fechtschuleamerica

[Jonathan Hill]

The danger here is that practitioners develop multiple skills which are mediocre without ever developing any one codified skill set. In addition, what protocols exist to determine that the so called "best fighter" wasn't simply the luckiest?

The answer to that is a very long debate on what the rules should be, and what they should represent. Ideally you find a rule set where there are no conflicts, the struggle to obtain the ideal is the key... In fact there was just a very long debate on spanning a few different forums with the AEEA guys (Spain) who claim that only single hit elimination tournaments are valid, and they wouldn’t listen to any other arguments…It was quite annoying.

I’ll assume you guys have your own side of this debate when you talk about how to approach Freeplay or Prize plays. I think you will find we are more alike than different.

In addition, allow me to reiterate that the ARMA is concerned with how the art was practiced historically. Inventing new rules is ulitimately nothing more than inventing something new. It no longer reflects the historical reality.

This is true and one reason why many historical rule sets are used or rules that have a basis in historical tournaments are favored. i.e. the after-blow rule (after a hit is landed the struck fighter gets a beat of time to hit them back, this aims to avoid the tag match that modern Olympic fencing is): it is a historical rule not a modern invention.

[Jorge Cortines]

First off events like fechtschuleamerica or combat con etc. are more than just the tournament,

Hi Jonathan!! Just to clarify this is not about a specific event, but rather the discussion focuses on the idea of tournaments... also this is not a discussion about seminars/classes...

Rule: Rules are essentially a principle or regulation governing conduct, or it can be said that rules set the goal for the fight. Fighting under rules, this seems to have happened for as long as fighting existed.

This is the problem, you create such an artificial scenario that has nothing to do with a violent chaotic encounter... Can you prove your point that rules when fighting exist since the dawn of mankind are a common factor with archeological facts? Does Master Lichtenauer established rules of engagement or for tournaments, or Fiore or George Silver or Vadi or Capo Ferro or Thibault or Carranza or Mair etc? can you write them down, this rules? Does Fiore/Vadi/Monte give any direct indication of tournaments or their rules and did they teach them? I think the fighting literature we have are silent on this issues... why do you think?

Taking the renaissance era, a knight will have different goals when fighting another knight that he can ransom vs when he is fighting a commoner who he encountered on a road, vs when he is in a town and in a bar fight. In one instance he should not kill his opponent he should capture him and ransom him, in another he is free to kill at will, while another he may not wish to kill due to laws in the area.

Well, if the life of the knight was in danger I think he would have killed his enemy regardless of ransom or law, he might want to protect his life first in this violent encounters...

In the last debate over ‘rules,’ (outside ARMA) it was decided that it is ok, even beneficial, to have multiple sets of rules and the fighter that can compete in all and fight well under multiple rule sets, is going to be the best fighter amongst us. IMO; This shows control and the ability to adapt your fight to suit the needs of the situation which I do believe is historical and gentlemanly. I personally believe that the development of the rules is more important to our art than strictly objecting to a tournament.

So we agree above rules in a tournament changes the nature of the Art, never the less more rules equals more changing the nature of the art equals better understanding of the art? What better training than to adapt your fighting abilities to a freeplay with as minimum rules (less constraints) as possible...?
I have a difficult time understanding how setting rules (restraining the art) and focusing on playing with the rules to win is better than freeplaying... what can you do in a tournament (where the art is subdue to the rules of the tournament) that can not be equal or best in freeplay with as little rules as possible (just like violent chaotic real life encounters) and with a focus on the art not on winning? Can you cite where on Fiore or DiGrassi or any other master make this claim, that is beneficial to set rules? I think the masters talk of situtions with no rules and how to deal with this situations and how to survive a no rule violent encounter...
I think it is more important to research, reconstruct, practice the art as is than to define modern rules for "play"/tournament...

...those who participate are the ones who will get a say in if the rules help represent the art or if the rule distort the art.

False, because it depends on the motives for participating... How can they say it represents the art if the art is pretty much under-construction? Do we know exactly what it was, how it looked like? how can they say if it distorts the art if we cannot even agree of how a guard looks like (remember the vom tag vs lazy vom tag thread a year and a half ago, we don´t agree what a krump, shiel, bicorn, schlussel is, but they can say with certainty if the rules distort the art?)?

This has been good food for thought... my question is: what can a tournament offer that freeplay falls short in reconstructing, understanding the Art? why do I need a modern invention for training (tournament) that an already histortical training tool (freeplay) does not already deliver? How can distorting the art with a modern invention help us reconstruct the art?

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

Does Master Lichtenauer established rules of engagement or for tournaments, or Fiore or George Silver or Vadi or Capo Ferro or Thibault or Carranza or Mair etc? can you write them down, this rules? Does Fiore/Vadi/Monte give any direct indication of tournaments or their rules and did they teach them? I think the fighting literature we have are silent on this issues...

