I want to be absolutely clear that I was not triggered or upset by the Hard2Hurt video - I enjoyed it, and had absolutely no intention to make a response. I know it was clickbaity and poking fun, and I'm fine with that. I only made this response because I was goaded into it by HEMA people and channel followers, and I'm easy to goad LOL
I'm glad you made this response, Mike's video was fine until he started talking trash about how he would wreck a HEMA class. Then he goes on to showing is "bouting" that was the best example of a total noob with a sword in hand.
To go a step further, "MMA" is not a "Martial Art" in any way as it has no basis in any sort of true Military/Martial tradition. On the contrary, it's an entirely modern system of sport-fighting for money. There are no weapons, no armor, no self-defense, no disarms, no tactics, no multiple opponent drills/randori, etc... MMA is a game. A violent game, but a "relatively safe" one where there is not, has not, and will not ever be any notion of "life and death" situations as is the case in HEMA, which is entirely based on real world Martial/Military scenarios. Trying to "Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu" someone on the battlefield has rarely been advisable, or successful.
As my late father, who was a student of multiple forms of hand-to-hand and ancient fighting systems (pre modern Hema tho) used to put it: “ If unarmed combat was superior, we would not have spent 100,000 years developing ways to hit each other with absolutely everything but our fists.”
The claim was never that barehanded > weapons. The claim is that a good fighter can pick up a sword and outfence a bad HEMA practitioner. And i agree with that .
all martial arts are mixed martial arts. have been since we first came down from the trees. today's mma is well on the way to becoming a canonical style based on 'whatever dana white has decided you have to do if you want to get fights'
@@toddellner5283 agree. Back in the days taking somebody down for 20 seconds without even scratching their hair with your fists didn't score you 2/3 of the points as effective grappling and effective cage controll. Also nowadays if you are not looking bussy enogh from the buttom the referee will call TKO for the top guy rubbing your shoulder 3 times. The pointing system and a referee practice encourage wresstle f*cking, ground and pounding and standing up. Also 5 minutes is just enough to take someone down 2 times after 3 minutes of i donno what the hell. The standing portion of mma sucks. It is kick boxing but the parties don't dare to conact their strikes. And standing wrestling but somebody bugs into the wall....
@@toddellner5283 and in some areas IDPA from what I saw several years ago. It shouldn't be governed by Fudd rules. Even though I could "shoot for fun" my carry pistol at the time was a Glock 17L and I was DQ'ed from an "official score" due to it's size. It was my general purpose carry pistol. Even though I owned a G-26 also. I have not messed with that stuff in a long time now. Probably 20years. To add yes I still shoot and train as I can manage although when it comes to H to H I'm also disheartened by the amount of "Bullshido" in my area and really miss the old style training in aikido and hapkido I used to do plus a few mixed disciplines.
The method to Mike's madness is pretty easy to see. Make a super inflammatory video, get people talking, get professionals talking, invite professional to Collab, make great content and expose everyone to other aspects of fighting. It's "talk shit, get hit" in a constructive way. And I can't wait for his follow up video with a Hema RUclipsr.
Yeah, this is Mike's style a lot of the time, he's very good at connecting with people in the fight-tube community by basically talking trash, and then when they connect they get on really well, mainly because past the trash-talking Mike seems to be a very genuine kind of guy.
Mike from hard2hurt really is a decent guy. He talks a BUNCH of shit, but past that he's a good guy. A former cop too from what I hear so he has my respect there too. And I always have respect for anyone who trains Muay Thai/Boxing/Kickboxing/Jiu jitsu/Wrestling and similar styles - I myself train Muay Thai and formerly jiu jitsu so I know how hard it is and how effective it is and how FUN it is. And its saved my ass in real life from someone trying to assault me(I knocked out the scumbag with a single right hook to the side of his head, even after taking a sucker punch, blocking and evading till I recovered, then blasted him with that hook with perfect timing if i do say so myself). But yeah Icy Mike does this kind of thing a bunch to stimulate discussion. Its a cheap way to do it but obviously an effective one. I think he likes HEMA and just wants to talk to the Pros about it like Matt here or Shad. Cause once he talks to someone one on one hes a good guy - like most guys who train and spar hard regularly(aka fighting regularly; it humbles you while also giving you unparalleled confidence; its hard to explain). Its certainly not my approach. But I understand why he does it. Clickbait is effective after all. So are rousing peoples emotions with stuff like that.
I HOPE so. I HOPE he does that, but it is a fundamental error of a teacher to showcase something being done _wrong_ and then show it being done correctly _after_ in a subsequent video. Its akin to teaching a kid the wrong way to start a physics problem, and then teaching him the right way two weeks later when your student teacher is there to correct what you'd already taught.
I’ve got 9 professional MMA fights. My brother is an experienced fencer and Kendoka. We put on the kendo equipment and played about with the shinai (swords). I’ve never had my ass handed to me so quickly and thoroughly. Could not agree more with what you’re saying, Matt!
I think the argument that hema is “unnecessary” comes from the context of home owner having “sword and shield” and intruder having a typically chosen weapon that isn’t a gun, and that the “sword shield” combo is so vastly superior to typically chosen weapons (bat/knife) outside of a gun that limited training is need to be proficient in defending your home against invasion.
That's not the inflammatory part. He also said that an MMA guy with no HEMA training at all, with a sword and buckler, given a few hours to play with them, could wreck a HEMA practitioner who also has a sword and shield. Which is why he said that HEMA was unnecessary and stupid. He believes that anybody with a solid MMA background can just figure out how to use a sword better than a person who has been training to use a sword for years.
Saying that you don't need to formally train with a sword and buckler because untrained people can beat a guy with a baseball bat is like saying you don't have to train with a gun because an untrained person can also beat a guy with a baseball bat.
It's very different because you need safety equipment to handle a gun. But, it is actually true that you don't need "hema" levels of training with guns to defend yourself. To "master" HEMA you need to invest years and years of your life. It's unnecesary for self-defense or home defense. If they have anything less than a gun, it's an easy fight for you. If they have a gun, no amount of HEMA will block a bullet. I would say you need to train with a gun just enough to learn how not to shoot yourself and a bit of aim training. A few days of training with a gun is enough for most people. A few days of training with a sword is enough for most people. *For pure self defense needs.
@@vladimirgertner3960 but what if the assumed opponent is not some untrained fool? Cuz by necessity when discussing or training for self/home defense we are assuming that the opponent is X or Y because we can't actually invade each other's homes and assault each other. But if the guy's been doing this for a while and has been going to the same kind of legit gyms and classes that we do then 6 months of basic training ain't gonna guarantee we fend them off.
@@vladimirgertner3960 It obviously isn't an easy fight, because Mike had a sword and buckler and his opponents were either unarmed or only had a baseball bat (meaning he had the weapon advantage), and he still had a lot of trouble defeating them. In at least one case, he was the one defeated. And you also presented a false dichotomy. You implied that you either 'master' HEMA or just do a few days of 'training'. If you already have experience in MMA, you probably only need about a year of HEMA training to be really effective in a fight against someone who has a weapon, so long as they aren't trained in its use.
@@vladimirgertner3960 Nah…. Competent firearms handling takes a fair amount of practice, regularly at that. In a self defense situation, your adrenaline kicks in, and your aim suffers. Some firearms are easier for some people. Some are harder. It takes a lot of thinking and training to determine the best gun for you to defend your home. What works for me may not work for you.
The "dealing with someone behaving suicidally" aspect of HEMA is one of the longest dealt-with matters, I agree that he did not discover the wheel here.
I'll add a point based on personal experience: Many of my fellow HEMA practitioners, myself included, are basically nerds that would have otherwise been largely physically inactive for our entire lives had we not discovered and taken an interest in HEMA. My very first training session lasted about 45 minutes and I was more winded afterwards than I'd ever been, so it didn't take long for my desire to keep going to influence my decision to start exercising and eating properly.
Thats the story of almost every pactitioner of martial arts nowadays. UFC fans are often nerds too lol it's just that you haven't seen them yet. I'm dead serious. The only ones that aint totally nerdy are the ex-college wrestlers. Thats it. Why do you think Israel Adesanya tries to appeal to anime fans with his Rock Lee stances & personality? Anime fans like the UFC especially strikers.
@@ElDrHouse2010 Oh I'm well aware, as two of the guys in my tabletop gaming group are also very much into MMA and definitely look the part. If you talk to them for more than 5 minutes they'll start getting into conversations about all sorts of nerd stuff, and I believe one of them is possibly a furry but that's only speculation and not my business to ask lol
The ratio of nerds to athletes is gonna be vastly different in mma gyms when compared to hema gyms lmao. A nerd with a sword would lose to an athlete with a sword even if the athlete is untrained.
The UFC sent several of their fighters, including Rashad Evans, to the marine hand to hand combat training school. Using just knifes, the Marines wrecked the UFC fighters. Great video to watch
That does not surprise me. There is a paradox IMHO that grappling is absolutely important to knife combat, but if you learn grappling alone, then it will get you killed very quickly against a knife. If you want to slightly improve your chances in a knife fight, train knife fighting first and foremost.
@@scholagladiatoria learning how to duel wont help you much in the phalanx. different training is appropriate for different fights and environments. the best air conditioner in the world is not a great can opener.
Guys with wrestling BJJ MMA background would trump in close range than pure HEMA guys tho. Still remember that video where a dude just throw his sword away and successfully suplexed his opponent in a Longsword tournament
@@jaketheasianguy3307 I think you're forgetting that HEMA also encompasses wrestling and other grappling and hand-to-hand combat styles. And there are HEMA clubs that focus specifically on that alone. But that is not important. What is important is that closing in on someone armed with a sword is ridiculously hard especially when the swordsman knows what he is doing.
@@jaketheasianguy3307 Because a lot of schools neglect the grappling side and many tournaments have tight restrictions on throws and takedowns. That is an issue with particular schools and tournaments, not a categorical advantage of MMA over HEMA.
@@NevisYsbryd it's more about the training method as well. I have seen some folks who do HEMA absolutely want nothing to do when it comes to close play or learn super simple stuffs like how to break fall properly. They just want to swing swords and then calling time out when someone start halfswording on their face or just push them back, not even trying to throw them. Someone with a modern wrestling background would 100% take advantage of that easily
@@jaketheasianguy3307 the guys who "just want to swing swords" are just wrong and they don't represent HEMA cause grappling and wrestling are part of the traditional guidelines of the art. The man suplexing the other in tournament just did something that you see very often in historical treatises: close in when fighting in armor to grappling to finish it. It makes no sense for you to treat this case as if the winner had stepped outside of what is HEMA and made an unforbiden move against its martial tradition.
I don’t think people understand just how useful a long razor sharp blade at the end of a handle is, especially when you’re less than 5 feet from your enemy.
Tough guys who can take 100 of heavy punches is not the same or better than having 100 stabs by sharpened edges. Hiding behind rules is still hiding. Not very tough that way.
That is quite frankly the entire point of the mentioned hard2hurt video. Which merely posits that in the self defence scenarios of today, excluding a firearm (melee vs firearm is just not gonna go well) a sword and buckler with little training are sufficient. Because, nobody is going to invade your house with a sword, they’ll bring a bat, or knife, or crowbar, or hammer.
Well if nothing else this has created a lot of good dialogue and content to go back and forth! Thanks for taking the challenge in stride Matt, and keeping the tone grounded and civil as always :) Always something to learn when we compare and contrast different traditions.
That Hard2Hurt thing is ridiculous. Weapons are a game changer. Great fighters can get killed by a drunk guy with a kitchen knife. And being a bit of an older guy myself, who has played with swords and machetes since I was a kid, it blows me away how awkward people are when they're not used to them. Cutting well is not as easy as it seems. It is it's own skill set.
I have a feeling you misunderstood everything Heard2Hurt said tbh. He is a huge weapons proponent. His argument was that - for home defense, if you have a sword and buckler, you need only a few hours of training to ensure you can easily kill at least 95% of burglars who come in with baseball bats.
@@vladimirgertner3960 was that what he said? If so that's stupid as shit. I would imagine using a sword and buckler would require much more than a few hours of training for your muscle to adapt to the movements of swinging a sword effectively, a baseball bat is a club and is much easier to use effectively than a sword. For example in boxing throwing hooks are very awkward at first because your muscles are just not used to that movement but overtime they become natural to throw.
@@weaver1507 He specifically said that for 95% of situations, you just need to hold out a buckler in front of you, and stab your opponents. He tested it with resisting opponents. ANd he tested it with resisting opponents who were told exactly what he would do, and it worked EVERY TIME. Now, if someone asked me to teach them some boxing in 3 hours, i wouldn't go close to hooks. I would just force them to drill 1-2, And still, you can't compare that to having a weapon.
@@vladimirgertner3960except he fumbled multiple times even against unarmed opponents who grabbed his shield and sword (because he wasn’t in a proper guard) and began to wrestle him. He might’ve beaten them at wrestling, but then what is the point of a sword for self defense if you cannot even stop your opponent from negating your sword arm’s ability to do anything? Also there are multiple times when he could’ve ended his fights sooner but didn’t, or rather, he couldn’t, because he didn’t even know basic Hema. Him thinking he can just fight with a sword and win 95% time is the equivalent of those people who attend one self defense seminar and think they can actually defend themselves. If you want to fight and be able to defend yourself, you have to train, Hema is no different. If you don’t want to train Hema, don’t pick a melee weapon for self defense, use a taser or pepper spray instead (assuming guns are out of the question, because those are basically the default)
I’ve trained for 18 years (3rd degree BJJ black belt, and have done bits of wrestling and striking). One of my students does HEMA and when I got him (at the time a white belt) to show me some simple sword stuff, I felt like I would have been in big trouble if it was real. Distance and angles of attacks are completely different.
My buddy has been doing BJJ for 6 years and was very, very upset to find out that none it worked against a simple karambit (a blade designed to be felt, not seen). Once you had edged weapons, grappling itself becomes suicidal. I've done Judo for decades, but if I see a knife I'm going to do everything I can to avoid a fight.
@@johnpauljones9310 yeah man for sure, but I’d go further and say it’s best to just avoid all fights, I don’t want to fight anybody. Not sure why your friend got upset to find out a weapon beats unarmed… pretty sure that’s why weapons were invented originally 😂
My HEMA teacher is a kung fu teacher, and I know enough to know when I see someone who is really good. I myself am a long time karate practitioner who decided to have some fun with swords recently. Guess what, I am miserable with weapons. I make rookie mistakes, I get wrecked just as often as other people, who are rookies to fighting with a long weapon (not knife). I do have significant advantage when I get to grappling distance, and that much is true. But that's kinda it. Unarmed and HEMA combat are two completely different beasts which just shares some common basics (tempo, reach, body structure to support the technique and overall ability to control one's body, legwork, not telegraphing with eyes/unnecesary movements, not being scared and stressed when there's no reason to...) - but that's only what makes one a fighter. Not a winner. I find my experience, outside of the grappling scenarios, to help me learn faster. Btw, there IS a difference between unarmed and armed grappling. You can let go of opponent's armed arm under more strict circumstances, compared to the unarmed context. What I have done several times is I let go of an arm which I considered to be "safe" - and it would be normally - but then I got slashed with a draw/push cut, because while the arm was in no position to pose punching/grappling danger to me, it was in a position to cut me with a weapon it held by just dropping the thing on me. Having no weapon combat experience, but a lot of unarmed one, can, in certain situations, actually be dangerous to you, because the game does change a bit.
This will be a fun time for me 😄 I watch Shad, Skallagrim, this channel, and Hard2Hurt on a regular basis! It's awesome how much modern and historical arms and armor have in common!
You want a really wild experience? Learn some iai, and then learn some firearms combatives and ccw techniques. The philosophy and even practical applications for responding to a violent threat are so similar to each other that they might as well be the same. In fact, where there isn't overlap, you can take from one to improve the other, mainly taking from iai to improve the pistol presentation. Of course, it goes even deeper than that. If you've ever done MJER, or any other similar kenjutsu, and done CQB rifle drills for multiple targets, the shihoto sono ichi is practically identical to a four-target a-zone drill. Blew my mind when I realized that.
I think the hard2hurt video was specifically in the context of using melee weapons in a self-defense situation against unarmed attackers, and his premise was that HEMA training would not be helpful in such a situation. I can see where he's coming from but it's a fundamental misunderstanding of HEMA to think it would be less helpful than MMA in such a situation.
It seems like he thinks that hema is just a fancy name for sword fighting. The only practical application of sword training I can think of is using a sword against someone who also has a sword, a scenario that is extremely unrealistic. Being trained in sword fighting would surely be more useful in a home defense scenario than not, but I don't think that's necessary to be able to stick someone with the pointy end effectively when they're unarmed. Most likely they'll leg it as soon as they see you got a sword anyway.
