This post explores the notion of speed in our sources, starting with the explicit admonitions to be quick, the reasons one needs to be quick, and then details the distortions to martial moves that are brought by low-speed work. I believe this information is important to keep in mind when discussing training methodology.
Ceci est une version française de cet article, suite à des demandes de lecteurs intéressés ! Il traite d’une nouvelle façon de représenter la distribution de masse des épées, à la fois intuitive, visuelle et objective.
The mass distribution of swords is a well-known component of their performance and handling feel. Although sword makers have to control it through a variety of means, from a user perspective, only three parameters are needed to completely describe it: total mass, centre of gravity, and radius of gyration. They are well known of physicists. However, their values are not in direct relation with what we perceive when using a sword. Because of this, their usefulness has been questioned and their measurement in the sword community is still scarce. In this article, I will demonstrate how to build a more visual representation of the mass distribution of swords, with an application on five swords of my collection.
This article explores the history of the notion of centre of percussion, how it has been conceived by physicists and how it was then transmitted to sword people and modified to better suit their practical experience.
In the 16th century, cuts begin to be sorted according to the portion of the arm that moves while delivering the cut. This post explores the classification of cuts and the various tactical considerations that can be extracted from the source material.
How to move when cutting with a sword? While the question may seem simple, the answers are actually quite complex and diverse. In this post, I want to expose some things that can be found in sources to inform our cutting mechanics. This provides a starting point for experimentation, interpretation and training that is firmly grounded in history.
As I’ve exposed in a previous post the term HEMA does not come with a good description of the goals or an exact prescription of the approach. The study of historical European martial arts can use a variety of methods, and depending on the goals of the student the activity can take different forms. There does not have to be a universal agreement on that, at some point it’s just different strokes for different people. The rest of this post is just a clarification of my personal views on these topics.
I will write quite a lot about HEMA in these pages. What is it? It stands for Historical European Martial Arts. Read on for a more developed definition and some observations…
Here is a link to another article describing how geometric methods can be used to represent and analyze the mass distribution of swords and other weapons.