Manciolino (1531) hints at the rules used (in terms of points and also with a possible reference to the afterblow) in his book. I gather other Bolognese authors do so too, and teach slightly different tactics for play and for fight (spada da giocco and spada da filo). Thibault mentions in several parts different moves for fights "à plaisance" (for enjoyment) or "à outrance" (to death) and basically frowns on all early freeplay, without specifically singling out tournaments. Rules for longsword tournaments have existed for such a long time that it seems very unlikely that fencing masters did not engage in them or discouraged their students to participate. Meyer of course fits very well in that list too, describing flicking hits with the flat and a no thrusts policy with the longsword. I don't think he would have done that if he had taught in a tournament-free environment.

Personally I seek the understanding of what the sources have to say rather than my individual fighting performance, hence I'm not too keen to enter tournaments. But if I was seeking that performance I'd be sure to be involved in tournaments and I would try to improve their rules if need be, because that's a great way to pressure test my art against peers that I don't often fight and that will resort to every possible option to win. I'd trust myself, perhaps optimistically , to be sufficiently lucid about my performance to know if I'm losing because of rules or because I was just inferior and would have died with real swords.

You can complain that rules are artificial but they are needed because the modern fight does not happen in the same context as an ancient fight. At the very least, for any freeplay you'll need safety rules, and these distort the Art just as well. The other rules are there to make for these distortions. They can be implicit as in ordinary freeplay, as long as people get along and agree on the judgement of the moves, but when both are actually motivated to win and not just play it's better to make them explicit and as objective as possible, in my opinion.

Of course not everything is tested in tournaments, it's just another exercise in the training regimen.

Regards,

[Jonathan Hill]

Jorge

Good to hear from you, thanks for the thought provoking questions. First off I’m not trying to change any policies; I think that is your decisions as an organization.

Just to clarify this is not about a specific event, but rather the discussion focuses on the idea of tournaments... also this is not a discussion about seminars/classes...

Chris originally asked about the event and expressed interest in fighting at the event. The discussion has been about the tournament happening at the event. I wanted to address his original though of even to go, as you can still go to an event and not fight in the tournament (many people don’t,) usually there is also freeplay at the event, thus a ‘no tournament’ rule doesn’t specifically exclude going to and fighting at the event in freeplay. There is a cost to go to this event and the classes are a greater time investment and cost associated with the event. If you don’t like the classes or the teachers then the event is not for you. This should all be considered before you even think about the tournament.

If you look at the schedule you can see that of the three days there is less than one day of tournaments (if you add up all three tournaments.)You can also see the instructors and decide if these are the people you believe make good instructors and are worth attending classes from.

… Does Fiore/Vadi/Monte give any direct indication of tournaments or their rules and did they teach them? I think the fighting literature we have are silent on this issues... why do you think?

I’ll first state that my area of specific study is the Victorian era, I am not of the level to discuss the Renaissance authors with you. I can tell you that many of the Victorian manuals do discuss a difference in ‘friendly play’ and a ‘real fight,’ separating techniques you would not use at tournaments or sparring vs what you would definitely use when someone is trying to take your head. So from my era ‘friendly play’ and tournaments were a regular occurrence, we have other texts that discuss tournaments that are not the fighting manuals. as well as dueling and battle. The same people would do all of them. Gentlemen would lean in a school and acquire their skills in ‘friendly play’ and tournaments then head out to the battlefield for dirty fighting and get into duels. Some criticism existed then about the friendly play not properly preparing people for the battlefield. None of the schools wanted to be known as ‘tournament’ schools when most of their students would eventually go off to war. You want to know that you will be well prepared for war if you train there, thus it is rare to see any text saying this is how to fight in a tournament or ‘just for a friendly duel.’ At least you don’t see that until the late 19th century texts.

Rules: designing the rules has taken the approach of ‘less is better,’ the rules are posted below and most are set to conduct and safety gear. The goal of course is to get as little distortion of the art as possible while allowing unfamiliar people to fight, ‘safely.’ Much discussion went into them and they are still under review to ensure there is little distortion of the art and little gaming of the rules. While things can never be perfect, we can still strive for it.

The rules for the tournament are up at their site, it would be very interesting to someday compare them to your guidelines on Prize plays. I do understand this is unlikely at this point though.

Freeplay vs Tournament: Ideally there really is no difference aside from one guy is going to continue to the prize the other is out. Rules set up if there is distortion in the art or a way to game the rules. This can happen in Freeplay just as much as it can happen in a Tournament. For me I do not see a difference, but in all we do on both our sides I assume we strive to have as little distortion to the art as possible, even if we are encouraging tournaments and others do not.

While we are at it, the Seminario nacional de Artes Marciales Occidentales happens in Leon, Guanajuato in June. I’m not a big fan of the ‘old feud’ that goes on between ARMA and much of the rest of HEMA, hopefully the old feud will not affect you and the rest of the guys in Mexico. Carlos Chavez is one heck of a fighter and a great guy, (I had the opportunity to meet and see him fight him in Vegas last year) well worth meeting if you have the time, he’s putting on a class there.

