Up Close and Personal

[Guest]

The more I study, the more I am convinced that all the medieval and renaissance masters considered a good foundation in hand to hand fighting to be the basis for all other fighting skills with weapons. To be able to "come to grips" with your opponent, unarmed, or with only a dagger seems to be the basic skill set that other techniques are built on. How can you "ringen am schwert" if you can't ringen? As Keith Meyers says in the introduction to his book, "Medieval Hand-To-Hand Combat", many of us have begun our study with the sword and overlooked the rich tradition of hand to hand fighting. I think it's very important to train in the unarmed techniques as well. How many of you spend time at training sessions working on grappling and dagger techniques? I'm finding it much more fun and interesting than I once thought. BTW, if you don't have Keith's book, you should!

[GaryGrzybek]

Hi Matt,

I'm begining to see the importance of this myself and really need to spend more time working at it. These are no doubt the foundational skills of the art.

Looks like I need to get Keith's book too <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

[John_Clements]

Yeah Kieth's book is great. Can't wait to see something more formal produced for publication.

Grappling and unarmed were important, as Dr. Anglo's book points out, several masters thought it foundational. However, in an age of armor and lethal hand weapons, they were primary and could not be ignored in favor of the other (see my piece online here on grappling &amp; wrestling in Renaissance fencing, and the larger vesion in my book next year). Each was part of overall fighting skill, but I am inclined to believe that armed skills were primar and that learned a weapon over time teaches the unarmed arts ---which in turn could then be used to reinforce and augment the armed.
For example, I started including grappling and disarms back in the mid '90s only after I had stumbled across its tremendous value in my rapier and longsword. Before that I knew next to nothing of it. Now I try to make sure all my students grasp some of its principles.

JC

[Shane Smith]

It does seem that men with good empty-hand skills tend to be men with good technique at the hilt as well. We commonly incorporate both half-swording,dagger and Fiore-style grappling in alot of our sessions as a warmup before we move on to the Long-sword or sword and shield. We find that the natural progression in body mechanics and flow carries us smoothly from one aspect of the art to the next.

[Guest]

Years ago when I studied EMA weapons were always taught as an extension of hand to hand, makes sense; timing, distance etc. are all fundamental to all MA. Flos Duellatorum starts with hand to hand too which I think was also done to suggest the student learn to move the body, then add a weapon to extend the reach/power/effectivenes.
OK that said where do I get a copy of Keith's book? Not listed in Amazon and it sounds like it should be a solid part of our training

mark

[John_Clements]

Well, I think this needs considerable qualifying....
When I use to kickbox and box (which I was never particularly good at) I would often talk my sparring partners into fencing with sword &amp; buckler or longsword, and invariably, no matter how good they were unarmed, they always were easily whipped when it came to weapons ---even the ones who had studied kenjutsu or kendo or arnis/escrima (in fact, the more Asian weapons knowledge they had, they worse they often seemed to do in serious weapon sparring with me). On the other hand, if I managed to get a foil/epee/saber fencing student to spar unarmed with me in boxing or kickboxing, no matter how good they were at saber or epee, 90% of the time they couldn't hold up for more than few seconds. Even those I met who did both armed and unarmed arts seemed to have trouble adjusting one to the other in sparring. It was always puzzling. But,
I myself did not make the “connection” between armed and unarmed techniques until the early 1990's.
So, my conclusions are that, unless you really know weapons and really have a serious training program for them that includes lots of contact free-play/sparring, you can't get students studying unarmed fighting to adapt their knowledge to weapons, especially using just infrequent drills and exercises. Similarly, unless your weapon skills and knowledge are exceptional, you will not easily incorporate unarmed principles into your repertoire if you don't understand them well in the first place.

Nowadays, I am surprised how easy it is to teach unarmed skills to novices in the course of our weapon use. They pick things up far faster than I have seen unarmed students trying to learn weapons ---the very opposite of what we often hear in Asian arts --i.e., that weapons are "reserved" for "advanced students", an approach I believe directly at odds with military history.

JC

[Guest]

You make some good points John. Most of us ARMA types started with longsword. From what I've seen, the ARMA practitioners with some basic longsword experience don't seem to have a hard time adding in grappling, either with a weapon or completely unarmed. Maybe it isn't really necessary to learn the grappling first as long as you eventually include it in your training and sparring routine.

[Shane Smith]

Fair enough John.I agree 100% that good empty-hand skills do not inherently make for a good Swordsman.I do think though the the tactical understanding and footwork learned during the practice of those unarmed skills can be valuable. Also,in reference to us using those unarmed sessions to warm up for sword work,it does seem to get the juices flowing and prep the body for the armed work to follow. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

[Mike Cartier]

Alot of the Filipino arts teach weapons first, usually the stick and double stick or sword and double sword first.
they beleive that the attributes most needed for hand to hand are mort easily developed when working with weapons first then going to unarmed.

[Guest]

Hi Mark!

