Research and Discussion Forums

[Jay Vail]

You might find this little vid interesting. Note the defensive front kick the cop uses to keep the aggressive and resisting arrestee away. Codex Wallerstein advocates something similar, not unlike muay thai, BTW.

Note the flying side kick that brings down the arrestee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=p3g2DR-m9Gc

[Stephen Zeringue]

[Samuel Bena]

Just to add a detail that the olde English pre-queensbury pugilism/boxing contained a fair bit of infighting consisting of wrestling/gouging / headbutting and even kicking (especially folks that came from Devon , their "regional" style of wrestling included devastating shin kicking/scraping).

As far as the kampfringen/ Ren-med combatives are concerned striking is something more of an auxilliary skill and to my knowledge 80-90% of the material consists of standup "dirty" grappling. IIRC, Ringeck recomends (in his chapter on ringen/mortstosse (sic) ) using the off hand to index/grab a part of the upper oponent’s body and then follows with ramming him(the adversary) with the other hand into "targets" (chin , neck , temples etc.) Personally I think that it somewhat resembles Mick Coup’s C2 (core combatives) in some respect ( mainly the usage of the off hand in order to trap/grab/decieve whlist pummeling the adversary, altough thats not the full picture of the system).

[Jonathan Newhall]

You're more or less right on all counts there Samuel. Most medieval/ren combatatives (especially German ones, cannot speak terribly well for the Italian or other systems) focused heavily on grappling with striking used as an aid to assist in subduing the target that they might be grappled.

For instance, in the second (I think?) wrestling, it has been suggested that a target resisting farther than you'd like could be subdued by temporarily hitting at their throat with the hand grabbing their upper torso, then resuming the grab.

[Jaron Bernstein]

[Stephen Zeringue]

i was wondering why they would not have striking how else would you close in to grapple?
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swz

[Jonathan Newhall]

[Ryan Marcin]

[Tyrone Artur Budzin]

If we were to assume these techniques were primarily for the battlefield then why is it most of the illustrations of unarmed combat in the fechtbuchs are done without any armor then?

I would like to emphasize this on Kampfringen/Ringen system, most of the well known manuals depict two adversaries going at it in just plain clothes. There are ofcourse illustrations with armor but generally show fighting with weapons either dagger or sword.

This could very well mean the unarmed combat systems were specifically designed for everyday use against anyone wishing harm upon you.
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"If there is a Peace to be found on the other side of War....then I will fight for it."

[Ryan Marcin]

I don't know about prevailing scholarship on this, as I'm still quite new, but I've often wondered if some illustrations were unarmored for ease of communication, rather than realism. It's easier to determine limb orientation ("is the forearm rotated?") and body position without obscuring plate. So, I wonder if illustrations were "simplified" to make it easier to educate the reader.

But then, given the general quality of most of the illustrations of the period (lack of perspective and all that), and the fact that no author has explained such a "simplification" in the text, maybe that's not true at all.

Admittedly, most of the explicit striking that I've seen in the manuals, that isn't just a thump in the course of grappling, is from the later fechtbuch (Petter, Pascha) of the early/mid 17th century. Could the introduction of dedicated striking be a later development in WMA? Could it be in line with the development of civilian arms (small sword, etc) and urban self-defense? Was the "democratization" of codified combat (from knightly battlefields to urban middle class) a reason for a transition from a wrestling-focus to striking-focus?

[Jaron Bernstein]

[Stacy Clifford]

That said, take a look at this article for a bit of history on the Renaissance origins of boxing:

http://www.thearma.org/essays/BridgeWars.htm
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Stacy Clifford
Free-Scholar
ARMA Houston, TX

[Stephen Zeringue]

from what i understand most of the hand strikes in ringen are palm heel, knife hands, and hammerfists. wich makes sense to me because i have decked a brick wall with my knuckles and it hurt bad, with my palm though it did not hurt at all.
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swz

[Stacy Clifford]

I think another reason striking is less emphasized in the manuals is that brawling, roughhousing and general rowdiness from the cradle to the tavern were much more easily forgiven back then, so any man of the fighting class who lived to adulthood probably had pretty decently developed instincts for how to hit a guy and plenty of practice. If you're relying exclusively on striking to win then it seems more art is required to be successful, but if you're relying more on grappling to finish the job, then simple instructions like "soften him up before grabbing him" probably were sufficient for most people to create the needed distraction without requiring a lot of detail. A few more detail oriented masters may have gotten picky and described a hammerfist or knife hand, but most probably just showed the move in the school once or twice and expected you to know what he meant from then on. Having suffered through a few of Gene's classes on Petter, I can tell you that if someone wants to grab you and toss you around, it really doesn't seem to matter how they hit you in the head; as long as they apply force to your skull without hurting themselves then you will usually present them with a nice opportunity to further humiliate you.
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Stacy Clifford
Free-Scholar
ARMA Houston, TX

[Jonathan Newhall]

Stacy's right on the money there. I've generally just heard things like "now strike at him and proceed to wrestle with X wrestling". What strike it is isn't really consequential, as long as it succeeds in forcing an opening for the real killer, which is the wrestling.