Edit: mostly when it comes to a tournament vs freeplay, the rules are supposed to set a level playing field between different schools and philosophies. Some groups are perfectly happy moving to grappling, while other groups are not. Some groups encourage hand sniping while others believe it is too dangerous. When we go into freeplay with people we know we make the assumption that a level of control will be used. When we meet someone we do not know, that assumption of control cannot be made.

There was recently a tournament where a lady won sword and buckler. In the final fight she took a few hits that she visually reacted to as painful. This upset quite a few people and they were crying ‘too much force is being used.’ They wanted rules or measures put in to limit the force used, it was decided not to enact some rules to counter this. My opinion and many others was excessive force must be dealt with and it creates openings, a good fighter needs to deal with it (she did win.) Brutal as it sounds someone attacking you and hitting really hard is a reality. It may be unsportsmanlike but it’s real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7bh9RHfOnI

[Jorge Cortines]

Manciolino (1531) hints at the rules used (in terms of points and also with a possible reference to the afterblow) in his book. I gather other Bolognese authors do so too, and teach slightly different tactics for play and for fight (spada da giocco and spada da filo). Thibault mentions in several parts different moves for fights "à plaisance" (for enjoyment) or "à outrance" (to death) and basically frowns on all early freeplay, without specifically singling out tournaments. Rules for longsword tournaments have existed for such a long time that it seems very unlikely that fencing masters did not engage in them or discouraged their students to participate.

Hi Vincent!!!
There is no master of defense that directly, quotably says anything about tournaments. Possibility is just that, open to any interpretation, and can go one way or the other or in circles. However the master do say things that practiced in school fencing (which is not equal to tournaments) if practiced are good for the real thing. IMHO there is a confusion that school fencing is tournaments, a hypothesis that nobody has been able to connect. Manciolino nor any other master never presents himself as Back to Back Champion of the League from 1525-1526, second place of the championship of the royal crown in 1530... Why no comment by the masters if we consider so important the tournaments? Were they important for practicing, teaching the Art if they were not mentioned?
The books they wrote for the real violent encounters don't mention anything near as harddata of them participating, encouraging to participate in tournaments but they do say how to confront a violent no rule situation for your life. This is curious that there is no mention of tournaments in the fight books, but that in the modern world in certain sectors they are considering them important...
Nachschlag, appears in HS 3227.a, Ringeck, Peter von Danzing, etc, and it has nothing to do with the "afterblow rule" you mention. Master Lichtenauer explains (my words): as soon as you feel you are at a distance you can strike and hit your opponent in the head or body do the vorschlag, if you miss or are displaced, parried, bind, or you hit, immediatly wind and do the nachschlag (chop him to pieces)... the concept of "the afterblow rule" used in tournaments has nothing to do with the concept of fighting for real... I wonder if this so called Afterblow rule is being well interpreted?

Meyer of course fits very well in that list too, describing flicking hits with the flat and a no thrusts policy with the longsword. I don't think he would have done that if he had taught in a tournament-free environment.

Well this is supposition not proof, this can be debated and go in circles... however I do consider Meyer teaching for real life/death violent encounters... also as I stated above I don't consider school fighting is tournaments, and there is no proof that this was the case...
The few images of school fencing do not show tournaments (just a bunch of guys practicing setplays or freeplays, and one guy with a staff overseeing practice, no judges, defined areas etc) and no direct word on the fight books about tournaments...

I would try to improve their rules if need be

For the groups of people who are interested in reconstructing the art, why do we need rules if the masters don't teach or talk in their works about them... there is no solid proof from any master of rules for tournaments or tournaments... there is just an explanation on how to address violent life or death encounters... Why if we do have evidence of freeplay we need to create modern tournaments that do not appear in the source literature?
The masters were concerned on how to teach the art, how to write down their knowledge, and how to practice it, we have Master Lichtenauer saying that it is difficult to explain with word what you can show physically by doing the art, later in the HS3227.a the masters go on to explain what you can do in school fencing that if you practice will be good for the real thing yet there is no mention of technics rules for tournaments or tournaments at all... and anyone can go and research and see that the masters wrote what you can do in school fencing that helps you for the real thing and yet none mention as explicitly as their technics, or core principles for fighting , or as explicitly their recommendations of things to practice in school fencing that are good for real fighting, that they remain silent on tournaments... curious... the question is why they were explicit in somethings and silent on others?

Regards

[RayMcCullough]

Edit: mostly when it comes to a tournament vs freeplay, the rules are supposed to set a level playing field between different schools and philosophies. Some groups are perfectly happy moving to grappling, while other groups are not. Some groups encourage hand sniping while others believe it is too dangerous. When we go into freeplay with people we know we make the assumption that a level of control will be used. When we meet someone we do not know, that assumption of control cannot be made.

