Right, I forgot to mention that these people have also challenged HEMA practitioners to fight them with sharp blades... And of course they *totally* wouldn't sue the crap out of anyone if they lost a limb while playing tough guy, right? And then they have the gall to call people "cowards" for refusing their challenge to illegal duels. Oh, humanity... Might be time to drop the meteor and re-start from scratch.
Lol never underestimate untrained soldier? There's a difference between medieval ages and modern soldiers. Modern soldiers are trained better than soldiers back in the days of swords. If a knight was to go up against a peasant, of course the knight would get cocky but no other knight or footsoldier is gonna be stupid 🙄 that is if they are just borned stupid and over confident. And talking about untrained soldiers in modern day? You don't have to be a smart ass to know untrained soldiers are not to be underestimated. If a robber can shoot pretty sure anyone can shoot as long as their not stupid. You don't have to be trained to be good. Some ppl are born to be good at it or even more.
@Michael HEREDOS and your reply is unnecessary. Good job of wasting ur own time. Also I never said about myself being knowledgeable, as I'm going off from what I know or have heard from other videos and or internet informations. Also I can care less. Its my opinion on how I wanna reply so you telling me to check on my grammer? So what? Is being on the internet a professional job that I have to use proper grammer. No, so you saying check your grammer is stupid. Even if some of my points aren't correct that doesn't mean I'm wrong from certain things. No ones perfect 👌 so why don't you lay off instead of being them wannabe grammer police and internet police. Also I was using soldiers as example, I didn't have to say "as example, soldiers of peasants, recruits/trainees, mercenaries and or Knights" Also you can't just say "look at historical accounts" Almost anyone can just say look at historical this or that information. Its not like the writers in those days wrote every little details about every man or soldier etc. Also I could've referred to other things in history. The medieval era wouldn't be the only thinking I could be referring to. I could've mention back to the Roman's and Greeks, etc. To those times. You can't just tell or read something to know that back then no one has never underestimated anyone. Roman's underestimated the barbarians even tho Rome had a great empire and professional soldiers, they had the confidence to beat anyone and bravery and discipline. Romans lost a couple battles to the slave revolt of Spartacus, lost some battles against the barbarians. I don't know another battles as I'm not super knowledgeable as wannabes like you trying to annoy ppl like me. Also replying with "dude" to my "Lol" you clearly need to pay attention yourself to what you would reply to, whenever you see lol, the person can either be trolling, not serious and or just using it. Ontop of that I used another couple examples which is today's modernized world. "If a robber can shoot pretty sure anyone can shoot as long as their not stupid." I'm not only going based on historical regardless if I'm wrong or right on my knowledge. I can go all day about modern, medieval bronze, etc any of those eras. Crusades, mongol invasions, China, Japan, etc. I go through some of those wars that I have taken a look at through videos, internet and talk about untrained or trained troops. Don't bring up the word confidence otherwise your reply is invalid to this.
I take risks, but only calculated ones. The problem is I suck at math. In all seriousness though, I agree with you and Skall. Complete recklessness is displaying ignorance and immaturity to an extreme. I would, however, like to point out the difference between recklessness and calculated risks. When I do rock climbing and find a place where I can't get proper footing, I'll stop, and work my way back down. I understand that there is an inherit danger in rock climbing, but I know it's within my capabilities. Climbing an almost smooth rock face with no equipment is recklessness. I would never do that. I practice fencing with foam blades (calculated risk); I would never fight with sharps, even with HEMA-grade heavy sparring gear (which is recklessness).
"Masculinity" is for savage wild animals who kill each other over a mate. Among us humans. If you're that desperate for a mate, just go onto Tinder or something.
You should see the training Russian and Polish special forces do with live ammo. Scared the shit out of even our most badass spec ops guys back when I was in the Army... Not because it's badass, but because it's stupidly dangerous... It is kinda badass though. Lol, if you're insane. They have one where they shoot each other in vests with live ammo, but the worst is where one dude stands between two targets and the one shooting has to shoot the targets, maybe a FOOT to the side of his buddies head. It gets even weirder too, there's a good video on UA-cam by Vickers Tactical called "insane Russian counter terror confidence drill" that covers a couple of the nuttier things. It's really wild.
@@JesusChrist-qo5ln I know. Doesn't make it safe, does it? One can train as a highly proficient shooter, but if you get a bunch of conscripts flailing at each other with rifles you'll get a lot of paperwork.
I've actually been stabbed while practicing. It was a long time ago. Three quarters of a inch in my calf. Took me more than 6 weeks to even be able to stand on it. 6 months of physical therapy to gain back flexibility. I lost enough blood to significantly drop my iron levels in lab results. I almost didn't make it. I still feel it when I walk sometimes. This is not a joke at all. Take it from someone who has actually been stabbed in real life.
@@glugtrop2010 It gets gnarlier than that too. They didn't know if I needed surgery for the artery so I couldn't take any pain meds while waiting. The tourniquet could only stay on for a certain amount of time. But the bleeding wasn't stopping. So they would release the tourniquet every 15 minutes to prevent severe damage. You could hear the blood hitting the floor every time they loosened it. Let the blood flow out and tighten it again. The tourniquet was by far the most painful part of the entire experience. Felt like someone was ripping my leg off. The doctors figured out I didn't require surgery and eventually they were able to loosen it without more blood loss. They didn't do stitches either because large wounds need to be able to self drain. Lesson learned the hard way. Don't fuck around with sharp objects.
@@emceeunderdogrising Agreed. I still have the scar on my shoulder to this day. It took me 2 months to completely recover... I should have known how sharp my sparing partner's arming sword was
@Albert Fels Tourniquets are most definitely extremely painful. By far the most painful element of my experience. There is also a level of danger when leaving a tourniquet on for too long. After 18 minutes without blood flow the tissue becomes damaged very quickly. It felt like someone was pulling my leg off. It was also one of the heavy duty ones with a turn crank. You can hear it click as it turns increasing the pain dramatically. But if they didn't turn it enough I would start pouring blood again. So they had to go 100% in every time. Took what felt like hours of them turning it up and down before the bleeding slowed down. When leaving the ER to a hospital bed I noticed the fat pool of blood under the bed. It was really shocking how what felt like a shallow wound could be so dramatically intense.
I remember a quote a while back, don't remember exactly but it was to the effect of " Master doesn't fear another Master because they know what they're going to do, a master fears the amateur because neither of them have any idea what he's going to do. "
This is a significant concern, extra care is needed when fighting utter novices, but as Skall says, it's about "framing" the action and keeping it simple. Something like balestra pause hit. balestra should be crisp to elicit the overreaction.
"You can't hit each other on the head because that could cause cumulative brain damage over time..." I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest this isn't a concern for these gentlemen.
Maybe that's exactly how it happened... They kept hitting each other on the head so hard with blunt swords that eventually they had this brilliant idea. :D
Funny. In my experience in wii sports resort in swordplay, I found that wildly swinging in tougher duels meant that I would keep hitting a blocking sword. Because of this, I chose to deliberately aim my strikes to yield consistent successes (that and it is more fun this way)
Cade Thumann Stupidly enough, I feel like going with that approach is actually a nice, gentle intro to how to use a sword. Like kindergarten art class... but yeah, it’s a stupid amount of fun. I kinda wish I still had mine. It vanished somewhere ):
I remember hearing a story of someone who practiced disarming gunmen of their guns, he practiced so much that when he actually had to do it, he returned the gun back to the gunman. I can't find the story so I don't know if I remember that story correctly but this is the problem with real sword practice: If you don't have intent to harm but you are using blades that can; you'll place a mental block in your mind that when your sword meets resistance, you'll instinctively withdraw your cut. This is why sparring uses blunt practice swords. Combat will always be different from sparring because the intent to harm exists in real combat. Sparring was originally meant to replicate that intent without causing harm to each other. So when you do find yourself in real combat, you don't instinctively hold back from an opportunity to win the battle.
yeah that is an issue for me. I try to teach my little brother about fighting and swordsfighting. I dont have the money to buy protective gear for us so when I spar with him in the backyard, I teach him stances, how to fight, whats going on, but what he needs to do to make sure both of us are safe. Absolutely no headshots (Even with foam larp ones. A hard enough hit with one can knock your ass out cold). I constntly position myself just barely out of meassurment so if one of us has a fast or hard swing, it can be avoided easy or stopped easier. And I taught him how to limit his strength. Admittedly I wish I could get us some actual sparing armor but for now it works for us. We have gave each other some good whacks but we have yet to injure each other. My point is, yeah its hard to train yourself for the real deal when you train for stuff thats not real. I am a novice swordsman and I know my way around a sword but put into the real deal it might be a tricky situation because my muscles are acustomed to safe practice. Then again fight or flight might correct those issues.
It goes for alot of things funnily. I teach jujitsu and also work security as side jobs and one night I had to subdue someone and I remember cranking the arm lock and subconsciously I just knew that was as far as his arm went.....and I let the damn lock go out of habit!!!! Dude immediately clocked me as soon as I did and thank god my partner had gotten there by then BC I got full on rocked. To this day i still cant believe that happened and now when I train with more advanced students I have us both practice with a rule of only let go if one of us taps fully or gives verbal submission.
