Fellow ARMA members,
I received my copy of Johann Heim’s Ochs Longsword video yesterday. I thought you might be interested in a brief review.
This is an excellent video and well worth the wait and the price. It succinctly surveys the fundamental techniques of the Lichtenaur school of the German longsword. The production values are good. Little time is wasted on artsy intros and displays. We get right to the cool stuff. The two men illustrating the techniques demonstrate a high degree of technical mastery. Their movements during free flowing exercises which begin and end the video and intersperse the instructional segments are quite beautiful to watch.
The video begins with footwork, demonstrating the five ways of stepping: passing, the triangle, the slide, the hidden step, and the lunge. As with most of the instructional segments, the movements are repeated and then shown again from a separate angle.
The video then covers the main guards and then the eight ways to cut, followed by the slices and the thrusts. These are shown against the air and against a partner armed and unarmed.
The master cuts are given detailed treatment and will be a useful reference to any student who seeks to master them. It is helpful to see them performed against various attacks, for their usefulness is more clear to me now than it has been. I was particularly impressed by the versatility of the krumphau, which I had not appreciated so much before.
The video also shows how to use the thrust as a stop hit before the opponent strikes, and how to use ochs and pflug as major deflections of just about any strike and then follow with a thrust. JC covered this use of ochs and pflug at a couple of seminars I have attended, but his instruction hadn’t quite sunk in until now, when the light finally went on.
Here and there, the video briefly (rather too briefly for my taste but that’s a quibble) illustrates practice methods for working the cuts, the master cuts against the guards, and the thrusts. They look like good exercises.
At the end, the video gives us a taste of the more advanced techniques, which involve working from the bind and throwing. Also, the video showed a few dagger techniques and made the point so many often forget that the sword is just one tool of the warrior, and that he needs to master grappling, the dagger and the lance to be completely prepared for combat. You can’t just learn the sword.
The two main differences ARMA members are likely to have with the film are in the way ochs and vom tag are performed. The ochs is shown with the flat parallel to the ground rather than we recommend, with an edge toward the ground. Vom tag is shown with the cross held at armpit level rather than at the head. This is sure to spark some heated debate, but for those who think this approach is wrong, don’t let that distract you from the value of the remainder of the video.
I wish the video was available in a DVD rather than VHS.
There is one major defect: IT NEEDS TO BE LONGER! WE WANT MORE!
Good work, Hans. I can’t wait for the next one.
 |
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
