Research and Discussion Forums

1.1) As far as I know, we do not currently have any members in Romania, but changing that has to start with someone, so 1.2) yes, you should still consider applying. We can help you recruit study group members and provide long-distance training support to get you started. I believe we still have a f...

I met John in 2001 & 2002 at events in Atlanta. The latter being at Hank R's house. I believe you were at one if not both events. You have a great memory! That goes way back when I was very green, but I was at both events. Great to hear you're still following the art after all these years as we...

Yes, in the past Windlass made swords that looked pretty and handled adequately, but stood up poorly to actually being used. I believe Windlass is under new management now with more commitment to quality and accuracy, and they brought in John as a consultant to help improve the new products and test...

In the end, if I were a knight with the skill to make accurate strikes with my weapons, I imagine I'd still much prefer an axe or pick over a mace on the battlefield. Also worth considering, even though knights were well trained to make precision strikes with edged weapons, battle fatigue can great...

All of those are good possible answers, although it's difficult to find any historical sources that directly answer this question. I would add one thing to your #7 argument: plate armor is well designed to cause sharp weapons to deflect and skip off, reducing the force of impact. Because blunt clubs...

Voiding leg cuts and hitting them over the top is one of my favorite tricks, and there's an art to it. If you're trying to take a full step back, you will be too slow almost every time. The trick is to momentarily withdraw your front foot to your back one without moving the rest of your body. The vu...

JC brings up something important here, and I'd like some insight from other ARMAteers on the issue, since he himself is busy: If by refusing to condone sportifying of martial arts, an ARMA member refuses to bout with other HEMA practitioners under their rulesets, how can the two methods test each o...

Excellent! We in ARMA Houston got a lot of mileage out of Mr. van Noort's earlier translation, so it will be interesting to see what improvements he's made. This is very good manual for beginning your study of rapier, and we greatly appreciate his hard work in making it available.

All of NSA's wasters are well made and well balanced, so you're not going to go wrong with any of them, but it's best to get one that is roughly proportional to your height to start with. (Once you have more experience, it's easier to pick up any size and fight with it.) The most commonly cited advi...

Great news! The Houston Study Group worked through Reinier van Noort's translation of Bruchius last year and found it very useful. We look forward to seeing this one for comparison.

If you are a member of ARMA, you should be able to access member materials, regardless of your study group size. If you didn't get that information when you joined (you should have, but emails are known to get lost on occasion), email the ARMA Director to request access.

Although it's a very long read, if you want to understand footwork as ARMA interprets it, this article is an absolutely vital read: http://www.thearma.org/VoltaKeyandScale.htm Though there are no specific exercises in it, there are numerous diagrams and hundreds of images from the sources, along wit...

For the most part, the guards for different weapons are all very similar because they both oppose and create the same universal lines of attack. The sword has the widest variety of guards because it is the most versatile of weapons. Other weapons, such as maces or polearms, may modify or remove cert...

Only a few manuals that I'm aware of discussed the proper lengths of weapons, and certainly you had plenty of people back in those days fighting with weapons that were larger or smaller than you might expect for a person of their size. I believe it was Filippo Vadi that said a longsword should come ...

I'm no bladesmith, but I think you'll find Peter Johnsson to be a priceless resource for the questions you're asking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaT3GXdr5kM

http://www.peterjohnsson.com/the-soborg-sword/