The gun disarm was a few years back with a LEO at a traffic stop. I read about it in a magazine and forgot about it. I attended a dog bros seminar and it came up with someone who was NJ trooper. The new defensive tactic was to do a disarm and step back while controlling the situation because of that incident. on a larger issue, safety enables everyone to continue training and developing while injuries prevent that. Therefore, find way to find that sweet spot between forcing oneself better and not being injured. Not always easy to do. The lost factor is that martial training, unless one is a LEO/protective professional or military, why push yourself to injury on something you enjoy doing.
Thank you so much for this video. As someone who suffered from a large number of symptoms of borderline personality disorder for a good part of my life, i understand why the holmgang hamburg guys might be doing this. Yet today, as a grown-up, sane person (into hema) i can't find anything beautiful about it anymore. The following might sound a bit... i don't know, arrogant?... but anyone who feels the need to do what holmgang hamburg does should start looking for professional help. No offence intended.
If a HEMA practitioner actually challenged these guys either A: All the bravado would drop and they would shit themselves... or B: Someone is going to jail for murder.
@Captain Kirk i did, and I've just read it again without seeing anything wrong with what he has said. Now are you gonna try to justify your claim or are you too busy liking your own comments?
@Captain Kirk I have read every single reply under phantom savages comment. Are you gonna try to defend your claim in any way, or you just gonna keep challenging my ability to understand information and hope that somehow that makes your argument more credible.
Holmgang Hamburg are somewhat infamous in the German sword fighting scene. I don't know if you've read their website or your German is good enough to understand what they are saying. They basically say that the historical manuals suck and it's useless in a real combat situation. Only what they are doing is the real deal. And of course, none of those phoney HEMA suckers ever stood a chanch against them. Most probably, they will challenge you to a fight if they learn about this video. Now, you could argue that they can kill or hurt (which is usually their goal, as they are fighting till first blood) themselves all they want as long as they stay among themself. The problem is that they might make life harder for every German sword enthusiast. Right now, it is fairly easy to buy a sword as a collector's item or practice sword fighting as a sport. Should one of these guys be seriouly injured or even killed, this is going to change, especially with our current Minister of the Interior, but that's another story.
Apparently a few people have already died doing this. If I accidently killed my friend with some reckless sword fighting idk if I'd even want to continue the sport.
last time i stumbled uppon a video (or were it some comments? ) by them, they hinted that there was an incident a while ago that they can not talk openly about...
@@zypherabe I remember that too. If you want to be reckless, fine it's your life but I could never live with myself if I harmed someone else. Imagine being at that guys funeral or seeing him rushed to the er. Was it really worth it?
@@ColtDouglasMusic that's the purpose of laws. To protect property and bodily health. But I agree we should stop protecting willfully ignorant people from themselves so mother nature can take care of 'em.
Their videos are actually 100% historically accurate. Whenever two idiots get a sword each and want to fight for whatever reason, this is exactly how things go when they've never held a blade or received proper training before in their life.
One time at my local weebcon I brought a set of twin "straight" katanas (the kind that sheaths into each other's handle, yeah, I know) for a cosplay contest, safety regulations were not that safe in the early 2000s, a friend of a friend asked if he could hold it for a moment, so I handed the swords (still sheathed into each other) I turn for 1 second to say hi to another friend, then I heard a loud "GO!!!" behind me and turn back to see this guy and another rando pull from the oposite sides of the sheathed twin-katana-stick (the handles), do a 360 heel turn and try to clash the blades... and I say "try" 'cause I grabbed the closest knucklehead by the forearm and pulled him away while pointing the sword to the ceiling before they manage to harm each other... moral of the story do not bring a "real" weapon to a weebcon.
Me: "Practice with sharp swords? Well yeah, how else are you supposed to cut stuff?" Skall: "Where people actually...S-P-A-R with sharp blades" Me: "...oh."
*really* sharp blades are surprising painless to get cut with, (having accidentally deeply cut myself with a razor sharp blade - not sword - before). So together with infight adrenaline, I can totally see people not noticing unless serious structural damage is done (bones, tendons or large muscles severed). Also it's *really* easy to break skin with a properly sharp sword - mine are shaving sharp, despite a solid appleseeded edge angle. Just lightly bumping against the edge while oiling it left me trailing blood droplets to the bathroom. Lesson: Don't watch interesting UA-cam videos while cleaning your swords, kids...
Yeah. I set really easy-to-understand stuff playing while maintaining mine so that I commit the bulk of my attention to the blade. While I may not need all of my attention on it, I certainly need a lot of it.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I don't have any swords, but I keep my knives as sharp as possible (my friends joke about them being mini lightsabers), and there's nothing so disconcerting as slipping and tagging yourself with one of them. Just standing there, holding a finger and thinking "am I gonna squirt blood across the room when I look to see how bad this is?"
@@Sk0lzky so i guess kings, daimyo's and emperors would just send in 100's of completely untrained men onto the battlefield and if any come back that's how you knew they were good huh not sure any empire would've lasted quite so long with this mentality. Training how not to die or trade hits is a pretty big deal and even Musashi Miyamoto had trained in a number of schools safely as well as being brought up around warrior monks and yet again trained safely before deciding to measure himself with his life on the line. Point is you practise what works, then build on it with experience just like with anything in life.
@@Sk0lzky Who said HEMA people want to be actual warrior and killer ? :-) Pratice with wooden/synthetic sword are sufficient enought. Not complicated : you are hit, you die. I don't see why I should put my life on the line where I can just acknowledge I've lost :-)
@@voltekthecyborg7898 its actually not surprising at all. It makes plenty of sense that bare knuckle boxing has a lower injury rate, you've got less targets that won't break your hands, so your forced to pick and choice your shots more carefully and without the padding of gloves to shell behind your distance management and grappling tools are even more improtant for defence and placing accurate shots. The thing people don't seem to get is that a boxing glove is a weapon, it's a pound of leather and padding that lets you hit harder then you'd naturally be able to and to target hard boney body parts that would normally destroy your hand.
Many (many, many, many) years ago I was part of a group that used sharpened blades to do Renfest shows. Each show ended with an unchoreographed melee. Oddly enough we logged less injuries than groups using foam and rattan weapons. But we were a group that literally practiced with live steel 3-5 days a week and followed a lot of safety protocols. I wouldn't attempt it today because I haven't done it for well over a decade. I am in full agreement with Skall... these guys look like future Darwin Award recipients...
This is a more complicated subject than many people seem to realize. Many people use to say, and some still do, that because traditional martial arts don’t train full contact sparing they can’t fight and so we got mma. I remember how they would talk about beating the sh1t out of each other almost every night. Now however it has changed a lot. Just about every GOOD mma gym does light contact sparing and reserve full contact for special nights seeing that you can’t really survive to fight in your 40’s and 50’s if you get seriously injured every other day.
Very much so. Hard sparring is definitely not something that should be done frequently, for the same reasons actual matches take a lot of cooldown time between each other.
@@edrichlouw1790 Full contact sparring is not hard sparring tho. The point of MMA was to test every martial arts and see what was the best. The most damaging aspect of traditional martial arts is the "useless" rules that are not really justified. Rules like no ground and pound, no kicks or no pounching are all rules that limit the efficiency of the fighter.