@@victorro8760 HEMA encompasses many weapons besides the sword, and many practitioners spar unequal weapons, just like Matt mentioned in this video. A sword is quite capable of facing a baseball bat, and it would have to be. Plenty of people carried heavy clubs similar to a bat back then and a gentleman who carried a sword would train answers to such weapons.
@@micaiahelliott8821 counter point though, how many people are breaking into houses without something that can be used as a weapon if not an actual weapon? I'd say probably close to zero. And if they are unarmed they will probably just try to run as soon as you challenge them.
I think HEMA has the reputation of being something that someone who loves D&D can call a martial art. It is but it's a lot more than that as well. It's the focus on weapons that I think gives it real strength. Mike does fun videos and I am glad you did a response just to add to the dialogue.
The emphasis on weapons is certainly what I like about it, given that, as a red blooded American, I love guns. Since guns are such a great equalizer, in the event that guns are unavailable, I still would rather have a sword, or even a large Bowie knife, over unarmed combat.
Given the European orgians of North America and that HEMA has a martial history shooting sports have some relationship. It's a broad umbrella and I think it's clear that the focus is on history so I don't think one can say that the modern self defense movement is part of HEMA but it seems to me that there is a lot in common especially since it has a lot of military roots and are developing formal training based around systems. That's basically what HEMA is looking at as well just in the past so in 100 years it would seem to fit perfectly. When you are looking at swords spears and pikes etc we aren't probably going to encounter them or use them in any sort of self defense. However sticks, clubs and knives will never go away and are the most common weapons that anyone will encounter. I have very little fear that I will ever encounter a highly trained martial artists who is going to attack me or a loved one unprovoked and kill people with his bare hands. That's a brawl and I can't think of a situation where a weapon isn't used that is going to get serious without a large amount of provocative from myself. If people are going to try to harm someone they are going to use a weapon. I like guns too but they aren't something that you will always have with you and even if you do being disarmed is possible. HEMA seems fun and interesting as a hobby but I also see parts of it especially the ones that deal with sticks and knives as probably being the most useful sort of self defense especially when combined with firearms training.
HEMA only has a reputation of being related to D&D if you've never looked into it beyond what someone who shittalked it on facebook said. If you look into HEMA's reputation, its an art that continues back over 700 years in dozens of different styles and with hundreds of different weapons from all over Europe. Italian fencing, French, German zweihander methods, Scottish, Norse, all of that is HEMA.
I had a background in jiu-jitsu before starting HEMA. I can confirm, I was shit at HEMA initially, but my jiu-jitsu does come in handy now I've had some training with weapons as well.
That's because traditional jujutsu is literally kenjutsu techniques with the sword removed from your hands and your hands are in very slightly different positions for a lot of techniques. Its meant to be something that a swordsman can pick up in weeks and then translate his entire swordfighting method into hand to hand with the lessons that are taught, so as not to overwhelm students with two totally different styles that require different movement methods.
Lets not forget things like edge alignment and the fact that most swords found today are more effective at slashing than hacking as Mike was doing in the video, when he wasn't stabbing the opponent that is, and we can't forget that those of us that train in weapons (I've got a background in kali not HEMA) are able to tell not only by looking at the weapon but also by how it handles as to whether it's best used as a slashing, hacking or stabbing weapon.
@@vladimirgertner3960 Narrow spaces aren't an issue if you use a smaller sword like a Ginunting and if you train to fight in confined spaces like we do in FMA. No disrespect to Mike as he has real world experiance an some good, solid views but when it comes to melee weapons he has no idea what he's talking about and needs to stick to talking about un-armed fighting. For an un-trained person, stabbing is absolutely a good tactic as it's the quickest and easiest thing to learn but to anyone that has any skill with melee weapons it doesn't matter how they use it and can very easily defeat someone who only stabs. Let's not forget that Mike never specified whether he was talking about un-skilled people using a sword and shilled for self defence or if he was including people with training.
@@TheMegaAsh i mean, if your burglar is a kali expert, you are shit out of luck, but that is not a realistic situation. For home defense, you really don't need that much skill
I'm a hard2hurt fan and I like when mike introduces me to different communities by provoking them in a way. Had he not made that video I would not be learning as much about Hema as I otherwise would have.
I swear that guy is mentally handicapped. I remember when he said oblique kicks can't blow out knees, when they absolutely can, and have a deserved reputation for doing so. I asked him if I could come to his studio and oblique kick his knee as hard as I can. No reply. I have done many martial arts including mma and HEMA both, if someone comes at this genius with a knife he's a dead man. His "advice" is going to get people hurt/maimed/killed.
Well, there’s maybe an unwitting a lesson to be had. You have to respect the martial art and the fighter for what they bring to the table on a very specific context. Some people talk about Mixed martial arts like Hard2hurt talked about Hema.
I think it is important to note that H2Hs video was mainly in the CONTEXT of modern home defence. In most places in the world it would be very rare for an intruder to bring a sword and buckler while also have trained with those weapons. Therefore the focus of HEMA as you describe it (facing an opponent with similar weapons and skills) might not be that relevant for that application. I do think however that if you really want to get a sword and buckler for homedefence you should probably get atleast some training with them.
@@ryanwood6754 Ditto. It's prudent to push yourself to be the most proficient you can be in the use of your chosen weapons system. With firearms you train for the best DTFS times, the best groups, the best recoil control, all so you can end the threat as quickly and with as little harm to yourself and bystanders as possible. It's no different with swords. You want to train to get the most consistent edge alignment and make exploiting the mistakes of your opponent as natural as breathing. Especially considering that an assailant, even if unskilled, is rather likely to be armed with a knife. Getting hit by a bat is one thing, but I'd rather maximize my chances of not getting cut open. Speaking of edge alignment, that's the most major point H2H really missed. He seems to not understand that in order to use a sword as effectively as possible, making sure the edge is at the right angle is very important to getting good cuts. That's something that really only comes with practice, and lots of it. It's one thing to argue that HEMA is useless with blunt weapons, but it's an entirely different thing to say that when you're dealing with blades and similar weapons.
Honestly, in the case towards the end which turned into a grapple, I actually have a hot take in that MMA training actually hurt Mike there. Since MMA is an unarmed martial arts discipline, weapon retention is not something where a lot of attention is paid to. Whereas in HEMA, the emphasis is on weapons training, so maintaining control of the weapon either through a proper stance or proper reaction is something the sword wielder would’ve done. Even me, though I wouldn’t know the proper stance, would’ve tried to withdraw my sword as soon as the other guy tried to grapple me simply because I learned gun retention techniques. Hell, this is part of what I like about HEMA despite not being an active practitioner myself. Being your average, red blooded American, I like guns and my martial arts discipline of choice is gun fighting, as mentioned before. And HEMA is one of the few martial arts disciplines which emphasizes using weapons, which given how useful weapons are as force multipliers, getting proficient with a weapon will generally always be an advantage over unarmed combat.
@@jaketheasianguy3307 True, but he definitely didn’t have as much attention paid to weapon retention that HEMA guys (or gunfighting guys) do. Which is fine, since MMA is an unarmed martial art so that’s not something you generally have to worry about. But it does mean his hot take is doubly wrong here. lol
@@TheErtagon15 How long ago has he been? Skills like this are a perishable skill. If he’s been training mostly unarmed most of the time, things like weapon retention will be forgotten. I’m just going off the fact that in one of the grappling scenarios, he didn’t pull his weapon back properly like he should’ve.
@@gameragodzilla he does this kind of thing for a living. He regularly practices grappling with weapons in hand. He has multiple videos of him and others grappling with a taser. He takes very realistic defense classes. He's well aware of the perishability of skills. He is definitely a goofball and could learn a lot from HEMA, and clearly needs more practice grappling with longer weapons, but he's not some hack. If you have any interest in modern martial arts and self defense, his channel and those he collabs with are definitely worth checking out.
3 reasons Hard2hurt is wrong 1. Hard2hurt doesn't know anything about HEMA 2. Hard2hurt never really tested his opinion against real HEMA 3. Hard2hurt is wrong so often that you could have just randomly guessed that he was wrong and you would have probably been correct.
The whole point of his argument is don't bring up manuscripts and said this is "the right way" when it comes to modern self defense, and I absolutely stand by his side with this argument. You don't need HEMA training to start shanking a modern attacker with a sword and a buckler when that guy trying to invade your home. Also no idea why people even think that medieval dagger defense would 100% translated to modern knife defense and it could somehow trumped everything that great people such as Craig Douglas or Ryan Hoover teach.
@@damasek219 that's the whole point of that video. Literally quoting Matt here, "context matter" and saying he's wrong for saying things that's part of his original subject is literally taking things out of context and criticize it
Excellent response, Matt. I am a fan of Icy Mike and this particular video made me 😂 it looks like someone just caught the weapons bug and Icy Mike is going down the HEMA rabbit hole, just like the rest of us😂
I swear that guy is mentally handicapped. I remember when he said oblique kicks can't blow out knees, when they absolutely can, and have a deserved reputation for doing so. I asked him if I could come to his studio and oblique kick his knee as hard as I can. No reply. I have done many martial arts including mma and HEMA both, if someone comes at this genius with a knife he's a dead man.
@@markfergerson2145 No, with pretty much everything else. I get it that you're not a Hard2hurt follower, but fyi Mike has a lot of videos in which he test ideas, equipment, or attends training classes and then go through everything about it. The good, the bad & the ugly: did it work? Did it not? Why is that? Have been made mistakes? What could be improved? Etc etc.
Watched a street fight where two dudes were unarmed against each other, traded some shots and it went down to grappling. A 3rd guy walked up and easily knifed them both and walked away. Weapons > unarmed, and you are incredibly exposed and vulnerable when grappling. I would never recommend it in a street fight.
Was waiting for your take on this, just for the fun of it! I think Mike did indeed prove the effectiveness of the Buckler even for unexperienced combatants, for what it's worth.
Yeah, but I think that not the point, Mike fully realise the effectiveness of historical weapon. But he miss the point when he underestimated Hema and say you don't really need Hema to know how to use historical weapon effectively. Which it's not actually wrong, but it's become wrong when he say MMA fighter with a sword would beat any Hema fighter. Which it's proved in his Sparring when he basically Miss many chance to counter attack and how he have limited movement and not fully realise the fully potential of the Blade. Something that you will not found on your own easy without study Hema or Hama.
What unexperienced combatants used a buckler in that video? I just saw Icy Mike spar against folks at his studio & get hit multiple times (by his own admission). & everyone involve had some level of martial-arts experience. Mike himself certainly has tons of sparring unarmed & with various types of weapons.
Perfect breakdown thanks Matt 🙂 Some people forget that fighting is fighting regardless of what you call it, every effective technique has different versions under different names, in Japanese Jujutsu we mix several weapon forms with various grappling, striking and throwing forms that work most consistantly and effectively (I didn't know your club had their own Jujutsu instructor btw that's cool 🙂) and I assume if someone seriously wanted to learn to defend themselves they'd be doing much the same thing. The context they were trying to put their argument in was in home defence, I hope they don't have many people convinced for their sake, stay safe and sensible even someone that's spent their whole adult life learning isn't stupid enough to be so overconfident
@@dgmt1 that's a very negative assumption, you can throw around the names of "legit techniques" all day but unless you do choose to learn just to stay fit the only important thing is how well you've been taught to fight. I don't just demonstrate half-baked twists, lazy throws and taps with the back of my hand, there are a lot of people being "taught" like that but a lot of us are more interested in defending ourselves than winning medals. I've sparred with plenty of different styles of fighting and picked what works for me
@@dgmt1 Nah it has its things. I agree that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is more developed practically because they compete more & it's more mainstream, martial arts benefit from being mainstream & sports. That being said don't underestimate the Japanese version they might not compete as much but maybe they have the old finger breaks which are illegal in BJJ.
@@ElDrHouse2010 I've had the chance to spar with a lot of people that do BJJ, it is a really popular one around my way and when we grapple or throw we usually end up doing almost the same things except you're right there're plenty of things I was taught to do to pin, throw or break a grapple that they've always told me not to do because BJJ is a sport. I think it's about "why" you want to learn to fight and who you find to teach you, I recommended a BJJ class to my sister a few months ago and she loves it 🙂 What we were talking about was proper instruction, my teacher's always pushed that poor instruction could get someone seriously hurt especially if they've ended up overly confident because of it
What I got from the Hard2hurt video is that it is more important in a self defense or home defense situation to learn the basics of self defense than learning sword treatises. Icy Mike did repeatedly say he wasn't trying to take anything away from HEMA as a sport or hobby, its the requirement some people have that a self defense technique be validated in a manual that he seemed to have an issue with. Now he harped on this a while, but I can see where the obsessive nature of some to always validate every technique with some sort of historic document would be absurd especially with modern armed self defense techniques. Realistically, Icy Mike isn't talking about walking into a HEMA club and wrecking people, he is talking about someone with a martial arts background having a foundation where they could quickly learn enough about using a sword to fend off an intruder if guns or similar alternatives aren't available. You said it yourself, a sword and buckler is a better system than a bat; its a lot more realistic that burglar is going to show up with a bat than an epee. So, I don't see anything wrong with his statements other than he obviously needs to put his money where his mouth is and go to a HEMA club and learn how to use a sword.
It doesn't matter if they weren't _trying_ to take anything away, they still had a teacher, who did not understand the weapons and did not evaluate their capabilities correctly, demonstrating use of those weapons in a self defense manner, and that video is still up on youtube. The way he'd come at those people, if any of the opponents understood the slightest about weaponry, would be much more difficult opponents, and he would have gotten railroaded. He's demonstrating things incorrectly to make an incorrect point. That is the mark of a bad teacher. Source: Kenjutsu student for 11 years soon, sandan in Ryukyu Kobujutsu, shobayashi shorinryu karatejutsu, and unranked in Wing Chun, but I know all the weapons kata. I also practice samurai jujutsu. If this guy came into our weapons classes and tried _that,_ we'd put kendo armor on him and give him a good whack on the gut or thighs every time he moved in. It is a teacher's #1 job to ensure that they are not misinforming their students. He's misinforming his audience. He should take the video down, and then replace it with a "So I went to a HEMA pro, and here's everything that was wrong about the video from the other day" video in its place.
@@nuclearsimian3281the point of the video wasn't to educate anyone. They asked a question, does a sword make a good home defense weapon? They brought students into a studio to recreate home defense situations and Icy Mike tried to fend off attackers who had a baseball bat. There are all sorts of issues with this video, if it were actually designed to be exhaustive. The video basically is a series of Icy Mike's opinions on using a sword for home defense. He is using the sparring sessions to demonstrate why he is thinking a certain way, but ultimately its obvious that he is not trying to teach anything with a sword. I don't think he needs to make an apology video for having an opinion or using his platform to broadcast it for entertainment value. Its up the viewership to understand this isn't a training video and actually educate themselves on what could be a life or death situation.
@hard2hurt Shad got a lot of subscribers because he made videos explaining Lars Anderssen's rapid fire Bow techniques when Lars Anderssen went viral. He has the most watched Archery video in youtube look him up he can fire an arrow every half second it's insane. But he been training with the Bow non-stop for like 10 years now.
Agreed. Nicely stated. I was the first Australian to get into BJJ - back in 1987. Have since spent my lifetime teaching BJJ to the public - but have also been heavily involved in designing Defensive Tactics programs and bespoke solutions for a variety of law enforcement, military and other 'highly specialised' operators ... some of this work has centered around the intersection of grappling, striking and weapons - of various sorts. Scenarios vary widely - assymetrical contests in confined environments (cars, hallways, elevators) all require different types of strategies and skill-sets. Ultimately - testing reveals strengths and weaknesses of being too attached to a specific skillset. Having an open-mind and being willing to drop a previously-held opinion or preference in the light of new information and experience - is key. Train hard - train often - train intelligently. - J
Wow one of the OGs of Aussie bjj Awesome to see u are open to hema I trained with John Simon , elvis and Anthony back in the day in Sydney but run a hema club now Great post
I think a good analogy that could be presented to mike is that what he said is very similar to people who buy a gun and think that by itself will give them the advantage. But you have to train with your gun to become proficient, and the same goes for swords.
Sort of but it's a lot easier to instinctively pull a trigger than it is to intentionally drive a sword through someone. Mentality is an often overlooked part of the whole equation. You can unintentionally kill (or seriously wound/incapacitate) someone with a shotgun at close range easier by just panic squeezing the trigger whereas to do the same with a sword you've got to willingly initiate the action. Stabbing someone is a mentally hard thing for a normal person to do, you've got to put in enough physical force and aggression to see it through, firearms have far more of a mental disconnect between cause and effect, if it's pointing at them all you've got to do is overcome the resistance of the seer.
Icy Mike tends to spend about 3 minutes looking at something and then making judgments about it even though he knows nothing about it. Mike thinks HEMA is ONLY sword fighting, and he thinks sword fighting is what he saw while watching Game of Thrones. He spent 5 minutes holding a foam sword and figured that he figured out all he needed to know.
