What kind of Martial Arts?

[philippewillaume]

Hello
The saut d’ecole seems to have been purely for school and not for war
http://www.cadrenoir.fr/siteene/html/les_sauts.htm
http://www.spanische-reitschule.com/
That will explain the difference between the terms and the moves (in earlier author there is even more moves but it is really a mix and match or levade and croupade

You can see that in Saumur typically in the reprise des “sauteurs”
In a early 1700 French horsemanship book Saulnier and he clearly state that those are not to be used in battle because it put the rider at risk

On the same vein plurivel earlier late 1500 recommend against them for the same reason.

That being said you need really the equivalent of a national modern dressage if you want to use a horse in battle.
This is based on the German manual I have been working with…


Ps I joust in my spare time (full plate harness and wooden lance with balsa tips)

[JeffGentry]

Hey Philippe

Well thePicture's from the first site describing the move's was very cool, unfortunately I don't read, speak or otherwise know any foriegn language so had no clue what the page said.

I saw on the Spanish riding school site they will be here in Columbus Ohio(were I live) in November so I think I may have to go see them, it look's very cool.

Thank's for posting that though.


Jeff

[philippewillaume]

Especially for jeff

courbette (the little bow)
Préparé par un équilibre sur les hanches, le sauteur, sur indication des jambes de son cavalier, élève l'avant main en prenant appui sur les postérieurs.

Prepared with the horse balanced on his hips, at a leg indication from the rider the horse raise his forehand using his hinds legs to support himself

la croupade. (the rear kick)
A la demande du cavalier qui touche la croupe à l'aide de sa cravache, le cheval exécute une ruade énergique en étendant complètement les membres postérieurs

At the touch of the cravache on his bum, the horse execute an energetic kick extending fully his rear members.

la cabriole (the goat jump)
La cabriole résulte de la combinaison presque simultanée d'une courbette et d'une croupade ; le cheval étant au terre-à-terre (sorte de galop à deux temps), à l'indication de son cavalier, il éleve l'avant-main, quitte le sol, puis touché par la cravache, détache avec force une ruade, postérieurs tendus.
L'exécution de la cabriole est très délicate en raison de l'énergie déployée et de la synchronisation.

[JeffGentry]

Philippe

Thank's for the translation, I am looking ofrward to seeing them.

Jeff

[Jonathan Scott]

whoah. Lot of the stuff in this thread is really cool/enlightening/thought provoking!
Well let's see, I'm interested in learning both AMA's and WMA's. I don't know if I'll be able to devote enough time to both, as I only have room for this at the moment as a hobby (my real passion for a career is music).
But I started training aikido at my college aikido club last year, and plan on continuing it if I can. Also, I started taking fencing (though wasn't able to make the practice time often cause it interfered with classes and all, so I barely got past the footwork)), and I plan on at least going once a week to learn what I can (And cause my cosplay friends go to fencing too). And I already realise that there are differences in sport fencing vs. historical fencing, so I'll watch out for those (well I don't know too many specifics, but I've printed out a few articles to help), and I'll try to gleam what basics I can from it while maintaining an open mind and an ever questioning western spirit. And also, I'd like to start training what I can from ARMA if possible. (I will see Jay Vail about that, and I'll probably be able to train at the Iron door some by next summer (if I go back to GA in summer) if I join ARMA and all) So much I want to do, and so little time...I guess that's college life for ya.
Anyways, I respect both Asian and European martial heritage(s) and I have a great thirst to learn more about both (ultimate cross training anyone? mwuahahah! <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> ), compare and contrast, and keep an open mind about them. After all, it's the martial artist that makes the art, not the art itself. I have no dillusions (that the right word?) as to there being a "superior" martial art or genre of martial arts out there.

[Matt Bailey]

Well, skepticism about traditional European martial arts is an example of where all-pervading politics intrudes even into the hobby of training with antique weapons.

The pop over-culture is definitely not in favor of the creations, or indeed, individuals, of European extraction. The historical tendency that began in the Rennaisance where Europeans tended to see previous generations as crude and gothic, as well as "lux et orient" beliefs about history, don't help. Except for the occasional forgetable barbarian movie, you're unlikely to see dead Christian white dudes romantacized as unstoppable warriors with near-magical fighting systems.

