Grauenwolf's Study of Western Martial Arts

I don’t see it anywhere near as often as I used to, but there is a still a subset of the community that praises what I call the “Flying Oberhauw”. This is when a fencer launches themselves forward for a cut with no control over their body.

Related to this is the “Ballerina Tap” where someone goes forward and up on their tippy toes in order to try to reach. Not backwards, such as when trying to void a low attack while overreaching, but forwards such that you immediately stumble afterwards.

Look, I get it. This is a fast and unpredictable attack. And it works in tournaments. But if you stumble after your attack or otherwise have no control over your next step, it’s bad fencing. You’re just taking advantage of a ruleset and the judge’s whistle to cover for your inability to continue the exchange. And that shouldn’t be encouraged.

Not only does it look bad, it’s dangerous. If the ground isn’t perfect, you increase the chance of slipping, which can hurt you and/or your opponent. And even on a high quality floor, the situation may change that you need to pull your cut, which is hard when physics is in control of your body.

This is also part of a bigger problem, ignoring the withdrawal. In sparring, most of us, at one point or another, get into the habit of freezing the moment someone lands a hit to think about the exchange. That’s bad enough, but lately I’ve been seeing training videos recommended where the attacker has to drop their arms towards the ground to recover from the stumble.

I got a new student last Sunday. This student broke the cardinal rule of HEMA, “Never train on your own before joining a club.” Like all students who pick up a sword and swing it around without an instructor present, he had dozens of bad habits that we will now have to spend months working through.

Oh wait, none of that happened.

Instead, he knew how his body worked and was able to learn more quickly than any of my other students with no martial arts backgrounds. The ones coming from foil fencing or boxing learned faster. But compared to the ones who just dreamed about swords, he progressed much faster with far fewer corrections.

So here’s the real deal. If you come into my class without every having held a sword-shaped object, you’re probably going to spend several weeks just learning how to not trip over your own feet. I’m going to give you the same drills as everyone else, but I’m expecting you’re going to have to repeat them over several weeks just to get to square one.

This fear of “acquitting bad habits that you have to unlearn” is complete bullshit. You can’t “unlearn” a habit. You can only layer good habits on top until they replace what you used to do. And it’s a lot easier to do that when you understand how your body works. And no instructor can teach you that. You need to experience it yourself by actually moving.

Now I do want you to be careful. Don’t push yourself to the point of injury. And if you aren’t sure what that feels like, take a break when you feel start to feel sore so you have a buffer. In time you’ll learn your limits. And don’t swing around a sharp sword until you’re 100% confident that you won’t hit yourself with a blunt one. (Raw pottery clay makes a great cutting target for blunts.)

So grab a broom handle or interesting stick, go outside, and have some fun. Don’t wait for the perfect opportunity to come along. Life is too short to spend it rotting on the couch.

The tool I use for this process is Paint.NET. However, any tool that supports layers should work.

Setup

In a new layer, strike a pair of horizontal lines to check the image alignment. This one is close enough, but in many cases you’ll have to rotate or even skew the image.

Tip: For Paint.NET, hold the SHIFT key to ensure the line is level.

After you have the image straight, trim to size. It is important to trim last so that you don’t end up with an empty wedge where the image was rotated.

Floor

The floor is painted with a “Color Burn” layer.

I find it easier to draw large rectangles and then erase the coloring from the legs. Near the edges, rotate the rectangles to match the horizon line.

Tip: For Paint.NET, you can move the rotation point from the center of a rectangle to a corner. This makes it much easier to match the angles.

Skin

The next step is to color the skin. A “Multiply” layer with the opacity set to 200 works well for generic pseudo-European skin tones.

When figures are grappling, I like to setting one skin layer to opacity 100 and the other to 255 gives some contrast.

Hair

The hair uses an “Overlay” layer. Allow it to overlap the skin a bit, it just makes the hair darker.

Clothing, Sword

For clothing and swords, I use a “Multiply” layer set to 100 opacity.

More Examples

These images were made for the Illuminated L’Ange book using the same techniques.