As someone who competes in MMA and BJJ, and has messed around with my friends with some longswords and protective equipment we bought, I can say my MMA experience did not count for a whole lot against my opponent, who was of the same skill level in swords, but had never done MMA. If I managed to close the distance and grapple, I did have a big advantage, but more often than not, my attempts to initiate a grapple got me killed
yeah, I think H2Hs argument was solely about self defense though. When defending your home do you need to practice a lot to use a sword and shield effectively? Arguably the MMA training gives you basic distancing tactics and stamina which is enough. His videos often talk about the limited time any one person have to train and what is the most effective way to get a well rounded coverage. He also seemed to have a weird distain towards the idea of using old manuals for some reason. As if an old way of doing something was automatically worse than anything new. This seemed like a weird approach imo
I've watched hard2hurt for years and years. I like him and his channel. He does think he knows everything, but he is up for being proved wrong. He has a couple of youtube fight videos, so he is for real. And of what he teaches, its good stuff. He just unfortunately made the human of all errors about something we don't understand or have in depth knowledge about that is very different than what we know: You either are scared of it, or you summarily dismiss it as irrelevant or stupid. Hard2hurt knows these kind of videos lead to more views and subscribers. He really did one of these videos on Jeese Enkamp, saying the same kind of stuff about karate he did Hema. Now, they collab all the time, and they appear as very good friends. Making h2h a very good youtuber and business person, as well as a good martial artist.
Been watching Matt easton for probably almost a decade and been involved in HEMA for just as long. I have been involved in unarmed fighting for less time but still a decent amount of experience. The thing is this. The HEMA skill gap is very very big. Ive met some who are very tough skilled fighters. Ive also met A LOOOOOTTTT of snowflakes. Punching and kicking is discouraged in most clubs to the point of disqualification from tournies. Ive personally never been apart of an official hema club that allowed grappling let alone taught it. When I was younger (14ish i think) I got in contact with people and was involved in the creation of our own club that basically had no rules aside from a "yeah itll be fiinnee bro" and yeah people got hurt sometimes but we all came back for a long time and it was still the most fun time of my life i think ill ever have. The point is this at the end of the day. Most mma people have intent to cause pain and scramble in a heated fight. Hema people are often conditioned to stop once something unexpected happens. I would so much love to go to Matts club, it sounds awsome.
The thing is, MMA's sported goal from the looks of things is basically 'literally beating the other guy into submission'. So ofc they're intent to cause pain and disable. It's the way their tournaments work. MMA's technique pool similarly boils down to 'discard any flourish' for better or worse. HEMA seems to have a lot broader picture and target audience. Some people are into it for the fighting tournaments, some for the living history / expiremental archeology, the reconstruction of a lost art of fighting etc. Those are broader aspects that MMA will never satisfy in anyone. So ofc. there are people there who's goal isn't to get choked out by someone three times their size, when they were hoping to get a lecture in Meyer. It should be a discussed and at least drilled/practiced part, don't get me wrong - but if you really want to train grappling, then train grappling. People can only train & learn about non-olympic euro swords in HEMA. Grappling is all over the place by comparism.
Some disarms can wreck wrists and somewhat elbows if done really fast, so fast that opponent has no chance to let sword. If you know aikido or judo: it is similar to kote gaeshi. Consider all kinds of backgrounds people have, form motives to age and you really can't make something which would fit to everyone in club/school.
Avoid injuring your training partners bro, if you are going to throw them at least teach them how to break fall. If you are going to push kick em tell them you push kick. Just dont do it full force, they dont even spar full force in Muay Thai, they wont spar you ever again if you injure your training mates. Consider that bro.
It's similar to striking vs grappling within MMA. I've done a lot of grappling (judo, wrestling and BJJ since I was 6) but very little striking. When I started with MMA I was matched with other beginners, I'd just clinch up/takedown/throw etc force them into grappling and submit them easily. It doesn't mean striking is worthless, just that we were both beginners at striking, and I had a massive advantage at grappling.
6:21 You _need_ to get this instructor to start making videos. I _desperately_ want to see more of that type of system in action. I'm interested because it's just so rare to see anything about Japanese jujutsu outside of any formal koryu instruction.
FMA practitioner here, absolutely brilliant retort! It’s about time that Hard2Hurt got called out for pretending to know about things he doesn’t…. And this is exactly the way to do it! Well Done!
Matt, I’d love to hear your response to H2H’s video on 1) the screwdriver for self defense (I recently taught rondel techniques to a few people and suggested a screwdriver as a modern replacement) 2) his video suggesting the buckler for police use (I can’t remember if it was with the baton or not).
I love MMA and JKD, but there's more to fighting than what's allowed in the cage and there are several effective martial arts that deal with weapons, that are irrelevant in MMA. And there are things like eye pokes, throat strikes, groin strikes, hair grabbing, clothing, obstacles, concrete, multiple opponents, etc all that needs to be taken into account and isn't a part of MMA
All things considered, I bet you can just call Mike in. The guy is pretty open to collaboration. And his audience kind of loves seeing him getting his butt kicked. vov
It's the same problem with the Armchair Violence video, sword fighting isn't their field of expertise. Don't get me wrong, the guy who runs Hard2Hurt was a police officer, he fought against knife attackers more than once, and he knows stuff when talking about KNIFE and other modern-ish weapon fighting system. However, he isn't a fencing expert, when he says any MMA fighter would pick up the pace at a HEMA club, but a HEMAist would have trouble on a MMA gym is just him being an MMA hooligan.
Idk why it’s so common for martial artists too look at a completely separate discipline that they don’t practice and say “oh that’s just useless I can probably do better with my discipline” and not once bother to conceive that perhaps they have a gap in their knowledge.
True, most of the time not even researching why, how and in what environment it was made + looking at exercises/drills without keeping in mind that they are just exercises/drills (Common argument: "That wouldnt work IRL (if person does XYZ)")
@@naj4261 Mike's point is that an MMA fighter can jump into HEMA and essentially have a head start over full time HEMA guys when they first started because they've already developed the soft skills through unarmed fighting. The HEMA guy's melee weapon training won't necessarily transfer over to a boxing/kickboxing context. Plus, most HEMA dudes don't nearly have the same level of cardio/conditioning as kickboxers, and that's a topic in itself.
I’ve never participated in HEMA, but as someone who’s spent his life wrestling, practicing bjj, Muay Thai, and was a Marine Corps Martial Arts instructor, most of what I see coming out of Hard to Hurt is just awful. He should keep his options to himself and change the channel name to Hard to Watch.
The MMA is REALLY good because half of the heavy armor fights end up in grappling. But if you have zero melee skill it might be pretty hard to get in grapple range and eventually you are going to take a wound even with the best armor and reflexes.
I knew a special forces guy who once told me that basically no Martial arts system is an end all is because outside of a ring there are no judges, no rules, and you could face anything. So there is no invincible combo.
One point which, in my oppinion, is actually missing here: the dude with the buckler and sword isn't afraid of the dude with the bat.There is no negativ consequence if he's hit by the bat while charging, so why wouldn't he do that. But that's not how things go. I always percieved the actual challenge not as being able to hit someone with a sharp stick, but to not get hit in return. Because it doesn't matter if the other guy dies, if i also get hurt.
My takes from Mike's video was: Two unskilled people, home invasion style (as his video was, for home defence). Invaders have a bat, defender has a sword and shield.. The sword and shield combo is superior (pretty much a no-brainer). Which was pretty much demonstrated in his video. Mike has some weapons training (but not sword and shield as far as I'm aware), his 'attackers' had none of very little.. I would expect sword and shield to do better. He then said take a highly trained MMA guy and give him a few hours "HEMA" (weapons) training and he would do better than a "pure" HEMA person that gets a few hours MMA training. Now, assuming "pure" hema is just weapons, nothing else, and pure MMA is no weapons training - I might agree within the context of a home invasion. In a one on one, planned, sanctioned, rules, fight? Tougher call. A well trained hema person with decent MMA background vs a well trained MMA person with decent hema background? I'd pay to see that! :D Not trying to defend Icy Mike, he can do that himself, just felt like the perception or message got a little lost in the shuffle here.
Sword and shield are two objects. People are often not aware significance of having two weapons, no matter how small/short/powerless they are. Dagger and cloak or two daggers against single rapier, person with rapier usually lose. It would be very interesting to see a bit longer baseball bat with powerful blows on a shield and even some stabbing like attacks over shield (most likely boss grip).
Learning weapon and shield fundamentals is WAY easier than learning how to fight unarmed. That's basically what Mike's point is, but these guys are missing it. The MMA fighter has an easier time cross transferring his soft skills to HEMA, but the HEMA guy has to literally retrain his limbs to not make instinctual errors as we do as humans. tl;dr learning how to punch requires way more focus and training than learning how to use a sword.
@@asto5767 sword and shield versus baseball bat, of course it is easier. Two handed sword versus sword and shield is even easier. It would be more interesting to see fight with equal weapons and then draw conclusions. In real fight MMA guy with sword would be destroyed because single hit with a sword would be much more devastating, something MMA guys are not accustomed to. With HEMA protection MMA would be just slight poking, except locks.
@@radivojevasiljevic3145 HEMA guys aren't spartans on halo bro. A hit to a limb is stil la hit to the limb, but because fighters are more used to getting bludgeoned (fighting), they're gonna be more willing to continue. Either way, you're conveniently ignoring the fact that HEMA fighters use unarmed moves too. Just sign up to a fight gym bro, you don't know what you're talking about lol
@@asto5767 and MMA guys are used to Type X cuts? Yeah, they are not Spartans, they are Supermen. It seams you have problems with understanding the fact that MMA kick or punch is nothing compared to real cut or stab. Would you try to kick somebody in arm or leg and than to accept "the same" with sharp sword by that person? No you wouldn't and you can't see such things in fight clubs. You should learn to make the difference between training and real situation. Unarmored people are very sensitive to damage from weapons unlike kicks and punches. If you don't believe me, ask ER surgeons about stabbing wounds inflicted by small knives. Oh, sorry, MMA guys are used to war hammer blows, mea culpa.
I knew this video was coming. I think you and Mike also make the some of the same points because what i believe he was saying is that people that regularly train combat sports like mma are gonna be better at HEMA than the average person that claims to be a HEMA practitioner. And to be honest Matt it seems to me a lot of those not so up to par HEMA clubs that you're talking about tend to have members that look like well slightly or very tubby gents that do more talking than sparring and get winded after 30 seconds. Any of the people ive ever met that claim to study hema fell into this category and always seem to have these "oh I used to be able to fill in the blank" stories but now can barely do 10 body weight only squats much less push-ups or swing a sword for a 5 minute round . Again not saying all of HEMA i actually think its very cool but there's good bit of it much more than in other combat sports .
Ah wait until you're old, especially over 45, you become one of those tubby gents that talks more than does because your body says it's time to do so. The harder you did things when younger the more your body pays you back as you get older, it's "fun" let me tell you. You end up with the knowledge but not the physical ability where younger you are the inverse.
MMA competitors are self-selected for athleticism and endurance. Ordinary guys who study MMA would be dogfood facing HEMA fighters. The pros would possibly do well but not if they were facing equally young, athletic HEMA practitioners.
Depends on their style Stephen Wonderboy Thompson would be a great Sabre & Rapier user, any one handed. He is used to the Point Karate style movement. One-Handed weapons are similar. They move in the bladed stance so he would have a lot that carries over when it comes to moving in & out fast already.
It seems like everybody's ignoring the fact that Icy Mike's premise was based on home defense, and the overwhelming majority of home invaders aren't trained in anything, let alone medieval melee weapons. Blind stabbing from behind a shield is almost certainly more than good enough against some dude who just want's to steal your TV. That said, I've been watching both of you for a few years, now, and it's almost all gold.
Shad nerded out for a few minutes about how he as a home invader with HEMA training and a baseball bat would take on an untrained defender by sacrificing his hand to commit second degree murder. In this hypothetical, just flee the scene.
If you impale a guy who's just stealing your TV, you have to spend the rest of the night digging a big hole in your back yard. That's a lot of work to save $150. I'd probably just pound him with the shield, Captain America style -- minimal blood on my floor, no injuries on him worth a hospital visit, and much less chance of me needing a lawyer OR a shovel.
I think h2h has his logic rooted in the same logic as a Büffel (the ‘tough guys’ that mindlessly try to thrust you through [which would be an easy counter if you knew it was coming]) just more absorbed with the modern umbrella terms and apples and oranges type comparison. Glad you responded to this and highlighted the issues.
I like hard2hurt, but the things he says about knives and batons are juvenile and ignorant. "A knife can't be used for self defense." He was using a particular knife that was daggerish shaped, and he was going on about how he thought a reverse grip is better. I think he also said, "Knife guys are weird, they think a sharp knife is safer."
I think his point is that knife and baton are weapons that does excessive damage that most of the time would not be justifiable for self defense context. Of course depends where you live if the society is literally lawless, then sure, but for countries that's relatively safe 99% of the time, those 2 are terrible for self defense
It can be hard on the egos of these guys who train in unarmed combat all the time to know that a semi-trained person with a knife could kill them, but that's the whole 'point' of weapons.
@@squamish4244 I think guys who do practical unarmed MA do understand that weapons are not their forte and their chance of beating a weapon with 2 empty hands are close to zero. Unless you're learning from a mcdono that teach false confidence, any karate BJJ Muay Thai MMA instructor would tell you to run when seeing someone flashing out a knife
@@jaketheasianguy3307 which shows that all his time as a cop, was it as a cop, didn't teach him much about the law or the realities of self defense. he has spent his adult life being strong, healthy, trained, and able to take care of himself. if you are smaller, weaker, disabled, attacked by a group, threatened with murder, armed robbery or rape, defending an innocent who can't defend her/himself things change, and one of those changes is that deadly force can be not only justified but the only reasonable response. i am eternally pissed off at that bloviating meathead for suggesting that people at serious disadvantages in deadly force situations rely on pain compliance. that depends on the attacker being _reasonable_ . if he were reasonable he wouldn't be trying to rape or kidnap you. in those cases a knife or baton or a firearm is absolutely justified. 'ouch, that hurt' is not going to do the job. and he is willing to encourage innocent people to be crippled or killed based on his macho posturings and ignorance of something that was supposed to be his profession.
@@toddellner5283 that's pretty much self explanatory and common sense. If my life or love one is on the line, all bets are off. But self defense is alot more than being paranoid how ninjas would ambush you from dark alley There's this thing called restraint and see what is the level of violence you're up against and choose a proper response. Some dude pushing or punch you and then you draw the knife or baton out and start hacking him ? Or when old lady Dorothy hitting you with her purse because you accidentally stepped on her foot ? Better shank her, she may have a gun. Pain compliance techniques are absolutely trash, that I agreed because if a technique just relied on pain and does not break and dislocated anything, it's shit for everything but scaring off wimps.
Funny because Bruce was mixing the same styles we see in MMA, look at the tao it has judo/jiu-jitsu, wrestling, muay thai, karate, etc, BUT he also used things from historical fencing and weapons arts
Icy Mike, for years, didn't believe a knife other that any other weapon can be a advantage in a self defence scenario. Then he did some actual knife training and changed his stance 180 degrees. Edit: to be fair he's an ex-cop so he probably grew up to see the knife as the bad guys choice of weapon when committing crime. That a knife also is a effective equaliser for a physically weaker but trained person is quite obvious.
When I watched the hard to hurt video I realised something. You don’t need to be super trained to win a fight. You don’t need to have the best technique. You can win by avoiding mistakes. The first (and arguably the most important) thing you learn in any art is how to stop making mistakes. This is key to understanding all art v’s art debates. Different arts train for different situations and what constitutes a mistake varies with the situation. Lose position on the ground and you have lost. Drop your guard striking and you have lost. Try fighting against a joint lock with strength and you have lost. Exchange hits while weapon fighting (Hard to hurts mistake) and you have both lost. Practice the art that most closely simulates a given situation if you what to win in that situation. That way you learn the common mistakes in that situation and how to avoid them.
I'm one of the mma fighters who is now exploring HEMA. I thought rhe mma experience would be much more useful than it was. It was a bit helpful but minimally.
Icy Mike's controversial hot take was that an MMA guy with a sword would be more dangerous than a HEMA guy with a sword, not the strawman everyone seems to be responding to where an MMA guy is somehow a better fencer than a fencer. Violence in the real world seems to be most often asocial and asymmetric. I suspect that the social symmetric violence of MMA sparring gives one a better understanding of violence "in the wild" than the start-stop action of the typical HEMA bout.
@Ianmar1 no that's not what Mike said. He said that an mma guy with a little bit of training would mess up HEMA fighters. I thought so too until I tried it. Go try it.
