ImplicitAssembler posted:

What the hell is being 'Nordic'? (Aside from actually *being* Nordic)

Siivola posted:

I'm strictly medium-sized but I'm Nordic as heck. I don't think I sweat enough for this kind of stuff? I just get red and damp and then tap out.

Modern fencing's given me a tiny bit larger a gas tank than I used to have, though. Everyone else tapped out first at the HEMA club.

ChocNitty posted:

I’ll be honest. I stereotype fencing as a sport for rich kids. Is this innacurate? Are there poor minorities that are accepted in the sport? It doesnt seem like theres any big money in the sport, so its persued by people who already have money, like polo or formula 3 racing.

your friend a dog posted:

my buddies went to a hema tournament and someone put their quillion through someones hand 8|

bessantj posted:

During the competition or did they just not like the guy?

Liquid Communism posted:

Sounds like someone needed better hand protection and/or to not try to block with their hand.

your friend a dog posted:

this is not the answer

Liquid Communism posted:

No, the refs pulling that dude's card because he's clearly not controlling the force of his strikes is the answer, but at the same time I'm big on overbuilding protective gear a little.

your friend a dog posted:

Agree but I'll effort post when I get back from work on why the culture leads to it happening

Internet Wizard posted:

He’s probably talking about his macho man SCA tourneys

Liquid Communism posted:

Please do. The HEMA tourney scene is a mystery to me.

your friend a dog posted:

Warning: effort post incoming



Alright. So, a little background - I don't know a whole bunch about HEMA either, as I'm not even sure there's an overarching governing body that specifies rules and judging standards. I'm coming from the perspective of someone who's done SCA (despite being outside the SCA) rapier fighting who's done a few HEMA tournaments. I'm going to discuss why I see HEMA has blow problems, and also why I dislike HEMA rapier fighters (as fighters, not as people), and think they're lovely fighters.

As a brief recap of the differences:

Blows:
HEMA: Blows halt the action entirely. Blows give points, with the least being limbs and then the body, and finally the head. Blows are entirely called by judges, HEMA fighters are expected to fight until the judges call a halt. In other words, they do not call their own shots.
SCA: Blows do not halt the action, although it's considered honorable to give your oponent time to reset if you've taken an extremity. If you make a legal blow to their arm, they lose that arm. If you make a legal blow to their leg, they lose all mobility. Head and body shots are created equal, but taking a head shot usually means you forfeit your after blow. Stop thrusts are a thing, so if I stick my point in your bicep as you're throwing a shot at my body, your shot wont count (probably). Shots are expected to be called by the individual fighters as they feel them. Shots may also be called back by fighters as they feel. If you ignore shots, everyone will know, and you will find yourself taking harder and harder shots until someone eventually decides to get you kicked out.

Protective equipment
This is a big deal.
HEMA: (Copy pasted from their combatcon rules). Appropriate Head protection: Masks with back of the head protection. This is HARD back of the head covering. Not soft. Trachea protection, that protects the throat from a direct thrust. Heavy padded HEMA jackets or Padded Gambeson. Hard elbow protection, that covers the 3 points of the elbow. Hard Knee protection that covers the knee. Hard shelled hand protection. Groin protection for male fighters. Breast protection for female fighters. Shin and forearm protection are not essential but recommended. No exposed skin will be allowed.

SCA: No skin showing. Must have gussets to protect the arm pits. Doublet must pass a punch test to stop you from getting gutted by a broken blade. Cups for men, breast protectors recommended but not required for women. Only requirement for back of the head protection is that no skin is showing, eg, a soft hood. You can wear more protection if you want, but it's not required, or expected that you'll need it.

I've bolded the important parts of the HEMA stuff.


Remember that hullaballoo a while back about how football injuries were actually increasing because the players were wearing more protection? In other words, once they thought they were safer, they started playing a lot harder - and injury rates climbed.

