of those times stem from hunting , farming or carpenter tools etc . Easy to come by and many styles of fighting where created. Its a continous adaptation of the times.
Wudang Sword style and Shaolin Spear are so intricate and beautiful that HEMA seems primitive compared China is a 5500 year old country and have refined everything better Even our current technology gets stolen by China and vastly improved HCMA destroy HEMA , I've studied both for decades Every single move in HEMA is in Wudang but not vice versa
I think HEMA has been very slow at taking advantage of the living martial arts of Europe, such as Jogo do Pao (portuguese stickfighting). I had the honor of learning briefly from a Jogo do Pao master, and he had amazing insights that most HEMAists simply lack.
Yeah, I also think that living traditions in Europe have been kind of glanced over by HEMA practitioners.
So what insights are there to gain from Jogo du Pau regarding Absetzen in german longsword. What insights are there to be gained regarding the Halbe Stange of Meyer?
Amen to this. I've been trying since ages to tell HEMA people to look into German stage fencing. Even freaking Wikipedia lists it as a surviving part of medieval martial arts, yet most HEMA guys completely ignore it, which is freaking stupid, given that most practitioners are either old or almost dead.
hemaist are sometimes too much proud and have ego, but this also happens in every martial arts
@@thescholar-general5975this happens at every martial arts, people want to look at the shiny cool looking thing (mma/shaolin) 😂
The sad thing about CMA is how much potential it has but it is wasted. We have rich, diverse, systems of weaponry, but 99% of the CMA students just do forms with flabby weapons, and would get their ass kicked by HEMA guys, even though CMA is a "living" tradition and HEMA is a "ressurrected" one.
Yes, many modern wushu and tcma schools have neglected to practice things like sparring and test cutting so things won’t look good for them when push comes to shove.
@@thescholar-general5975I had a Wing Tsun master back then. He had great kung fu boxing teaching and approach and made us sparr often. He didn't made us spar at all with the weapons because the priority of the art was the boxing, also we don't often defend ourselves with knifes/staff anymore.
3:20
Well technically there are living weapons traditions in Western Martial Arts, but they tend to be little known and understudied. Some examples would the stick fighting traditions from Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy, knife fencing traditions from those last three, plus hussar saber and axe fighting from Hungary. In addition to all of that there is also Classical Fencing which is essentially the continuation of 19th century dueling traditions down to the present day.
Yeah, I accidentally skipped over some of those living traditions in europe. Many of these arts are not widely practiced in part due to the dominance of things like the longsword in Hema.
Well the saber traditions in hungary or Ukraine are very much divorced from reality. Its mostly for show.
Having a living tradition is a double edged sword, outside of trying to figure out the "truthfulness" of the claims of age and use of the forms, you have the potential baggage of many traditional arts not always being keen on ideas like sparring or even sharing their art fully. And this isn't just CMA, arguable you see that more in the Japanese arts which also has living lineages and manuals as well.
I read old fencing manual as if they were chess books. I take what I like, disregard what I don't like, sometimes don't recommend some books because I don't like the approach, etc.
Why should old material be stale? We should learn, try, test, adapt.
Thoughtful and thought-provoking stuff as usual. Having done a variety of Eastern and Western martial arts, the latter mainly some boxing and HEMA, I think that it is useful to critically compare in terms of fundamental movement principles, as in George Silver, and experientially, inasmuch as this is realistically possible.
As Roland Warzecka stated, 'the technique is a container that conveys the principles' and the principles are what are used in actual combat.
My 'theoretical' background is in physiotherapy and taking movement analysis from my training as a dancer, partly in terms o Laban-analysis and partly from the work of Alexander and the McLurg-Anderson 'Principles of Efficient Movement'. Applying these to patients, and to various martial arts, over the last forty-odd years or so.
Sparring and competition are poor analogues for actual combat, although the best than can be done relatively safely. Often blunt swords are used more like poor clubs in actual sparring or competition, with people rushing into action in a way they would never do if facing an actual sharp weapon as their attack would most likely end in two deaths or severe injuries.
We tried this experimentally and facing a sharp with a real risk of a mistake producing an injury had a definite psycholgical effect realised somatically; i.e. in terms of movement.