@@Kankudai I will have to rewatch, I heard something different. Edit: I see that you were probably refering to ruclips.net/video/73sTlT9aIZs/видео.htmlm32s which I suppose your experience shows that it takes a lot longer than a few hours to become a problem, whatever Mike meant by that. I had a later hot take in mind ruclips.net/video/73sTlT9aIZs/видео.htmlm Fencing in general has a realism blindspot (real swords have real consequences) which a fighter should be better psychologically prepared for than a fencer when facing an untrained home invader. He was not talking about fencing ruclips.net/video/73sTlT9aIZs/видео.htmlm48s
@@Ianmar1 No dude Mike is really saying that for that Home Burglary scenario the MMA guy who just started using the sword & buckler would do better than the HEMA nerd lol. It's such a wild take & I'm sure its bait. It's like telling a soldier to just train hand to hand but never learn to use the M16 rifle & then make him go to Vietnam in the 60s.
@@ElDrHouse2010 I don't see how you are correcting what I said, your remark seems to agree with mine. However, while a sword and buckler even untrained makes one very dangerous to an untrained home invader, desensitizing oneself to violence is not easily done in hobbyist sparring.
I am a reasonably good mma fighter, and I've started training longsword with my friend who has no other martial arts experience. And no, I don't wreck him at all.
i'm very happy that part of america's fighting or self defence community is joining the debate, it's a lot of visibility for hema. maybe the discussion about hema's popularity will get to the next level soon 😁
When I was in the Marines black belt course, we learn some weapons like bayonet, “weapon of opportunity” and knives. During the course we had a HEMA instructor come in and teach us about the dagger. He was knowledgeable and during that time is how I learned a lot more about footwork and distancing. I have mad respect for HEMA practitioners.
The big mistake I see with hard2hurt is that he continues to prove his point wrong with his examples and comes out with the wrong conclusion. And it was fairly bro science rather than attempting to have it be more so scientific by having a good HEMA person in on either side of the scenario so he could see if his premise was wrong. But what he showed is that an MMA person makes all the same mistakes with a weapon that any newb makes. He also showed that often enough he mentally shuts down and resorts to his grapple training instead of stabbing or cutting the person with the weapon. In which case the sword and buckler is now arguably detrimental to his ability to defend himself because they are in his way and are potential weapons the opponent can steal from him. What he showed is that someone is going to resort to their training, but the conclusion was that one doesn't need training. Baffling.
Im so happy 😭Its making the rounds. Ive been waiting for the day Hard2Hurt and the medieval to come into contact. I hope theres more future collabs and discussions Unfortunately, I will say that your second point feels null as Mike did say if youre learning to sword fight against other swordsman "have at thee" meaning hes all for that 🤔
He's right that, all else being equal, an mma practioner would have an advantage over someone with no martial arts experience, when it comes to HEMA style fighting. HOWEVER. When he said that an mma guy with a few hours of experimentation would be a real problem for most HEMA guys....all else being equal...that's just hilariously wrong. As someone who wrestled in school, I got tapped out immediately for far longer than a few hours when I started taking BJJ. When I figured out how to defend against submissions, it got a lot more competitive really quick, but still. But anyways. We also have examples of what happens when top MMA guys try to box a boxer. It generally doesn't go well. My point being that there's a LOT more overlap between freestyle/Greco-Roman wrestling and BJJ, and between MMA/kickboxing and boxing, than there is between MMA and HEMA. Why he thinks he can beat someone at their own style, with a few hours of solo practice is beyond me. A profoundly silly thing for him to have said. Dunning-Kruger-jutsu
I'm not familiar with this Hard2Hurt guy, but I am pretty familiar with loudmouth buff guys that talk when they should listen. The best thing to do is get someone like the instructors you mentioned in front of him and humble him so completely that he actually learns the lesson.
Icy Mike is a former SWAT cop in the US. He has some armed combat training, but more with guns and knives than sword and sword like objects. I do think his knife training has some crossover, though, where it comes to the distance management and timing, which he may be underestimating when comparing himself to other MMA guys. Also, he isn't afraid to use clickbait or directly address his comments section even if it's a bad idea for his sanity. It does appear like a certain kind of commenter under his videos underestimated other, more contemporary forms of edged weapons training, but he compared learning from medieval swordplay sources to learning from medieval medical texts, which makes no sense unless he's trolling again.
@@formlessone8246 I know that people who play piano can't really play harpsichord or organ, despite both being keyboard instruments. Even short blades like machete is very different than knife. SWAT is all nice and well, but AFAIK SWAT teams usually go against more or less clueless people and have numerical superiority. Something like 1 year HEMA vs 10 years HEMA. We all know results in advance.
He is obviously very good at what he does. And what he does is to get other people to engage with him directly or indirectly on RUclips/internet. Matt seems to realize it though 😂
My issue was his point that he would be a "problem" in a hema club with a few hours of training, then proceeded to not cover his hand, chest or head...stuff everyone at my club can spot.
It's a bit ironic to be campaigning for MIXED Martial Arts by putting a type of martial art into a separate category and then complaining about it instead of integrating what works into your MMA toolset.
I haven't studied HEMA but I have studied iaido and kendo, and you'd have mall ninjas challenging kendo practically all the time, some them who had some martial arts training, but no sword training. I'm sorry, but watching 8 seasons of Naruto does not make you a sword master. Most them just thought they could intimidate you in a fight, but once the sticks start flying (we would NEVER use live steal against guys like that no matter how annoying they were) the quickly learned what mattered. Most of them would just get frustrated and leave, but every once in a while some of them would stay. It didn't help that our dojo was literally in a mall at one point. Lol.
@@Ianmar1 truth. Like someone trying to learn tae kwon do by starting with leaping roundhouse kicks. Until you know your migi-do from your higari-do, stick with your step drills.
I think part of it is that Mike underestimated the effectiveness of his preexisting weapon skills compared to his students at the gym. He's stated that he does at least 50 hours a year doing knife training (despite his known dislike of knives as self defense weapons, he carries one every day for self defense) which would prepare him for using a short sword better than his boxing training. The speed is different, the distance is different, and the idea of lashing out with the hand before stepping into distance is precisely the opposite body mechanic from how most people are trained to throw their punches (except perhaps the jab or wing Chun punches). But it's something he probably does instinctively with blades because he's used to having a knife in hand. Meanwhile, do any of his students have extensive experience or training with a baseball bat as a weapon? He found that the guy who played baseball was one of the tougher opponents he faced in that experiment. That is the guy who you should be training for if you want to use a machete/sword and buckler for home defense, not just the untrained guy who doesn't know how to swing a weapon. Its like when people mistakenly think they can just pick up a gun and defend themselves just fine. You could, but it's much better to have trained with it first to work out the problems you will inevitably run into if you really have to use it.
You will also note that Sensei Seth, who has now done bits and pieces of HEMA, HAMA, ninjutsu, kali and bohurt, did way better than any of the other attackers.
I was hoping for a response to the two points made in the video that likely should have been the crux of any discussion. 1. "I thinking if I thrust this [the shield] in your face and then thrust [the sword from] behind it, and I have no specialized HEMA training; I think I'm wrecking like 95% of dudes... if they don't have a gun." - Icy Mike 3:43 - 3:56 ruclips.net/video/73sTlT9aIZs/видео.html 2. "Hopping into HEMA classes... Simply the ability to understand range and adapt to range pretty quickly, I'm a problem immediately." - Sensei Seth 4:32 - 4:45 ruclips.net/video/73sTlT9aIZs/видео.html In the 1st statement they are discussing a home defense scenario not armed fighter combat. Is Mike's statement ostensibly correct? Or wrong for overlooking something that is possibly critical to consider? In the 2nd statement is Seth's statement reasonable? Are HEMA practitioners at any level off-balanced by a newbie that happens to be good at range management, unarmed or otherwise? Or is this actually a peculiarity of HEMA newbies who happened to be well trained unarmed fighters going up against HEMA newbies or intermediates that have no background in range management other than their current HEMA training? To me it just seems that training in range management is simply a critical skill in combat to learn in the beginning armed or not. But I'd love your thoughts as I'm in no way an authority on the subject.
1. Agree 2. Disagree - over many years we have seen people with only unarmed fighting backgrounds have a problem in HEMA with range and covering with weapons. They generally get hit a lot until they've learned some weapons. People with a background in modern fencing, reenactment, kendo etc, have a way bigger advantage.
I stopped paying any sort of attention to icy Mike a long time ago when he in effect said a knife isn't an effective weapon, and that someone attacking you with a knife and getting slashed or stabbed to the arms and chest isn't serious in a confrontation. As someone who's seen several 'knife fights' and stabbings over the years its fairly obvious to see he's chatting serious amounts of shit and doesn't actually appreciate what bladed implements or even blunt force trauma can actually do to the average person.
Icy Mike has also done detailed videos about extremely brutal knife techniques with experts. & promoted self-defense knives too. Some of his claims may just be to troll or perhaps he goes wherever the money is depending on the day.
What's funny about H2H is how much he includes HEMA into his training without realizing it, specifically with his knives. There were two bits that annoyed me the most: One came at the end when he criticized someone for using historical tactics by using the wall to his advantage. The second was the criticism of using the old manuals. He said it was like using medicine from the 14th century while ignoring the 1000s of years of history behind the manuscripts.
Yup. These people were just as smart as we are. And they fought a heck of a lot more. Yeah....there were times of relative peace in many local areas, but the world was full of warrior societies, and there were no police as we know them. And that's not to mention the almost constant conflict, invasions, and full on wars.
I mean hard 2 hurt did make it pretty clear he was speaking strictly in a home defense situation I.e. some random person breaking into your house rather than a sword fight with another trained fighter. Hell he even said "if you're doing HEMA to fight another person who does HEMA good on you." Just kinda seems like people latched on to the "HEMA is useless" thing and ignored the context of the situation he was talking about.
because he says at the end the MMA fighter is better at dealing with a home burglar with a sword than the hema practitioner with a sword. he says it at the end. that somebody ignorant about how to use the weapon he is going to use to defend himself is better than the guy who knows lol. imagine telling that to a modern soldier. "you are gonna go to war in the vietnam? lol just do jiu jitsu and muay thai don't bother learning how to use the M16".
He is baiting by the way Matt. He always does this. He also said side kicks (the straight push kick from a bladed stance) were useless in martial arts at some point lmao. I think he knows what gets the click bait done & he always doubles down on extremely one sided generalized opinions for this reason hahaha.
Reminds me of what Geoff Thompson said about working the doors. He'd got black belts in a bunch of different martial arts including Judo and Karate, but he found when the sh!t hit the fan he'd get choice paralysis. Instead he worked out a system he called the Fence that told him who was going to turn violent, and a pre-emptive strike, a punch some people have described as the hardest punch they've ever experienced or witnessed, to the liver or solar plexus or throat, which Geoff says most of the time felled them like a slaughtered ox. Most people kicking off aren't trained fighters - they're drunk people. Most fights he'd get into as a doorman weren't duels, and he made sure of that with his psychological techniques - giving them a way to back down honourably, trying to de-escalate but if they crossed the fence, BAM, fastest hardest punch ever like he's breaking bricks, on the ringleader. That doesn't need an expert boxer, just the man who's practised the same strike 10,000 times. Likewise, if someone's breaking into your house, what's the chances they're a master swordsman? I'd agree though - if some roadman type's coming into your house with a machete & you're an expert in HEMA dagger fighting or you know FMA and have sparred properly, pressure testing your techniques, you're better off than knowing nothing.
Personally, I really want to see the HEMA circle overlap with hard2hurt and the circle he runs in. I really think that they both could learn a lot from each other. I've been pushing Jesse Enkamp to collab with some HEMA people, but I'm just one voice in an endless internet. I encourage anybody reading this comment to go check out hard2hurt, Jesse Enkamp, Sensei Seth, Ramsay Dewey, Martial Arts Journey, McDojo Life, and anyone they collab with. History buffs will be very interested in Jesse Enkamp's channel. He's very knowledgeable about the practice and history of karate, and has traveled all over Asia to find its roots.
Sensei Seth has done some videos where he takes beginner weapons classes. I know he has one on fencing and an African weapon martial art. Not sure if he has one on Hema specifically
You should train the Icy Mike home Burglar scenario in your HEMA club Matt. It's not like HEMA doesn't allow for mixed weapon competitions. A baseball bat / crowbar / knife are the most common Burglar weapons because they also double as tools to get inside the house. So these those against Longsword, Sabre, Arming Sword + Buckler, etc. See how your students fare. I'm sure they are gonna do super well. The Bat or the Crowbar is specially slow & a Sword is balanced to be nimble. I'm guessing they will have to grab the Bat 1 handed closer to it's point of balance so the Burglar has a hand free to grapple, otherwise his chances of dying to the sword as very high.
It might sound crude but probably the more practical martial arts to train in for real world self defense would be systems that revolve around knives, daggers, or sticks. Because in the modern age a variation of these weapons is the most likely culprit for assault if a firearm is not involved. Also because the most likely object that a person will probably be able grab in the moment is a variation of one of these things: knife, scissors, screw driver, broom handle, cane, ect.. It might be easy to aggress upon someone without training, but if your are the one being attacked knowing how to defend yourself from these weapons could be the difference between life and death. knowing how to block and a fist will not help you when your assailant is wielding a blade, even a small one. Even a light brush with a sharp edge can cause an incapacitating or fatal injury if it hits the right spots (inside of joints or throat specifically). When a weapon enters the equation a macho mentality will get you killed fast.
Skillsets are situation specific. I'm a karate black belt, done some judo, kobudo (okinawan weapons) boxing and fenced sabre for 4 years. While I might be able to combine those skills successfully against a Hema beginner - a skilled practitioner is going to slice me to ribbons because I don't have the specific skills, especially timing and distancing required for HEMA.
I mean, with an understanding of exothermic chemical reactions and electronic signalling, both MMA and HEMA become a moot point, and best of all, no hours of drilling, and there's little immediate physical risk to yourself as long as you have the adequate comprehension of the chemicals at play. This game is fun, let's keep going.
I want to be absolutely clear that I was not triggered or upset by the Hard2Hurt video - I enjoyed it, and had absolutely no intention to make a response. I know it was clickbaity and poking fun, and I'm fine with that. I only made this response because I was goaded into it by HEMA people and channel followers, and I'm easy to goad LOL
I'm glad you made this response, Mike's video was fine until he started talking trash about how he would wreck a HEMA class. Then he goes on to showing is "bouting" that was the best example of a total noob with a sword in hand.
I think that was obvious from your response this was still respectful logical and educational
To go a step further, "MMA" is not a "Martial Art" in any way as it has no basis in any sort of true Military/Martial tradition. On the contrary, it's an entirely modern system of sport-fighting for money. There are no weapons, no armor, no self-defense, no disarms, no tactics, no multiple opponent drills/randori, etc...
MMA is a game. A violent game, but a "relatively safe" one where there is not, has not, and will not ever be any notion of "life and death" situations as is the case in HEMA, which is entirely based on real world Martial/Military scenarios.
Trying to "Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu" someone on the battlefield has rarely been advisable, or successful.
i enjoy your pedantic content oodles
I hadn't heard of HEMA before the Hard2Hurt video. Now I'm intrigued. If nothing else, Icy Mike has given you some free publicity.
As my late father, who was a student of multiple forms of hand-to-hand and ancient fighting systems (pre modern Hema tho) used to put it: “ If unarmed combat was superior, we would not have spent 100,000 years developing ways to hit each other with absolutely everything but our fists.”
Just like the old saying don't bring a knife to a gun fight, you can equally well say don't bring a fist to a knife fight.
Hahaha, that's an incredible quote!
Yeh, people are so used to movies and fantasy heroes that they seem to forget simple common sense.
This is an incredible quote I love it
The claim was never that barehanded > weapons. The claim is that a good fighter can pick up a sword and outfence a bad HEMA practitioner. And i agree with that .
It’s almost like mixing your martial arts in mixed martial arts is a good idea.
all martial arts are mixed martial arts. have been since we first came down from the trees. today's mma is well on the way to becoming a canonical style based on 'whatever dana white has decided you have to do if you want to get fights'
@@toddellner5283 yeah, things like that happen in some shooting disciplines as well.
@@toddellner5283 agree. Back in the days taking somebody down for 20 seconds without even scratching their hair with your fists didn't score you 2/3 of the points as effective grappling and effective cage controll.
Also nowadays if you are not looking bussy enogh from the buttom the referee will call TKO for the top guy rubbing your shoulder 3 times.
The pointing system and a referee practice encourage wresstle f*cking, ground and pounding and standing up.
Also 5 minutes is just enough to take someone down 2 times after 3 minutes of i donno what the hell. The standing portion of mma sucks.
It is kick boxing but the parties don't dare to conact their strikes. And standing wrestling but somebody bugs into the wall....
@@Manco65 'i am talking to you ipsc'
@@toddellner5283 and in some areas IDPA from what I saw several years ago. It shouldn't be governed by Fudd rules. Even though I could "shoot for fun" my carry pistol at the time was a Glock 17L and I was DQ'ed from an "official score" due to it's size. It was my general purpose carry pistol. Even though I owned a G-26 also.