My book is self-published at this time, so you can get it only from me. Just send a check or money order for $25 to:

Keith P. Myers
11220 Troy Rd
Rockville, MD 20852

Be sure and include your eMail addy so I can let you know when I get it out in the mail

[Guest]

Yes, I agree with John. The body dynamics are not always the same between the medieval grappling and the use of the weapons. As I get deeper into Mair, I am finding that the weapons use requires deeper stances and more extension. It would be somewhat easier for someone that has already learned the balance and extension necessary to use the weapons well to modify his body mechanics for grappling than the other way around. It also seems that there is not as direct a correlation between the western grappling and western weapons methods as there is in some of the asian systems. Likely because rather than one being developed directly from the other... they arose independantly and were then brought together. We hear about Ott being a grappler and a student of Doebringer. But nowhere have I seen it stated that he was a swordsman.

Keith

[Shane Smith]

Hello Keith. I will defer to you and John on this issue.Perhaps my personal experience is the exception rather than the rule. I think my wording made my original intent unclear as well. I guess my thinking boils down to this;A good empty-hand fighter tends to pack the mental gear to get the job done for real(as opposed to a technique collector).That mental attitude is precisely what makes him a"good fighter".That same mental quality would be required of the Swordsman as well. There are many "technical wizards" to be found in any martial art,that while knowledgable on the technicalities/intricacies thereof,are not mentally equipped to apply that knowledge when it matters ie. they don't think tactically or move with economy of motion.Thats really where I'm coming from.Unarmed fighting is a good "gut check" and lays a solid foundation in the realm of mental fortitude.I think a mans inner strength or lack thereof can be more easily exposed at arms length then at the standard measure a sword dictates.If you pack the gear,you'll get the job done armed or no.If you don't,you'll fail.From that particular perspective,perhaps my previous posts are more understandable. I wish I could nail down my thoughts in a more tangible manner,but this is the best I can manage for the moment. <img src="/forum/images/icons/crazy.gif" alt="" />

As for grappling and sword-play evolving seperately,I think thats false in the absolute sense. As styleized systems of martial art,you are probably correct,but who would argue that even from the very beginning when men were fighting with stone blades mounted on the jawbone of an ass as a sword(can't you just see the guy,loin-cloth and all <img src="/forum/images/icons/laugh.gif" alt="" /> ), that if the guy with the blade found himself too close to use the blade effectively for it's intended purpose,he would not resort to kicking,scratching,tripping,throwing or anything else that he thought may preserve his life? I think any true distinction between the use of ANY weapon and the natural use of the body itself as weapon to complement it, is arbitrary at best and patently false in probability.Thats just my opinion.

[Guest]

Attitude - I agree with Shane's idea about attitude being key to a good fighter. But I beleive attitude can arrive thru either hand-to-hand or weapons training. Just wish I knew how to teach attitude; you can explain it, you can demonstrate it, but in the end it has to come from within. Eventually though, any good fighter must be willing to close, either thru intent or due to circumstance. New students seem to be reluctant to do this. I wish I was better at it; I'd like some good reference material on closing and grappling techniques.
Hands and weapons are tools - both should be integral to any robust style.

[Jay Vail]

I tend to agree with John. The question whether wrestling is “foundational” to weapons combat is open to question. I have been an empty hand fighter since 1964. I feel very comfortable with empty hand fighting at all ranges except on the ground, where I am pathetic. Since transitioning to ARMA and spending more time with weapons than I have in the past, and actually fighting people, I find all that empty hand training of limited practical value when sword fighting. The distance, the timing, the reactions and techniques are just too different.

Where wrestling comes in handy is when you close, intentionally or accidentally, with your opponent. As pointed out in the grappling forum by Mark, a close quarter kampfringen technique will catch the opponent by surprise. It may even defeat him.

One thing I have noticed in weapons combat is that when you close with the opponent and grapple, they almost always struggle to retain control of the weapon and to use it rather than to wrestle back; at least the novices do this. But at that stage of the combat, it is often better to abandon the weapon and go to full wrestling when you are grabbed.

So, in this broader sense, wrestling supports and supplements the sword rather than forming a foundation. That grappling was important to the ancient warrior, however, cannot be disputed. Otherwise, you would not see arts similar to kampfringen emerge elsewhere in the world (i.e., jujutsu to support the katana).

[TimSheetz]

HI Jay,

Interesting! When I would begin training a cadet at USMA, if they had extensive training in either boxing or wrestling, it seemed that they picked up things a lot faster than folks coming in without extensive combative sport training... but the wrestlers were always faster on the uptake than the boxers. The wrestlers seemed to adapt to the different ranges faster than the boxers.

Of course, mental attitude played a very large part in the initial quick successes that new students made.

They all had trouble fluidly combining unarmed and off hand actions with the weapon. Once familiar with the weapon and having conducted off hand training they were able to handle it.

Of course, you'd never guess the easiest students to train.....