OTOH, more realistic fighting competition seem to have finally discredited the magical powers of mysterious Eastern arts. Greco-Roman wrestling, boxing/kick boxing and BJJ are not Kunst Das Fechten, but they are essentially products of the Western way of thinking and fighting.

[Aaron Pynenberg]

I am trying to hook up with some other kendo guys, but I have all ready trained with a few. One, who I cannot name as per our agreement, but he is very well respected in the kendo world( I guess- do not really know much about it) but he owns his own Dojo etc, anyway I consider my skills growing, but not totally developed and I found that they both had no answer for the sheitelhau or krumphau.

I scored hit after hit to thier hands, wrists, and head. The hits they did make were, I felt more due to the flaws in my form, but not the "system" I was using. They go low way to much- comments? Aaron

[jeremy pace]

I find often when you take any set structured style and put it against another you have those moments. Adaptation is key. Martial Arts and Mcdojos are very different in that Martial Arts were taught to keep you alive... "Strike first and be true." This is a very universal and natural concept in wma and ema alike. Did the maestros use only what they knew in a desperate battle for life? No they survived and were maestros in that they could adapt to an oponent and out think him no matter the style or technique used.

I never met the men myself, but if they were even half as curious on the ways of the sword and learning new ways to defeat an armed opponent as we seem to be then i would hazard a guess that we would see fechtmeisters and samurai trading books and stories like little kids trading baseball cards. And dancing in the fields later just as we would.

I think ema are very popular right now. Americans especially are very fickle people. Most ema were discounted as mumbo jumbo until Hollywood realized it was a cash cow when Kung Fu came out, not to mention bruce who happened to have an eastern background with wing chun but studied, as we do, many wma to create jeet kune do. Were we influenced?....... Of course we were. Have our asian brethren a good reason to think westerners steal their tradition and change and corrupt it? Well, i think that is just a difference of opinion. The West evolves. Our weaponry, our government, our lifestyle. The East has always been a wealth of knowledge. I greatly respect, as i'm quite sure we all do, everything arma stands for. The West needs something of our heritage back. And why put down the sword just because we cant kill with it?

We are, i am not as of yet an arma member so im sure i wont be heard as i would if i were, pioneers. John Clements has striven for and reached what all of us dream. To remember our ancestors, or at least their path. I look at the photos of him holding not replicas, but the actual blades themselves and am crushed with envy. But also pride. Im with him. If other "martial artists" discount the work arma has done let them bring their swords to meet ours and see if its not a pretty damn good fight. Thats what the maestros did.

"There is no true way" Miyamoto Musashi

[Jaron Bernstein]

" I greatly respect, as i'm quite sure we all do, everything arma stands for. The West needs something of our heritage back. And why put down the sword just because we cant kill with it?"

Ah, but that pragmatic adaptation IS the western heritage. Sure, you may find the same armlocks and hip throw all over the earth in every local style (wow, the human arm only articulates the same way in China, Italy or India!), but that adaptation made Perry's guns firing into a Japan that still had swords an expression of WMA. Or a Boxer rebellion with Chinese fist styles broken by western rifles.

In a certain sense, WMA have supersceded swords. The product of our WMA adaptation is the cruise missile for 2005 instead of the heavy Swiss pike formation of 1550. That said, in their day (snapshot-in-time) if you will, western fencing was every bit the equal of AMA fencing in the same era. It is just that the paths diverged. AMA went into "whateverdo" while we gave up our swords and went to guns. Our task, as I see it, is to unfreeze WMA from where the manuals froze them in amber and try to resurrect them. AMA is more into preserving what may very well be altered/defanged teachings after the generations of oral transmission without actual battlefield usage.

In terms of how to use a sword, you have 2 choices of transmission to learn from:

1. AMA - Oral transmission from generation to generation, without actual field usage or arts that IMO have over the generations lost their original bite. Served ready to eat by your local AMA teacher. But is it nutritious as is it really could be?
2. WMA - An art frozen at the peak of freshness in the manuals so you DO have a better look at what the original flavor was like. Served....well, not served. You must hand thaw it and puzzle it out from the manual. Takes a lot longer. But IMO it has a lot more of the original nutrients.