I have not messed with that stuff in a long time now. Probably 20years.
To add yes I still shoot and train as I can manage although when it comes to H to H I'm also disheartened by the amount of "Bullshido" in my area and really miss the old style training in aikido and hapkido I used to do plus a few mixed disciplines.
The method to Mike's madness is pretty easy to see.
Make a super inflammatory video, get people talking, get professionals talking, invite professional to Collab, make great content and expose everyone to other aspects of fighting.
It's "talk shit, get hit" in a constructive way. And I can't wait for his follow up video with a Hema RUclipsr.
Yeah, this is Mike's style a lot of the time, he's very good at connecting with people in the fight-tube community by basically talking trash, and then when they connect they get on really well, mainly because past the trash-talking Mike seems to be a very genuine kind of guy.
Yes exactly and even though the playbook is so obvious, i enjoy it every time he does it.
Mike from hard2hurt really is a decent guy. He talks a BUNCH of shit, but past that he's a good guy. A former cop too from what I hear so he has my respect there too. And I always have respect for anyone who trains Muay Thai/Boxing/Kickboxing/Jiu jitsu/Wrestling and similar styles - I myself train Muay Thai and formerly jiu jitsu so I know how hard it is and how effective it is and how FUN it is. And its saved my ass in real life from someone trying to assault me(I knocked out the scumbag with a single right hook to the side of his head, even after taking a sucker punch, blocking and evading till I recovered, then blasted him with that hook with perfect timing if i do say so myself).
But yeah Icy Mike does this kind of thing a bunch to stimulate discussion. Its a cheap way to do it but obviously an effective one. I think he likes HEMA and just wants to talk to the Pros about it like Matt here or Shad. Cause once he talks to someone one on one hes a good guy - like most guys who train and spar hard regularly(aka fighting regularly; it humbles you while also giving you unparalleled confidence; its hard to explain). Its certainly not my approach. But I understand why he does it. Clickbait is effective after all. So are rousing peoples emotions with stuff like that.
I HOPE so. I HOPE he does that, but it is a fundamental error of a teacher to showcase something being done _wrong_ and then show it being done correctly _after_ in a subsequent video. Its akin to teaching a kid the wrong way to start a physics problem, and then teaching him the right way two weeks later when your student teacher is there to correct what you'd already taught.
PRECISIONSTRIKING is far better boxing/martial arts youtuber.
I’ve got 9 professional MMA fights. My brother is an experienced fencer and Kendoka. We put on the kendo equipment and played about with the shinai (swords). I’ve never had my ass handed to me so quickly and thoroughly. Could not agree more with what you’re saying, Matt!
I think the argument that hema is “unnecessary” comes from the context of home owner having “sword and shield” and intruder having a typically chosen weapon that isn’t a gun, and that the “sword shield” combo is so vastly superior to typically chosen weapons (bat/knife) outside of a gun that limited training is need to be proficient in defending your home against invasion.
That's not the inflammatory part.
He also said that an MMA guy with no HEMA training at all, with a sword and buckler, given a few hours to play with them, could wreck a HEMA practitioner who also has a sword and shield.
Which is why he said that HEMA was unnecessary and stupid. He believes that anybody with a solid MMA background can just figure out how to use a sword better than a person who has been training to use a sword for years.
That's not what he said. He said s&b against baseball bat home invader
Saying that you don't need to formally train with a sword and buckler because untrained people can beat a guy with a baseball bat is like saying you don't have to train with a gun because an untrained person can also beat a guy with a baseball bat.
It's very different because you need safety equipment to handle a gun.
But, it is actually true that you don't need "hema" levels of training with guns to defend yourself. To "master" HEMA you need to invest years and years of your life. It's unnecesary for self-defense or home defense. If they have anything less than a gun, it's an easy fight for you. If they have a gun, no amount of HEMA will block a bullet.
I would say you need to train with a gun just enough to learn how not to shoot yourself and a bit of aim training. A few days of training with a gun is enough for most people. A few days of training with a sword is enough for most people.
*For pure self defense needs.
He got his training from Galadriel.
@@vladimirgertner3960 but what if the assumed opponent is not some untrained fool? Cuz by necessity when discussing or training for self/home defense we are assuming that the opponent is X or Y because we can't actually invade each other's homes and assault each other. But if the guy's been doing this for a while and has been going to the same kind of legit gyms and classes that we do then 6 months of basic training ain't gonna guarantee we fend them off.
@@vladimirgertner3960 It obviously isn't an easy fight, because Mike had a sword and buckler and his opponents were either unarmed or only had a baseball bat (meaning he had the weapon advantage), and he still had a lot of trouble defeating them. In at least one case, he was the one defeated.
And you also presented a false dichotomy. You implied that you either 'master' HEMA or just do a few days of 'training'.
If you already have experience in MMA, you probably only need about a year of HEMA training to be really effective in a fight against someone who has a weapon, so long as they aren't trained in its use.
@@vladimirgertner3960 Nah…. Competent firearms handling takes a fair amount of practice, regularly at that. In a self defense situation, your adrenaline kicks in, and your aim suffers. Some firearms are easier for some people. Some are harder. It takes a lot of thinking and training to determine the best gun for you to defend your home. What works for me may not work for you.
The "dealing with someone behaving suicidally" aspect of HEMA is one of the longest dealt-with matters, I agree that he did not discover the wheel here.
Also showing someone has not been hit hard with a piece of steel or more.
Meyer's works explicitly have bits about it tfw.
@@runakovacs4759 Yeah, I was about to mention the Meyer play where he talks about what to do if you've been stabbed by a spear lol
I'll add a point based on personal experience: Many of my fellow HEMA practitioners, myself included, are basically nerds that would have otherwise been largely physically inactive for our entire lives had we not discovered and taken an interest in HEMA. My very first training session lasted about 45 minutes and I was more winded afterwards than I'd ever been, so it didn't take long for my desire to keep going to influence my decision to start exercising and eating properly.
Thats the story of almost every pactitioner of martial arts nowadays. UFC fans are often nerds too lol it's just that you haven't seen them yet. I'm dead serious.
The only ones that aint totally nerdy are the ex-college wrestlers. Thats it.
Why do you think Israel Adesanya tries to appeal to anime fans with his Rock Lee stances & personality? Anime fans like the UFC especially strikers.
@@ElDrHouse2010 Oh I'm well aware, as two of the guys in my tabletop gaming group are also very much into MMA and definitely look the part. If you talk to them for more than 5 minutes they'll start getting into conversations about all sorts of nerd stuff, and I believe one of them is possibly a furry but that's only speculation and not my business to ask lol
A very efficient way to get/stay in shape is using elliptical machines. Highly efficient.
The ratio of nerds to athletes is gonna be vastly different in mma gyms when compared to hema gyms lmao. A nerd with a sword would lose to an athlete with a sword even if the athlete is untrained.
@@BigMoik Being athletic and being a nerd are not mutually exclusive though.
The UFC sent several of their fighters, including Rashad Evans, to the marine hand to hand combat training school. Using just knifes, the Marines wrecked the UFC fighters.
Great video to watch
That does not surprise me. There is a paradox IMHO that grappling is absolutely important to knife combat, but if you learn grappling alone, then it will get you killed very quickly against a knife. If you want to slightly improve your chances in a knife fight, train knife fighting first and foremost.
you by chance got the video on hand? oo
@@scholagladiatoria That pointy object tends to make abit of a difference up close, lol.
@@scholagladiatoria learning how to duel wont help you much in the phalanx. different training is appropriate for different fights and environments. the best air conditioner in the world is not a great can opener.
@@Sareth94 ruclips.net/video/1RPiA27uC8A/видео.html
Can agree, used to train MMA fairly regulary, found it's been helpful, but not game changing in HEMA.
Guys with wrestling BJJ MMA background would trump in close range than pure HEMA guys tho. Still remember that video where a dude just throw his sword away and successfully suplexed his opponent in a Longsword tournament
@@jaketheasianguy3307 I think you're forgetting that HEMA also encompasses wrestling and other grappling and hand-to-hand combat styles. And there are HEMA clubs that focus specifically on that alone.
But that is not important. What is important is that closing in on someone armed with a sword is ridiculously hard especially when the swordsman knows what he is doing.
@@jaketheasianguy3307 Because a lot of schools neglect the grappling side and many tournaments have tight restrictions on throws and takedowns. That is an issue with particular schools and tournaments, not a categorical advantage of MMA over HEMA.
@@NevisYsbryd it's more about the training method as well. I have seen some folks who do HEMA absolutely want nothing to do when it comes to close play or learn super simple stuffs like how to break fall properly. They just want to swing swords and then calling time out when someone start halfswording on their face or just push them back, not even trying to throw them. Someone with a modern wrestling background would 100% take advantage of that easily
@@jaketheasianguy3307 the guys who "just want to swing swords" are just wrong and they don't represent HEMA cause grappling and wrestling are part of the traditional guidelines of the art. The man suplexing the other in tournament just did something that you see very often in historical treatises: close in when fighting in armor to grappling to finish it. It makes no sense for you to treat this case as if the winner had stepped outside of what is HEMA and made an unforbiden move against its martial tradition.
I don’t think people understand just how useful a long razor sharp blade at the end of a handle is, especially when you’re less than 5 feet from your enemy.
Tough guys who can take 100 of heavy punches is not the same or better than having 100 stabs by sharpened edges. Hiding behind rules is still hiding. Not very tough that way.
@@MtRevDr the toughest guy will go down from one god cut
That is quite frankly the entire point of the mentioned hard2hurt video. Which merely posits that in the self defence scenarios of today, excluding a firearm (melee vs firearm is just not gonna go well) a sword and buckler with little training are sufficient.
Because, nobody is going to invade your house with a sword, they’ll bring a bat, or knife, or crowbar, or hammer.
Well if nothing else this has created a lot of good dialogue and content to go back and forth! Thanks for taking the challenge in stride Matt, and keeping the tone grounded and civil as always :)
Always something to learn when we compare and contrast different traditions.
A blade would not be called a "force multiplier" if it was, indeed, worse than fighting with bare fists.
That Hard2Hurt thing is ridiculous. Weapons are a game changer. Great fighters can get killed by a drunk guy with a kitchen knife. And being a bit of an older guy myself, who has played with swords and machetes since I was a kid, it blows me away how awkward people are when they're not used to them. Cutting well is not as easy as it seems. It is it's own skill set.
I have a feeling you misunderstood everything Heard2Hurt said tbh. He is a huge weapons proponent. His argument was that - for home defense, if you have a sword and buckler, you need only a few hours of training to ensure you can easily kill at least 95% of burglars who come in with baseball bats.
@@vladimirgertner3960 was that what he said? If so that's stupid as shit. I would imagine using a sword and buckler would require much more than a few hours of training for your muscle to adapt to the movements of swinging a sword effectively, a baseball bat is a club and is much easier to use effectively than a sword. For example in boxing throwing hooks are very awkward at first because your muscles are just not used to that movement but overtime they become natural to throw.
@@weaver1507 He specifically said that for 95% of situations, you just need to hold out a buckler in front of you, and stab your opponents.
He tested it with resisting opponents. ANd he tested it with resisting opponents who were told exactly what he would do, and it worked EVERY TIME.
Now, if someone asked me to teach them some boxing in 3 hours, i wouldn't go close to hooks. I would just force them to drill 1-2,
And still, you can't compare that to having a weapon.
@@vladimirgertner3960 hmm I'll have to check out this guy's video then, I'm no expert so I could very well wrong.
@@vladimirgertner3960except he fumbled multiple times even against unarmed opponents who grabbed his shield and sword (because he wasn’t in a proper guard) and began to wrestle him. He might’ve beaten them at wrestling, but then what is the point of a sword for self defense if you cannot even stop your opponent from negating your sword arm’s ability to do anything? Also there are multiple times when he could’ve ended his fights sooner but didn’t, or rather, he couldn’t, because he didn’t even know basic Hema. Him thinking he can just fight with a sword and win 95% time is the equivalent of those people who attend one self defense seminar and think they can actually defend themselves. If you want to fight and be able to defend yourself, you have to train, Hema is no different. If you don’t want to train Hema, don’t pick a melee weapon for self defense, use a taser or pepper spray instead (assuming guns are out of the question, because those are basically the default)
I’ve trained for 18 years (3rd degree BJJ black belt, and have done bits of wrestling and striking). One of my students does HEMA and when I got him (at the time a white belt) to show me some simple sword stuff, I felt like I would have been in big trouble if it was real. Distance and angles of attacks are completely different.
My buddy has been doing BJJ for 6 years and was very, very upset to find out that none it worked against a simple karambit (a blade designed to be felt, not seen). Once you had edged weapons, grappling itself becomes suicidal. I've done Judo for decades, but if I see a knife I'm going to do everything I can to avoid a fight.
@@johnpauljones9310 yeah man for sure, but I’d go further and say it’s best to just avoid all fights, I don’t want to fight anybody. Not sure why your friend got upset to find out a weapon beats unarmed… pretty sure that’s why weapons were invented originally 😂
@@RobJT He was mad because he took the knife defense seminars (paid a shit ton of $$$) and none of it worked on my goofy little practice karambit.
The dangerous guys with a knife are in jail or on the street robbing you, you're just a fool who likes to live out a fantasy.
@@bruno4299 wtf are you on about?
My HEMA teacher is a kung fu teacher, and I know enough to know when I see someone who is really good. I myself am a long time karate practitioner who decided to have some fun with swords recently. Guess what, I am miserable with weapons. I make rookie mistakes, I get wrecked just as often as other people, who are rookies to fighting with a long weapon (not knife). I do have significant advantage when I get to grappling distance, and that much is true. But that's kinda it. Unarmed and HEMA combat are two completely different beasts which just shares some common basics (tempo, reach, body structure to support the technique and overall ability to control one's body, legwork, not telegraphing with eyes/unnecesary movements, not being scared and stressed when there's no reason to...) - but that's only what makes one a fighter. Not a winner. I find my experience, outside of the grappling scenarios, to help me learn faster.
Btw, there IS a difference between unarmed and armed grappling. You can let go of opponent's armed arm under more strict circumstances, compared to the unarmed context. What I have done several times is I let go of an arm which I considered to be "safe" - and it would be normally - but then I got slashed with a draw/push cut, because while the arm was in no position to pose punching/grappling danger to me, it was in a position to cut me with a weapon it held by just dropping the thing on me. Having no weapon combat experience, but a lot of unarmed one, can, in certain situations, actually be dangerous to you, because the game does change a bit.
It's also quite hard to grapple if your hands have been cut off.
"I'LL BITE YOUR LEGS OFF!"
and also hope the guy doesnt know grappling counters
Kinda difficult when the other guy is armored. Armored vs unarmored scenarios are going to be very different.
This will be a fun time for me 😄 I watch Shad, Skallagrim, this channel, and Hard2Hurt on a regular basis! It's awesome how much modern and historical arms and armor have in common!
You want a really wild experience? Learn some iai, and then learn some firearms combatives and ccw techniques. The philosophy and even practical applications for responding to a violent threat are so similar to each other that they might as well be the same. In fact, where there isn't overlap, you can take from one to improve the other, mainly taking from iai to improve the pistol presentation. Of course, it goes even deeper than that. If you've ever done MJER, or any other similar kenjutsu, and done CQB rifle drills for multiple targets, the shihoto sono ichi is practically identical to a four-target a-zone drill. Blew my mind when I realized that.
@@stupidanon5941 I do! And like you said there's so many awesome connections. I'll check out that shihoto sono ichi drill you mentioned!
Tips fedora
I think the hard2hurt video was specifically in the context of using melee weapons in a self-defense situation against unarmed attackers, and his premise was that HEMA training would not be helpful in such a situation. I can see where he's coming from but it's a fundamental misunderstanding of HEMA to think it would be less helpful than MMA in such a situation.
It seems like he thinks that hema is just a fancy name for sword fighting. The only practical application of sword training I can think of is using a sword against someone who also has a sword, a scenario that is extremely unrealistic. Being trained in sword fighting would surely be more useful in a home defense scenario than not, but I don't think that's necessary to be able to stick someone with the pointy end effectively when they're unarmed. Most likely they'll leg it as soon as they see you got a sword anyway.
@@victorro8760 I mean unless I'm mistaken many people still use walking sticks. what is a walking stick but a blunt sword?
@@victorro8760 HEMA encompasses many weapons besides the sword, and many practitioners spar unequal weapons, just like Matt mentioned in this video. A sword is quite capable of facing a baseball bat, and it would have to be. Plenty of people carried heavy clubs similar to a bat back then and a gentleman who carried a sword would train answers to such weapons.
I pretty much agree with Mike on that point. If I have a sword and my opponent is unarmed I don’t think a lot of special training is needed
@@micaiahelliott8821 counter point though, how many people are breaking into houses without something that can be used as a weapon if not an actual weapon? I'd say probably close to zero. And if they are unarmed they will probably just try to run as soon as you challenge them.
