Protecting the HEMA name

[Frede Jensen]

How should we as a community go about protecting the name HEMA?

I ask because in Denmark a lot of reenactors now claim to be doing HEMA. But in reality they are just doing reenactment fighting with fencing masks on.

Especially amongst viking reenactors the trend of doing "viking HEMA" has really started to take on. And it is very clear that they are doing reenactment with the head added as a target. Usually I would not be bothered but they are starting to get more and more publicity and i fear they might end up being thought of as real HEMA. It has started to become somewhat of a selling point for various reenacters, because somehow you sound more serious and cool if you say you do HEMA.

I don't know how it is in the rest of the world. Is it something to worry about?

- F -

[Lyceum]

By fighting.

[Cutlery Penguin]

Personally I don't really care about the name. What I do stands or falls on its own merits.

That being said quality always comes through, Ashida Kim might claim to be a ninja but I doubt Hatsumi would agree.

[Phil C]

How should we as a community go about protecting the name HEMA?

By stop thinking that there is a "community", and doing what you do well and not giving a toss what other people do.

[Wolfgang Ritter]

Well, it's an annoyance, but then again, it also annoys me to see "reenactors" that give a shite about accuracy and historically correct details of their portrayal.
Same with HEMA.
What I'll do against that? Well, telling them and the audience that they're wrong when they claim (please note, I don't care what they do in their spare time, I only open my mouth once I notice some of them "educating" others) to be ding reenactment, HEMA or whatever.

[Joeli]

There were once some Danish re-enactor-HEMAists/reality-escapists that came to train with us in Helsinki. Oh boy. I share your pain. Especially the talking part was an enlightening experience. They taught me so much, all the time. Even while I was trying to train with them, which some of them respectfully declined.

If you are concerned with that, how is it working with that CAA you have. I thought it's very purpose was to stand slightly apart from the kind of "hema" you don't want to be associated too strongly with, and to serve as a public face of the kind of values you stand for.

I know it's not going to be easy, with public viewing both parties much the same, adults playing with fake swords. At best any argument is met with benevolent ignorance, I'm afraid. The chances are that it is easier to assimilate the re-enactors to "proper" hema than it is to make a difference between "us" and "them" in the eyes of the public, or even to the general martial arts community. The question is, is it worth such an effort or is the time better spent on honing the thing you do the best, and get better at it. Respect, and maybe even acknowledgement is then possibly earned over time.

[scholadays]

By fighting.

Or by fighting.

[SeanH]

Fighting thirded.

That being said quality always comes through, Ashida Kim might claim to be a ninja but I doubt Hatsumi would agree.

That's GRANDMASTER Kim to you. Disrespect will lead to ninjers shining torchlights in your face while you sleep.

[bigdummy]

Yeah if they are using fencing masks and not requiring a ton of rules, the historical techniques should allow historically trained fighters to do well in their tournaments; if they are requiring a ton of rules which prevent historical techniques then you can point that out.

But the natural tendency is going to be for them to make rules which favor their own guys, so I think this is going to be as much a problem as the sport fencers are going to be. HEMA is in for a major challenge in the next few years.

BD

[Joeli]

There's nothing to prove, just enjoy the riddle of making the treatises alive again. Bigdummy, I dunno even about the historical techniques... It was only a short time ago when the armed combat and tactics dudes were trashing hema people in tournaments, this was around the first world championships. I don't know what happened to them next though, haven't heard of them since. Their paradigm was just general martial arts curiosity to use rubber longswords as training weapons, combined with athleticism and general fighting skills. I haven't heard them give a rat's arse about adhering to historical technique, thought they are no strangers to it either. Still they did pretty well.

I see no point in trying to prove anything by trying to make historical techniques work in setting up mock fights. Everyone knows by now that the techniques can be used effectively. Heck, many of the epee techniques are present in Liechtenauer blossfechten. But individual techniques alone do not make an effective marital art. HEMA does not have unified tactical framework, physical conditioning program, consistent pedagogical framework, single application context, one true martial approach, anything. Why should it rise up against anything else, and if it did, which of the myriad values would it defend? And remember also that when you pick a facet of HEMA and start proving something by defending those aspects, you are not only attacking the other martial arts/sports/activities, you are also making a statement against the rest of HEMA. The chances are, that those are also the only people who will really notice what you are doing, since they share the same events, forums and equipment.