First off I wanted to say that there is no "ARMA policy" forbiding tournaments. I don't know of anyone that has competed as of the last 6 years other than MMA events which is totally different. There is no need to compete in a tournament because Free-play is a much better tool to learn actual self defense. The goal of free play is to learn and practice the art. The goal of a tournament is to win the tournament. Apples and oranges. The whole Rules or No rules argument is a moot point in the decision to have or not have tournaments.

Your paragragh above says alot about tournaments and why we dont' need them to learn the art.
Like,leveling the playing field between schools and philosophys. What?
What you really mean here is that some schools and practitioners are unable to grapple or protect their hands or legs so they need to be given special treatment so that they can compete. If certain practitioners and schools cannot understand how to grapple and protect their hands and legs, making rules that restrict those things will not teach them to defend themselves. This is not a problem tournaments can fix. There must be something wrong with the way they "free play" and the way they approach trianing in general in the Science of defense.
Setting rules on"control" will not bring forth control either.
Tournaments and rules on rules just make us focus on the "least common denominator" instead of focussing on raiseing the bar.

But anyway to make this short....

Why have tournaments if we do not need them? They don't help us learn the Art.
If we want ot get together with other groups and free play and hang out, then we don't need a Tournament as an excuse to do so.

[Jonathan Hill]

Ray

My apologies, the tone of what I had read in the first page lead me to believe there was a policy concerning tournaments. I had not heard before anything to the contrary, thanks for straitening that out.

Yes tournaments are not a ‘learning tool’ aside from you should be learning any time you fight someone. Freeplay is a better learning tool, I’ll never argue that. Tournaments are a totally different beast use for fun and winning, if these conflict with your goals naturally they don’t fit. If you can accomplish your goals and still participate all the better. My original intent in posting here was to explain that the events are not just the tournament, I seem to have gotten side tracked. Discussions with Jorge are usually good and I’ll wander.

Some people just don’t grapple that is a given, or study dagger for example and I like to keep a dagger at my hip when fighting. Expecting freeplay to happen between a 250 lb man and a 120 lb woman with grappling involved may be a bit off. Some tournaments do not have a goal of allowing inside fighting, this, as indicated above, is historical as well. Again this comes back to the fact that the learning gained from a tournament is and should be very limited. The hands comment was a jab at a different group, not ARMA, that was complaining they don’t have proper hand protection to fight in the tournament as the other fighters were too brutal (yet they had the same hand protection that everyone else had,) you would have needed to read that thread to get that one, so…inside joke I guess. I wasn't trying to support putting in rule to overcome other peoples deficiencies like ‘can’t protect their hands.’

[RayMcCullough]

I didnt get to finish my thought so see my earlier post for the full thoght.

[Jonathan Hill]

Why have tournaments if we do not need them? They don't help us learn the Art.
If we want ot get together with other groups and free play and hang out, then we don't need a Tournament as an excuse to do so.

Absolutely true, I see tournaments as a carryover from other martial arts/the past. Frankly I grew up with tournaments from Karate to sport fencing. As such I hold no bias against them and I’m happy to fight in any I can. I’m also very happy to face people in freeplay and have a beer afterwards. I do not post here to persuade all of you to come out and fight in the tournament, I'd rather face you guys as you perfer in freeplay. I was hopeing to show a little that we are trying to perserve the integrety of the art in the tournaments. If those of us who do fight in them do not stick up for 'keeping it real' then it will deteriorate in to sport fencing real quick.

[Jorge Cortines]

Hey Jonathan!!!
Just wanted to be sure that I'm not targeting with my comments any event or group, but rather specifically the idea of tournaments...

I wanted to address his original though of even to go, as you can still go to an event and not fight in the tournament (many people don’t,) usually there is also freeplay at the event, thus a ‘no tournament’ rule doesn’t specifically exclude going to and fighting at the event in freeplay.

I'm not the official voice of ARMA but to my knowledge The ARMA policy, and JC's advice to all members of ARMA is that they are free to participate in any freeplay with other groups, also we are free to participate in any outside seminar we might be interested. However, participating in tournaments is highly discouraged as we see no value and even negatives on being participating in a tournament... JC's advice has been to freeplay as much as we can with as many as we can (considering outside groups)... Is just that we have so many things to participate inside ARMA to recosntruct, practice, and promote MARE, that little time, energy, and money is available for anything else...

I’ll first state that my area of specific study is the Victorian era, I am not of the level to discuss the Renaissance authors with you. I can tell you that many of the Victorian manuals do discuss a difference in ‘friendly play’ and a ‘real fight,’ separating techniques you would not use at tournaments or sparring vs what you would definitely use when someone is trying to take your head. So from my era ‘friendly play’ and tournaments were a regular occurrence, we have other texts that discuss tournaments that are not the fighting manuals. as well as dueling and battle. The same people would do all of them. Gentlemen would lean in a school and acquire their skills in ‘friendly play’ and tournaments then head out to the battlefield for dirty fighting and get into duels. Some criticism existed then about the friendly play not properly preparing people for the battlefield. None of the schools wanted to be known as ‘tournament’ schools when most of their students would eventually go off to war. You want to know that you will be well prepared for war if you train there, thus it is rare to see any text saying this is how to fight in a tournament or ‘just for a friendly duel.’ At least you don’t see that until the late 19th century texts.

