I was wondering what is known about any changes that may have been made to WMA in general, and swordsmanship in particular, once tournaments and other contests became popular.
If you look at "combat" sports today, they all have rules and those rules differ a little from reality. And when you have a huge financial outcome on the outcome, or just the pleasure of thumping your chest, there appear competitors who train in ways they know will get them killed in reality but work much better in contests than reality based techniques.
Need I provide examples from sports like kendo, PPC pistol and the like?
So the tournaments were big financial windfalls if you won. And a huge setback if you lost. The winner got the losers horse and armor if I remember correctly. And that is a lot of cash. And in the tournaments they used special weapons for a minimum of safety. (I am generalizing here- not all tournaments were the same.)
So what kind of things do we know about where training and techniques have drifted from what will keep you alive on the battlefield to just what will allow you to win in a contest?
Don Roley
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