But maybe such things are viable to be built around one treatise source, one competitive event, one martial art federation, and so on. And please go ahead doing so. There will be some friction, but as long as any statements would not be forced to envelop the whole HEMA, I don't think it will be a problem.

[bigdummy]

ACT never dominated at any HEMA event I ever attended. The rest of that seems like a bunch of bullshit rationalization to me. Now that HEMA has a certain cache, there are going to be a ton of fakes and half-asses coming from all directions; re-enactors, eppeists, LARPers, whatever, who are going to try and call what they do Historical fencing. The one thing the rest of us have in common is reliance on Historical techniques.

I know that everyone here has their own experiences and observations, I personally have seen over the last 12 years that I've been involved with this actively, the people who were fighting the best and winning the most in every from of competition, formal and informal, have been the ones using the historical techniques most accurately. Period. This pattern has continued to reinforce itself at an accelerating rate in spite, or because of, the increasing numbers of outsiders coming into this from their own fighting backgrounds.

If people come from other traditions, and beat us, it means we aren't applying ourselves to the historical manuals. I think it's a good challenge, in fact without it I think we wouldn't have come along half as far as we have. Of course everyone has different levels of conditioning, approaches to pedagogy and all the rest of it, but the one constant I see is the historical basis of training. I have seen enough that I personally am convinced that this is sufficient to protect the legacy of what we have built up in any truly open competetive format, and I've yet to see any evidence that it's not the case.

As for ACT, f*ck 'em. Send 'em down here.

BD

[Joeli]

Bigdummy,

I think I get what you mean by the fact that the dudes that adhere to historical techniques are the ones that are also successful. I just don't think it is the whole truth. Also to me, it seems to me that you are judging the value of hema by the success achieved in a certain rule set. I'm just giving a neutral nod towards the people who might be concerned about the notation that franco-belgian-nylon-liechetnauer (or any such facet) = hema.

I am not 100% convinced that it's always adherence to historical techniques that brings all the fencers to the first place, but that they have a good training regime which creates fighters that do well in the said events (and that there's not necessarily anything historical about the regime), *and* they fight well enough because of their regime that they could do well with any sensible set of techniques. I see no definite causality between historical sources and tournament success. You are probably going to write this off, but how else even in the context of Liechtenauer techniques the repertoire of things being used in competitions is so narrow? Wouldn't the person who can do the largest amount of stuff win if the historical techniques alone are the key to success? The repertoire being used is growing, and I hear outsiders laud that new historical things are being tried out to novel success in the tournament circles. But then again I hear talks from the fighters themselves about exploiting areas of excellence in the ring, in other words knowing couple of things really well and capitalizing on those while trying to deny your opponent using theirs. Is that just gamesmanship, and has it less to do with HEMA, or is it some general martial art wisdom? Is the approach embraced by the sources? I do know examples of dudes who do really well, and are only interested in the drills and exercises made by their instructors, they are themselves pretty ignorant of sources. But then again, I can think of counter examples of every four direction between doing well and knowing sources. I am not sure which examples are just outliers and which are a result of disciplined training of the right kind.

I don't disagree with the content of what you are saying, but I a sceptical of the tone, which seems to me to be embracing certain facet of hema, and the belief that the adherence to the sources will be the best thing in any reasonable application context. Sure, it's a challenge to do so, and great if it will be proven to be an ultimate truth, but I wouldn't be so confident about it at this point.

Edited for some clarity. Should not vomit walls of text in a hurry, sorry.

[bigdummy]

I am confident of it but I don't have any systemic proof, I am only going by what I have seen.

And what I have seen is indeed people exploiting individual techniques, and winning matches that way, but then I see them in turn being defeated by people who use the historical counter to those techniques, which in most cases are pretty counter-intuitive and come as a surprise to people who aren't familiar with the historical sources.