In both HEMA and the SCA, you have people worried about getting hit too hard. Each group tackles this problem in their own separate ways. In the SCA, people will complain about 'stiff' shots and expect you to modulate your blows so you're not hurting people. You won't actually get in trouble, however (although people might start trying to hit you back harder), unless you straight up hurt someone, in which case you can end up getting your fighter's card pulled and banned from fighting. So people try to control their blows out of respect for their opponents and a desire not to get kicked out. That being said, you're also expected to understand that it is a martial art, and a fighting sport, and that you will get hit. You will get bruises. Protection is as much your responsibility as it is your opponents. You can wear more equipment, but it's expected that you won't be taking hits that you'll actually need it on, and the stiff hits you do take occasionally are all part of the game. ("Learn to parry", as my old fencing master used to say) It's like MAD, but the opposite. Mutually assured protection.

In HEMA, they just pile on the equipment. Notice the differences in gear, especially the parts I bolded? They're wearing like 5x as much protective gear as the SCA fighters. Yet, in the few HEMA tourneys I've been to, multiple people have gotten hurt. As in, multiple people each time. In the dozens of SCA tourneys I've been in, I can't remember a single person getting seriously hurt. The over emphasis on protection leads to people assuming people won't get hurt (or at least they wont get hurt). And yet, it keeps happening anyways. So... why is that?

The first HEMA tourney I went to, after doing some rapier, I jumped into a saber tourney as well. Multiple people's tips started coming off of their sabers. In the SCA, if a single person's tip came off, they would halt all combat that person was involved in and make them leave until they fixed their poo poo. Lose your place in the rankings? Tough luck.
It didn't seem to phase the HEMA guys one bit. Normally I would've said something, but I had so little faith in their ability to hit me with their tips that I didn't bother. Anyways, in one of my matches, I saw an opening in my opponent and balestra'd forward. Not only did he lunge into my attack (and missed, but nevertheless) my saber came up at such an angle that it was impossible for it to flex.

To recap: He got hit by an uncapped tip (and they were shaped pointed too!), backed by a lunge backed by the momentum of my jump, AND he lunged directly into it. I immediately asked him if he was okay, and he patted his heavy gambeson and said that he had barely felt it. Hmm.

I've been hosed up a couple times by doing exactly what he did in the past, and getting punked in the gut by a tip hurts enough that you learn not to do it again. Nothing improves your form like the risk of going home with a fresh bruise or a headache from getting popped in the head. I guarantee you that HEMA fighter didn't learn a thing.

In the SCA, you're expected to control your sword. While sometimes it can get hurt to get hit, and sometimes you just get blasted, both you and your opponent are expected to remain in control of the weapon at all time. Cuts should be delivered with the intention of drawing, not bashing, and your thrusts should be hitting them from far enough away that they would've penetrated that fatal three inches - not go through them and come out their back. These are basic safety expectations, but nevertheless manage to breed good fighting and control as a byproduct. In HEMA rapier, they have none of that.

They fight like they're doing cut-and-thrust, with wild, out of control swings that you can see a mile away, delivered with percussive force and no thought for control before, during, and after. As I mentioned before, cuts in the SCA are expected to draw - preferably with the last six inches of your blade. (If you sit there trying to saw at someone with your forte, no one's going to take it.) In HEMA, if the judges see one of those cuts that look like they'd fit in better with a fantasy movie, they still call it good. There's no expectation of either realism or control.

Lastly, the judging is terrible. This sounds like a tangent, but it ties into the whole problem with safety they have. There's a reason why you're expected to call shots that hit you in the SCA - it's hard to see what fighters are doing, even when you're on either side of them. Not to puff myself up, but I've fought and trained under two men that I would consider #1 and #2 in the world in terms of sheer competitve and combat skill with a rapier. (Note - not sheer accuracy to specific historical style.) I've fought with my fellow class mates for years. If there's anyone who should be able to see and accurately judge their blows, it should be me. And yet - I still can't do it. It's hard as poo poo to tell who's hitting who, and if that blow actually hit his hand or if it just scuffed by the lining of his glove, or if that guy got popped in the head or if it was a max range extension that barely tickled his bib.