I think HEMA has the reputation of being something that someone who loves D&D can call a martial art. It is but it's a lot more than that as well. It's the focus on weapons that I think gives it real strength. Mike does fun videos and I am glad you did a response just to add to the dialogue.
The emphasis on weapons is certainly what I like about it, given that, as a red blooded American, I love guns. Since guns are such a great equalizer, in the event that guns are unavailable, I still would rather have a sword, or even a large Bowie knife, over unarmed combat.
Up until after WW1, “HEMA”would’ve been the more practical martial art to learn compared to unarmed fighting as well.
Given the European orgians of North America and that HEMA has a martial history shooting sports have some relationship. It's a broad umbrella and I think it's clear that the focus is on history so I don't think one can say that the modern self defense movement is part of HEMA but it seems to me that there is a lot in common especially since it has a lot of military roots and are developing formal training based around systems. That's basically what HEMA is looking at as well just in the past so in 100 years it would seem to fit perfectly. When you are looking at swords spears and pikes etc we aren't probably going to encounter them or use them in any sort of self defense. However sticks, clubs and knives will never go away and are the most common weapons that anyone will encounter. I have very little fear that I will ever encounter a highly trained martial artists who is going to attack me or a loved one unprovoked and kill people with his bare hands. That's a brawl and I can't think of a situation where a weapon isn't used that is going to get serious without a large amount of provocative from myself. If people are going to try to harm someone they are going to use a weapon. I like guns too but they aren't something that you will always have with you and even if you do being disarmed is possible. HEMA seems fun and interesting as a hobby but I also see parts of it especially the ones that deal with sticks and knives as probably being the most useful sort of self defense especially when combined with firearms training.
HEMA only has a reputation of being related to D&D if you've never looked into it beyond what someone who shittalked it on facebook said.
If you look into HEMA's reputation, its an art that continues back over 700 years in dozens of different styles and with hundreds of different weapons from all over Europe. Italian fencing, French, German zweihander methods, Scottish, Norse, all of that is HEMA.
The americans do not understand Europeans at all.
I had a background in jiu-jitsu before starting HEMA. I can confirm, I was shit at HEMA initially, but my jiu-jitsu does come in handy now I've had some training with weapons as well.
That's because traditional jujutsu is literally kenjutsu techniques with the sword removed from your hands and your hands are in very slightly different positions for a lot of techniques. Its meant to be something that a swordsman can pick up in weeks and then translate his entire swordfighting method into hand to hand with the lessons that are taught, so as not to overwhelm students with two totally different styles that require different movement methods.
Lets not forget things like edge alignment and the fact that most swords found today are more effective at slashing than hacking as Mike was doing in the video, when he wasn't stabbing the opponent that is, and we can't forget that those of us that train in weapons (I've got a background in kali not HEMA) are able to tell not only by looking at the weapon but also by how it handles as to whether it's best used as a slashing, hacking or stabbing weapon.
Mike said that you should focus on stabbing approaches because you will probably fight in narrow corridors and because stabbing requires less skill.
@@vladimirgertner3960 Narrow spaces aren't an issue if you use a smaller sword like a Ginunting and if you train to fight in confined spaces like we do in FMA.
No disrespect to Mike as he has real world experiance an some good, solid views but when it comes to melee weapons he has no idea what he's talking about and needs to stick to talking about un-armed fighting.
For an un-trained person, stabbing is absolutely a good tactic as it's the quickest and easiest thing to learn but to anyone that has any skill with melee weapons it doesn't matter how they use it and can very easily defeat someone who only stabs.
Let's not forget that Mike never specified whether he was talking about un-skilled people using a sword and shilled for self defence or if he was including people with training.
@@TheMegaAsh i mean, if your burglar is a kali expert, you are shit out of luck, but that is not a realistic situation. For home defense, you really don't need that much skill
Sensei Seth went to try HEMA. He saw it's not a walk in the park.
I'm a hard2hurt fan and I like when mike introduces me to different communities by provoking them in a way. Had he not made that video I would not be learning as much about Hema as I otherwise would have.
I swear that guy is mentally handicapped. I remember when he said oblique kicks can't blow out knees, when they absolutely can, and have a deserved reputation for doing so. I asked him if I could come to his studio and oblique kick his knee as hard as I can. No reply. I have done many martial arts including mma and HEMA both, if someone comes at this genius with a knife he's a dead man. His "advice" is going to get people hurt/maimed/killed.
@@huwhitecavebeast1972 k :)
Well, there’s maybe an unwitting a lesson to be had.
You have to respect the martial art and the fighter for what they bring to the table on a very specific context.
Some people talk about Mixed martial arts like Hard2hurt talked about Hema.
@@SilverSidedSquirrel I don't really have a direct line of communication to him. I would try and tell him yourself if its important to you
I think it is important to note that H2Hs video was mainly in the CONTEXT of modern home defence. In most places in the world it would be very rare for an intruder to bring a sword and buckler while also have trained with those weapons. Therefore the focus of HEMA as you describe it (facing an opponent with similar weapons and skills) might not be that relevant for that application. I do think however that if you really want to get a sword and buckler for homedefence you should probably get atleast some training with them.
@@ryanwood6754 Ditto. It's prudent to push yourself to be the most proficient you can be in the use of your chosen weapons system. With firearms you train for the best DTFS times, the best groups, the best recoil control, all so you can end the threat as quickly and with as little harm to yourself and bystanders as possible. It's no different with swords. You want to train to get the most consistent edge alignment and make exploiting the mistakes of your opponent as natural as breathing. Especially considering that an assailant, even if unskilled, is rather likely to be armed with a knife. Getting hit by a bat is one thing, but I'd rather maximize my chances of not getting cut open.
Speaking of edge alignment, that's the most major point H2H really missed. He seems to not understand that in order to use a sword as effectively as possible, making sure the edge is at the right angle is very important to getting good cuts. That's something that really only comes with practice, and lots of it. It's one thing to argue that HEMA is useless with blunt weapons, but it's an entirely different thing to say that when you're dealing with blades and similar weapons.
Honestly, in the case towards the end which turned into a grapple, I actually have a hot take in that MMA training actually hurt Mike there.
Since MMA is an unarmed martial arts discipline, weapon retention is not something where a lot of attention is paid to. Whereas in HEMA, the emphasis is on weapons training, so maintaining control of the weapon either through a proper stance or proper reaction is something the sword wielder would’ve done. Even me, though I wouldn’t know the proper stance, would’ve tried to withdraw my sword as soon as the other guy tried to grapple me simply because I learned gun retention techniques.
Hell, this is part of what I like about HEMA despite not being an active practitioner myself. Being your average, red blooded American, I like guns and my martial arts discipline of choice is gun fighting, as mentioned before. And HEMA is one of the few martial arts disciplines which emphasizes using weapons, which given how useful weapons are as force multipliers, getting proficient with a weapon will generally always be an advantage over unarmed combat.
To be fair, Mike learned weapon retention not really from MMA but rather from guys who specialize in weapons such as Craig Douglas or Ryan Hoover
@@jaketheasianguy3307 True, but he definitely didn’t have as much attention paid to weapon retention that HEMA guys (or gunfighting guys) do.
Which is fine, since MMA is an unarmed martial art so that’s not something you generally have to worry about. But it does mean his hot take is doubly wrong here. lol
@@gameragodzilla he was a cop and has plenty of experience in handling firearms in situations where he has to be close to the other person
@@TheErtagon15 How long ago has he been? Skills like this are a perishable skill. If he’s been training mostly unarmed most of the time, things like weapon retention will be forgotten. I’m just going off the fact that in one of the grappling scenarios, he didn’t pull his weapon back properly like he should’ve.
@@gameragodzilla he does this kind of thing for a living. He regularly practices grappling with weapons in hand. He has multiple videos of him and others grappling with a taser. He takes very realistic defense classes. He's well aware of the perishability of skills. He is definitely a goofball and could learn a lot from HEMA, and clearly needs more practice grappling with longer weapons, but he's not some hack. If you have any interest in modern martial arts and self defense, his channel and those he collabs with are definitely worth checking out.
3 reasons Hard2hurt is wrong
1. Hard2hurt doesn't know anything about HEMA
2. Hard2hurt never really tested his opinion against real HEMA
3. Hard2hurt is wrong so often that you could have just randomly guessed that he was wrong and you would have probably been correct.
most of hard2hurt opinion just trying to stir some heat to bring him views
The whole point of his argument is don't bring up manuscripts and said this is "the right way" when it comes to modern self defense, and I absolutely stand by his side with this argument. You don't need HEMA training to start shanking a modern attacker with a sword and a buckler when that guy trying to invade your home. Also no idea why people even think that medieval dagger defense would 100% translated to modern knife defense and it could somehow trumped everything that great people such as Craig Douglas or Ryan Hoover teach.
@@artikelservice796 I think so too. Most of it is just about offending some people. But when he's offended himself he's really easy2hurt.
@@jaketheasianguy3307 you're attacking a strawman. Nobody here claims what you're arguing against.
@@damasek219 that's the whole point of that video. Literally quoting Matt here, "context matter" and saying he's wrong for saying things that's part of his original subject is literally taking things out of context and criticize it
Excellent response, Matt. I am a fan of Icy Mike and this particular video made me 😂 it looks like someone just caught the weapons bug and Icy Mike is going down the HEMA rabbit hole, just like the rest of us😂
I swear that guy is mentally handicapped. I remember when he said oblique kicks can't blow out knees, when they absolutely can, and have a deserved reputation for doing so. I asked him if I could come to his studio and oblique kick his knee as hard as I can. No reply. I have done many martial arts including mma and HEMA both, if someone comes at this genius with a knife he's a dead man.
I can't take him seriously until he shows himself getting defeated and analyzing his failures.
@@markfergerson2145 which he regularly does
@@dustyboots2693 With a sword vs a baseball bat?
@@markfergerson2145 No, with pretty much everything else. I get it that you're not a Hard2hurt follower, but fyi Mike has a lot of videos in which he test ideas, equipment, or attends training classes and then go through everything about it. The good, the bad & the ugly: did it work? Did it not? Why is that? Have been made mistakes? What could be improved? Etc etc.
Watched a street fight where two dudes were unarmed against each other, traded some shots and it went down to grappling. A 3rd guy walked up and easily knifed them both and walked away. Weapons > unarmed, and you are incredibly exposed and vulnerable when grappling. I would never recommend it in a street fight.
Was waiting for your take on this, just for the fun of it! I think Mike did indeed prove the effectiveness of the Buckler even for unexperienced combatants, for what it's worth.
Yeah, but I think that not the point, Mike fully realise the effectiveness of historical weapon. But he miss the point when he underestimated Hema and say you don't really need Hema to know how to use historical weapon effectively. Which it's not actually wrong, but it's become wrong when he say MMA fighter with a sword would beat any Hema fighter. Which it's proved in his Sparring when he basically Miss many chance to counter attack and how he have limited movement and not fully realise the fully potential of the Blade. Something that you will not found on your own easy without study Hema or Hama.
What unexperienced combatants used a buckler in that video? I just saw Icy Mike spar against folks at his studio & get hit multiple times (by his own admission). & everyone involve had some level of martial-arts experience. Mike himself certainly has tons of sparring unarmed & with various types of weapons.
Perfect breakdown thanks Matt 🙂
Some people forget that fighting is fighting regardless of what you call it, every effective technique has different versions under different names, in Japanese Jujutsu we mix several weapon forms with various grappling, striking and throwing forms that work most consistantly and effectively (I didn't know your club had their own Jujutsu instructor btw that's cool 🙂) and I assume if someone seriously wanted to learn to defend themselves they'd be doing much the same thing.
The context they were trying to put their argument in was in home defence, I hope they don't have many people convinced for their sake, stay safe and sensible even someone that's spent their whole adult life learning isn't stupid enough to be so overconfident
@@dgmt1 that's a very negative assumption, you can throw around the names of "legit techniques" all day but unless you do choose to learn just to stay fit the only important thing is how well you've been taught to fight.
I don't just demonstrate half-baked twists, lazy throws and taps with the back of my hand, there are a lot of people being "taught" like that but a lot of us are more interested in defending ourselves than winning medals.
I've sparred with plenty of different styles of fighting and picked what works for me
@@dgmt1 Nah it has its things. I agree that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is more developed practically because they compete more & it's more mainstream, martial arts benefit from being mainstream & sports. That being said don't underestimate the Japanese version they might not compete as much but maybe they have the old finger breaks which are illegal in BJJ.
@@ElDrHouse2010 I've had the chance to spar with a lot of people that do BJJ, it is a really popular one around my way and when we grapple or throw we usually end up doing almost the same things except you're right there're plenty of things I was taught to do to pin, throw or break a grapple that they've always told me not to do because BJJ is a sport.
I think it's about "why" you want to learn to fight and who you find to teach you, I recommended a BJJ class to my sister a few months ago and she loves it 🙂
What we were talking about was proper instruction, my teacher's always pushed that poor instruction could get someone seriously hurt especially if they've ended up overly confident because of it
What I got from the Hard2hurt video is that it is more important in a self defense or home defense situation to learn the basics of self defense than learning sword treatises. Icy Mike did repeatedly say he wasn't trying to take anything away from HEMA as a sport or hobby, its the requirement some people have that a self defense technique be validated in a manual that he seemed to have an issue with. Now he harped on this a while, but I can see where the obsessive nature of some to always validate every technique with some sort of historic document would be absurd especially with modern armed self defense techniques.
Realistically, Icy Mike isn't talking about walking into a HEMA club and wrecking people, he is talking about someone with a martial arts background having a foundation where they could quickly learn enough about using a sword to fend off an intruder if guns or similar alternatives aren't available. You said it yourself, a sword and buckler is a better system than a bat; its a lot more realistic that burglar is going to show up with a bat than an epee. So, I don't see anything wrong with his statements other than he obviously needs to put his money where his mouth is and go to a HEMA club and learn how to use a sword.
It doesn't matter if they weren't _trying_ to take anything away, they still had a teacher, who did not understand the weapons and did not evaluate their capabilities correctly, demonstrating use of those weapons in a self defense manner, and that video is still up on youtube. The way he'd come at those people, if any of the opponents understood the slightest about weaponry, would be much more difficult opponents, and he would have gotten railroaded. He's demonstrating things incorrectly to make an incorrect point. That is the mark of a bad teacher.
Source: Kenjutsu student for 11 years soon, sandan in Ryukyu Kobujutsu, shobayashi shorinryu karatejutsu, and unranked in Wing Chun, but I know all the weapons kata. I also practice samurai jujutsu. If this guy came into our weapons classes and tried _that,_ we'd put kendo armor on him and give him a good whack on the gut or thighs every time he moved in.
It is a teacher's #1 job to ensure that they are not misinforming their students. He's misinforming his audience. He should take the video down, and then replace it with a "So I went to a HEMA pro, and here's everything that was wrong about the video from the other day" video in its place.
@@nuclearsimian3281the point of the video wasn't to educate anyone. They asked a question, does a sword make a good home defense weapon? They brought students into a studio to recreate home defense situations and Icy Mike tried to fend off attackers who had a baseball bat. There are all sorts of issues with this video, if it were actually designed to be exhaustive. The video basically is a series of Icy Mike's opinions on using a sword for home defense. He is using the sparring sessions to demonstrate why he is thinking a certain way, but ultimately its obvious that he is not trying to teach anything with a sword. I don't think he needs to make an apology video for having an opinion or using his platform to broadcast it for entertainment value. Its up the viewership to understand this isn't a training video and actually educate themselves on what could be a life or death situation.
Very classy, well thought response, Matt. I agree with you fully. Keep up the good work, mate! 👏
Bro I would tell you to teach Shad how to make points this concisely... but wtf do we know... he's the one with all the subs.
Hi there, thanks for posting 😄
@hard2hurt Shad got a lot of subscribers because he made videos explaining Lars Anderssen's rapid fire Bow techniques when Lars Anderssen went viral. He has the most watched Archery video in youtube look him up he can fire an arrow every half second it's insane. But he been training with the Bow non-stop for like 10 years now.
Agreed. Nicely stated. I was the first Australian to get into BJJ - back in 1987. Have since spent my lifetime teaching BJJ to the public - but have also been heavily involved in designing Defensive Tactics programs and bespoke solutions for a variety of law enforcement, military and other 'highly specialised' operators ... some of this work has centered around the intersection of grappling, striking and weapons - of various sorts. Scenarios vary widely - assymetrical contests in confined environments (cars, hallways, elevators) all require different types of strategies and skill-sets. Ultimately - testing reveals strengths and weaknesses of being too attached to a specific skillset. Having an open-mind and being willing to drop a previously-held opinion or preference in the light of new information and experience - is key. Train hard - train often - train intelligently. - J
I remember hearing of you in Sydney early naughties
Wow one of the OGs of Aussie bjj
Awesome to see u are open to hema
I trained with John Simon , elvis and Anthony back in the day in Sydney but run a hema club now
Great post
I think a good analogy that could be presented to mike is that what he said is very similar to people who buy a gun and think that by itself will give them the advantage.