Settings

## Blood
* Color: 7F0000
# Bleed Through Removal
* Color: E2D9C6
* Opacity: 130
* Mode: Lighten
## Floor
* Color: 8A755A
* Opacity: 255
* Mode: Color Burn
## Skin
* Color: D9BAA6
* Opacity: Base 200, Contrast A 100, Constrast B 255
* Mode: Multiply
# Hair
* Color: 362511, 80471C, 9A7B4F, 4A2511, 371D10
* Opacity: 255
* Mode: Overlay
## Red Clothes
* Color: FF0000
* Opacity: 100
* Mode: Multiply
## Blue Clothes
* Color: 0026FF
* Opacity: 100
* Mode: Multiply
# Blade
* Color: 404040
* Opacity: 100
* Mode: Multiply
# Foot Lines
* Width: 3
* Blue: 0026FF
* Red: FF0000
# Body Lines
* Width: 3
* Torso: 00FFFF Cyan
* Limbs: FFD800 Yellow
# Heigth Lines
* Width: 3
* Horizontal: FF00DC Magenta 
# Drop Lines
* Width: 3
* Vertical: B200FF Purple 

The word “feder” literally means “feather” or “spring” in German. (Yes, they used it for puns.) In a HEMA context the definition varies. Here are some definitions of feder in rough order of popularity.

1. A flexible steel longsword used for training with a narrow profile and a schilt.
2. A flexible steel longsword used for training.
3. A flexible steel sword used for training.
4. A flexible steel sword used for training with a narrow profile and a schilt.
5. A flexible longsword used for training with a narrow profile and a schilt.
6. A flexible sword used for training.

In other words, the term feder can refer to the flexibility of the blade, the shape of the blade, whether or not it has a schilt, and/or the material of the blade (steel vs synthetic). Since we don’t know the precise definition intended by the original authors, I go with #3 because it’s the most useful for me. This gives me…

• Waster: an inflexible sword made of wood or plastic
• Blunt: an inflexible sword made of metal
• Sharp: an inflexible sword made of metal with a cutting edge
• Synthetic: a flexible sword made of plastic
• Feder: a flexible sword made of metal

These five categories cover everything I care about. As a club operator, details such as whether or not it has a schilt aren’t important to me. And I don’t know that it was important to the source authors.

When you flip through rapier manuals you’ll see a consistent theme, most of hits are against the body, not the face. Here are my theories why.

Margin of Error

If you miss the center of the chest to the left or right, you still hit the chest or shoulder. If you miss low, you hit the belly. If you miss high, you hit the throat or head. While we train for accuracy, there are factors we can’t always control. So having this margin of error is helpful.

As for the head, a miss to the left or right is a clear miss. Same if you miss high. You only still hit something if your thrust comes in low.

Training Safety

Next we need to consider how they trained. Throughout most of history, fencing masks just weren’t a thing. Which means you have two options when working through drills.

1. Work just outside of measure.
2. Avoid aiming for the face.

We know unequivocally some chose option 1 because Rada goes into great detail exactly how you need to do it.

Outside of my club, I have been working with an Asian martial arts instructor. In Asian cultures, they still do the majority of their training without masks. So that’s how I taught my L’Ange lesson. And there were absolutely no problems. Between the speed of the actions and the targets L’Ange illustrated, the points never got near the face.

Obviously there are limitations to this. We were working through highly scripted drills with minimal opposition. To stress test the drills we would certainly need safety gear appropriate for the level of intensity.

Note that I’m not saying that you should be training without masks. And if you are my club this isn’t even a question, the HEMA Alliance safety policy mandates face protection when thrusts are involved.

But again, when you are in a context where masks aren’t even an option, this is how the authors can mitigate risks without eliminating the thrust.

Constraining the Arm

My third theory deals with the opponent’s response to being hit. Outside of a tournament context, time doesn’t freeze when you make a touch. The opponent can still injure you before succumbing to their injury, if they were even injured at all and you didn’t get caught up on a brass button.

Docciolini, 1601, addresses this with the concept of the Punto (Point, Spot, or Mark). For most situations, the mark is the right shoulder. A strike here constrains the arm such that it can’t come forward for its own thrust. Experimentally, I’ve found the best place for the mark is the hollow of the chest where it meets the shoulder. You’ll know when you found it on yourself because it’s also a pressure point. (See chapter 8 for more on Docciolini’s discussion.)

If you are attacking from the outside, a thrust or cut that goes over the right arm has a similar effect. Even if you don’t actually hit the arm, you’ll make it difficult for your opponent to raise it. Meyer calls this a Zwingerhauw (Constrainer Cut) in his dusack material. If you instead aim for the head, the arm has room to move.