The HEMA judges are - at best - fighters so far below me I'd rank our first year students above them, and - at worst - not fighters at all. So how can they be expected to see blows? Every HEMA competition me or my buddys go to, we'll be hitting them in the arms, in the legs, in the torsos, sometimes over a dozen times before the judges notice a single hit.
I remember in my first HEMA tourney - I might've mentioned this earlier in the thread - stabbing a guy squarely in the stomach. The judges say nothing as he retreat, me following after him, with my sword still buried in his stomach. I won shortly thereafter. Was it because the judges finally noticed that I had stabbed him? Nope. He ended up tripping over himself as he retreated and falling on his knee. Never seen a knee twist out of position like that before. The dude nearly passed out. Could've been entirely avoided if he had just called the shot.

The need for these super obvious blows that even an untrained judge can see leads to all this wild, uncontrolled charging and large, swinging blows. In a normal sword fight - in the SCA - if you charge a better swordsman, you're going to get popped in the legs, in the stomach, in the head, long before you get in cut range. In HEMA, you can be hitting the dude in every part of his body and he'll keep berserker charging you as the judges stand there, oblivious.


So, to recap:
HEMA puts an over emphasis on protective equipment. Because they cannot feel hard blows, they never learn to modulate their shots. Their bitching about hard blows and demanding people shove on more safety equipment just means they fight all that more unsafely because they think their protective equipment will keep them 100% safe. Unfortunately, sometimes it fails or something sneaks through.

Their inability to call their own shots means they never learned to fight cautiously. The system rewards over the top, uncontrolled blows because those are easy for the judges to see. They don't worry about charging in because they expect their equipment to stop injuries and because subtle stopping shots are too fast for the judges to see.
They also have a bit of a macho attitude (and considering I bitched at people for complaining about hard shots, this should tell you something) when it comes to blows and injuries. They seem to think 'tougher than thou' is a thing, and how hard you can swing your blade at someone is a measure of skill. It's a clusterfuck of poor attitude and bad training.
(SAFETY RANT FINISHED HERE)


Addendum: (aka, the HEMA fighters suck rant)
All those things also contribute to HEMA fighters being such lovely fencers. If anyone ever introduces a post with being a HEMA fencer and then prepares to share their opinion, I give it a little roll of my eyes and immediately discard it. I'm not particularily fond of SCA fencers either - I think they train poorly, have poor motivation, and the wrong attitudes 90% of the time - but even their newbies of a year or two tend to be leagues better than HEMA fighters who've been doing it for half a decade. And when I say 'tend to', I mean 99% of the time.

Their point system discourages any sort of actual defense of the extremities. In the SCA, a good hand shot is literally right below an actual killing shot. Taking away the hand someone's been training with for years is a brutal setback for a fighter. In the SCA, people learn how to defend their hands - and after that, they learn how to turn a hand into a bait for an overeager opponent. Got a mobile opponent who's mastered distance, or simply outranges you? Take out his legs to ground him and give you a chance to finish him off. In HEMA, they don't give a poo poo. It's hard as hell for the judges to see a quick hand or knee shot, and even if they do somehow notice it, it's worth as little as 1/3 of an actual kill.

The judging system leads to lovely fighters being rewarded by worse judges, when their opponents blows somehow manage to go unseen, and their over the top swings being called immediately. I've had shots called on me when their sword never came close. Once, I had my opponent's dagger parried outside my body, my sword tip in his stomach, and the judges, watching, with his sword still outside on my dagger, called a double kill. HEMA fighters just rhino hide their way through a better fighter's skill and force them to hit them again, and again, and again, until they gently caress up and finally get chopped. HEMA fighters are not forced to take responsibility for their shots, and have zero sense of sportsmanship or competitive honor instilled into them. It breeds a bunch of poor, unchallenging fighters that are zero enjoyment to fight.

