Style or Method?

[Bart Walczak]

John explained his point in his last letter and I agree with his objections. Yet the word "method" describes the way of studying, not the subject of studies. Unless you are studying how to study.

An example: me starting with simple excercise and expanding it to get to a sparring is a method (of training). My combat is bound to have my style, because of my physical capabilities.

Preference of techniques makes a style for me.

Certainly Fiore, Liechtenauer etc. did have their own style. We will never be able to replicate it 100%, but they did not leave us with the method how to train, they left us the scrapes of their own style of fighting.

Back to the training yard.

[Randall Pleasant]

Bart

Your example is true within the context of "studying". You do have a method of studying and that method is not the subject of your study. A method is the steps in doing something, such as studying. Likewise, the steps in performing different martial art techniques represent a method of fighting. How you, as in individual, perform a set of techniques might well reflect your "style". However, I think it is safe to say that Fiore was not attempting to teach each individual to develop their own style, rather he was attempting to teach a number of people to perform the techniques the same. In other words, Fiore wanted everyone to perform his techniques alike in a standard manner, with no individual style. When John fights he does have his own style because of his physical capabilities. However, that "style" is not what John teachs to his students, rather he teaches a method of fighting based upon the teachings of the masters. Hope this makes sense.

[Bart Walczak]

Hi Randall,

It's hardly true that everyone would perform the said techniques in the same manner, simply because everyone is built differently.

A good teacher chooses techniques best suited for his student. For example, for those with heavy built I would recommend closing in as fast as possible, while for the lighter people I would recommend trying to stay at the distance.

Ever saw a meisterhau executed by a 5 feet guy against 6 feet guy? It just simply doesn't work. You need a different technique. You need your style.

As a teacher, though, you need to know all the techniques. As a student, you will win most fights if you can successfully employ 10 of them.

What I'm trying to tell is that neither method nor style is a good word for what we practice. "Way" would be good if it didn't have so many connotations with "do". And why not stick to "system"?

OK, this was my last post on this subject. Got work to do.

[Jake_Norwood]

I suggest that the term "approach" settles most of the semantic disputes here.

Jake

[Patrick Hardin]

I have a more simplistic view on all this. I just consider what we do as learning "how to fight." There's no equivalent word in the English language for this, it's just "how to fight." You can call it anything you want, style method, technique, approach, or whatever, but it all boils down to the fact that we're learning "how to fight." I see all sorts of Asian "styles," or "ways," and some are more martial than others, but the question I always ask myself about these things is "But do they teach how to fight, pure and simple?" I think you went to a fechtschul simply to learn how to fight, not to learn a style, and each master had his own method, or whatever, and these may or may not be found in the surviving manuals, but however they went about it, they taught people "how to fight."

So, to avoid future semantic debates, why don't we just invent a new word for the English language to describe this thing we are discussing? We could just do a word blending. How does "howdafight" sound? Now we can discuss the howdafight of Fiore, or the howdafight of Ringeck, or whatever. <img src="http://www.thearma.org/forum/images/icons/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Patrick Hardin

[Richard Strey]

You could, of course, *not* reinvent the 500-year-old wheel and just call it "fechten" or "fencing". But that would be too obvious, right? <img src="http://www.thearma.org/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />
BTW, von Danzig, Ringeck et al. called Liechtenauer's stuff his "Zedel", which, if my scarce knowledge of ethymology doesn't fail me, simply means "laid out stuff", or *plan*. So it's not a method, not a style, but simply a plan of what to do when you get into a fight. One should remember that often enough, we're not even told whether to advance or move back, let alone possible ways to get *into* the the situation described. Mostly because *it depends*. We rely on our own knowledge of "how to otherwise fence" -as von Danzig puts it- to figure that out. And the possible variations of the fight because of this are much bigger than anything usually described by the term "style." At least in my opinion.

[Steve Thurston]

The way I see this going is that there is a 'mechanism' which is common across Europe during the medieval period. This 'mechanism' is then taught on by a master, his specific 'method' of execuiting aspects of the 'mechanism'. Where it gets complicated is when these arts die out. In the orient the 'shools' have very long traditions that can be linked to single origoinal 'schools' (am I right?). In WMA there is a gap. I think we should therefore say that a direct interpretation of a manuscript or treatise is a 'style' and what is passed on by these 'new masters' is a 'technique'.

I don't feel that term fencing covers it, and there are already stong preconceptions around the term. What I suggest would be that '[period] fencing' would in it self be a 'mechanism' then refering to the 'method' of a specific contemperary master.

eg.
'mechanism' - Medieval longwsord
'method' - Ringeck
'Style' - Tobler
'technique' - what I fight when I get the chance. <img src="http://www.thearma.org/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

Steve Thurston

[Guest]

Hi everybody!

It's been a while since I last posted, and I like this thread. I'd like to take the cinversation in a slightly different direction. I'm not sure I like the word "style" when it comes to fighting. The problem I have with it isn't so much semantics, however. As far as I'm concerned, there are only two kinds of fighting, either weaponed or unweaponed: there's good fighting, (that which is effective), and bad fighting, (that which is not). Good fighting is an art, to be sure, but it differs from other arts because fighting is NOT an aesthetic (despite what some hokey "masters" of the Eastern methods might claim). As has been said before on the forum, (and most aptly put, I might add), the human body can only move in so many ways. This means that there is a limit on what will be effective in any kind of combat, and as the scope is limited, any effective method of fighting will have many similarities others, at least superficially. This argument is supported by the number of times that I've shown Japanophiles the European manuals and they claim the images depicted are very similar to guards employed by Samurai, etc. As stated above, fighting is not an aesthetic; meaning it cannot be comapred to the visual arts, where preference is subjective. One might claim that Da Vinci's work is superior to Rapheal (sp?), but another will disagree. Likewise, one might claim Mozart is better than Beethoven, Shakespeare more insightful than Goethe, or whatever. This is the intelectual realm where the word "style" is most apt, I think. Fighting, by its very nature, cannot be thought of along these subjective lines. A method of fighting is either effective, and therefore "good," or superior to the ineffective, or "sportified" ones, or its ineffective, and therefore "bad."
I prefer the word method over style.

[Webmaster]

Brandon,

I think this is going to depend on exactly how you define a "style". I think I would consider the foundations of a fighting system, meaning the basic principles of movement, timing, etc., and the total body of techniques, to be the "method," as in the "European fighting method." I would consider a "style" to be a preferred subset of the method which can be different from region to region. We've already pretty well established on this thread that if there were indeed an "Italian style" and a "German style" of longsword fighting, that they weren't much different from each other because of so much overlap, and would be hard to consider separate. However, from my research on staff so far I think it's safe to say that there are definitely distinct styles of staff fighting in Germany and England. Both still draw from the same body of techniques and would be easily able to adapt to one another, but the emphasis placed on which techniques to use and how best to apply them are noticeably different, kind of like a violinist and a fiddler playing the same instrument. Others may disagree with me, but to me that is what constitutes a style. Not all weapons are going to have differing styles within the whole system, but some can. It's all a judgement call between the lumpers and the splitters in the end.