Test cutting is essential but I have seen many people who appear to be technically excellent in cutting or choreographed demonstrations of techniques who do something largely different in sparring or competition.
Observations from kick-boxing or karate sparring can be applied to HEMA and observations from HEMA can be applied to the form of Ju-Jitsu I do now. Both the similarities and differences are informative and each enriches the other.
Modern HEMA is a very different beast, in many ways, to, say, Medieval combat training or even the 16th Century 'Schools of Defence' in London, which also seem to have had a 'networking' purpose in Elizabethan society.
What I find strange in HEMA is the sometimes egocentric and heated arguments over minor points of interpretation of techniques from some treatise or other, as if it really matters. Also in some Eastern martial arts, the inability of the Sensei to explain the practicality of what is being done, other than it being traditional. As the author of 'The Martial Arts Delusion' notes most modern martial arts techniques and training may not be so useful in actual combat.
However the practical utility of the underlying framework on principles, including the movement principles, do seem to be useful and seem to apply across time and place. That is my observation for what it is worth.
Even so sparring is great fun. Also, breaking down, analysing and critiquing then experimenting with techniques, as an endless process of improvement, is both fascinating and fun, even for an old bloke like me.
All the best.
Great video. There seem to be fewer old historical Asian martial arts manuals. This is one reason I like Jack Chen’s Chinese Longsword - Ancient Martial Arts Manuals project. It would be cool to have a bibliography of English translations of historical Asian martial arts manuals.
Can't wait for Shad to make an hour long reply video to this one.......
Jk. Found your channel because of your reply to the flail. Excellent vid and channel overall. I will pray for your channel to get a much larger audience, man. Take care.
😂 Thank you for supportingg the channel! I will keep improving my content and we will see how far we can go!
I have done hema for a long time and I am always extremely disappointed when I see a hema purist talk down on other traditions.
I think your take on the difference of having to work with a written source great.
Personnally, I would also add than when you have a pass down system with a rigid pedagocic aproach, why you are approaching the techniques this way is relevant to the system. I have learned some Wing Tsun and they have quite a good pedagogical approach to cut down the content.
You just got a new subscriber. I've been debating whether or not to get in to HEMA or study Kung Fu from fighting manuals from the Ming Dynasty. I used to study Wing Chun about ten years ago and I want to get back into practice.
@@NayrbRellimer Thanks for the sub! HEMA is definitely worth doing in conjunction with Chinese sword arts if possible. There are of course key differences, but the timing and some of the primary techniques will be similar across systems.
Living traditions are a ‘double edged sword’(cough*) from a historical perspective, as they tend to change and evolve with the times. In my case I practice the Chen style taijiquan sword form, which has supposedly been passed down for ‘hundreds of years’ in the Chen village, yet my teacher can’t be certain what the applications of the movements are, or which ones are the more historical moves and which ones are more recent additions or changes. That becomes a hindrance as much as an aid to someone like me who is interested in the historical aspect of what I am learning.
Yeah I know what you’re talking about, I KNOW a master adding stuff to old forms because it looks cool and afterwards thinking about an application for the fancy tricks but still communicating he is teaching traditional Chinese martial arts. Absolute horror in my point of view.
Great video, instructor of HEMA, specifically Bolognese system and student of Taiwan system Baji Quan here. To me, I think a problem with living tradition in HCMA is that ppl sometimes just try to apply their style’s understanding and be quite dogmatic in some ways which happened to me quite a few times
The problem of dogma is a real one that has to be handled carefully.
@@thescholar-general5975 Personally, when I teach the polearms, especially spear of the Bolognese school I infuse some Chinese techniques in it to try to broaden the more advanced curriculum
I am a I.33 guy over here, yes... many dogmatic people in hema. Every martial art have egotistical rigid master 😂
Hello, have you done a survey video of the oldest Chinese manuals? I know you have done excellent deep dives into techniques, but how about an overview of manuals? Thank you. 🙏🥋
I would love to get my hands on those too
How old are the chinese living traditions actually? Have the living traditions been documented?