In short - HEMA is bad. Bad fighters, bad system, unsafe practices. At least, HEMA rapier is. I don't know about their other disciplines, but considering my old fencing master - who had never held a longsword in his life, who solely devoted himself to mastering the rapier - has gone undefeated in both steel and synthetic longsword, I'm guessing their other disciplines are just as poo poo. Sorry to rag on those of you that do HEMA and post in this thread, but as a word of advice: if you want to learn how to fight well, go do SCA. Do both if you want, but I guarantee you that if you find a decent teacher in the SCA to guide you, you'll find your skill level 'magically' improving.

Verisimilidude posted:

There's no point in bitching about bad technique or big strikes if that's going to win you a tournament, because at that point your goal should be to play to the tournament's rules. You paid upwards of several hundred dollars to be there, do whatever you have to do to get that medal, heck even if it means hurting someone, because it's the tournament organizer's job to deal with the potential for that outcome.

your friend a dog posted:

You should be fighting for the sake of being better at fighting. Encouraging lovely fighting because "thats what wins" is a terrible attitude

Ravenfood posted:

Or you guys should figure out if you're a sport or a martial art and work from there.

Verisimilidude posted:

There's no point in bitching about bad technique or big strikes if that's going to win you a tournament, because at that point your goal should be to play to the tournament's rules. You paid upwards of several hundred dollars to be there, do whatever you have to do to get that medal, heck even if it means hurting someone, because it's the tournament organizer's job to deal with the potential for that outcome.

your friend a dog posted:

And come to think of it, I remember this attitude being prevalent among HEMA fighters as well. Their lovely fighting only works in the confines of a shittier system, and that attitude is why all the HEMA fighters learn nothing. They treat it as a sport where being noticed by the garbage judges comes in far ahead of actually being able to use the weapon realistically. If you want that poo poo, go play with boffers. You're not doing "historal european" anything.

your friend a dog posted:

You should be fighting for the sake of being better at fighting. Encouraging lovely fighting because "thats what wins" is a terrible attitude

your friend a dog posted:

Why are the two mutually exclusive? It's not like karate, where it devolved into a bunch of useless katas and meditational exercises. The rapier was a dueling weapon, the treatises and manuals written about it aimed to teach students how to effectively use it. Learning rapier properly means being good at it and being able to use it effectively. And that's why when HEMA fighters come up against SCA fighters they get beaten into the ground.

Verisimilidude posted:

OK! Tell that to the HEMA-ists. Get involved in HEMA tournament organizing. Open a school and teach the way you want to teach. IDK I'm just tired of all the non-productive whining, particularly from people who don't even participate in HEMA.


Tournaments are, by nature, games with rules and a system. If you aren't playing the game to the system because of "honor" or because "the text says THIS" or whatever, I don't really have much to tell you when someone who is, even though they're a "worse" fencer, wins.

Liquid Communism posted:

Just remember, bitching about suicidal rapier fighters is period, if a bit late period. George Silver goes on at length.

your friend a dog posted:

Verisimilidude posted:

I've already explained my reasoning fairly soundly. I'm sorry you're too aggressive and easily triggered online to have a reasonable discussion about this. If you'd like, we can discuss it further in person at an event.

dupersaurus posted:

>Olympic fencers continue on joyfully turning on pretty lights without bickering about who killed who

dupersaurus posted:

>Olympic fencers continue on joyfully turning on pretty lights without bickering about who killed who

your friend a dog posted:

during the competition. they didnt even pull the guy lmao. he was like 6'3 270 and he went on to almost break my buddies fore arm with a cut (good thing he was wearing a bracer)

Liquid Communism posted:

Just remember, bitching about suicidal rapier fighters is period, if a bit late period. George Silver goes on at length.

your friend a dog posted:

its almost like the system works better when you don't have to wait for someone to visually confirm whether or not you hit at high speeds

Siivola posted:

Spot the epeeist.