It seems like the only way to spar full contact hand to hand combat is to do wrestling or jujutsu. Striking full force every training sessions only do you more harm than good
well as some one that does mma sparing once in a while... believe me even a 50% of a headkick while you're wearing headgear can make you do the chicken dance :D ... so no you don't need hard sparring to understand and value positions and techniques... the key difference in MMA is that the sparring was real it doesn't have to be 100% hard to be real and make you understand the danger that you're in ... the old school bullshido martial arts never sparred even when they did it was very controlled as in ... you hit me with this and i will hit you with that ... while in MMA gyms they just give you 5 minutes and tell you remember what we worked on :D ... also you can go 100% in grappling and not injure your self (most of the time :D)
Great video! Safety has weighed heavy on my mind this week as I’m on day 8 in the hospital for a bizarre injury caused by a blunt, steel Longsword. Geared-up in all but the helmets at our feet, I was explaining a drill to a second-year student and we were doing slow work as we normally do before testing at full speed with our helmets on... I was Thwarting at him from side-to-side and teaching him how to block one side with the long-edge and the other with the Short-edge-Crooked-cut, stepping away from my cut slightly with each counter-cut - nothing abnormal, right? Then my student, after blocking with the Crooked-cut on his left, anticipated the counter-to-the-counter and reversed against the bind, flicking the tip at me in a doubling, which I’d taught him a ways back. This caused our blunt blades to load like a spring, and then all in an instant, his blade sprung in a flick and shot at my right eye! Having 6 years of binding experience under my belt helped me to feel the ‘wrong’ movement for the drill and I ‘matrixed’ my head back as the flat of the blade slapped me across the eye and forehead... oooor, so I thought. I stopped our warm-up and immediately tossed my right glove off and went to one knee, as did my partner, so we could assess damage. All I felt was a ‘sharp’ stinging pain, much like someone slapped me in the face or punched me in the eye and after some assessment we moved to the washroom where I could see for myself in a mirror and things seemed fine, other than a little rub on the side of my eye?!? I decided I should go to the hospital and get things checked out, just in case, and I called in a ride and we packed up gear. I was obviously in shock, but filled with adrenaline, and though I had a slight worrying feeling, I felt fine. After six hours of waiting in emergency and getting assessed and CAT-scanned (I have a picture & yay for Canadian health-care!), they said that I was very lucky and that the blade had missed my eye and went back in behind to break-through the top of my orbit... into my f-ing brain!!! Like to a 4-5” depth. So, even a blunt steel, slow-sparring, warm-up, and a crossing of the arms for a flick, almost killed me, or at least took my eye... A harsh reminder as to why I’m constantly slowing everyone’s drilling down: we train with weapons, and that even a blunt, spatulated, version can kill with a flick of the wrist because of the unpredictability of spring-steel in the bind. To say anything other than this was ‘eye-opening’ would be to miss the golden opportunity to use a pun that I could never do quite the same justice to, but seriously, lol, I feel like I was simultaneously in a head-on-collision, tossed out the front window, flipped, over the oncoming car, and landed on my feet and casually walked away, all while lighting a cigarette using the friction from the roof of the passing car to Snoop Dogs, “Dunn, Dunn Dunn Dunn, he’s the MF’ing D.O. Double-G”... 1-in-a-million chance?? Anyway, I’m going to test out the same kind of bind-and-wind, flicking at some water bottles (with safety gear) to see if I can replicate the action (I have the image ‘stuck’ in my head - sorry, pun not intended), but I would guess that if we’d practiced with sharps, like in the video you described, even at our slower speed, his tip would have come out the top of my head and I’d have almost immediately dropped dead, inexperience not required... 😬⚔️🤔 My advise, based on this: even slow work requires helmets when it comes to binding-and-winding work. It takes too long to gain an intuition about how the blades react in the bind to teach binding-and-winding properly, especially if you’ve developed strength with the crossing and uncrossing of the hands... Take care all, and learn from this anecdote and Skall’s video - safety first and go to the hospital, just in case! 😁 Oh, and yeah, I seem to be recovering well, and should be fine - being released today - woohoo! I’ll start slowly with the sword again, just in case, and might treat myself to a new helmet - something I can speak in, so I can run, even the slow speed demos, while in helmet... 🤔
This reminds me of that video where Skall looked at that "Training" session where the instructor used a sharp axe against a student with a shield... With the axe going right through the shield and into the students arm... Sharp weapons were literally designed to *kill* people wearing protection on battlefields and should be treated as such.
Axe Weight Loss Training GONE WRONG. When you see a bald Rusky with a beveled ax vs a fat Rusky with a strap shield with a cudgel, there will be someone saying "Blyat!"
Instructors have stabbed or shot their fellow soldiers to prove a point how a flak vest or bullet "proof" armour will stop a knife blade or a certain caliber round. They were wrong...
@@vimtheprotogen2855 It's a pizza with garlic butter instead of sauce, extra cheese and it2 cut into fingers instead of slices. It's served with Donair sauce (a sweet, creamy garlic sauce ) to dip the fingers into.
Reminds me of stories of people shooting their friends to test if "bulletproof" vests work. Great if it stops the bullet, but what if it doesn't... or what if you miss and hit somewhere else. Maybe refrain from using lethal weapons against your friends for "fun".
I call that natural selection. First thing your taught with a firearm is don't point it at anything your not willing to kill/destroy....oh and lesson number two, it's always loaded even if you think its not.
Do you know the video of a russian man wearing a russian spec op helmet (one with visor) and the other friend shoots it with a handgun. The guy survives but it looks like it had some force
It's actually amazing to me the damage people can suffer without even noticing it. I have a coworker whose dad cut his leg wide open when he mishandle a chainsaw, but didn't even notice until a few minutes later after losing a whole lot of blood
@@levoweal Indeed. Communism is a cult as much as Fascism is (leader worshiping). You can be on the literal opposite of the spectrum and still have similar practices. It's stupid to bring politics into this as the way I see it we are all equally capable of doing stupid shit.
Recklessness is a non-specific symptom. Like a headache, it could be a migraine, a tumor, emoblism, aneurism, hangover, or just a headache. Recklessness can be caused by Stupidity, but that's not something you can fix. It could also be excitement, boredom, showing off for the cameras, and competing with your sword-bros in bloodsport. Which is pretty stupid, if you ask me, but not any dumber than say Motorcross, or Street Racing. I smell a lot of testosterone in the air, and when you get a bunch of guys together, with something to prove. Be it with swords, guns, cars, alcohol/drugs. Boys that age drink recklessly, then go out, and vandalize places at random because they're bored, or whatever. Stupid behavior doesn't mean they're stupid guys. They're just guys, getting stupid. They don't have bras to pull up, and flash the camera. Boys Gone Wild. It's not just a boys, nor just a girls thing either. Girls just don't generally do it with swords. (Though some do that as well.)
to me the funniest part is the fact that these guys didn't seriously maim or kill each other basically means that they are both terribly incompetent swordsmen
They are still posting UA-cam comments saying stupid shit about how they "destroyed" olympic fencers and regional champions. They also say they are between 14 and 23 and people like them don't grow old.
Everyone here likes to play with blades or you wouldn’t be watching this video Right it just that there is a boundary of what’s reasonable and what’s not
@@LordEvan5 Yeah, and this is not reasonable lol. I was just making a comment about this in particular. I play with blades on a safer level than this haha, since I just flip balisongs.
Gotta say, its super nice to see you discuss this. I loved snapjelly's assessment of these guys, and you did not dissapoint in the slightest. Love your channel Skal!!!!!
I have to wonder what they say if they get hurt and have to go to the doctor. I mean, what would happen if you tell the doctor, "I was cut by a guy with a longsword in a duel?" It is probably not something the doctor hears every day... I remember when I strained an arm joint from too much sword practice. The doctor asked how I hurt it and I said too much sword practice. He didn't get what I meant and I had to explain historical fencing to him. Now imagine a guy showing up actually cut with a sword, the doctor would probably think he was on candid camera or something.
I've gone to the doctor with sword wounds, they just do their jobs. Most doctors are very professional. I had my thumb nearly severed and I told them how it happened. 20 stitches inside, 20 stitches outside, antibiotics and bandages then goodbye
@@davidoftheforest Wow. Glad your thumb was saved! (I mean, I've had injuries from things like grinding wheels and tools but thank goodness not one of my swords!)
@@thelonerider9693 thanks lol I was certain itd be amputated. It was literally hanging because the impact also dislocated it. I'm wiggling my thumb and shuddering remembering what happened lololol
My dad had to go to the doctor after getting a golf ball to the face because some idiot forgot to shout before launching it into the air. The doctor was not very professional - not because of insensitive jokes or anything - but because he didn't bother using any anesthetics or pain killers while stitching my dad's face up. Understandably my dad never went to that doctor again.
....Okay so I do stage combat, and had to film a scene with a blunted bearded axe all of once. And even understanding what *it* could do to a person if I fucked up was terrifying, so the FUCK you say? Like I think I read the comment right but reading it still felt like a very tiny stroke at the prospect of people being *that* stupid.
This reminded me the other side of terrible "real" combat that was those dudes with tons of protection and blunt sword just flailing at each other while feeling next to nothing. They were also kinda cringe to watch and claim "this is real medieval sword fighting".
Are you talking about Buhurt? Because yeah, those guys honestly piss me off. The have no technique and just flail weapons around then act as if that's historical. The reason HEMA is taught the way it is, is because we're not actually trying to kill each other so tournaments are done as if the combat is unarmored. If you have plate armor on the only way to be historically accurate with the fighting is if you actually try to kill your opponents.
Yea, that seems to be a very fun sport, yet, alot of people look at it and called it "Europe historical combat" and dissed HEMA just because the practitioners trying to "hit each other and not get hit back in the process". Thanks alot to Hollywood for all of the stupid tropes about medival combat (10kg longsword, people just bashing eachother with no techniques) in their movies that affected a mass of people.
Don Diego: Do you know how to use that thing? Alejandro: Yes. The pointy end goes into the other man. Don Diego: [sighs] This is going to take a lot of work.
@Fureori Can kill you if you do it wrong way. Its same as bring your normal car on race track ofcourse you need to know track and your car well to lower your lap times and push car on limit this is same you need learn basic stuff and than more and more.
"Cut-parry-counter" is oldschool sabre fencing logic (for example Hutton), but with for example Liechtenauer it is different, he says that you pretty much should have a plan in mind, get the first cut (Vorschlag) and then immediatly follow up with another (Nachschlag), at least once after the first one.
Yea, each people will have their own style of fencing, some prefer getting into the bind, some not. I saw some HEMA clubs that have people originated from japanese swordsmanship and carried along that fighting style into HEMA (japanese don't like binding, they prefer parry counter like western sabre duel because their swords are not as durable as western longswords)
I read a Go Rin No Sho and it seems the same or similar to Lichtenauer tradition in many aspects. Musashi spoke in favor of taking initiative, immediate zero telegraphed strong cuts, he was talking about similar timing, it was different, of course, but core was very similar.