Even from Japan, it is very hard to find many Ryuha which have solid documentation for unbroken teaching down to the middle ages, that is, 16th century and before.
This is an important point that I kind of glossed over when I was talking about researching one's own lineage. The truth is that most CMA go back to the 19th century at the latest. We do have documented evidence for some styles going back into the 18th century. A number of living traditions have notes or texts written by practitioners of various arts. But you have to have the languages skills and know the right people to find them. The Brennan Translation site is a good place to read English translations of this type of thing. We also have military manuals which date to the 16th century and outline techniques for a few weapons. There are a couple treatises too which attempt to explain a whole system.
One thing I did not mention in this video is how the living tradition can and should complement textual reading. For example, if we wish to practice Ming dynasty spear, than it is fool hardy to simply read a handful of Ming spear manuals and then create a system without also studying at least one living spear tradition. Doing this certainly does not open the door to all understanding, but the advantages of doing so greatly outweigh the disadvantages.
@@thescholar-general5975 Yes my impression is that there are no documented Chinese living traditions going back to middle ages (17th century or before). It would be great to find one.
@@thescholar-general5975 where are these living traditions? I really doubt that these kinds of traditions survived the culture revolution in mainland China.
Eric I should make a video topic on this. The cultural revolution definitely had a negative impact on chinese martial arts, but many of these traditions were able to survive it. I would actually argue that the invention of modern wushu has done more harm to kung fu’s effectiveness as a martial art then the cultural revolution.
Well HEMA isn't limited to the sources. Everbody can make what he wants, the sources are just one pillar. I.E when I go to olympic fencing I learn a lot from a living european tradition and my longsword fencing will become much better (I am talking about things like speed, and precision and general fitness training. I am aware, that the footwork is a little bit different)
Yes the H in HEMA is important and some poeple think it is the most important thing, but the best of us know, its the sparring culture and the testing and questioning what makes HEMA so good. If I have to choose between the sources and the sparring culture I would choose the last one. Luckly I dont have to coose. :)
I also believe that the sparring culture is extremely important in HEMA however, without the history, the practice is no longer a martial art and more of a sport like fencing or lightsaber fighting.
It is like training for firearms but only having airsoft fights. You will definitely pick up some skills, but the practice needs to be contextualized in order to function as a martial art.
A good analysis. I personally have experience in both fields. I have a nylon European great sword that I've been practicing with for 2 years, and i more recently purchased a nylon two-handed Ming-style Jian that I just started using. Both I got from Purple Heart Armory
The approach you described in HCMA is similar to what they are doing with HAMA (historical african martial arts). Using living traditions as a source for critical analysis.
Yes, exactly! I was just talking about this with a HAMA practitioner not long ago. Really cool stuff!
Might also be worth pointing out that the military application of sword based martial arts lasted well into the 20th century with China employing units of swordsmen during WW2. Whereas in other parts of the world martial arts had turned more into performance or pastime, in China out of necessity there was still a military component to it. The recent border clashes with India saw some pu dao being deployed... in 2020.
The people who used single sided swords/daos during WW2 used them as backup weapons, and many of those swords were basically mass produced thick cleavers that could be used by anyone with minimal training. Furthermore, the government of mainland China has been promoting Wushu in the 20th-21st century, which is acrobatics-performance style martial arts that has no application in real life combat. There is still a decent level of disconnect between modern Chinese performance sword arts and historical sword fighting styles.
@@Intranetusa I think I largely agree. Firearms even to the Chinese were infinitely preferable to swords. Like I mentioned, the deployment of Chinese sword troops was out of necessity rather than preference.
However it is incorrect to say that these weapons were used as backup, particularly in the "Big Sword" units. They might be also handed pistols and grenades, but their tactics were developed largely around close-in sword attacks in favourable terrain. This also prevented the Japanese from employing their main advantages in artillery, air support, and motorised/mechanised/armoured forces. If you think about it from a strategic perspective it makes sense; deny an industrialised enemy of their advantages while taking advantage of your own large local population base.