Ok, cool I understand that there is a difference in understanding the context of tournaments given the time separation between "Victorian Martial Arts" and Martial Arts of Renassaince Europe (MARE)...

The rules for the tournament are up at their site, it would be very interesting to someday compare them to your guidelines on Prize plays. I do understand this is unlikely at this point though.

Prize playings is about the prizer, testing him, doesn't matter if I'm better or worse than him, I'm testing him, is about giving him a chance to demostrate physically and emotionally to obtain his prize (rank). This is the focus of prize playing for us... it is different from tournament, I don't think we can compare them... Freeplay is a tool for training to test your skills in time and action against an opponent who does not coopertate and is actually trying to use his skills in time and action agianst mine... also different focus from tournaments... so there is no sound comparison to draw conclusions...

While we are at it, the Seminario nacional de Artes Marciales Occidentales happens in Leon, Guanajuato in June. I’m not a big fan of the ‘old feud’ that goes on between ARMA and much of the rest of HEMA, hopefully the old feud will not affect you and the rest of the guys in Mexico. Carlos Chavez is one heck of a fighter and a great guy, (I had the opportunity to meet and see him fight him in Vegas last year) well worth meeting if you have the time, he’s putting on a class there.

Nobody of us likes the ‘old feud’.
Yes we know Carlos, he has been to a couple of JC's (and one with AP) seminars in Mexico City a couple of years ago. I'm no aware of any feud between the ARMA Mexico and any other group in Mexico.
Fortunatly we have more than enough projects inside ARMA Mexico that we need to comply August, that we as a study group will be unable to attend as a whole, however possibly one or two of our members will find energy, time and money to participate in the seminars (not likely in the tournament LOL!).

Edit: mostly when it comes to a tournament vs freeplay, the rules are supposed to set a level playing field between different schools and philosophies. Some groups are perfectly happy moving to grappling, while other groups are not. Some groups encourage hand sniping while others believe it is too dangerous. When we go into freeplay with people we know we make the assumption that a level of control will be used. When we meet someone we do not know, that assumption of control cannot be made.

Thank you very much for the explanation, interesting!!! Probably a theme in its own worth discussing and sharing opinions...

There was recently a tournament where a lady won sword and buckler. In the final fight she took a few hits that she visually reacted to as painful. This upset quite a few people and they were crying ‘too much force is being used.’ They wanted rules or measures put in to limit the force used, it was decided not to enact some rules to counter this. My opinion and many others was excessive force must be dealt with and it creates openings, a good fighter needs to deal with it (she did win.) Brutal as it sounds someone attacking you and hitting really hard is a reality. It may be unsportsmanlike but it’s real.

This is the issue, the teachings do show us how to deal with hand snips (as in another forum discussion ) or how to deal with brute force (as in another Swedish tournament ), the problem is training for sport, mentally as if sport, then act as a sport not a martial art that deals with this violence or worse ...
It is my opinion that we loose time/energy in so much nonsense of tournaments (me seeing them as sport)instead of focusing in understanding how the masters address violence with brute force, how to train for it, how do masters address press the hands or countering it? how to train for it? but now I sadly see that the focus is on getting more padding to gloves instead of addressing not getting hit at all, why this happens? because probably they see less and less martial arts and more and more sports without realizing it and this is because of tournaments... Just read the forums it is all about padding up, not about understanding the art to not get hit while hitting...

Let me tell you a point of view: some decades ago the people padded sticks (boffers) so they could hit each other without injury, it proved disastrous, so we took out the padding and upgrade the stick (wasters), better than boffers, the padding we took out from the stick we just started to wore it on our bodies, wood being better than boffers, was upgraded to metal and now we have the best tools that let us train and understand the art, but we padded ourself more... hmmm the result is what you just commented about that woman, without much more info, I bet she trains padded, I bet she gets hits on the hands and either ignores then in training or does not feel that her buddies are hitting her hands, and she did not research, understood and/or trained to not get hit in the hands because she ignore she was being hit, so when confronted to reality... well there is the result... more padding is not better art, I bet that if we don't use padding when freeplaying we will start to read the masters and we will try to look at their teachings differently, because we cannot lie to reality (violence) when we are face to face with her.

Unsportsmanlike? no, that is the reality of violence... the point of discussion is why think and act as if a sport? if it is well real violence, a martial art, why transform the teachings of the masters to deal with real violence to a sportify version? This is the question for the group of people trying to reconstruct the martial art, there are others that what they want is a sport, martial sport, or a hobby or a tool for spectacles bbut not a martial art...