@Abrar Mukarram Setiawan Absolutely, but I was referring to the way fencing/teaching techniques are employed. Only recently sword fencing has been reconstructed differently, while before a lot of the logic came from Olympic fencing or sabre fencing or even Asian martial arts. But sword fencing uses different approaches, depending on who the manuals are credited to, and those recent discoveries I call newschool as opposed to (often moreo r less Hutton-based) oldschool. Measured by the time of the source material, Hutton would be newschool ofc and Liechtenauer oldschool. I was making my statement from a learner's perspective.
@@Tkoutlosh I wouldn't be so sure if it is different in essence - a comparison in theory and practice would be very interesting. While techniques differ because of the differences between a Katana and a Langes Schwert, martial art core principles are pretty much always the same, because they use biomechanical forces, leverage, and so on, and only the more crude martial "arts" rely on muscle power. One example from Liechtenauer sounds very "Asian", yet it shows that proper fighting is based off the same stuff anywhere in the world: Liechtenauer states that against hard force one should counter with soft force and vice versa. If an opponent strikes super hard (especially stright through the central line), you use techniques that utilize the opponent's force. If the opponent is too soft, for example weak in some way, you break thorugh his cover or parry with powerful strikes. It is in essence the logic behind the Yin and Yang-concept. Also Liechtenauer speaks of moderation in everything (!), he says everything has its measure, i.e. not too strong, not too soft, steps not too far, not too short; a fencer must be aggressive, not too aggressive, and so on. This is the reason why a physically weaker opponent with better technqiue and understanding will (probably most of the time) beat a physically superior opponent who has no clue of techniques and fighting strategy - or at least higher chances.
When I was a kid, we used these metal swords (self made... out of any steel we could find) and sharpened them as much as we could (luckily we weren't that pro) and then start fencing with each other... They weren't sharp enough to cut through anything TOO deep, but yeah, we were kids and we were idiots 🤦♂️ 100% right about that ego rubbing stuff with sharp swords. If someone needs their ego rubbed like that, it's a sign of low self esteem and lack of confidence. Guys who do that: Don't be weak little fools. Train with training tools, it won't make you "less of a man". Or don't, and see how many thinks you're awesome when you're missing fingers, perhaps an eye... possibly an arm and you tell them the reason behind the loss 🤷♂️ I'm a knife guy myself and while some knife handling needs you to have the actual knife in your hand, anything that involves people around me will be done with dull plastic or rubber knives. If I'm just doing it by myself to get that proper feel to the knife, then yeah sure, use the "real deal". But sparring with someone? Only an idiot would risk injury when training.
Oh I remember seeing a gif of one of them getting their arm sliced open. Its a core memory along with that suicide bomber that dabbed before exploding.
@@cahallo5964 Look, all I know is what I saw. A group of soldier were behind an APC and shooting at insurgents when out of nowhere some fucking maniac jumps from around a corner, hits a fucking dab, and explodes.
@@Griff1011 I'll try and find it again but if you're into that sort of stuff there's a subreddit called r/CombatFootage and r/CombatEdits. Great source for military footage and media, just expect to see someone die form time to time. Also, no jokes (most of the time).
Hello Skal! Sorry to bother you but speaking as a dude who's not a native English speaker + is a bit deaf, I really super duper hope there will be subtitles somewhere down the line, because I miss so much without them. I know that sort of things takes time and all, so if it's at all possible to have them, I'll really be grateful. I still want to say that I truly appreciate the way you keep your elocution clear and slow enough that it's not simply impossible to me to appreciate your videos, even though a bit of lip-reading always helps. It's certainly very welcome to at least one unfortunate minority ;)
bohurt after too many brain concussions "let's use semi-sharp swords and do the same idiotic thing we do but without armor " "technique and Hema is overrated bro" Lmao
Finally there‘s a good video about those guys. To give a bit more background information: Yes, they still are active as well as „practising“ with sharp swords, which they do in polish forests due to legal reasons. When not using sharps, they do what we call „Vollkontakt“, basically full contact sparring with less than safe protective gear. Another thing they like to do (tough I don‘t know if they‘re still doing it) is „Mensur“, a style of fencing with sharp swords popular with some student groups. Might be an interesting topic for another video
Mensur, from what I've read is actually somewhat safe. Modern Mensur schools were full chainmail and protective goggles and have a set distance between the two opponents.
@@PJDAltamirus0425 Yeah, it's safe in the way that you don't really die while doing it. But they are still fighting to injure each other. Because the dont protect the areas you're actually meant to attack (face and arms).
@@PJDAltamirus0425 the really bizar thing about Mensur is that essentially they want to be cut, because the resulting scar is viewed as a sign of honor and that you are part of a very specific in-group (Schlagende Burschenschaften - (mostly) very right wing student organisations)
@@zypherabe Yeah, but they are practicing with sharp swords, practicing basic blocks and I don't think the point of the exercise is to perfectly replicate life and death combat without the death, but to develop composure. Honestly, the more I learn they more I think repicating life or death combat in a single activity is a work of folly.
I would add that sharp sword simulators actually exist. For those who wanna learn how sharp swords feels and train the binding actions without actually endangering themselves.
I'm kinda surprised that the makers of the synthetic swords don't put a non slip material of some sort on the cutting edge to better simulate what you were talking about. I wonder if something as simple as emery cloth, that plumbers use, adhered to the edge would have enough grab against itself to add any sort of realism to the bind.
I think that could probably be a very easy DIY way to do it, just get that tape at the local hardware store and just put it on the blade, replace it anytime it stops sticking to the other blade
Make it happen, the HEMA scene is niche and you could easily make grip covers for both synthetic and blunt metal swords. You could make a fair bit of money and pitch the idea to a larger producer like Purpleheart or Regenyei.
@@MrSignman65 Honestly I don't know nearly enough about how this works to begin to recreate a realistic effect. Basically gluing sandpaper to each edge is about as far into this as I have thought lol.
I agree with most of the video, excellent job this time too. One thing i have to mention, that paradox when a proficient sword fighter/master fights an inexperienced individual, about the same athletic proficiency (or at least, ones body is not a hindrance in moving the weapon and performing) - there is a chance that the "noob" would surprise the master/experienced individual with some weird stuff: - a monkey business never really seen before and the brain goes like like wait, what the actual fuck? and boom gets hit. This has a lower chance of happening as a master has enough experience to tackle all kinds of shit, regardless of what form they might take. - involuntary suicidal attitude/action from the unexperienced person, disregard for own safety, flailing away or going for a low attack while remaining completely open and losing his/her head but managing to slice a belly or a leg in the process. Because one lacks the mental foresight/the mental chess to assess danger properly. This can happen, an experienced person to do great with other experienced fencers, because its a known attitude - everybody wants to survive and avoid injury as a primary objective, but to be surprised and get a double hit against a lesser adversary, a loss actually (injury or death). It brings in mind that famous Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court) quote "The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to." So even if I would describe the chances of a master against a random flailing/irrational as very high, think they're not vastly in his/her favor, bordering invincibility. That might boil down somewhat to the state of mind, taking every opponent seriously, especially the unexperienced with who you cant have a "dialogue" through fencing, for they don't know the language.
yea, when playing dark souls or elden ring, learning patterns might work. Joke aside, i know what you mean. But you might not have enough of a pattern to go on - its one sword fight. Not much to go on except being able to generally identify a certain movement or action, given enough experience (vast number of inputs).
@@JohnHellscream I was thinking more-so smash bros. but mentally conditioning your opponent is an effective fighting technique whether it's a videogame or real life.
So you mean mentally conditioning your opponent as in reduce unpredictability and constrict your opponent to a certain number of possible actions (the lower the better) that you anticipate (at least statistically) and use as a setup. If you mean it in this way, i agree 100 percent.
The reason the guy had to have his injury pointed out is the "adrenaline" rush. One of the effects of adrenaline is to dull pain - that is, he doesn't "feel" the injury immediately. Athletes of all sorts are very familiar with this. That blow you suffer on the football field doesn't feel "that bad" at first, but 3 plays later you're taking yourself out and 20 minutes later you can't even walk because of the pain. This would increase the danger of such "behavior" between sword swishers as well. You can't trust what your body feels, or doesn't feel, and in your zeal to continue the fight you ignore that you're life's blood is seeping from several gaping wounds... Sword combat is brutal, and death often comes hours later, even to the "victors."
There was a historical account of a Landsknecht swordsmen who lost an arm in a battle and continued to fight for some time after suffering the injury. How long the source doesn’t specify, but I doubt it was for too long
Dont know if you read comments Skal, I'm new to your channel, and not really that into swords or blades personally, but I have been sticking around due to your style of teaching. I really respect that you are as knowledgeable and proficient as you are, yet you are very responsible and seem to have great respect for your common wo/man. Good job my guy. Thanks for contributing to the world in a way that is beneficial and not just driven by monetisation.
I LOVE to spar. My fiancé and I do it on a regular basis trying out different things, it's a lot of fun. I have NEVER understood people who use sharpened weapons in sparring 1 and 2 people who don't wear protection of really any kind while doing so. I've always been of the mind that if you're going to do it with a sharpened weapon then only do so because you're trying to kill your opponent.
