ARMA's Interpretation of Ringeck

[Peter Giannini]

So far from what I have gathered, there are numerous interpretations of Ringeck, all differing from each other, and all having their good points and their bad points. I am just starting out learning swordsmanship, and I wanted to know what is the best interpretation to use.

I have been given advice that Sigmund Ringeck's Knightly Arts of the longsword is a good book that contains the full Ringeck document as well as interpretation, but again it does not stick to ARMA's interpretation exactly.

Where exactly can I find the interpretation used by ARMA. I plan to use other books like Svard/Lindholm's and Tobler's, but I would like to stick to what has been proven best so far by those that have worked it out.

[John R. Schmidt]

Best thing to do is find your nearest study group and attend, I have learned so much in a short time and so will you!

[Greg Coffman]

I don't know if there is any "ARMA interpretation" of Ringeck. Certainly there is no written commentary/interpretation like in Tobler's book.

[Stacy Clifford]

There is no single "ARMA interpretation" of any entire manual. We have accepted interpretations of individual techniques and concepts that span across different manuals, true to our holistic approach, but even those are subject to revision if somebody comes up with a better insight, and we have often done exactly that in our history. That holistic approach gives us a way to evaluate the nature and scope of core skills across the art, but individual masters can often be quirky and slightly out of agreement with the bigger picture, so assessing single samples (manuals) is left more to the local level while determining the average is more the goal of the organization as a whole.

Each member and study group is free to research individual manuals on their own and then present their findings to the rest of our members for feedback, as my study group is slowly doing with Di Grassi right now, and if our work survives enough fire tests by our fellows then it might win some endorsement from ARMA as "our best interpretation to date," but it would by no means be the final word. Any other group would be free to do their own research on the same manual and challenge our conclusions with their own, and may the most effective interpretation win with no hard feelings. This setup plus the size of our organization makes ARMA a very effective crucible for ideas.