So we in ARMA are interested in the martial art not the sport, anyone who approach us with not a martial arts conotaction is not going to comunicated well with us because we are not talking about the same thing with the same common ground... make sense?
Regards

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

Hi Jorge!

There is no master of defense that directly, quotably says anything about tournaments. Possibility is just that, open to any interpretation, and can go one way or the other or in circles.

About tournaments per se, no, not that I know. They don't describe tournament structure, that is, how you select fighters progressively until you have a winner. But they do talk about rules, that you don't need unless you are trying to win a bout (not just to play, but win). Really, look into Manciolino:

A blow to the head counts for three, because of the nobility of such part of the body. A blow to the foot counts for two, in deference to the awkwardness of delivering such a low attack.

The after-blow I'm talking about is not German fencing nachschlag. It really is a seemingly arbitrary rule such as this:

After receiving a hit, you may not perform more than one riposte delivered with a single pass forward;

The footnote of the translation mentions that this appears in the Anonymous Bolognese, a work that I have not read from the early 1500:

Manciolino is citing a rule in the art of the spada da gioco, which is also reported by the Anonymous Bolognese. The reasons given by the Anonymous are that such restriction makes the play more realistic (with sharp swords you may not physically be able to riposte with more than one pass after receiving a hit), and allow the spectator to have a clearer grasp of the outcome.

These concerns mirror quite perfectly the concerns of modern tournament organizers.

You could argue that these are in fact rules for freeplay, not tournaments. But then we also have tournament rules as I linked to earlier. These are not from fencing masters' technical treatises, I'll grant you that, but they are from fencing guilds, which had to be supervised by fencing masters.

The masters don't detail tournament structure in their work and they don't make claim of performance either. But they don't do that much for "real" fights either (actually the only master I can recall talking about his own performance or that of his student is Fiore). They don't generally detail how to challenge your opponent to a duel, what legislations are at play for judicial duels, what restrictions are imposed in such and such state for weapon wearing. In my opinion that's because tournaments were just seen as one practical application of the same art, not worthy of detailing in technical works.

Heck they don't mention test-cutting either and yet last I've heard ARMA was practicing that. I've even had it said to me on this very forum that they did not write about because it was an obvious thing to do. If that works for test-cutting then it works for tournaments, which have a lot more source support.

The overall opinion of those who enter tournaments and also take part in freeplay is that they provide a higher pressure to test your skills in (which is why tournament fighting is not always so beautiful to watch). This, aside from any ego boost, is the real reason to participate if personal performance is something you seek. Note that not seeking that is perfectly fine by me...

Regards,

[Jaron Bernstein]

Good discussion. Japanese sword arts (JSA) and WMA were once holisitic fighting arts. Over time, in large part because they took a "sport" path we today have Kendo and western sport fencing. Kendoka and sport fencers are very dedicated athletes who train hard.....who are now wholly geared for tournaments that only very minimally reflect their koryu and WMA origins.

This is not such a concern for 2012. It will be for 2112 (if the Mayan calender ending doesn't doom us all! ). The current generation of WMA tournament pioneers are very much "real" WMA scholars and fighers. I don't question their intent. They may see tourneys only as a way to test themselves under pressure. But the process of sportification takes its inevitable toll over time. Where there were once real samurai practicing "real" koryu skills there are today Kendo and Iado practicioners.

This is why I support the ARMA approach that combines scholarship with freeplay, but without a sportification that inexorably over time make "gaming" the rules to win the norm rather than reviving the whole Art. By all means, have gatherings and classes. Freeplay early and often at these events. But just don't turn it into a sport or it will become...a sport, with great athleticism, but losing the totality of the Art along the way.

As long as you freeplay with vigor and intent (in conjunction with training the principles from which the techniques flow and using the manuals as your training guide), you will develop just fine in the Art without the need for trophies. And the Art will become more of what it once was in the process, rather than diverging down a flawed path.

[Jaron Bernstein]

In freeplay you "call your hits" when someone hits you, you discuss it and figure out what happened without ego and everyone learns from the experience. You learn by trying what MMA calls "low percentage" techniques to make them work and really revive them in the Art.

In a tourney you would eschew anything other than very "clear" kills, so a lot of the inside windings and pressings go out the window. Not because they aren't historical or valid, but because the referee may not see them as clearly and your opponent (who is not your training partner in this scenario) may not be inclined to acknowledge a point against him.

IMO you need both the athleticism and the Art. You lose the Art when you take the sportification path. Not in the short term perhaps, but certainly over time. None of this is to advocate against fighting. Clearly that needs to a large part of your training. But it needs to be fighting in a context that enables us to reconstruct the Art (without ego pressures, safety rules that allow a reasonably full spectrum of expression) as it existed rather than just degenerating into something analagous to kendo or sport fencing.