Furthermore there was (and is) a good deal of training behind the Da Dao. Certainly you can have untrained people wielding them, but you can have untrained people hacking away with any sword from a katana to a longsword. The Chinese forces using the Da Dao did train fairly extensively with them, both in terms of physical endurance training and actual swordsmanship. I have a 152 page manual (including translations and pictures) from 1933 on the Da Dao, which does indicate serious training for the weapon (rather than the typical view that it was nothing more than a machete). The manual clearly states that while it is descended from the two-handed sabre techniques, it also reflects lessons from the battlefield after initial Big Sword unit victories against the Japanese.
So I would say that with respect to the Da Dao techniques, it has far more application to real life combat than any HEMA tradition, especially considering it attempts to answer the question of "how do you use a sword to fight against a machinegun or bayonets".
@@colonelchingles Interesting, I wasn't aware that they had a 152 page training manual for the da dao in the 1930s. Yeh, in that case the techniques would be more real life appropriate. Thanks for the information. Do you know if the training retained a lot of the earlier sword vs
sword/spear/etc techniques, or did it evolve mostly into sword vs early guns type training?
@@Intranetusa Some of it seems specifically geared towards opponents with firearms, typically bayonets. I'd estimate 60-75% seems "new" in the sense it is made for 20th century warfare. A few excerpts:
"Using the middle portion of
the blade
I shall strike down aggressively
on the enemy’s front-hand
that’s holding the rifle."
"The enemy’s rifle shall then be
scraped to my right-side.
Seize the opportunity to strike
at the enemy’s chest
Or his front-hand holding the
rifle."
Pretty much out of the 12 stances, all of them are mentioned as being used against rifles. There are very clearly some artefacts from earlier martial arts and likely much of it is similar to fighting against a spear (which a bayoneted rifle most closely approximates). But in particular attacking the hands on a rifle is a bit different than the hands on a spear so that seems fairly unique to this manual.
Definitely having access to oral history is an advantage more common in my T & H CMA practice then my HEMA practice so I agree in general but I think there are a few more arts with living lineage then just those... savate and La Cain come to mind plus it's worth mentioning there is more then one style of wrestling with independent lineage.
Yes for sure. It is an oversimplification to just talk about fencing, boxing, and wrestling. That being said, it seems like a majority of HEMA practitioners are interested in the older stuff which is unfortunately disconnected from any lineage.
Good topic. I’m a HEMA practitioner and I’d like to try same approach with Chinese weapons
Another great video!
Thanks for watching!
Will you do technique comparison?
Yes, eventually I will do some more in-depth comparisons.
Well there is a trend of Historical Asian Martial Arts or HAMA and also Historical African Martial Arts also HAMA I guess lol. Have you seen the videos from Dr. Kono?
It's kind of pointless to make geographic distinctions like that. All of these fighting styles are in essence the same thing with different equipment, aren't they? And if there was a big difference between fighting styles, it makes even less sense to lump Arabs into the same group as Southern Africans and so on. Just get rid of the place name and you are good to go. Whichever technique works best is what people will stick to.
I’m really first
Edit: thx for heart
Did you find that the studying of living lineages helped you in your sparring? It seems like a lot of what we see today comes from stage combat. I'd imagine that the best masters of the most renowned and practical lineages would have been purged during the Cultural Revolution, so it must be hard to find the lineages that would help in practical sparring
Why am I only discovering this now?
I hope there will be a continuation of this theme...
I care more about Western hand-to-hand combat, pankration, boxing and medieval wrestling.
Yeah we have treatises which go over medieval wrestling, but know very little when it comes to pankration or medieval boxing.
which 1 is overall more complicated?
I am not sure it is possible to say. Ultimately reconstructing any past system is going to be very difficult and require a lot of historical and martial knowledge.
I really like this video. I thought there'd be more people practicing with real weapons in China? But I can see that replicas or antiques might be expensive and hard to get. Also training with them might not be good because it'd be too easy to make serious errors. I remember hearing about a master of Kajukenbo ( a Hawaiian martial art with Chinese influences) who seriously cut his arm practicing a double sword form with sharp swords. I learn a lot from your videos. I think they're great.
Thank you for watching! The recent history of modern china has made it such that most practitioners nowadays use floppy “wushu” steel swords.
