Art of the Sword

Back of head protection, it's one of those things (like a box) that you don't need until you really need it. Simply as protection from hooking shots or from instinctively turning your the head. I should make plain first what purpose this is intended for. This is intended to cover the back of my head during full intention sparring but where back of head blows are rare. From watching international tournaments, where there seems to be a large number of back of heads blows following wild and uncontrolled explosive actions (particularly in Longsword) I would have to say this isn't intended for that environment. In that situation wrapping your head in a full encompassing protector makes sense. So, I bought a SPES Vectir a while ago but it isn't compatible with Leon Paul masks and when I adapted it still wasn't satisfied with the large gaps left at the top and sides when you are moving around. Unlike "normal" fencing masks Leon Paul masks don't have a ...

Initial thoughts on tournament: It definitely appears to work better to have judges call all hits, not because they are good at it but because at least it's a level playing field of incompetence that affects all participants equally. Therefore we had a lot of grumbling about the judges but it didn't progress into outright whining because, well people whos hits weren't called also had hits against them not called. This also, as we thought, tended to favour fighters who gave clean, decisive blows over scrappers and snipers. Having said that, all the training had paid off and the standard of judging was much higher than in previous years. As per usual, a lot of the outcome was determined by the luck of the draw. Many of the better fighters were paired up and went out early, whereas many of the newer fighters were paired up and went into the later rounds. I think that is part of the charm of a tournament but I think that some kind of experimentation with a seeding pro...