I think people really don't take the sources seriously until they are confronted with the necessity to fence with very precise adherence to them. Everyone fights sloppy in their guards, some guy starts just hitting people on their hands, becoming a specialist in this... certain people train effectively to stay more properly in their guards and perform proper displacements, counters, and exploitations against this technique incorporating the various subtle nuances from the manuals that they originally glossed over. They start beating the 'specialists' and the one-trick pony's. Then someone finds another hole people are not covering, and the process repeats itself. This is how we are learning to be well-rounded in basic shit while also learning slightly more advanced.

I think we are only using some small percentage of the historical techniques, most of what we are doing is an approximation, and we are still too weak on the basics to plunge into advanced techniques, except against amateurs. But we are in fact seeing some, because some people have just enough of the basic skills down to survive to the intermediate level of the fight, and have practiced some techniques or technique from this intermediate level sufficiently to pull them off successfully when the opportunity presents itself. I saw some of this most recently at the last FA in Houston in March.

Due to the rapid pace of growth in the advance of techniques, (small compared to the repertoire available to us, but large in the context of the fighting success in the tournament circuits) I think those people who are just copying others and not studying and learning are left half-a-step behind. Right now all of the top fencers I know are fighter-researchers, again admittedly out of a small sampling of people, a few score maybe, who I've met in the active tournament scene.

So I am confident, at this point, of the trend I think I see, but I am not at all confident that this will be sufficient to 'protect the HEMA name' to quote the OP, if as I think is likely, the sport fencers, the LARPers, the Reenactors and others adjust their rule -sets to suit what they already do and call it HEMA. Then we are all going to be rather embarrassed, and will probably have to find some other name by which to call ourselves. Mediocrity is a strong force, like a glacier of stupid.


BD

[John H]

I thought I’d bud in on something as well. As I see it knowledge of sources is not important to ability to fight, it’s important to the ability to teach. Martial arts is just knowledge of physical movements, and the sources wrote down those physical movements, and some wrote theories of when and how to use them. Before the written sources it was an oral art. The historical sources just allow us to see into what was oral and passed from teacher to student, or from experienced fighter to inexperienced fighter. The sources allow us to gain that experience from what was written rather than re-creating it by constant fighting with the weapons. When you combine the fighting and the knowledge written down, you get the most efficient way to learn when you don’t have an experienced teacher.

Right now we do not have an abundance of ‘teachers’ that have the full knowledge of how to fight with the weapons. Thus is should be no surprise that the guys studying texts and fighting will excel faster than those just fighting. But once these same guys get old and start teaching, they shouldn’t ever need to bring up the texts in their classes. When a student questions them they can reference that they have used it many times and it works or they can demonstrate on that student. Only when those students start to exceed their teachers or wish to teach themselves, will the texts be needed.

As to tournaments/fights: fights are won with basics, not fancy advanced techniques. IMO this is why we only see basics in the later military manuals. Plays or techniques are specific responses to specific actions. Two seasoned fighters who both know those techniques will generally not get into those situations while they try to put the other guy in that situation. I tend to see more advanced techniques when one fighter is completely outclassed by the other guy and he can ‘show off.’

As to protecting the name. We have a few tournaments at Ren faires around here. I hate playing dress up but some of the best Rapier fighting happens there. At the faire I’ve seen the groups who are doing HEMA and those who are just LARP’ing…you can tell the difference and I haven’t once seen them enter the tournaments, perhaps they use to and found the competition too steep, I don’t know. In the end just like other martial arts groups, we will get known by our reputation. If one group puts out great fighters and another looks good, they will attract those people who are looking for that type of activity.

[bigdummy]

John,

I find I couldn't disagree more. I hope you will forgive my candor.

The sources allow us to gain that experience from what was written rather than re-creating it by constant fighting with the weapons. When you combine the fighting and the knowledge written down, you get the most efficient way to learn when you don’t have an experienced teacher.