But you have to train with your gun to become proficient, and the same goes for swords.
Sort of but it's a lot easier to instinctively pull a trigger than it is to intentionally drive a sword through someone. Mentality is an often overlooked part of the whole equation. You can unintentionally kill (or seriously wound/incapacitate) someone with a shotgun at close range easier by just panic squeezing the trigger whereas to do the same with a sword you've got to willingly initiate the action. Stabbing someone is a mentally hard thing for a normal person to do, you've got to put in enough physical force and aggression to see it through, firearms have far more of a mental disconnect between cause and effect, if it's pointing at them all you've got to do is overcome the resistance of the seer.
Icy Mike tends to spend about 3 minutes looking at something and then making judgments about it even though he knows nothing about it.
Mike thinks HEMA is ONLY sword fighting, and he thinks sword fighting is what he saw while watching Game of Thrones.
He spent 5 minutes holding a foam sword and figured that he figured out all he needed to know.
As someone who competes in MMA and BJJ, and has messed around with my friends with some longswords and protective equipment we bought, I can say my MMA experience did not count for a whole lot against my opponent, who was of the same skill level in swords, but had never done MMA. If I managed to close the distance and grapple, I did have a big advantage, but more often than not, my attempts to initiate a grapple got me killed
yeah,
I think H2Hs argument was solely about self defense though.
When defending your home do you need to practice a lot to use a sword and shield effectively?
Arguably the MMA training gives you basic distancing tactics and stamina which is enough.
His videos often talk about the limited time any one person have to train and what is the most effective way to get a well rounded coverage.
He also seemed to have a weird distain towards the idea of using old manuals for some reason. As if an old way of doing something was automatically worse than anything new. This seemed like a weird approach imo
One of the greatest crossovers that could happen.
I clicked quick.
I love both your channels.
I've watched hard2hurt for years and years. I like him and his channel. He does think he knows everything, but he is up for being proved wrong. He has a couple of youtube fight videos, so he is for real. And of what he teaches, its good stuff.
He just unfortunately made the human of all errors about something we don't understand or have in depth knowledge about that is very different than what we know: You either are scared of it, or you summarily dismiss it as irrelevant or stupid.
Hard2hurt knows these kind of videos lead to more views and subscribers. He really did one of these videos on Jeese Enkamp, saying the same kind of stuff about karate he did Hema. Now, they collab all the time, and they appear as very good friends. Making h2h a very good youtuber and business person, as well as a good martial artist.
Been watching Matt easton for probably almost a decade and been involved in HEMA for just as long. I have been involved in unarmed fighting for less time but still a decent amount of experience. The thing is this. The HEMA skill gap is very very big. Ive met some who are very tough skilled fighters. Ive also met A LOOOOOTTTT of snowflakes. Punching and kicking is discouraged in most clubs to the point of disqualification from tournies. Ive personally never been apart of an official hema club that allowed grappling let alone taught it. When I was younger (14ish i think) I got in contact with people and was involved in the creation of our own club that basically had no rules aside from a "yeah itll be fiinnee bro" and yeah people got hurt sometimes but we all came back for a long time and it was still the most fun time of my life i think ill ever have. The point is this at the end of the day. Most mma people have intent to cause pain and scramble in a heated fight. Hema people are often conditioned to stop once something unexpected happens. I would so much love to go to Matts club, it sounds awsome.
The thing is, MMA's sported goal from the looks of things is basically 'literally beating the other guy into submission'. So ofc they're intent to cause pain and disable. It's the way their tournaments work. MMA's technique pool similarly boils down to 'discard any flourish' for better or worse.
HEMA seems to have a lot broader picture and target audience. Some people are into it for the fighting tournaments, some for the living history / expiremental archeology, the reconstruction of a lost art of fighting etc. Those are broader aspects that MMA will never satisfy in anyone. So ofc. there are people there who's goal isn't to get choked out by someone three times their size, when they were hoping to get a lecture in Meyer.
It should be a discussed and at least drilled/practiced part, don't get me wrong - but if you really want to train grappling, then train grappling.
People can only train & learn about non-olympic euro swords in HEMA. Grappling is all over the place by comparism.
Some disarms can wreck wrists and somewhat elbows if done really fast, so fast that opponent has no chance to let sword. If you know aikido or judo: it is similar to kote gaeshi. Consider all kinds of backgrounds people have, form motives to age and you really can't make something which would fit to everyone in club/school.
Avoid injuring your training partners bro, if you are going to throw them at least teach them how to break fall. If you are going to push kick em tell them you push kick. Just dont do it full force, they dont even spar full force in Muay Thai, they wont spar you ever again if you injure your training mates. Consider that bro.
It's similar to striking vs grappling within MMA. I've done a lot of grappling (judo, wrestling and BJJ since I was 6) but very little striking. When I started with MMA I was matched with other beginners, I'd just clinch up/takedown/throw etc force them into grappling and submit them easily. It doesn't mean striking is worthless, just that we were both beginners at striking, and I had a massive advantage at grappling.
Not really,striking isn't instantly lethal.....standby knives and swords ARE
6:21 You _need_ to get this instructor to start making videos. I _desperately_ want to see more of that type of system in action. I'm interested because it's just so rare to see anything about Japanese jujutsu outside of any formal koryu instruction.
FMA practitioner here, absolutely brilliant retort! It’s about time that Hard2Hurt got called out for pretending to know about things he doesn’t…. And this is exactly the way to do it! Well Done!
Matt, I’d love to hear your response to H2H’s video on 1) the screwdriver for self defense (I recently taught rondel techniques to a few people and suggested a screwdriver as a modern replacement) 2) his video suggesting the buckler for police use (I can’t remember if it was with the baton or not).
Sensei seth went to a hema class and got wrecked
I love MMA and JKD, but there's more to fighting than what's allowed in the cage and there are several effective martial arts that deal with weapons, that are irrelevant in MMA.
And there are things like eye pokes, throat strikes, groin strikes, hair grabbing, clothing, obstacles, concrete, multiple opponents, etc all that needs to be taken into account and isn't a part of MMA
All things considered, I bet you can just call Mike in. The guy is pretty open to collaboration. And his audience kind of loves seeing him getting his butt kicked. vov
It's the same problem with the Armchair Violence video, sword fighting isn't their field of expertise. Don't get me wrong, the guy who runs Hard2Hurt was a police officer, he fought against knife attackers more than once, and he knows stuff when talking about KNIFE and other modern-ish weapon fighting system. However, he isn't a fencing expert, when he says any MMA fighter would pick up the pace at a HEMA club, but a HEMAist would have trouble on a MMA gym is just him being an MMA hooligan.
Idk why it’s so common for martial artists too look at a completely separate discipline that they don’t practice and say “oh that’s just useless I can probably do better with my discipline” and not once bother to conceive that perhaps they have a gap in their knowledge.
True, most of the time not even researching why, how and in what environment it was made + looking at exercises/drills without keeping in mind that they are just exercises/drills (Common argument: "That wouldnt work IRL (if person does XYZ)")
@@naj4261 Mike's point is that an MMA fighter can jump into HEMA and essentially have a head start over full time HEMA guys when they first started because they've already developed the soft skills through unarmed fighting. The HEMA guy's melee weapon training won't necessarily transfer over to a boxing/kickboxing context. Plus, most HEMA dudes don't nearly have the same level of cardio/conditioning as kickboxers, and that's a topic in itself.
I’ve never participated in HEMA, but as someone who’s spent his life wrestling, practicing bjj, Muay Thai, and was a Marine Corps Martial Arts instructor, most of what I see coming out of Hard to Hurt is just awful. He should keep his options to himself and change the channel name to Hard to Watch.
The MMA is REALLY good because half of the heavy armor fights end up in grappling. But if you have zero melee skill it might be pretty hard to get in grapple range and eventually you are going to take a wound even with the best armor and reflexes.
I knew a special forces guy who once told me that basically no Martial arts system is an end all is because outside of a ring there are no judges, no rules, and you could face anything. So there is no invincible combo.
One point which, in my oppinion, is actually missing here: the dude with the buckler and sword isn't afraid of the dude with the bat.There is no negativ consequence if he's hit by the bat while charging, so why wouldn't he do that. But that's not how things go. I always percieved the actual challenge not as being able to hit someone with a sharp stick, but to not get hit in return. Because it doesn't matter if the other guy dies, if i also get hurt.
My takes from Mike's video was:
Two unskilled people, home invasion style (as his video was, for home defence). Invaders have a bat, defender has a sword and shield.. The sword and shield combo is superior (pretty much a no-brainer). Which was pretty much demonstrated in his video. Mike has some weapons training (but not sword and shield as far as I'm aware), his 'attackers' had none of very little.. I would expect sword and shield to do better.
He then said take a highly trained MMA guy and give him a few hours "HEMA" (weapons) training and he would do better than a "pure" HEMA person that gets a few hours MMA training. Now, assuming "pure" hema is just weapons, nothing else, and pure MMA is no weapons training - I might agree within the context of a home invasion. In a one on one, planned, sanctioned, rules, fight? Tougher call.
A well trained hema person with decent MMA background vs a well trained MMA person with decent hema background? I'd pay to see that! :D
Not trying to defend Icy Mike, he can do that himself, just felt like the perception or message got a little lost in the shuffle here.
Sword and shield are two objects. People are often not aware significance of having two weapons, no matter how small/short/powerless they are. Dagger and cloak or two daggers against single rapier, person with rapier usually lose. It would be very interesting to see a bit longer baseball bat with powerful blows on a shield and even some stabbing like attacks over shield (most likely boss grip).
Learning weapon and shield fundamentals is WAY easier than learning how to fight unarmed. That's basically what Mike's point is, but these guys are missing it. The MMA fighter has an easier time cross transferring his soft skills to HEMA, but the HEMA guy has to literally retrain his limbs to not make instinctual errors as we do as humans.
tl;dr learning how to punch requires way more focus and training than learning how to use a sword.
@@asto5767 sword and shield versus baseball bat, of course it is easier. Two handed sword versus sword and shield is even easier. It would be more interesting to see fight with equal weapons and then draw conclusions.
In real fight MMA guy with sword would be destroyed because single hit with a sword would be much more devastating, something MMA guys are not accustomed to. With HEMA protection MMA would be just slight poking, except locks.
@@radivojevasiljevic3145 HEMA guys aren't spartans on halo bro. A hit to a limb is stil la hit to the limb, but because fighters are more used to getting bludgeoned (fighting), they're gonna be more willing to continue.
Either way, you're conveniently ignoring the fact that HEMA fighters use unarmed moves too. Just sign up to a fight gym bro, you don't know what you're talking about lol
@@asto5767 and MMA guys are used to Type X cuts? Yeah, they are not Spartans, they are Supermen.
It seams you have problems with understanding the fact that MMA kick or punch is nothing compared to real cut or stab. Would you try to kick somebody in arm or leg and than to accept "the same" with sharp sword by that person? No you wouldn't and you can't see such things in fight clubs.
You should learn to make the difference between training and real situation. Unarmored people are very sensitive to damage from weapons unlike kicks and punches. If you don't believe me, ask ER surgeons about stabbing wounds inflicted by small knives.
Oh, sorry, MMA guys are used to war hammer blows, mea culpa.
Oh shoot, Matt Easton weighing in!!
Icy Mike did say that if you want to learn how to fight with swords against other people with swords, HEMA is a your best option outside of FMA.
It's like we invented weapons and have been using them for hundreds of thousands of years for a reason or something.
I knew this video was coming. I think you and Mike also make the some of the same points because what i believe he was saying is that people that regularly train combat sports like mma are gonna be better at HEMA than the average person that claims to be a HEMA practitioner. And to be honest Matt it seems to me a lot of those not so up to par HEMA clubs that you're talking about tend to have members that look like well slightly or very tubby gents that do more talking than sparring and get winded after 30 seconds. Any of the people ive ever met that claim to study hema fell into this category and always seem to have these "oh I used to be able to fill in the blank" stories but now can barely do 10 body weight only squats much less push-ups or swing a sword for a 5 minute round . Again not saying all of HEMA i actually think its very cool but there's good bit of it much more than in other combat sports .
Ah wait until you're old, especially over 45, you become one of those tubby gents that talks more than does because your body says it's time to do so. The harder you did things when younger the more your body pays you back as you get older, it's "fun" let me tell you. You end up with the knowledge but not the physical ability where younger you are the inverse.
MMA competitors are self-selected for athleticism and endurance. Ordinary guys who study MMA would be dogfood facing HEMA fighters. The pros would possibly do well but not if they were facing equally young, athletic HEMA practitioners.
Depends on their style Stephen Wonderboy Thompson would be a great Sabre & Rapier user, any one handed. He is used to the Point Karate style movement. One-Handed weapons are similar. They move in the bladed stance so he would have a lot that carries over when it comes to moving in & out fast already.
It seems like everybody's ignoring the fact that Icy Mike's premise was based on home defense, and the overwhelming majority of home invaders aren't trained in anything, let alone medieval melee weapons. Blind stabbing from behind a shield is almost certainly more than good enough against some dude who just want's to steal your TV.
That said, I've been watching both of you for a few years, now, and it's almost all gold.
Shad nerded out for a few minutes about how he as a home invader with HEMA training and a baseball bat would take on an untrained defender by sacrificing his hand to commit second degree murder.
In this hypothetical, just flee the scene.
If you impale a guy who's just stealing your TV, you have to spend the rest of the night digging a big hole in your back yard. That's a lot of work to save $150.
I'd probably just pound him with the shield, Captain America style -- minimal blood on my floor, no injuries on him worth a hospital visit, and much less chance of me needing a lawyer OR a shovel.
I've heard some bad takes in the martial arts world before, but H2H's take on this is a whopper. Thanks for the video.
I think h2h has his logic rooted in the same logic as a Büffel (the ‘tough guys’ that mindlessly try to thrust you through [which would be an easy counter if you knew it was coming]) just more absorbed with the modern umbrella terms and apples and oranges type comparison.
Glad you responded to this and highlighted the issues.
I like hard2hurt, but the things he says about knives and batons are juvenile and ignorant. "A knife can't be used for self defense." He was using a particular knife that was daggerish shaped, and he was going on about how he thought a reverse grip is better. I think he also said, "Knife guys are weird, they think a sharp knife is safer."
I think his point is that knife and baton are weapons that does excessive damage that most of the time would not be justifiable for self defense context. Of course depends where you live if the society is literally lawless, then sure, but for countries that's relatively safe 99% of the time, those 2 are terrible for self defense
It can be hard on the egos of these guys who train in unarmed combat all the time to know that a semi-trained person with a knife could kill them, but that's the whole 'point' of weapons.
@@squamish4244 I think guys who do practical unarmed MA do understand that weapons are not their forte and their chance of beating a weapon with 2 empty hands are close to zero. Unless you're learning from a mcdono that teach false confidence, any karate BJJ Muay Thai MMA instructor would tell you to run when seeing someone flashing out a knife
@@jaketheasianguy3307 which shows that all his time as a cop, was it as a cop, didn't teach him much about the law or the realities of self defense. he has spent his adult life being strong, healthy, trained, and able to take care of himself. if you are smaller, weaker, disabled, attacked by a group, threatened with murder, armed robbery or rape, defending an innocent who can't defend her/himself things change, and one of those changes is that deadly force can be not only justified but the only reasonable response.
i am eternally pissed off at that bloviating meathead for suggesting that people at serious disadvantages in deadly force situations rely on pain compliance. that depends on the attacker being _reasonable_ . if he were reasonable he wouldn't be trying to rape or kidnap you. in those cases a knife or baton or a firearm is absolutely justified. 'ouch, that hurt' is not going to do the job. and he is willing to encourage innocent people to be crippled or killed based on his macho posturings and ignorance of something that was supposed to be his profession.
@@toddellner5283 that's pretty much self explanatory and common sense. If my life or love one is on the line, all bets are off. But self defense is alot more than being paranoid how ninjas would ambush you from dark alley
There's this thing called restraint and see what is the level of violence you're up against and choose a proper response. Some dude pushing or punch you and then you draw the knife or baton out and start hacking him ? Or when old lady Dorothy hitting you with her purse because you accidentally stepped on her foot ? Better shank her, she may have a gun.
Pain compliance techniques are absolutely trash, that I agreed because if a technique just relied on pain and does not break and dislocated anything, it's shit for everything but scaring off wimps.
Funny because Bruce was mixing the same styles we see in MMA, look at the tao it has judo/jiu-jitsu, wrestling, muay thai, karate, etc, BUT he also used things from historical fencing and weapons arts
Icy Mike, for years, didn't believe a knife other that any other weapon can be a advantage in a self defence scenario. Then he did some actual knife training and changed his stance 180 degrees.