Not a HEMA practitioner myself, but I find it very interesting the overlap and similarities between these weapon-based martial arts and the unarmed systems I have more practical experience with. The note about binding swords and feeling what your opponent is doing is very similarly explored in the style of karate I do (Goju-Ryu) emphasizes touch sensitivity a lot, because there are a lot of self-defense situations where you can barely see what your opponent is doing at all. And yes, if you don't know what you're doing in the clinch (kind of the unarmed equivalent to the bind), it is very, very confusing and distressing. My very, very brief stint with a medieval-style sword-fighting group (not really a HEMA group) had them telling me in definite terms NEVER to do that. Shows what they knew, eh? 😆 Also the nature of distancing is very similar, if not identical. The preferred fighting distance is just out of reach of the opponent, so that they have to step forward in order to get you and that gives you the extra nanosecond to react. Getting in close and maintaining physical contact with the opponent is also good in some ways because you can feel what they are doing, and there are certain techniques which are much easier to defend against up close. Just like in armed combat, the real dangerous distance to be in is hovering within your opponent's striking range without having any grip on them, because you can't feel them and you have no time whatsoever to react to them. People tend to eat knuckles when they do that. I could go on (the topic of sparring realism and safety for one thing), but basically martial arts of all kinds are cool and I appreciate their similarities. Jolly good video, Skall, I will continue to avoid sparring with sharp things. 👍
Never too late for a video like this. People get excited when watching history videos, then buy a blade, and sometimes they hurt themselves or others. Took a semi-sharp cut to the knee one time from a idiot in class after he was messing around with a sword he bought online.
I think the concept of sparring with sharp swords is a cool idea because of the type of safety gear and possible scoring it would bring up. Imagine if you did sharp sword sparring for the purposes you mentioned, but then you wore a suit of sturdy polymer that is a bright color (ie bright pink) covered by a thick black paint or even a full suit of metal armor that has been rubberized on the outside. Then it would remove the need for an actual score keeper to call where the strikes are made, and whenever the damage is done to the gear it could just be covered by tape. What are your thoughts on this idea?
Great video as always! I especially liked the greasy garlic finger metaphor. My brother and I are practicing sword and staff fighting just for fun, though both of us have a martial arts background. We make our own practice weapons from wood and foam. Even with these we manage to hurt ourselves and each other every now and then when things get wild. So far no serious injuries and we're only getting better at it and more careful with time. We never use sharp weapons, we like our extremeties the way they are.
A quick question: I'm not really experienced with swords, altough it seems to me that coatin the edge with a high friction material, like rubber, would let you train binding as effectively as a sharp sword, while being way safer. What am I missing here?
For rubber to stick, it would need to be fairly soft, and a soft rubber edge wouldn’t have the durability to survive hours of striking for very long, then you’d have to go out and buy a new one. If it’s a hard rubber, it could make the blades bounce instead of stick, and might still break and fall apart. Notches would have to be deep and wide enough to stop a blunt blade from sliding along the edge. This could negatively impact sparring because while blades can bite into eachother, they don’t lock in place, especially during fast exchanges. They could also wear down, which could either result in the notches deepening too much, or ceasing to exist at all, which means you have to buy a new one or figure out how to maintain it.
The problem is, for one, durability, and the rubber would make the blade bounce in the cut, which is not ideal either. There is a reason that no one has found a good substitute for sharps yet, it is that all the aspects of sharps are only simulate-able one by one while having to sacrifice everything else. Magnets? Then the blades would always stick, not just edge on edge. Rubber? Would make cuts behave differently. Sharpening portions of the blade? Safer, but less realistic, obviously. Personally, I think the key to fencing safely with sharps lies in personal protective gear that can withstand cuts. But then you get into armoring up, which makes the whole simulating blossfechten moot. And also remove the fear of dying from the fight. Really, the only thing you can do to truly simulate the real thing ... is going out to actually kill each other. Otherwise you can only get close, but no cigar. Which I prefer, personally.
I'm going to say one of the most valuble things about these videos isn't actually to show proper technique or skill, but it does provide a fairly accurate depiction of what a swordfighting injury would look like. Something that no sane person would be willing to demonstrate.
Right, I forgot to mention that these people have also challenged HEMA practitioners to fight them with sharp blades... And of course they *totally* wouldn't sue the crap out of anyone if they lost a limb while playing tough guy, right? And then they have the gall to call people "cowards" for refusing their challenge to illegal duels.
Oh, humanity... Might be time to drop the meteor and re-start from scratch.
There will always be a horde of idiots in the world. The meteor came once, but gave up...
Noone:
That one shooting star that happens to be going around rn laughing: Just wait for the next year about to come. Your wish was granted. xD
@Skallagrim what do you think of this? :D Do make a comment video.
ua-cam.com/video/IV3yvOkooYA/v-deo.html
@@Archy11102 i mean they at least wear armor
2 meteors plz
Five people gave this a thumb down, because that's the only finger they got left...
Yes?
Surely it's the same thumb as you use to thumbs up though
@@sugondese5497 their thumb is hanging off too, so it has to be a thumbs down.
LOL
Lmao
I think their helmets were just throwing off their form, prob should ditch 'em for safety
Underrated comment.
Lol, fighting with sharps and no helmets would reduce the number of injuries over time... 🤔⚔️😂
@@chadherbert18 I mean... you're not wrong...
@@chadherbert18 technically correct, the best kind :D
Hey, if it works for the space marines it's good enough for me.
One thing my Infantry solider cousin taught me, never underestimate the confidence of the un-trained.
A little bit of training can be even worse on the right kind of person.
Only total ignorance can ensure total confidence
No belief ,like self belief....
Lol never underestimate untrained soldier?
There's a difference between medieval ages and modern soldiers.
Modern soldiers are trained better than soldiers back in the days of swords.
If a knight was to go up against a peasant, of course the knight would get cocky but no other knight or footsoldier is gonna be stupid 🙄 that is if they are just borned stupid and over confident.
And talking about untrained soldiers in modern day? You don't have to be a smart ass to know untrained soldiers are not to be underestimated. If a robber can shoot pretty sure anyone can shoot as long as their not stupid. You don't have to be trained to be good. Some ppl are born to be good at it or even more.
@Michael HEREDOS and your reply is unnecessary. Good job of wasting ur own time.
Also I never said about myself being knowledgeable, as I'm going off from what I know or have heard from other videos and or internet informations.
Also I can care less.
Its my opinion on how I wanna reply so you telling me to check on my grammer? So what? Is being on the internet a professional job that I have to use proper grammer. No, so you saying check your grammer is stupid.
Even if some of my points aren't correct that doesn't mean I'm wrong from certain things.
No ones perfect 👌 so why don't you lay off instead of being them wannabe grammer police and internet police.
Also I was using soldiers as example, I didn't have to say "as example, soldiers of peasants, recruits/trainees, mercenaries and or Knights"
Also you can't just say "look at historical accounts"
Almost anyone can just say look at historical this or that information. Its not like the writers in those days wrote every little details about every man or soldier etc.
Also I could've referred to other things in history. The medieval era wouldn't be the only thinking I could be referring to. I could've mention back to the Roman's and Greeks, etc. To those times.
You can't just tell or read something to know that back then no one has never underestimated anyone.
Roman's underestimated the barbarians even tho Rome had a great empire and professional soldiers, they had the confidence to beat anyone and bravery and discipline. Romans lost a couple battles to the slave revolt of Spartacus, lost some battles against the barbarians. I don't know another battles as I'm not super knowledgeable as wannabes like you trying to annoy ppl like me.
Also replying with "dude" to my
"Lol" you clearly need to pay attention yourself to what you would reply to, whenever you see lol, the person can either be trolling, not serious and or just using it.
Ontop of that I used another couple examples which is today's modernized world.
"If a robber can shoot pretty sure anyone can shoot as long as their not stupid."
I'm not only going based on historical regardless if I'm wrong or right on my knowledge.
I can go all day about modern, medieval bronze, etc any of those eras.
Crusades, mongol invasions, China, Japan, etc. I go through some of those wars that I have taken a look at through videos, internet and talk about untrained or trained troops. Don't bring up the word confidence otherwise your reply is invalid to this.
"Recklessness is not a sign of masculinity. Recklessness is a sign of immaturity." Thank you. Far too many people need this pointed out to them.
I take risks, but only calculated ones. The problem is I suck at math.
In all seriousness though, I agree with you and Skall. Complete recklessness is displaying ignorance and immaturity to an extreme. I would, however, like to point out the difference between recklessness and calculated risks. When I do rock climbing and find a place where I can't get proper footing, I'll stop, and work my way back down. I understand that there is an inherit danger in rock climbing, but I know it's within my capabilities. Climbing an almost smooth rock face with no equipment is recklessness. I would never do that. I practice fencing with foam blades (calculated risk); I would never fight with sharps, even with HEMA-grade heavy sparring gear (which is recklessness).
"Masculinity" is for savage wild animals who kill each other over a mate.
Among us humans. If you're that desperate for a mate, just go onto Tinder or something.
@@birdiemcchicken1471 söy
@@birdiemcchicken1471 söy
@@birdiemcchicken1471 err, I think your definition of masculinity is a bit skewed.
