Research and Discussion Forums

I don't need to follow that link to know that Hugh Knight (no relation, I assure you) is a very sloppy scholar. I stumbled across a review of Polearms of Paulus Hector Mair by Hugh Knight a few months back. Although it was overall a positive review, he began with: There is a brief forward and introd...

To resurrect an old thread... Allen listed four books. The first is JC's work. Kirby's Capo Ferro translation seems to be out of print and is currently priced at $800 on Amazon, so it isn't an option. Could anyone comment on the other two? They are: Arte of Defence: An Introduction to the Use of the...

Gene Tausk wrote:Suddenly, Ninja Master Ashida Kim and his ilk look a lot less dangerous. As a matter of fact, they look downright ridiculous and stupid.

Prepare for the wrath of the Grandmaster's astral spies!

Coincidentally , the first set of longsword plates from Mair's Vienna MS that Higgins has online are the exact same ones that I sent to Chivalry Bookshelf as samples when I was shopping a Mair book around (I was originally going to do a longsword book). Greg Mele forwarded those samples to Forgeng ...

As in, your hands are pinned to your sides?

The actual term is twirch but it is linguistically related to zwerch. They are also known as the horizontal stances. It is a series of throws shown in the Codex Wallerstein plates 36, 40,66,68, and 70. We're both a letter off. It's written "zwirch" in the original Codex. "Zwerch"...

I know it's hard for people who haven't gone to law school to understand, but you really should just consider Stew more or less dead for the next two years. Law school is nothing like undergrad, or even a research-oriented graduate program. It's quite literally all-consuming. And if he is a 2L now, ...

As part of a recent, long-awaited overhaul to http://PaulusHectorMair.com , I revised my 2005 article on Paulus Hector Mair and modern military combatives to include material from other Renaissance manuals, as well as earlier sources. Check it out at http://blog.paulushectormair.com/2008/10/ars-glad...

I'd like to humbly suggest that my blog, Ars Gladiatoris at http://www.paulushectormair.com , be included. It contains all the content from the old PHM site, but converted to a much more manageable blog format. While the focus is, of course, on Mair, I have expanded the scope to include other topics...

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Actually, it's not tricky at all since the question specifically asked about English quarterstaff, the term most people use to refer to a "short staff." The perfect length depends on you. The Englishman George Silver directly addresses your question in his 1599 Paradoxes of Defence : http:...

Since the original question specifically asked about a "kimura", let's be precise with the terminology. Plate 86 isn't a kimura. It isn't even a submission. It's a throw that works by cranking the upper arm and shoulder to drive the opponent off-balance while turning him over your leg. If ...

Unfortunately, the supplier wasn't able to come through with the right fabrics unless we placed a large order, so I'll leave it to individuals to procure their ringen jackets.

Just to add to the original discussion, I'm noticing a lot of what appear to be belt grabs in Talhoffer, too.

ARMA NYC is up and running! Our first session was today and it went very well. All the attendees were new to ARMA and didn't have wasters, so we worked ringen techniques from Codex Wallerstein and Mair. Everyone is looking forward to the next session later this week. Roger Soucy and I are also worki...

I actually just spent almost three hours drilling the Zwerch throws and counters in the Codex with 3 prospective new members of ARMA NYC (one of them has a fully padded training area in his garage, which is basically a dream come true) and my theory proved absolutely correct. These techniques are de...