Research and Discussion Forums

This whole topic is an immense can of worms to me. Is the goal to recreate an anachronistic martial art? If it's not, then in the evolution of redeveloping it, will our technological and metallurgical advances change the tools that the style can use, and thus change the style? I guess the other real...

Who or what is a mister Acutt?

If you will pardon the uninitiated question, what is whip in a blade? What causes it and what problems does it pose?

I'm using the microsoft antispyware beta, and it's working out very well for me.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

This is a question I wanted to ask also - I don't need historically accurate for my blunt practice - except in heft, balance and resonance. Appearance isn't really critical either though it's pleasant if it pleases the eye - what I do need is something blunt steel that is valid to practice with.

Actually I do have -one- beef, and that is that SCA is 'selectively' realistic - often serving a particular agenda. For example, they will have judges call sword-on-sword blocks (I'm using that term for a reason) that they feel would be sword breaking. I felt this discouraged single sword, and given...

Yes, they don't protect areas that are off limits, and their stances are weak. I got in trouble for checking, body contact, and tripping. =/ I got disenchanted with the "No heh you can't do that either", and too much gratuitous distortion, such as these 'fencing' style tapping hits done wi...

Those clips are impressive and even scary. I have to admit, my favorite is john c cutting the melon, and the melon slowly sliding off the pell, to fall in halves. Classic.

You've handled museum pieces, did you also handle the albion swords and if so what's your impression? How far is the gap between the museum pieces and what you handled at the show? Their prices, if these are serviceable swords I consider extremely reasonable. 500 dollar range for a sharp with fair b...

Intuitively speaking, I'd expect to gauge the effectiveness of a the blow based on the shock that goes back into my hand a la baseball. I would -expect- a sword to be swung and struck with the same motion that all other accelerated tools are swung (hammer, baseball bats, golf clubs, hockey sticks, e...

Well, there's a lot in that article that's counterintuitive and even things that go against the common wisdom. I guess the real question is, in test cutting against armor and soft materials does all this theory hold up? Could there be other factors such as deliverability of a blow or perhaps unpredi...

Wow talk about an immensely informative article.

I'm reading it now.

Other practice pells from ema have protrusions to use as limbs. Without a knot, what are you going to aim at? Also a knot is super-hard, so you'll better feel if you make a good harmonic strike. Btw, what do you call a 'harmonic hit' here? By that I mean a hit placement where the striking object lan...

I'm gonna back up tim on this one. I've 'sparred' with martial artists who don't 'spar' and they lock up in realtime. The timing is different and without that trained imperative of full speed practice, you won't have the instinct for full speed practice. Also, with noncontact sparring typically the ...

Not to be unkind, but whenever I ran into that in a regular karate situation that was always my first thought. "their stuff falls apart when sparring." Full contact and limited rulesets have a way of distilling combat down to the essentials of what works, and this excludes a great number o...