What you fail to understand is that the historical sources represent many generations of fighting knowledge derived during a time when the fighting was being used for real. Each of those facts are equally important. We have already had generations play-fighting and they never came anywhere near the historical techniques, many of which are very counter-intuitive. We would no more have figured these out from a lifetime of fighting in SCA or LARP combat any more than a thousand monkeys typing on typewriters for 50 years will come up with King Lear.

But once these same guys get old and start teaching, they shouldn’t ever need to bring up the texts in their classes. When a student questions them they can reference that they have used it many times and it works or they can demonstrate on that student. Only when those students start to exceed their teachers or wish to teach themselves, will the texts be needed.

This is based on the assumption that by the time the current best fighters get old (many of them already are) we will basically know all, or a substantial amount of, the fighting systems which are in the manuals. I think this is extremely unlikely, and I believe the most effective teachers will continue to be those who make use of the books early and often... and their clubs will benefit as much as the individual students will when new insights into these cryptic writings and images will emerge from fresh eyes. I also personally think it's going to be a couple of generations before we have really come close to emulating the techniques in at least the older (pre-17th Century) manuals. But I admit this is purely a guess on my part.

As to tournaments/fights: fights are won with basics, not fancy advanced techniques. IMO this is why we only see basics in the later military manuals. Plays or techniques are specific responses to specific actions. Two seasoned fighters who both know those techniques will generally not get into those situations while they try to put the other guy in that situation. I tend to see more advanced techniques when one fighter is completely outclassed by the other guy and he can ‘show off.’

I disagree with this categorically. The reason that later military manuals only covered basics (and focused on simple weapons) is because they were for training conscripts and institutionally taught professionals who would fight in large armies of relatively unskilled (and inexpensive) combatants. In other words, cannon fodder. There is nothing more sophisticated or better about later training manuals, it just represents something that is meant to be taught to a 19 year old kid over the course of 6 weeks versus something which would be learned by a man over the course of a lifetime. An analogy would be for training a Combat Medic vs. a Doctor. You may have more use for larger numbers of Medics on the battlefield in say, World War 1, but it doesn't mean the Medic is more sophisticated than a brain surgeon or a cardiologist.

Techniques in the tournament circuit are getting more sophisticated already, just in the last 5 or 6 years that we have had large international tournaments. This trend will continue as the quality of the entry level fencers increases.

And while I agree in casual sparring you will sometimes see an experienced fencer performing advanced techniques on newbies to show off, (and I realize I'm kind of contradicting what I wrote above) personally I have seen that in the tournaments, the opposite of what you describe is often true. Newbies can be most reliably defeated using simple techniques, cut their legs or their hands for example because they aren't covering or they can be easily feinted. Experienced fencers fighting more closely aligned with historical techniques pose problems which sometimes requires more sophisticated solutions. I think this is why you often see a 'cleaner' and 'better looking' fight between two experienced guys compared to an experienced guy fighting a newby.

In terms of technique progression I think the higher echelon of competitive fencers are still only going 1 or 2 levels deep most of the time, occasionally rising to maybe 3 levels. Most people are still in the 0 to 1 ... i.e. they don't even have the opening techniques correct most of the time, both in terms of those physical movements and those pesky "theories of when and how to use them" which many people skipped over in the enthusiastic early days of HEMA looking for the 'cool stuff', but are returning to by necessity today, and finding answers to the questions which derive from the tournament circle.

BD

[Joeli]