I like how he said recklessness is immature, very true, before making a butt joke.
Tell the truth, you paused there. :P
The duality of man.
At least butt jokes are not suicidal.
@@Tennouseijin ...and not a poor toilet humor on this channel.
*BUTT*
It's like training with live rounds... and the opposing force isn't made out of cardboard and plywood.
Airsoft with 22 long...
You should see the training Russian and Polish special forces do with live ammo. Scared the shit out of even our most badass spec ops guys back when I was in the Army... Not because it's badass, but because it's stupidly dangerous... It is kinda badass though. Lol, if you're insane. They have one where they shoot each other in vests with live ammo, but the worst is where one dude stands between two targets and the one shooting has to shoot the targets, maybe a FOOT to the side of his buddies head. It gets even weirder too, there's a good video on UA-cam by Vickers Tactical called "insane Russian counter terror confidence drill" that covers a couple of the nuttier things. It's really wild.
Russian special forces trains with live rounds and live targets.
Edit: ua-cam.com/video/rI01qKAqYts/v-deo.html
@@JesusChrist-qo5ln I know. Doesn't make it safe, does it? One can train as a highly proficient shooter, but if you get a bunch of conscripts flailing at each other with rifles you'll get a lot of paperwork.
@@RyanRyzzo lol. I didn't say it was safe. I was just mentioning the fact that they do it. It's absolutely crazy but effective as hell.
Skall: "There is no way to messer round with this"
Yep. Got that point across.
Got that "POINT" across hahah. Hah... ha
excuse me for being blunt....lets cut this out.
@@justindearmond1 oh god...
@@estoc9615 I'm still on the edge, maybe take another swing at it?
@@chronotach we didnt need a keen ear to hear that one. he just cut straight to the chase
I've actually been stabbed while practicing. It was a long time ago. Three quarters of a inch in my calf. Took me more than 6 weeks to even be able to stand on it. 6 months of physical therapy to gain back flexibility. I lost enough blood to significantly drop my iron levels in lab results. I almost didn't make it. I still feel it when I walk sometimes. This is not a joke at all. Take it from someone who has actually been stabbed in real life.
@@glugtrop2010 It gets gnarlier than that too. They didn't know if I needed surgery for the artery so I couldn't take any pain meds while waiting. The tourniquet could only stay on for a certain amount of time. But the bleeding wasn't stopping. So they would release the tourniquet every 15 minutes to prevent severe damage. You could hear the blood hitting the floor every time they loosened it. Let the blood flow out and tighten it again. The tourniquet was by far the most painful part of the entire experience. Felt like someone was ripping my leg off. The doctors figured out I didn't require surgery and eventually they were able to loosen it without more blood loss. They didn't do stitches either because large wounds need to be able to self drain. Lesson learned the hard way. Don't fuck around with sharp objects.
@@emceeunderdogrising Agreed. I still have the scar on my shoulder to this day. It took me 2 months to completely recover... I should have known how sharp my sparing partner's arming sword was
@Albert Fels Tourniquets are most definitely extremely painful. By far the most painful element of my experience. There is also a level of danger when leaving a tourniquet on for too long. After 18 minutes without blood flow the tissue becomes damaged very quickly. It felt like someone was pulling my leg off. It was also one of the heavy duty ones with a turn crank. You can hear it click as it turns increasing the pain dramatically. But if they didn't turn it enough I would start pouring blood again. So they had to go 100% in every time. Took what felt like hours of them turning it up and down before the bleeding slowed down. When leaving the ER to a hospital bed I noticed the fat pool of blood under the bed. It was really shocking how what felt like a shallow wound could be so dramatically intense.
@Albert Fels Hope you found a better job eventually. At least one where you don't get stabbed too often.
@Albert Fels what model stab vest and do they work?
I remember a quote a while back, don't remember exactly but it was to the effect of " Master doesn't fear another Master because they know what they're going to do, a master fears the amateur because neither of them have any idea what he's going to do. "
Ah, the school of "If i dont know what im doing, neither does the enemy"
This is a significant concern, extra care is needed when fighting utter novices, but as Skall says, it's about "framing" the action and keeping it simple. Something like balestra pause hit. balestra should be crisp to elicit the overreaction.
"You can't hit each other on the head because that could cause cumulative brain damage over time..."
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest this isn't a concern for these gentlemen.
Maybe that's exactly how it happened... They kept hitting each other on the head so hard with blunt swords that eventually they had this brilliant idea. :D
@@Skallagrim pretty sure they were braindead from the start.
You win the comments section!
I don't think you're going out on a limb on that assessment, but if they keep this nonsense up they'll certainly go out without one.
@@DeAthWaGer then they will sue someone
Wildly flailing weapons is precisely what Wii Resort taught me and I will NOT forsake the lessons of my motion control master.
Amen
Just hold the strap and swirl it.
@@AgentTasmania Those are pretty advanced techniques, I’ve found it hard to quite hard to master.
Funny. In my experience in wii sports resort in swordplay, I found that wildly swinging in tougher duels meant that I would keep hitting a blocking sword. Because of this, I chose to deliberately aim my strikes to yield consistent successes (that and it is more fun this way)
Cade Thumann Stupidly enough, I feel like going with that approach is actually a nice, gentle intro to how to use a sword.
Like kindergarten art class... but yeah, it’s a stupid amount of fun. I kinda wish I still had mine. It vanished somewhere ):
I remember hearing a story of someone who practiced disarming gunmen of their guns, he practiced so much that when he actually had to do it, he returned the gun back to the gunman. I can't find the story so I don't know if I remember that story correctly but this is the problem with real sword practice: If you don't have intent to harm but you are using blades that can; you'll place a mental block in your mind that when your sword meets resistance, you'll instinctively withdraw your cut.
This is why sparring uses blunt practice swords. Combat will always be different from sparring because the intent to harm exists in real combat. Sparring was originally meant to replicate that intent without causing harm to each other. So when you do find yourself in real combat, you don't instinctively hold back from an opportunity to win the battle.
yeah that is an issue for me. I try to teach my little brother about fighting and swordsfighting. I dont have the money to buy protective gear for us so when I spar with him in the backyard, I teach him stances, how to fight, whats going on, but what he needs to do to make sure both of us are safe. Absolutely no headshots (Even with foam larp ones. A hard enough hit with one can knock your ass out cold). I constntly position myself just barely out of meassurment so if one of us has a fast or hard swing, it can be avoided easy or stopped easier. And I taught him how to limit his strength. Admittedly I wish I could get us some actual sparing armor but for now it works for us. We have gave each other some good whacks but we have yet to injure each other.
My point is, yeah its hard to train yourself for the real deal when you train for stuff thats not real. I am a novice swordsman and I know my way around a sword but put into the real deal it might be a tricky situation because my muscles are acustomed to safe practice. Then again fight or flight might correct those issues.
It goes for alot of things funnily. I teach jujitsu and also work security as side jobs and one night I had to subdue someone and I remember cranking the arm lock and subconsciously I just knew that was as far as his arm went.....and I let the damn lock go out of habit!!!! Dude immediately clocked me as soon as I did and thank god my partner had gotten there by then BC I got full on rocked. To this day i still cant believe that happened and now when I train with more advanced students I have us both practice with a rule of only let go if one of us taps fully or gives verbal submission.
The gun disarm was a few years back with a LEO at a traffic stop. I read about it in a magazine and forgot about it. I attended a dog bros seminar and it came up with someone who was NJ trooper. The new defensive tactic was to do a disarm and step back while controlling the situation because of that incident. on a larger issue, safety enables everyone to continue training and developing while injuries prevent that. Therefore, find way to find that sweet spot between forcing oneself better and not being injured. Not always easy to do. The lost factor is that martial training, unless one is a LEO/protective professional or military, why push yourself to injury on something you enjoy doing.
@@sebastianriz4703 teach him boxing too. The quipments less expensive.
This is a problem I have in sparring. I always pull my punches so much I sometimes don't even connect!
Thank you so much for this video. As someone who suffered from a large number of symptoms of borderline personality disorder for a good part of my life, i understand why the holmgang hamburg guys might be doing this. Yet today, as a grown-up, sane person (into hema) i can't find anything beautiful about it anymore. The following might sound a bit... i don't know, arrogant?... but anyone who feels the need to do what holmgang hamburg does should start looking for professional help. No offence intended.
And technically Skall is a professional hema practitioner so...*stab stab*
Honestly its okay to do it.
As long as its in VR, or if you're covered head to toe in a literal boulder
As someone with borderline and who is also been practicing sword fighting my whole life, are those things more related then i realized?
If a HEMA practitioner actually challenged these guys either A: All the bravado would drop and they would shit themselves... or B: Someone is going to jail for murder.
Well I'm sure they'd accept the invitation
@Captain Kirk Is someone scared coward because they don't support dangerous illegal death matches?
@Captain Kirk i did, and I've just read it again without seeing anything wrong with what he has said.
Now are you gonna try to justify your claim or are you too busy liking your own comments?
@Captain Kirk I have read every single reply under phantom savages comment.