Great content as always mate. Many of the Westerners don't like the oral transmission of the techniques in Asian martial arts. Not everything was written down back then. Some things were secret, only past down from master to apprentice. The Western mindset calls this lack of evidence. I believe Eastern and Western way of thinking are quite different. A european person can say "this is not a real martial art, your teacher is lying, there are no documents" and the asian practitioner would think like "why would my master lie?". The oral traditions give birth to many great techniques or shape the old ones into something different. It is really hard to explain it to the Western audience.
Just don’t lump the Japanese into this ’Asian’ category. They customarily did a very extensive written documentation. Problem is a lot of it was lost in the wars over time, but some remain. They even had traceability in the documents, who copied which text and to whom the copy was given.
@@Tsurukiri as a practitioner of japanese martial arts since 2009, I agree completely. However like I said before, most of the Westerners don't like re-written denshos and makimonos of the masters. I know that a lot of documents were destroyed in fires during Meiji restoration and WWII. Many masters had their copies of original documents. Some of them even added their own understanding or henka. But if it isn't carbon dated to 15th century, the people go mad and say those documents are fake. They don't even know what is a densho and how/why it is written.
I think that incredulity about oral transmission largely arises from two sources. The first is the sub optimal state of Chinese martial arts at large and the second is that a number of HEMA practitioners know how to analyze texts critically, but do not understand alternative methodologies. To be fair, I have met many wonderful HEMA people who are not this way. Academic fields like anthropology have a refined and nuanced way to analyze phenomenon like living traditions, but most HEMA practitioners have not been exposed to these alternative approaches to technical transmission.
@@Tolabay Well, maybe we should tell the doubters that the age of a document does not prove the contents in it to be fake or not fake. The forgery could have happened a long time ago.
Certainly, some of the European manuals contain weird stuff. Fake or not, hard to say, but it’s seems to be that some of the European schools were also businesses and you definitely needed good marketing material to stand out from the crowd. And why are many of the manuals dedicated to important persons?
Some of the Japanese schools were businesses, too. And they too furiously marketed their ’goods’ to important people and protected their ’intellectual properties’. They even used clever encryption in the documents.
No idea how this went with the Chinese. Perhaps in a slightly similar way? Business first, techniques second :)
@@Tsurukiri the fact that most fencing books were written and published by jewish people in europe also proves that money was important for these stuff. Printing and handwriting books were expensive. That probably limited the amount of techniques we have today. Many fantastic fighters didn't have enough money to spread their knowledge.
I'm down for starting a TAMA league; anyone else? 😅
There is a y Gap from European martial arts still Asian martial arts cuz gunpowder was invented that's sad thing about it that we have to play catch up I think I'll martial arts are good I like them both a very honorable
Hii mr, seely
Hello!
@@thescholar-general5975 how’s life
posting a new video on the June 4th, interesting
*May 35th
modern kung fu became primarily for entertainment.
Yes the only real sparring happens in sanda.
It is a yes and no. "Real" Kung-Fu is done by Special units or Mafia.
First of all the word martial arts comes from the word mars god of war. 2nd martial arts changed over the past 10.000 years.
Each tribe , people got good at certain aspects of the arts of war. as technologie advanced so did the styles. what might be obsolete now was cutting edge in the past . Hema is a colection of thousends of years of combat styles based on what tactics where used in the day. There are many books images and records on the different fighting styles used in europe . Most weapons of those times stem from hunting , farming or carpenter tools etc . Easy to come by and many styles of fighting where created. Its a continous adaptation of the times.
中国传统武术有传承有断代，但是不管怎么说，中国古代兵书里的战斗技巧还原这一点做的很不好。
就我不黑不吹，有啥说啥
Wudang Sword style and Shaolin Spear are so intricate and beautiful that HEMA seems primitive compared
China is a 5500 year old country and have refined everything better
Even our current technology gets stolen by China and vastly improved
HCMA destroy HEMA , I've studied both for decades
Every single move in HEMA is in Wudang but not vice versa
I wish we could see more then
I feel like there just isnt enough exposure or tournaments visible for people outside those countries