Edit: to be fair he's an ex-cop so he probably grew up to see the knife as the bad guys choice of weapon when committing crime. That a knife also is a effective equaliser for a physically weaker but trained person is quite obvious.
I’m glad you chimed in on this one!
He is often wrong, and usually because he misrepresents the argument
When I watched the hard to hurt video I realised something. You don’t need to be super trained to win a fight. You don’t need to have the best technique. You can win by avoiding mistakes.
The first (and arguably the most important) thing you learn in any art is how to stop making mistakes. This is key to understanding all art v’s art debates. Different arts train for different situations and what constitutes a mistake varies with the situation. Lose position on the ground and you have lost. Drop your guard striking and you have lost. Try fighting against a joint lock with strength and you have lost. Exchange hits while weapon fighting (Hard to hurts mistake) and you have both lost.
Practice the art that most closely simulates a given situation if you what to win in that situation. That way you learn the common mistakes in that situation and how to avoid them.
1st point.
I study both HEMA/Kenjutsu and MMA. The only 2 things that really cross over is timing and footwork.
I'm one of the mma fighters who is now exploring HEMA. I thought rhe mma experience would be much more useful than it was. It was a bit helpful but minimally.
Icy Mike's controversial hot take was that an MMA guy with a sword would be more dangerous than a HEMA guy with a sword, not the strawman everyone seems to be responding to where an MMA guy is somehow a better fencer than a fencer.
Violence in the real world seems to be most often asocial and asymmetric. I suspect that the social symmetric violence of MMA sparring gives one a better understanding of violence "in the wild" than the start-stop action of the typical HEMA bout.
@Ianmar1 no that's not what Mike said. He said that an mma guy with a little bit of training would mess up HEMA fighters. I thought so too until I tried it. Go try it.
@@Kankudai I will have to rewatch, I heard something different.
Edit: I see that you were probably refering to
ruclips.net/video/73sTlT9aIZs/видео.htmlm32s
which I suppose your experience shows that it takes a lot longer than a few hours to become a problem, whatever Mike meant by that.
I had a later hot take in mind
ruclips.net/video/73sTlT9aIZs/видео.htmlm
Fencing in general has a realism blindspot (real swords have real consequences) which a fighter should be better psychologically prepared for than a fencer when facing an untrained home invader.
He was not talking about fencing
ruclips.net/video/73sTlT9aIZs/видео.htmlm48s
@@Ianmar1 No dude Mike is really saying that for that Home Burglary scenario the MMA guy who just started using the sword & buckler would do better than the HEMA nerd lol. It's such a wild take & I'm sure its bait. It's like telling a soldier to just train hand to hand but never learn to use the M16 rifle & then make him go to Vietnam in the 60s.
@@ElDrHouse2010 I don't see how you are correcting what I said, your remark seems to agree with mine. However, while a sword and buckler even untrained makes one very dangerous to an untrained home invader, desensitizing oneself to violence is not easily done in hobbyist sparring.
I am a reasonably good mma fighter, and I've started training longsword with my friend who has no other martial arts experience. And no, I don't wreck him at all.
i'm very happy that part of america's fighting or self defence community is joining the debate, it's a lot of visibility for hema. maybe the discussion about hema's popularity will get to the next level soon 😁
When I was in the Marines black belt course, we learn some weapons like bayonet, “weapon of opportunity” and knives. During the course we had a HEMA instructor come in and teach us about the dagger. He was knowledgeable and during that time is how I learned a lot more about footwork and distancing. I have mad respect for HEMA practitioners.
The big mistake I see with hard2hurt is that he continues to prove his point wrong with his examples and comes out with the wrong conclusion. And it was fairly bro science rather than attempting to have it be more so scientific by having a good HEMA person in on either side of the scenario so he could see if his premise was wrong.
But what he showed is that an MMA person makes all the same mistakes with a weapon that any newb makes. He also showed that often enough he mentally shuts down and resorts to his grapple training instead of stabbing or cutting the person with the weapon. In which case the sword and buckler is now arguably detrimental to his ability to defend himself because they are in his way and are potential weapons the opponent can steal from him.
What he showed is that someone is going to resort to their training, but the conclusion was that one doesn't need training. Baffling.
Im so happy 😭Its making the rounds. Ive been waiting for the day Hard2Hurt and the medieval to come into contact. I hope theres more future collabs and discussions
Unfortunately, I will say that your second point feels null as Mike did say if youre learning to sword fight against other swordsman "have at thee" meaning hes all for that 🤔
yep the response we have been waiting for, go matt!
He's right that, all else being equal, an mma practioner would have an advantage over someone with no martial arts experience, when it comes to HEMA style fighting.
HOWEVER. When he said that an mma guy with a few hours of experimentation would be a real problem for most HEMA guys....all else being equal...that's just hilariously wrong.
As someone who wrestled in school, I got tapped out immediately for far longer than a few hours when I started taking BJJ. When I figured out how to defend against submissions, it got a lot more competitive really quick, but still.
But anyways. We also have examples of what happens when top MMA guys try to box a boxer. It generally doesn't go well.
My point being that there's a LOT more overlap between freestyle/Greco-Roman wrestling and BJJ, and between MMA/kickboxing and boxing, than there is between MMA and HEMA. Why he thinks he can beat someone at their own style, with a few hours of solo practice is beyond me. A profoundly silly thing for him to have said. Dunning-Kruger-jutsu
I'm not familiar with this Hard2Hurt guy, but I am pretty familiar with loudmouth buff guys that talk when they should listen. The best thing to do is get someone like the instructors you mentioned in front of him and humble him so completely that he actually learns the lesson.
Hard2Hurt isn't a loudmouth buff guy.
He's a loudmouth small guy.
@@carltonbauheimer - Hart2Hurt is a LARPing elf type
Icy Mike is a former SWAT cop in the US. He has some armed combat training, but more with guns and knives than sword and sword like objects. I do think his knife training has some crossover, though, where it comes to the distance management and timing, which he may be underestimating when comparing himself to other MMA guys.
Also, he isn't afraid to use clickbait or directly address his comments section even if it's a bad idea for his sanity. It does appear like a certain kind of commenter under his videos underestimated other, more contemporary forms of edged weapons training, but he compared learning from medieval swordplay sources to learning from medieval medical texts, which makes no sense unless he's trolling again.
@@formlessone8246 I know that people who play piano can't really play harpsichord or organ, despite both being keyboard instruments. Even short blades like machete is very different than knife. SWAT is all nice and well, but AFAIK SWAT teams usually go against more or less clueless people and have numerical superiority. Something like 1 year HEMA vs 10 years HEMA. We all know results in advance.
He is obviously very good at what he does. And what he does is to get other people to engage with him directly or indirectly on RUclips/internet. Matt seems to realize it though 😂
My issue was his point that he would be a "problem" in a hema club with a few hours of training, then proceeded to not cover his hand, chest or head...stuff everyone at my club can spot.
It's a bit ironic to be campaigning for MIXED Martial Arts by putting a type of martial art into a separate category and then complaining about it instead of integrating what works into your MMA toolset.
This.
It’s because MMA fans have been brainwashed by UFC and RUclips.
Thank you for responding to it. It's great fun to finally get the conversation broader. HEMA is too much of an island
Not compared to Japanese bujutsu.
H2H is often an arrogant jerk. It's the truth, sorry. 🤷♂️
I haven't studied HEMA but I have studied iaido and kendo, and you'd have mall ninjas challenging kendo practically all the time, some them who had some martial arts training, but no sword training. I'm sorry, but watching 8 seasons of Naruto does not make you a sword master. Most them just thought they could intimidate you in a fight, but once the sticks start flying (we would NEVER use live steal against guys like that no matter how annoying they were) the quickly learned what mattered. Most of them would just get frustrated and leave, but every once in a while some of them would stay. It didn't help that our dojo was literally in a mall at one point. Lol.
They always seem to care a lot more about high level waza, than the kihon needed to make the simple waza work.
@@Ianmar1 truth. Like someone trying to learn tae kwon do by starting with leaping roundhouse kicks. Until you know your migi-do from your higari-do, stick with your step drills.
I think part of it is that Mike underestimated the effectiveness of his preexisting weapon skills compared to his students at the gym. He's stated that he does at least 50 hours a year doing knife training (despite his known dislike of knives as self defense weapons, he carries one every day for self defense) which would prepare him for using a short sword better than his boxing training. The speed is different, the distance is different, and the idea of lashing out with the hand before stepping into distance is precisely the opposite body mechanic from how most people are trained to throw their punches (except perhaps the jab or wing Chun punches). But it's something he probably does instinctively with blades because he's used to having a knife in hand. Meanwhile, do any of his students have extensive experience or training with a baseball bat as a weapon? He found that the guy who played baseball was one of the tougher opponents he faced in that experiment. That is the guy who you should be training for if you want to use a machete/sword and buckler for home defense, not just the untrained guy who doesn't know how to swing a weapon. Its like when people mistakenly think they can just pick up a gun and defend themselves just fine. You could, but it's much better to have trained with it first to work out the problems you will inevitably run into if you really have to use it.
You will also note that Sensei Seth, who has now done bits and pieces of HEMA, HAMA, ninjutsu, kali and bohurt, did way better than any of the other attackers.
I was hoping for a response to the two points made in the video that likely should have been the crux of any discussion.
1. "I thinking if I thrust this [the shield] in your face and then thrust [the sword from] behind it, and I have no specialized HEMA training; I think I'm wrecking like 95% of dudes... if they don't have a gun."
- Icy Mike 3:43 - 3:56 ruclips.net/video/73sTlT9aIZs/видео.html
2. "Hopping into HEMA classes... Simply the ability to understand range and adapt to range pretty quickly, I'm a problem immediately."
- Sensei Seth 4:32 - 4:45 ruclips.net/video/73sTlT9aIZs/видео.html
In the 1st statement they are discussing a home defense scenario not armed fighter combat. Is Mike's statement ostensibly correct? Or wrong for overlooking something that is possibly critical to consider?
In the 2nd statement is Seth's statement reasonable? Are HEMA practitioners at any level off-balanced by a newbie that happens to be good at range management, unarmed or otherwise? Or is this actually a peculiarity of HEMA newbies who happened to be well trained unarmed fighters going up against HEMA newbies or intermediates that have no background in range management other than their current HEMA training? To me it just seems that training in range management is simply a critical skill in combat to learn in the beginning armed or not. But I'd love your thoughts as I'm in no way an authority on the subject.
1. Agree
2. Disagree - over many years we have seen people with only unarmed fighting backgrounds have a problem in HEMA with range and covering with weapons. They generally get hit a lot until they've learned some weapons. People with a background in modern fencing, reenactment, kendo etc, have a way bigger advantage.
Mike's a VERY SMART MARKETER! and he is reaching audiences that wouldn't find him by having others respond to him! LOL
Yes he is but he does not keep this audience meaning he needs to do this quite often.
I stopped paying any sort of attention to icy Mike a long time ago when he in effect said a knife isn't an effective weapon, and that someone attacking you with a knife and getting slashed or stabbed to the arms and chest isn't serious in a confrontation. As someone who's seen several 'knife fights' and stabbings over the years its fairly obvious to see he's chatting serious amounts of shit and doesn't actually appreciate what bladed implements or even blunt force trauma can actually do to the average person.
Icy Mike has also done detailed videos about extremely brutal knife techniques with experts. & promoted self-defense knives too. Some of his claims may just be to troll or perhaps he goes wherever the money is depending on the day.
What's funny about H2H is how much he includes HEMA into his training without realizing it, specifically with his knives. There were two bits that annoyed me the most: One came at the end when he criticized someone for using historical tactics by using the wall to his advantage. The second was the criticism of using the old manuals. He said it was like using medicine from the 14th century while ignoring the 1000s of years of history behind the manuscripts.
Yup. These people were just as smart as we are. And they fought a heck of a lot more. Yeah....there were times of relative peace in many local areas, but the world was full of warrior societies, and there were no police as we know them.
And that's not to mention the almost constant conflict, invasions, and full on wars.
I mean hard 2 hurt did make it pretty clear he was speaking strictly in a home defense situation I.e. some random person breaking into your house rather than a sword fight with another trained fighter. Hell he even said "if you're doing HEMA to fight another person who does HEMA good on you." Just kinda seems like people latched on to the "HEMA is useless" thing and ignored the context of the situation he was talking about.
because he says at the end the MMA fighter is better at dealing with a home burglar with a sword than the hema practitioner with a sword.
he says it at the end. that somebody ignorant about how to use the weapon he is going to use to defend himself is better than the guy who knows lol. imagine telling that to a modern soldier. "you are gonna go to war in the vietnam? lol just do jiu jitsu and muay thai don't bother learning how to use the M16".
He is baiting by the way Matt. He always does this. He also said side kicks (the straight push kick from a bladed stance) were useless in martial arts at some point lmao. I think he knows what gets the click bait done & he always doubles down on extremely one sided generalized opinions for this reason hahaha.
I know the game and how to play it 😉
@@scholagladiatoria he bait's you, you use the bait for clicks of your own and we get to watch the entertainment and learn. everyone wins!
Reminds me of what Geoff Thompson said about working the doors. He'd got black belts in a bunch of different martial arts including Judo and Karate, but he found when the sh!t hit the fan he'd get choice paralysis. Instead he worked out a system he called the Fence that told him who was going to turn violent, and a pre-emptive strike, a punch some people have described as the hardest punch they've ever experienced or witnessed, to the liver or solar plexus or throat, which Geoff says most of the time felled them like a slaughtered ox. Most people kicking off aren't trained fighters - they're drunk people. Most fights he'd get into as a doorman weren't duels, and he made sure of that with his psychological techniques - giving them a way to back down honourably, trying to de-escalate but if they crossed the fence, BAM, fastest hardest punch ever like he's breaking bricks, on the ringleader. That doesn't need an expert boxer, just the man who's practised the same strike 10,000 times.
Likewise, if someone's breaking into your house, what's the chances they're a master swordsman?
I'd agree though - if some roadman type's coming into your house with a machete & you're an expert in HEMA dagger fighting or you know FMA and have sparred properly, pressure testing your techniques, you're better off than knowing nothing.
Personally, I really want to see the HEMA circle overlap with hard2hurt and the circle he runs in. I really think that they both could learn a lot from each other. I've been pushing Jesse Enkamp to collab with some HEMA people, but I'm just one voice in an endless internet. I encourage anybody reading this comment to go check out hard2hurt, Jesse Enkamp, Sensei Seth, Ramsay Dewey, Martial Arts Journey, McDojo Life, and anyone they collab with. History buffs will be very interested in Jesse Enkamp's channel. He's very knowledgeable about the practice and history of karate, and has traveled all over Asia to find its roots.
Sensei Seth has done some videos where he takes beginner weapons classes. I know he has one on fencing and an African weapon martial art. Not sure if he has one on Hema specifically
You should train the Icy Mike home Burglar scenario in your HEMA club Matt. It's not like HEMA doesn't allow for mixed weapon competitions. A baseball bat / crowbar / knife are the most common Burglar weapons because they also double as tools to get inside the house. So these those against Longsword, Sabre, Arming Sword + Buckler, etc. See how your students fare. I'm sure they are gonna do super well. The Bat or the Crowbar is specially slow & a Sword is balanced to be nimble.
I'm guessing they will have to grab the Bat 1 handed closer to it's point of balance so the Burglar has a hand free to grapple, otherwise his chances of dying to the sword as very high.
Also please post the results in a video I'm interested.
Hard2hurt is just a crazy gringo.
It might sound crude but probably the more practical martial arts to train in for real world self defense would be systems that revolve around knives, daggers, or sticks. Because in the modern age a variation of these weapons is the most likely culprit for assault if a firearm is not involved. Also because the most likely object that a person will probably be able grab in the moment is a variation of one of these things: knife, scissors, screw driver, broom handle, cane, ect.. It might be easy to aggress upon someone without training, but if your are the one being attacked knowing how to defend yourself from these weapons could be the difference between life and death. knowing how to block and a fist will not help you when your assailant is wielding a blade, even a small one. Even a light brush with a sharp edge can cause an incapacitating or fatal injury if it hits the right spots (inside of joints or throat specifically). When a weapon enters the equation a macho mentality will get you killed fast.
i KNEW IT thx matt i was waiting for this XD
Skillsets are situation specific. I'm a karate black belt, done some judo, kobudo (okinawan weapons) boxing and fenced sabre for 4 years. While I might be able to combine those skills successfully against a Hema beginner - a skilled practitioner is going to slice me to ribbons because I don't have the specific skills, especially timing and distancing required for HEMA.
I train MMA and HEMA; also, I am subscribed to both you guys.
I mean, with an understanding of exothermic chemical reactions and electronic signalling, both MMA and HEMA become a moot point, and best of all, no hours of drilling, and there's little immediate physical risk to yourself as long as you have the adequate comprehension of the chemicals at play.
This game is fun, let's keep going.