Research and Discussion Forums

It's my personal opinion that edge parries and parry-riposte were not late developments in British swordplay, but were simply the British style for as far back in time as we have evidence. I've presented the reasons why I think that. But I agree that two different people can read the same text and c...

>So what you are advocating Chris is that if someone swings a longsword at me I should stop it with my edge in a hard stopping motion? This is at odds with German masters who admonish us to not statically parry> No, I realize that. The German style doesn't statically parry, or tries to avoid it anyw...

But I don't care how ARMA regards it. I care how the historical sources regard it.

>This is not a forum for discussing Asian martial arts. Get off this subject now and take it to another, non-ARMA, forum> The thread was about cross-training with Asian-style martial artists. If that is off-topic, then the whole thread is off-topic. >If anyone on this thread is advocating edge-on-ed...

>There does not seem to be in earlier works a deliberate dui tempo [double time] defensive action as de rigueur, where a deliberate separation between a defensive block is followed by a separate attacking action, as in the Baroque fencing of the later smallsword> Do you not define Silver, writing in...

I agree that the argument is old, tired, pointless, you name it. But let's recap what happened in this thread- - someone posted an anecdote about bouting against kenjutsu - I said that what they were describing didn't sound like genuine kenjutsu - the original poster replied that I was probably righ...

>This rigid blocking is also not something that can be used to argue that any location of an edge should receive a cut from any location of another edge> But I didn't say that. What I said was that the edge was used to parry in some historical styles. Yes, it's a certain type of edge parry, it's don...

Bear in mind that proper edge-to-edge parries are made with the fort, and that the fort is either lightly sharpened or blunt. Furthermore, that the fort is not the section of the blade you cut with. However, there seems to be little point in this discussion. On the one hand you have numerous histori...

>That doesn't make it a legitimate or historical technique> Ummm, you are aware that the style was founded by his direct ancestor and has been passed down from one generation to the next in an unbroken line to him? When it comes to Japanese sword technique, I'm more inclined to take the word of a he...

>my memory is that Seki fought unarmed duels and they were against karate practitioners and the like> The book is not actually very clear on this point. It says that taryu-jiai (duels of skill) were fought by both Kunii Zenya and his student Seki Humitake. I believe it says that Kunii Zenya fought t...

>But, my experience in other martial arts besides this one is that without free sparring as at least 50% of your training time, you are just not going to develop a skill you can use against resisting competent opponents> Traditional kata training isn't the same as what most dojos do these days. See ...

>However, all we did was katas. We never got any free play, because all of the instructors there were just teaching and practicing rehearsed techniques> Aiki-ken (Aikido swordplay) is not combative swordsmanship and was not intended to be. It's simply meant to be an adjunct to your aikido training, ...

>Is that why you hear of the dreaded english mercenary instead of the german or swiss merc., no wait that was the other way around, wasn't it?> Although this was a flip comment, you do actually hear a lot about the Highland mercenaries. In fact, the Germans and Swedes hired them in large numbers, an...

>Read through the 15th c english longsword texts> See Paul Wagner's detailed analysis of them- he believes they are based on parry riposte, though in a way peculiar to the longsword and not really similar to smallsword parry riposte. >All systems have a balance of offense and defense> Quite right, b...

>For instance the idea of defence first does not at all seem to be the case in a battle scenario> You're quite correct, as Page says the ordinary rules of fencing are for single combat in a duel or prizefight, but on the battlefield "it is better to attack than to be attacked." However, a ...