BD, it would be great if what you say turns out to be true, but I will remain a bit sceptical (I am referring to your teply to mine, not John's). What you describe is still within the tournament scene, and even further a subset of it. The techniques and their counterintuitive counters form a lovely mindfuck game, which I think is the best part in HEMA, but it also comes with a requirement of common set of techniques and a common approach to the fight. This is not at all possible with all of the sources. I have my bone to chew about fiore vs liechtenauer bouts. Cross source sparring is full of oddities whre you are hard pressed to find clean game. What's Fiore's answer to mutieren? How would Ledall answer to blade grabs from Fiore? How would a person applying thibault to longsword answer to Marozzo's perugian manouver? When people from different schools meet, a lot of the situations they might encounter is for the first time, without an answer from their chosen sources. So what fo they do? The same as larpers, wannabe ninjas and other adults playing with fake swords - they make shit up on the spot. If this can be averted intelligently, then great. I spent a long time studying similar situations in two sources to make people be able to face and handle these undefined oddities. In the end, I am just throwing my hands up, tired of making shit up. In the meantime, I have ended up helping out theatric fencers, larpers, reenactors and boffer fighters to study the souces. I am immensely glad to help the largest larper organization in the country with their combat workshops. I rekindled a senior fight director's interest in hema while fighting in the national opera. I have challenged boffer fighters in their game and shown rapier and messer tricks for them to use. Hell, a boffer fighter gave me a run for my money by studying wallerstein and getting me with a nasty false edge bleiben with nylon swords. To the day I am not sure what a valid counter would be, at best I have educated guesses. If I help these people fight according to sources, does it mean you would have to call your art kunst des fechtschules just in case they will start referring to historical fencing, even though that's not neccessarily what they are all about? Did you know that in russia schools are calling treatise-inspired stage fighting with sport fencing terminology, HEMA? Did you know that just last year John Clements went to tutor these schools in his art? Maybe it would indeed clarify things out if different scenes within hema would be called something more specific, and then there are all these grey areas, within and without hema. In the mean time, what I do is HEMA, except when I borrow an exercise from epee or kendo, or a technique application from systema or bagua. Then I just try to point out that it comes from somewhere else, but I am applying it int the context of a hema treatise because I think it would be usefull. Does this all make me an enemy of HEMA in the eyes of some other hemaist? Quite possibly. But I am open to suggestions as I don't hold a strong opinion, other than trying to keep things as clear and bullshit free as possible.

[Mink]

The case seems quite simple.

If you consider that HEMA is predominantly about the study of sources, with all sorts of practical experimentation aimed at perfecting the understanding of the sources, then it cannot really be "taken over" by any existing activity. Or rather if it is, it will still further the understanding of the sources, which is fine by me

If you consider that HEMA is predominantly about fighting in safe conditions and pulling useful information from sources to perfect your performance, then of course other activities will start looking at sources if it helps them, and of course they're going to play with the same weapons if it's popular. And they won't be "held back" by considerations of historicity, realism or adherence to the sources. So they'll develop quicker and yes that could become a problem.

BD's hypothesis is that we'll be able to design rulesets that perpetually favour historical techniques over anything else. I'm not sure it will remain true for long once dedicated sporting types enter the scene.

Regards,

[bigdummy]

Joeli I can't answer all of your hypothetical questions, I think in the long run we will see which trends prove out, at the moment we can only see small hints of them. Yes of course people are borrowing from all kinds of things, bagua, boxing, FMA, Jianshu, kendo, MMA, epee fencing, LARP, SCA, badminton whatever. And there are all sorts of hybrid forms out there and these are multiplying, this was one of the points raised in the OP. I think in the most 'open format' competitive environments those folks emphasizing the historical sources most effectively will continue to dominate. But this is something we will just have to see over time, and you are certainly correct to be skeptical if you don't recognize the same pattern.

As to your concerns about cross-source sparring as you call it, I again can't answer them definitively in any general way. But I can refer to a specific anecdotal example from my own life. I know precious little about Fiore, in fact about half of what I do know I learned in a crash-course introductory class last year about two hours before I fought for the first time ever with an experienced Fiorista, an instructor with a major club far better trained than I am. We faced off with metal longswords and fairly light protective gear in this middle of this guys training space, among his students and fellow instructors.

It was clear during my beginners class that Fiore had a different approach to longsword than I was familiar with, so I tried to apply the principles of the KDF which seemed applicable. I noted immediately a strong control of the center-line, with efficient and ergonomic small movements of the feet, body, and hands. I didn't see a way to wind against this very effectively frankly. But I also noticed a fairly static footwork, especially in what we call in the KDF the zufechten, (which is something I've seen in many Fioristas, though I don't know if that is part of the system or simply a common habit among modern adherents). Essentially I saw this guy as a very good #2, "Artful and Sharp" role from Meyers four roles. After I tried fighting this guys fight a couple of times and got punished for it, I adopted a #3 role from Meyers four roles, "Cunning and deceitful". I moved around a lot, probing and feinting, while being very careful about my range. This guy was often strong at the bind, very effectively controlling the centerline, but by his being strong in the bind, I was able to apply the KDF principle of using weakness against strength and make quick 'pulling' cuts from the true to the false-edge.

