Further cross-training w/EMA

[JeanryChandler]

Keep in mind, other than ARMA, most WMA groups ONLY do 'free play' with wooden wasters or aluminum or steel blunts, which means fighting either half-speed and / or in armor with heavy restrictions, especially on thrusting. EMA groups aren't alone in this problem, which IMO centers around the lack of availablity of accurate padded sparring weapons which are also professional looking enough for suitible appearance sake, in spite of the efforts of folks like Lance and I to try to advance the art of making them.

JR

[Justin Blackford]

A quick comment to agree with Lance. This has been my assesment over the years. Blade alignment is a big issue among them. They are usually quite vulnerable to the lower legs on cutting swords and to thrusts in general, especially against rapier. Overall, it is their false assumptions and prejudice about our craft and weapons that is most striking.

I have also found in general the higher ranked they are the less willing they are to free-play and the more dismissive of sparring. The less traditional they are however, the more willing and open to cross-training experiences.

I can agree with you on that one. Most high ranking "experts" have refused to spar with me or even listen to the voice of reason when I try to tell them that Western Martial Arts are just as sophisticated in their system of training as any other art, if not more so. Most of the older higher ranking instructors I have met refuse to see the evidence on edge parrying and the actual crafting of an authentic and accurate Western sword which proves that they were not "heavy, cumbersome, and made of primitive iron".
The young man with whom I cross-train, however, is learning quite a lot from our experiences.
I had the day off from work yesterday and so did he, so I and several friends with whom I study the craft came to his house and we went at it again.
He is getting better(Although I still beat him 14 times out of 15; sneaky guy snuck a draw slice to my femoral artery past me on one fight)
This time, he learned to be more aggressive in his moves. He used to just defend and wait for an opening, although he must've been waiting for me to be WIDE open, because he rarely counter attacked unless I really screwed up a strike. I asked him why he didn't make an attempt at any of my openings? He replied, "Your style of longsword fighting isn't presenting any." <img src="/forum/images/icons/shocked.gif" alt="" />
I had to explain that no one attacks or defends without some danger of exposing himself in another area, so that's why one needs to be more brave and aggressive in their attacks. Apparently, his school teaches to "Not fight to win, but fight not lose; This way, you may take advantage of an overly aggressive opponent."
I openly disagree with that statement. It's been made again in the many manuals I have studied from the historical masters of the Liechtenaur style that one must "strike bravely and hasten forth; run in to strike or let go by; those wisest learn to loathe the one forced to defend." Actual freeplay has clearly proven this to be effective. I think most others who have experienced freeplay understand this as well.
But anyway, I mostly defeated him by binding him whenever he tried to close the gap between my longer blade and his shorter-curved one and then performed a durchwechsel or a zucken.
A few other times, I managed some mutieren techniques on both sides. He looked honestly surprised to see that I had my blade bound over his and that he could do nothing my receive my blade's thrust.
Our exploits even received some spectators from the neighborhood. At first, I was afraid that someone would call the cops on us, but most were just enjoying the show.
Well, it was more entertaining for those of us experiencing the freeplay than those just watching it, that's for sure.

Justin

[Risto Rautiainen]

Gene: "In which country do you live? From your name, I would guess either Latvia or Lithuania?"

Quite close, I'm from Finland.

Matthew: "Interesting, did he mention what type of weapons they used? Were they boken or some type of padded weapon?"

I really can't remember very well, because it's over an year ago when I met him. But somehow I am in the impression that they use steel weapons or at least a bokken when sparring (there was a bit of language problems). I think he studies ken, jo, bo and perhaps some sort of spear. The guy was not a lot bigger than me and quite lean, but his ability to give power and pressure when needed was quite terrifying. I saw him give a punchbag quite a whooping. He was interested quite a lot in the western arts and understood very well how similar techniques can be found from different cultures. The most essential difference I noticed was how he explained things. It was not with physics but with energy flows and such. I belive he would have been willing to spar with me had we had the possibility (and I the skill <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />)

[Lance Chan]

Talking about cross-training with EMA practitioner, today we have had a visitor from Taiwan who practice traditional Chinese martial arts. Here's are some of the sparring videos (I personally sparred with him when he wielded Chinese Jian and Chinese Spear, while I wielded the Brescia Spadona RSW version):

http://www.rsw.com.hk/activities.htm#arthur

[Matthew_Anderson]

Lance, you totally owned that guy. Is he supposed to be good with weapons? You had a bit of an advantage with your longer sword against his single hand weapon, but man, he was weak! His footwork was bouncy and sloppy and his cuts were usually wimpy and/or out of range. You pretty much hit him at will. He did a little better with the spear but still got smoked! I can only assume either he doesn't do any full speed contact sparring or you are Yoda!

[Lance Chan]

Well, traditional Chinese martial arts doesn't have full contact weaponry training and it was indeed his first time to spar like this. It was good that he didn't find the sword heavy because most Chinese style artists were not used to real sword's weight. He owned a real sword in Taiwan so he doesn't find the RSW to be heavy at all. Facing an uncooperative opponent is totally another thing though.

I've to say he already performed much better than those I encountered in Taiwan. So to echo the comments discussed before, without full contact weaponry training, it's hard to be fully proficient in the weaponry.

[Jaron Bernstein]

Hi Lance,

It is especially useful to hear how you guys do against EMA weapon fighters. While I don't really expect to see very skilled EMA weapon guys in the US, I would expect for you to have access to them to play with in Hong Kong.

[SzabolcsWaldmann]

Hi allz,

So here's a story from our group.

It was a guy from my group, who ownes a gothic armour and a rather big Longsword. For what he did he got my anger - I only got to know of his doing afterwards. I shouted with him two days long and we almost threw him out of the group, becouse that event was not legal, not safe, and threatened the sole existence of our group. Anyway, deep in my soul I was proud for the outcome <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />
So, he's got a friend. And that friend of his is studiing Iai-jutsu, Bu Jutsu Kai, and I think even Kenjutsu. They were chatting and the Samurai guy said the to-well known comments on knights, european longsword and all that stuff. So they agreed to have a free-play, with steel blunts (that was my problem with the thing). They met one morning, the samurai guy in some japaneese-style protective lightweight gear with a Katana that was worth more than 2000 dollars and our knight in his gothic suit with a longsword from Peter Regenyei.
First, our guy only set the first set of attacks of the samurai guy aside, with no riposte at all, just to check out his speed. He got hit once (the armour bended at the belly, and the katanas's edge went KO), then he began to overwhealm him with the full force of a good european threatment. The battle was ended when he hit him with the pointy end of the gothic suit's elbow in the side and threw him some meters away. The Samurai guy got some of his ribs cracked and was threated in hospital. The thing is, they were friends, so nothing happened afterwards. Nobody needs to tell me that this was simply idiotic, some things have already changed in our group since then.
But anyway, that must have been some sight, as the EMA fighter noticed, he seriously misjudged his own (OWN!) heritage.

byez,

Szabolcs