Are you gonna try to defend your claim in any way, or you just gonna keep challenging my ability to understand information and hope that somehow that makes your argument more credible.
Fear of death isn't inherently cowardice. It's pretty logical. Much like a fear of purposefully harming or killing someone else
Holmgang Hamburg are somewhat infamous in the German sword fighting scene. I don't know if you've read their website or your German is good enough to understand what they are saying. They basically say that the historical manuals suck and it's useless in a real combat situation. Only what they are doing is the real deal. And of course, none of those phoney HEMA suckers ever stood a chanch against them. Most probably, they will challenge you to a fight if they learn about this video.
Now, you could argue that they can kill or hurt (which is usually their goal, as they are fighting till first blood) themselves all they want as long as they stay among themself. The problem is that they might make life harder for every German sword enthusiast. Right now, it is fairly easy to buy a sword as a collector's item or practice sword fighting as a sport. Should one of these guys be seriouly injured or even killed, this is going to change, especially with our current Minister of the Interior, but that's another story.
Apparently a few people have already died doing this. If I accidently killed my friend with some reckless sword fighting idk if I'd even want to continue the sport.
last time i stumbled uppon a video (or were it some comments? ) by them, they hinted that there was an incident a while ago that they can not talk openly about...
@@zypherabe I remember that too. If you want to be reckless, fine it's your life but I could never live with myself if I harmed someone else. Imagine being at that guys funeral or seeing him rushed to the er. Was it really worth it?
@@ColtDouglasMusic that's the purpose of laws. To protect property and bodily health. But I agree we should stop protecting willfully ignorant people from themselves so mother nature can take care of 'em.
@@ColtDouglasMusic Even if there no law made, this will prevent others from getting insurance.
Those "Holmgang" guys talk about realism constantly and then swing like Hollywood swordsmen.
naww man they make hollywood look like experts lolz at least in Hollywood the swords are dulled edges eh
I heard they do that so they don’t actually kill each other
@@Red_Lanterns_Rage seriously. Ive seen better swordplay with handing 6yo boys rubber swords!
@@killerx9009 no kidding! I'm amazed that they haven't chipped/broken blades in their videos.
@Jack Mehoff Who are you referring to ?
Their videos are actually 100% historically accurate. Whenever two idiots get a sword each and want to fight for whatever reason, this is exactly how things go when they've never held a blade or received proper training before in their life.
Lmao. This is a great comment.
@@PauloGarcia-sp5ws HOW UNEXPECTED!?
@@MarSprite OF COURSE! Nobody expects THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
Idk the wild flailing looked pretty effective to me
Ah ! good times :)
One time at my local weebcon I brought a set of twin "straight" katanas (the kind that sheaths into each other's handle, yeah, I know) for a cosplay contest, safety regulations were not that safe in the early 2000s, a friend of a friend asked if he could hold it for a moment, so I handed the swords (still sheathed into each other) I turn for 1 second to say hi to another friend, then I heard a loud "GO!!!" behind me and turn back to see this guy and another rando pull from the oposite sides of the sheathed twin-katana-stick (the handles), do a 360 heel turn and try to clash the blades... and I say "try" 'cause I grabbed the closest knucklehead by the forearm and pulled him away while pointing the sword to the ceiling before they manage to harm each other... moral of the story do not bring a "real" weapon to a weebcon.
Sorry to hear your life got so dark. Hope your weebness has since been cured. 😉
Me:
"Practice with sharp swords? Well yeah, how else are you supposed to cut stuff?"
Skall:
"Where people actually...S-P-A-R with sharp blades"
Me:
"...oh."
Be prepared Skall, those guys at Holmgang have a tendency to call anyone who criticize them coward and will definitely challenge you for a fight.
There is absolutely no substantial reason he should take that challenge.
@@veeezis
I know, my point was to show that those guys can't take criticism.
Not being able to take criticism is even more evidence of insecure fragile masculinity. :)
@@Skallagrim
Yeah, no surprise here.
@@Skallagrim plus they clearly are alt right germans... So yeah, every discussion will be pointless
*really* sharp blades are surprising painless to get cut with, (having accidentally deeply cut myself with a razor sharp blade - not sword - before).
So together with infight adrenaline, I can totally see people not noticing unless serious structural damage is done (bones, tendons or large muscles severed).
Also it's *really* easy to break skin with a properly sharp sword - mine are shaving sharp, despite a solid appleseeded edge angle.
Just lightly bumping against the edge while oiling it left me trailing blood droplets to the bathroom.
Lesson: Don't watch interesting UA-cam videos while cleaning your swords, kids...
Yeah. I set really easy-to-understand stuff playing while maintaining mine so that I commit the bulk of my attention to the blade. While I may not need all of my attention on it, I certainly need a lot of it.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I don't have any swords, but I keep my knives as sharp as possible (my friends joke about them being mini lightsabers), and there's nothing so disconcerting as slipping and tagging yourself with one of them. Just standing there, holding a finger and thinking "am I gonna squirt blood across the room when I look to see how bad this is?"
Bleeding hurts more than the actual cut tbh
@@cahallo5964 yeah, it's the healing part later that hurts, when you can feel the pulse.
@@zacktoor1591 high blood pressure? Lol
They called hema and fencers cowards cause they dont want to die,its like calling a person weak because they use the shopping cart.
Well, Musashi M. was fairly clear in his teachings. You wanna be a warrior you go kill people or die, there's no other way to see if your shit works.
@@Sk0lzky well his teachings were more akin to shooting practice unlike today’s sword practice which are just a hobby.
:):)
@@Sk0lzky so i guess kings, daimyo's and emperors would just send in 100's of completely untrained men onto the battlefield and if any come back that's how you knew they were good huh not sure any empire would've lasted quite so long with this mentality. Training how not to die or trade hits is a pretty big deal and even Musashi Miyamoto had trained in a number of schools safely as well as being brought up around warrior monks and yet again trained safely before deciding to measure himself with his life on the line. Point is you practise what works, then build on it with experience just like with anything in life.
@@Sk0lzky Who said HEMA people want to be actual warrior and killer ? :-)
Pratice with wooden/synthetic sword are sufficient enought. Not complicated : you are hit, you die. I don't see why I should put my life on the line where I can just acknowledge I've lost :-)
God it's like the guys at mma gyms who insist on doing nothing but hard sparing and end up with so many injuries they never actually make to a fight.
There is Bare knuckle boxing, and that actually (and surprisingly) has less serious injuries than standard Boxing
@@voltekthecyborg7898 its actually not surprising at all. It makes plenty of sense that bare knuckle boxing has a lower injury rate, you've got less targets that won't break your hands, so your forced to pick and choice your shots more carefully and without the padding of gloves to shell behind your distance management and grappling tools are even more improtant for defence and placing accurate shots. The thing people don't seem to get is that a boxing glove is a weapon, it's a pound of leather and padding that lets you hit harder then you'd naturally be able to and to target hard boney body parts that would normally destroy your hand.
Many (many, many, many) years ago I was part of a group that used sharpened blades to do Renfest shows. Each show ended with an unchoreographed melee. Oddly enough we logged less injuries than groups using foam and rattan weapons.
But we were a group that literally practiced with live steel 3-5 days a week and followed a lot of safety protocols. I wouldn't attempt it today because I haven't done it for well over a decade.
I am in full agreement with Skall... these guys look like future Darwin Award recipients...
" *_Butt_* , and that's a big one right here."
Skall being a man of culture as always.
Chun Li is offended
(Insert Jpeg of Cammy from street fighter)
He's got class, style, and the *pommel.* Thank the Gods we have this man.
You’re not a “man of culture.” You’re just addicted to porn.
This is a more complicated subject than many people seem to realize. Many people use to say, and some still do, that because traditional martial arts don’t train full contact sparing they can’t fight and so we got mma. I remember how they would talk about beating the sh1t out of each other almost every night. Now however it has changed a lot. Just about every GOOD mma gym does light contact sparing and reserve full contact for special nights seeing that you can’t really survive to fight in your 40’s and 50’s if you get seriously injured every other day.
Very much so. Hard sparring is definitely not something that should be done frequently, for the same reasons actual matches take a lot of cooldown time between each other.
@@DinnerForkTongue definitely, but pressure testing techniques and yourself should never be completely removed.
@@edrichlouw1790 Full contact sparring is not hard sparring tho. The point of MMA was to test every martial arts and see what was the best. The most damaging aspect of traditional martial arts is the "useless" rules that are not really justified. Rules like no ground and pound, no kicks or no pounching are all rules that limit the efficiency of the fighter.
It seems like the only way to spar full contact hand to hand combat is to do wrestling or jujutsu. Striking full force every training sessions only do you more harm than good
well as some one that does mma sparing once in a while... believe me even a 50% of a headkick while you're wearing headgear can make you do the chicken dance :D ... so no you don't need hard sparring to understand and value positions and techniques... the key difference in MMA is that the sparring was real it doesn't have to be 100% hard to be real and make you understand the danger that you're in ... the old school bullshido martial arts never sparred even when they did it was very controlled as in ... you hit me with this and i will hit you with that ... while in MMA gyms they just give you 5 minutes and tell you remember what we worked on :D ... also you can go 100% in grappling and not injure your self (most of the time :D)
„No way to messer round“-Skall, 2020, holding a Messer
Best me to it...