This worked fairly well and I was able to acquit myself reasonably, without just making things up out of thin air. I honestly don't know how much depth of theory and technique you have to draw upon from Fiore, I know you have less material but I expect there is a great deal of depth in what you do have. I also know that Fiore himself was familiar with German fencers and very likely knew the KDF, so both systems should have a way to 'talk to' each other, if you can find it.

The KDF at any rate, does not require your opponent to fight within the rules or expectation of the KDF system. To the contrary, the zettel and the various glossa are always advising you how to deal with various types of opponents and techniques ranging from the crude to the subtle. So for me, I have so far found that there are applicable principles that I can bring to a fight (and even, to other things) rather than mere puzzle pieces which only fit with other pieces of the same set.

BD

[bigdummy]

BD's hypothesis is that we'll be able to design rulesets that perpetually favour historical techniques over anything else. I'm not sure it will remain true for long once dedicated sporting types enter the scene.

Regards,

My thesis is that a minimum of rules, of any configuration, will favour historical techniques. It's only by creating artificial and complex rules systems that non-historical techniques will dominate. And dedicated sporting types have already entered the scene. I've even met some.

BD

[John H]

If HEMA is about studying the texts, what happens when the texts have taught us what they can? Perhaps this idea is so foreign to many of you. I get the feeling from some people, not referring to everyone here, who seem to regard the texts like the bible, endless layers of things to teach and you can never stop learning from that one text. But in all seriousness at some point you will say, ok I understand this, I need to seek knowledge somewhere else. It may happen now or in five generations from now, but at some point we can say, we have learned all we can from this book. Does HEMA stop existing because 90% of the practitioners no longer need a text involved to be taught? Are these students that don’t look at the books somehow lesser HEMA practitioners than their teachers who are studied in the text? What happens when a guy who never cared for a text wins tournament after tournament under the tutelage of those who are studied and fought people who spent much time with their nose in a book?

I bring this up for two reasons. One I can teach the first three levels of longsword, Rapier and Sabre at our school without opening a book. I do not need to ever say, in X book it says Y. If someone wants to know why, and I always encourage questioning authority, I can show them why. I have read 10+ threads on Bicorno debating why this and why that, and seen my head instructor show the technique in five seconds that answered in my mind every question that was debated to exhaustion over many pages of text. When it says ‘it’s stronger,’ I’ve seen people looking for metaphysical answers to why is it stronger, when he has merely pushed on the blade (it was strong,) had them move their arm, pushed again and watched it collapse, bam simple answer…it is stronger.

The second reason is from my days of Karate, even the black belts didn’t get shown any type of text but that does not diminish their ability to fight in the style that was taught them. The title the head instructor there now carries is ‘teacher of teachers’ which is a good title, as in the school there are those who teach low level classes, and those who teach high level classes. He teaches those who become teachers of all the levels.

There is a level of confidence that is shown when you do not need a book to ‘teach for you.’ You may not like the wording I am using but that is what it looks like to people who are used to training under a teacher from a different art. My old fencing coach never needed a book, he just did it. My old Karate teacher spoke with authority and never pulled a book out, he had knowledge while this guy is reading something I can go get on my own.

The other side of the point is, not needing or using the texts does not equate to lack of understanding or possession of such texts. In My mind not needing the texts equates to a full understanding of the material. I believe at some point, and it should already be starting now, the texts will be reserved for the teachers to debate with other teachers. We should have 'teachers of teachers' who can turn a student into someone who has knowledge and the ability to transfer it to others. At that point the texts become a crutch to the teaching. This still allows those teachers to argue the texts amongst themselves.

Now I feel like I am preaching…