[Jorge Cortines]

Hi Vincent!!!!
Sorry for late reply! It has been a good discussion!!! And it is a long reply (sorry, but try to bare with me) I hope that my comments do not come by as preaching or anything else than my opinions and points of view and my sincere doubts about tournaments, and I'm not interest in people agreeing with me but I do look for understanding between our different views.
So I'll get to it:

The overall opinion of those who enter tournaments and also take part in freeplay is that they provide a higher pressure to test your skills in (which is why tournament fighting is not always so beautiful to watch). This, aside from any ego boost, is the real reason to participate if personal performance is something you seek. Note that not seeking that is perfectly fine by me...

Well, in my experience the universe of people who are drawn into looking at MARE do not have all the same motives, it is not a cohesive universe seeking mutual benefits, but rather some atomized multi-motive gathering of people.

Some want to rediscover and reconstruct the Art, some want to use certain parts for theatrical purposes, other want to compete and take what is useful from the art to make even an Olympic sport, for others is just a good way to do exercise, others because they can use it to have fun or socializing or for role playing, others because they feel proud what their ancestors did, others just want to incorporate or contrast martial arts to their studies, and yet others have a personal need for recognition and ego boosting in there lives and selected this young enterprise to get it…

And as I see it this is the core conflict, the efforts of one group may be in crash course to the efforts of another group… people who like tournaments because they want an ego boost and like to compete, will justify tournaments, rules and the development of tournament equipment no matter what and this is a crash collision course with the people interested in reconstructing the art, who are trying to do it with hard data from the source literature, without contamination from sports or other martial arts and are passionate about it (in both cases passions arises).

This is the problem…

Again I have no problem with people doing tournaments, I’m sure they are fun, I’m sure there are great people in them,… but just know where the tournaments fits in relation to reconstructing a martial art.

One of my complains is that we don’t know yet fully and thoroughly how the Art looked like, and probably will never be 100% sure (there are no masters today), but probably one day we will know with a very high degree of certainty how it looked, but at present we don’t know, we don’t even agree in simple concepts or explanations from the masters such as holding guards, stepping, cutting… so then how can we use tools that are not explained in the source material to draw conclusions?

Yes the tournaments are fun, but useless at this moment as to reconstruct the art, how do we know that by following this path of doing tournaments adding rules to enforces more rules we will not finish exactly where we started 3 decades ago, with the sportification of the art, with a distorted understanding of what is the ars marcialis of Renassaince Europe?

History has shown us that by setting up rules and pushing the art to tournaments, the art got extint and the only surviving heritage are some old books…

How can going down the ally of tournaments we will prevent this from happening?

Doing a quick review on other forums, all the conclusions on the art are based on tournaments, yet there is so little info on the tournaments themselves and they are absent from the source literarture but never the less that is how we measure our advancements of the art. Aren't we fooling ourselves?

Manciolino (trans. Tom Leoni) wrote:
A blow to the head counts for three, because of the nobility of such part of the body. A blow to the foot counts for two, in deference to the awkwardness of delivering such a low attack.

Or he is just emphasizing importance of going to the head or body, upper opening vs lower openings during set/freeplay…. I know I’m going in circles, but it is just to show that the argument of tournament rules is not a solid one, it is an inference of the sources… why if a tournament is such a good tool has no direct mention by the Masters is intriguing?

The after-blow I'm talking about is not German fencing nachschlag. It really is a seemingly arbitrary rule such as this:
Manciolino (trans. Tom Leoni) wrote:
After receiving a hit, you may not perform more than one riposte delivered with a single pass forward;

Just by reading this statement I would assume Manciolino is talking about the need to practice single time moves (counters) (I know this is another discussion) =) I would need to read the whole passage to get a better context…

The footnote of the translation mentions that this appears in the Anonymous Bolognese, a work that I have not read from the early 1500:
Tom Leoni wrote:
Manciolino is citing a rule in the art of the spada da gioco, which is also reported by the Anonymous Bolognese. The reasons given by the Anonymous are that such restriction makes the play more realistic (with sharp swords you may not physically be able to riposte with more than one pass after receiving a hit), and allow the spectator to have a clearer grasp of the outcome.

With just this footnote, I don’t agree with this interpretation, it fits best with single time move training/concept… however let’s theorize and experiment: ask 2 fighters to freeplay without padded gloves, without padding their bodies, no padding on legs or arms, just a fencing mask on his head, ask them to freeplay vigorously with intent and energy and don’t have restrain/control, when one of the fighter gets hit (a broken bone), ask him (the injured fighter) to do the above statement “to do this afterblow”, to the fighter who was able to hit tell him to do the nachschlag as stated by Master L (if you hit him, well continue hitting until he has completely disabled his opponent), see what happens … and this is not even considering sharps that cut or penetrate…IMHO this is where the reality of a violent encounter is not well understood and is not very well interpreted and do not reflect vicious encounters… This would make in real life /death situations irrelevant Leoni’s interpretation of the afterblow. So MasterL teachings for the real thing makes irrelevant the afterblow rule, that has probably zero martial value, making useless these rule for training martial arts.