[SzabolcsWaldmann]

Hey Jaron,

This post was great <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />
Cruise Missiles? <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

*sorry to interupt*

Szabolcs

[jeremy pace]

Absolutely! Most of what you hear is how we are at a disadvantage because we do not have the masters here to instruct us on the proper technique, but in ema do they really have it so much better? As you said most of theres has been bastardized into a form of quasi martial arts that is more suited to sport than actual combat. Thats why so often you hear how they cant defend against wma.
Didn't lance have a post talking about how most of the guys they fought doing ema sword work had never sparred before due to restrictions in place by their instructors?

[KatherineJohnson]

I would say that EMA's downfall is not due to sportification. I train in combat sports and the sporting enviornment actually forces one to use good solid high percentage techniques.

The removal of hard contact sparring and competition from many EMA's is what has caused them to lose effectiveness.

Keep in mind our ancestors used these arts "in ernest and in play".

I take "in play" to refer to in sport, as we know that they had some forms of combat sport.

It's when you take it to far from a combat sport to a simple game that you begin to see the downfall of martial arts.

[Scott Richards]

As is usually the case, the best method towards enlightenment is via education. In this regards, there are two issues I think are most important to use when trying to educate people on this issue.

First, I think the Asian martial arts have been glamorized as a result of Hollywood and, more importantly, because there is this sense of mysticism that has been weaved into its legend and myth. Most of us have studied, to some extent or another, an Asian martial art and know that there is indeed a level of spiritualism built into their studies, but we also know that only the greatest of all masters were ever able to take their studies and truly translate it into a higher level of spiritual awareness. The myth, however, is that any student of Asian martial arts, no matter how novice, is automatically somehow transcended into a higher level of conscienceness. This, combined with America's generally lacking amount of spiritual awareness or guidance, combine to make the Asian martial arts somehow the "truer" form of martial studies.

Second, there is the notion that Medieval and Renaissance warriors were mere brutes wildly hacking away at eachother with inelegant and crude weapons. I think this is because of the false impression created by Hollywood as well as the counterpoise to the Asian martial arts, namely that European martial arts had no spiritual base and was therefore not an art at all.

Anyway, if we overcome these issues in particular I think it becomes easier to convince people generally that ours is in fact a worthy and notable art well worth learning.

Thanks,
Scott

[Risto Rautiainen]

Whoa. This thread went a-bashing EMA. It seems there are really few EMA schools that are legit and teach JSA in the USA. That said, rarely any of us really seem to know _anything_ about JSA and we should make our comments keeping that in mind. Now this is something learned from another board, I'm not telling it's true, but it should give us something to think about.

1. Most JSA schools teach only through kata, but kata is not what many of us think. Kata is not always a set of moves made with an co-operative partner. At first they usually made so that the partner is co-operative and after skill progresses nothing is prohibiting the teacher from doing something out of kata.

2. Most JSA schools were formed during a fairly peaceful era and thus concentrate on the duel.

3. Thirdly and to me most suprisingly, at some point there were JSA schools that taught using sparring. When two novices engaged in challenge duels it did not matter rearding the result of the fight, wether the student had sparred or just used kata as a learning device. Now this is something that is hard for me to swallow. These "duelling tournaments" have been held as late as in the 1960's and were a part of some schools' belt graduation.

I'm not a practitioner of JSA, I study Fiore, but I really think we should tone down the chest thumping here.

[Mike Chidester]

I don't know what JSA is supposed to mean (Japanese... sword... something), but no one here disparages the fighting abilities of the historical Asian masters. Read the article by John entitled The Medieval European Knight vs. the Feudal Japanese Samurai. It demonstrates a great deal of respect for the skills and techniques of such men. Anciently, there were axcellent fighters in ASia just as there were in Europe.

However, it goes without saying that what is taught in modern dojos cannot, by any definition, be considered martial arts. All told, there are probably about as many people in the world engaged in a serious study of true Asian martial arts as there are engaged in seriously studying European.