It's no Art.

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"It's no art to perform a textbook technique in a textbook situation. The Art is to spot an opportunity in a messy sparring/fighting conditions." 

Anton Kohutovič

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10 simple tips for improving HEMA sparring

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Shamelessly inspired by this article: 1. Game I agree that relaxation is important. Being tense means you're thinking about being tense and not smiting the other guy. One of the simplest ways I've found to do this is to play more. This means treating sword fighting more like a game than a serious life and death situation because the only thing in danger in our pretend sword poking is our egos. Here are a whole bunch of games to help induce a relaxed mindset. 2. Train fast and get faster Not many sword fighting sources have ponderous complex actions but rather lots of simple actions done at the correct time and measure very, very fast. Want to be fast? Then recognise that what you are doing now is actually slow and do specific drills to improve your explosive speed. Just try this and see what I mean: Throw a glove in the air and do as many cuts as you can before it falls. Go as fast as you can while maintaining good body mechanic s. If you're loosing good mechani...
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HEMA games

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I've spoken about this before  but I feel that one of the key pillars of successful swordsmanship is developing a good mental attitude. Being relaxed and adopting a playful mindset allows you apply your knowledge gained from study and drilling to successful sparring. Like with strength or technique there is training you can do to develop this. Training for a good mental attitude is partly about training to reduce stress and reducing the likelihood that you will freeze under pressure. It is also partly about encouraging you to understand the linkages between techniques, how to apply the technique in different situations and how a technique fits into the bigger strategic picture. So, what's a solution? Games. Here's a list of some that I like to use with descriptions (I'll keep updating this list as I come up with new games): Without swords Slappy facey / tag -  based on a childhood game from my upbringing in Scotland, slappy facey in it's natural form is...
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Thrusting in Meyer's longsword

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"I will here remind the friendly reader at the outset, since there is a great difference between sword combat in our time and how it was practised by our predecessors and the combat masters of old, that this account of the cuts will only cover what is currently in use and pertinent to the sword. And as to the practice of former days, when they fought dangerously both with cuts and thrusts, I will discuss it in its proper and separate place." - Meyer Meyer is interesting when it comes to thrusting. He directly says thrusting has fallen out of fashion and it's a great difference between his art and the art of the past. Some people have taken to mean that Meyer does not "do" thrusting, that the whole system is a type of "sport" fencing and therefore flawed. However, in true HEMA style, I would argue that this is incorrect. Mainly because there are examples of thrusting in his long sword, these are just a couple I found within a couple of minutes flic...
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