You could argue that these are in fact rules for freeplay, not tournaments. But then we also have tournament rules as I linked to earlier. These are not from fencing masters' technical treatises, I'll grant you that, but they are from fencing guilds, which had to be supervised by fencing masters.

As a parallel, in the modern combative schools or during military service of the armed forces of almost any country you have tournaments as sports, not as the training for soldiers that must be ready to be deployed to conflict zones… their training resembles more free-play than a tournament… During history I have not seen any document where there is a claim that tournaments were used as training for killing, there is a reason IMHO for this… The tournaments from medieval history started as I understand them as ritualized, to keep battle readiness for the elite, etc as society evolved so did tournaments and with this evolution the tournaments evolved to a sport not to a martial art tool…

The masters don't detail tournament structure in their work and they don't make claim of performance either. But they don't do that much for "real" fights either (actually the only master I can recall talking about his own performance or that of his student is Fiore). They don't generally detail how to challenge your opponent to a duel, what legislations are at play for judicial duels, what restrictions are imposed in such and such state for weapon wearing. In my opinion that's because tournaments were just seen as one practical application of the same art, not worthy of detailing in technical works.

I cannot concure with this idea, Masters of Defense detailed in written and in some cases images what x,y,z technic, or core principle of fighting is, how it is done, what it does, how to use it… we have very graphical images on Talhoffer, Mair, Capo Ferro, Guelf, etc. For example we have Talhoffer we know he work in overseeing some duels, we see the representations in images in his book, where heads, hands, are severed… but we do not see any image to suggest a tournament… Capo Ferro, shows what the technics and the bases to make the technics, is meant to do against an opponent with no rules (and no clothes ). We do know more about the real fights. We know the Masters had important roles as masters of arms to nobility to train to fight for war or duels or self defense, and yet again remain silent on tournaments.

If the tournaments were so good tool to understand, teach and practice the ART why should they be not worthy to be mentioned and showen in the books?

Heck they don't mention test-cutting either and yet last I've heard ARMA was practicing that. I've even had it said to me on this very forum that they did not write about because it was an obvious thing to do. If that works for test-cutting then it works for tournaments, which have a lot more source support.

Yes we practice test cutting, we encourage it… the motives are different, test cutting is about knowing what your weapon does to a target, it is about knowing your weapon, and practicing technics, very much align with martiality. Tournaments have to do more with the ego boost, there is nothing about “skills pressure test” that cannot be done in freeplay that is done in a tournament, except for the ego-boost or ego-lost… and probably this risk of losing ego is what makes a tournament more “pressure test”? however ego has nothing to do with reconstructing and practicing a martial art… Do modern soldiers training for war care about egos when training or do they care about learning to stay alive even if the have to bite, scratch, poke an eye, hit the hands, legs…? They couldn’t care less about ego when training for their life… In the martial arts world it has more meaning understanding your weapons than an ego-boost... pressure testing your skills can be achieved through a free-play...

Regards

[Steven Reich]

The after-blow I'm talking about is not German fencing nachschlag. It really is a seemingly arbitrary rule such as this:
Manciolino (trans. Tom Leoni) wrote:
After receiving a hit, you may not perform more than one riposte delivered with a single pass forward;

Just by reading this statement I would assume Manciolino is talking about the need to practice single time moves (counters) (I know this is another discussion) =) I would need to read the whole passage to get a better context…

The footnote of the translation mentions that this appears in the Anonymous Bolognese, a work that I have not read from the early 1500:
Tom Leoni wrote:
Manciolino is citing a rule in the art of the spada da gioco, which is also reported by the Anonymous Bolognese. The reasons given by the Anonymous are that such restriction makes the play more realistic (with sharp swords you may not physically be able to riposte with more than one pass after receiving a hit), and allow the spectator to have a clearer grasp of the outcome.

With just this footnote, I don’t agree with this interpretation, it fits best with single time move training/concept…

The footnote refers to a passage in the Anonimo Bolognese that is a very clear and unmistakable reference to the "after-blow". You can actually buy a transcription of the Anonimo Bolognese from Il Cercchio books and read it yourself (in Italian) if you're interested. Manciolino is available as a PDF online if you want to read that. I can point you to the text in both works if you are interested.

Despite the above, I'm not overly fond of tournaments, although I think that they are one aspect of training and expose you to certain conditions that freeplay might not (e.g. adrenaline), although I think that there are usually other ways to get this, as well. I don't think that they are the "most realistic" simulation of combat, but I do think it is worth noting that tournaments were a part of our ancestors' sword arts. However, I (usually) learn far more when I don't have a time limit or score limit (for or against) so that I can try a wide variety of actions, or try the same action a few different ways and allow myself to fail at it without worrying about being "eliminated".

Steve