Yep.
It's like a dad joke among dad jokes is mrs skall pregnant or something??
I facepalmed and just laughed when I saw that. He said it with such a straight face and it killed me lmao
“I haven’t used a sparring sword since I was nine”
“That explains the golden hand 🙄”
Great video! Safety has weighed heavy on my mind this week as I’m on day 8 in the hospital for a bizarre injury caused by a blunt, steel Longsword. Geared-up in all but the helmets at our feet, I was explaining a drill to a second-year student and we were doing slow work as we normally do before testing at full speed with our helmets on... I was Thwarting at him from side-to-side and teaching him how to block one side with the long-edge and the other with the Short-edge-Crooked-cut, stepping away from my cut slightly with each counter-cut - nothing abnormal, right? Then my student, after blocking with the Crooked-cut on his left, anticipated the counter-to-the-counter and reversed against the bind, flicking the tip at me in a doubling, which I’d taught him a ways back. This caused our blunt blades to load like a spring, and then all in an instant, his blade sprung in a flick and shot at my right eye! Having 6 years of binding experience under my belt helped me to feel the ‘wrong’ movement for the drill and I ‘matrixed’ my head back as the flat of the blade slapped me across the eye and forehead... oooor, so I thought. I stopped our warm-up and immediately tossed my right glove off and went to one knee, as did my partner, so we could assess damage. All I felt was a ‘sharp’ stinging pain, much like someone slapped me in the face or punched me in the eye and after some assessment we moved to the washroom where I could see for myself in a mirror and things seemed fine, other than a little rub on the side of my eye?!? I decided I should go to the hospital and get things checked out, just in case, and I called in a ride and we packed up gear. I was obviously in shock, but filled with adrenaline, and though I had a slight worrying feeling, I felt fine. After six hours of waiting in emergency and getting assessed and CAT-scanned (I have a picture & yay for Canadian health-care!), they said that I was very lucky and that the blade had missed my eye and went back in behind to break-through the top of my orbit... into my f-ing brain!!! Like to a 4-5” depth. So, even a blunt steel, slow-sparring, warm-up, and a crossing of the arms for a flick, almost killed me, or at least took my eye... A harsh reminder as to why I’m constantly slowing everyone’s drilling down: we train with weapons, and that even a blunt, spatulated, version can kill with a flick of the wrist because of the unpredictability of spring-steel in the bind. To say anything other than this was ‘eye-opening’ would be to miss the golden opportunity to use a pun that I could never do quite the same justice to, but seriously, lol, I feel like I was simultaneously in a head-on-collision, tossed out the front window, flipped, over the oncoming car, and landed on my feet and casually walked away, all while lighting a cigarette using the friction from the roof of the passing car to Snoop Dogs, “Dunn, Dunn Dunn Dunn, he’s the MF’ing D.O. Double-G”... 1-in-a-million chance?? Anyway, I’m going to test out the same kind of bind-and-wind, flicking at some water bottles (with safety gear) to see if I can replicate the action (I have the image ‘stuck’ in my head - sorry, pun not intended), but I would guess that if we’d practiced with sharps, like in the video you described, even at our slower speed, his tip would have come out the top of my head and I’d have almost immediately dropped dead, inexperience not required... 😬⚔️🤔 My advise, based on this: even slow work requires helmets when it comes to binding-and-winding work. It takes too long to gain an intuition about how the blades react in the bind to teach binding-and-winding properly, especially if you’ve developed strength with the crossing and uncrossing of the hands... Take care all, and learn from this anecdote and Skall’s video - safety first and go to the hospital, just in case! 😁 Oh, and yeah, I seem to be recovering well, and should be fine - being released today - woohoo! I’ll start slowly with the sword again, just in case, and might treat myself to a new helmet - something I can speak in, so I can run, even the slow speed demos, while in helmet... 🤔
This reminds me of that video where Skall looked at that "Training" session where the instructor used a sharp axe against a student with a shield... With the axe going right through the shield and into the students arm...
Sharp weapons were literally designed to *kill* people wearing protection on battlefields and should be treated as such.
What video was that?
@@cdru515 Was this one: ua-cam.com/video/fIaApxx4vRE/v-deo.html
Axe Weight Loss Training GONE WRONG. When you see a bald Rusky with a beveled ax vs a fat Rusky with a strap shield with a cudgel, there will be someone saying "Blyat!"
Instructors have stabbed or shot their fellow soldiers to prove a point how a flak vest or bullet "proof" armour will stop a knife blade or a certain caliber round. They were wrong...
Just saw this video and omg
And with the mention of a garlic finger, Skall has truly become a Nova Scotian.
lmao I thought the same thing. Hope he’s eating them with donair sauce
those truly are a highlight when we fly from germany to take a vacation in novia scotia ^^
What's a garlic finger? Is it a kind of bread stick?
@@vimtheprotogen2855 It's a pizza with garlic butter instead of sauce, extra cheese and it2 cut into fingers instead of slices. It's served with Donair sauce (a sweet, creamy garlic sauce ) to dip the fingers into.
@@vimtheprotogen2855 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garlic_fingers They are awesome
Reminds me of stories of people shooting their friends to test if "bulletproof" vests work. Great if it stops the bullet, but what if it doesn't... or what if you miss and hit somewhere else. Maybe refrain from using lethal weapons against your friends for "fun".
I call that natural selection. First thing your taught with a firearm is don't point it at anything your not willing to kill/destroy....oh and lesson number two, it's always loaded even if you think its not.
@@takuame7 and rule 3, keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire
“Billy quit twichin’. I paid 20 bucks fer this on wish.com, and I aim to make sure it’s worth it.”
Do you know the video of a russian man wearing a russian spec op helmet (one with visor) and the other friend shoots it with a handgun.
The guy survives but it looks like it had some force
@@Bruh-hq1hx oh gosh, that's terrifying... why wouldn't they just put a Mellon on a stick in the helmet instead
It's actually amazing to me the damage people can suffer without even noticing it. I have a coworker whose dad cut his leg wide open when he mishandle a chainsaw, but didn't even notice until a few minutes later after losing a whole lot of blood
It's probably due to the delayed reaction the human body can experience. It's just happened that fast and that cleanly. But also pain handling
Hey hey hey. These guys have literally killed two of their members and said “they died with honor” they’re dumb but they’re real
Wait, really?
@@mohammadsaleem5990 yup. They said it on their Facebook or something
@@elirollins1547 did anyone get arrested? This sounds like something that would cause quite a stir
@@mohammadsaleem5990 not sure.. I’d assume so but they all agreed to do this so no body is reporting it
Well... Can't say it surprises me when you treat sword fighting like you're someone from Soul Calibur.
I remember when this story was young. They're absolutely insane. Practically a suicide cult
not a cult but still practically suicide
I mean they were a group of right wing dudes thinking it’s cool to do shit like this so this assessment isn’t entirely inaccurate
@@FromThanatosToSol I wonder what does any wing have to do with subject matter of a cult
@@levoweal maybe some left wing people think that as cults have religious aspects it means it has to be conservative?
@@levoweal Indeed. Communism is a cult as much as Fascism is (leader worshiping). You can be on the literal opposite of the spectrum and still have similar practices. It's stupid to bring politics into this as the way I see it we are all equally capable of doing stupid shit.
Actually, it was not that dangerous, they never unscrewed their pommels, they weren't crazy.
True they're not reckless
The live practice for that play is throwing pommels at each other's unprotected faces.
Nothing can protect your face from a pommel
that joke is so old, its not even funny anymore
kinda like facebook mom jokes, the meme is dead, get on with it boomer
Like I really don't care
Recklessness is a sign of stupidity
If you're going to spar make sure it is controlled and safe
Recklessness is a non-specific symptom. Like a headache, it could be a migraine, a tumor, emoblism, aneurism, hangover, or just a headache. Recklessness can be caused by Stupidity, but that's not something you can fix. It could also be excitement, boredom, showing off for the cameras, and competing with your sword-bros in bloodsport. Which is pretty stupid, if you ask me, but not any dumber than say Motorcross, or Street Racing. I smell a lot of testosterone in the air, and when you get a bunch of guys together, with something to prove. Be it with swords, guns, cars, alcohol/drugs. Boys that age drink recklessly, then go out, and vandalize places at random because they're bored, or whatever. Stupid behavior doesn't mean they're stupid guys. They're just guys, getting stupid. They don't have bras to pull up, and flash the camera. Boys Gone Wild. It's not just a boys, nor just a girls thing either. Girls just don't generally do it with swords. (Though some do that as well.)
Doesn't word "sparring" mean safe training fight by definition?
"I'm bored"..."wanna try to kill eachother in the woods with some swords?"...."hell yeah! I'll bring the beer!"
Sounds good to me
to me the funniest part is the fact that these guys didn't seriously maim or kill each other basically means that they are both terribly incompetent swordsmen
Holmgang Hamburg is dead. Well their Homepage is dead. Okay maybe some of their members as well.
I am amazed that they lasted long enough to get a website.
Sounds like nothing of value was lost
@Chris Oli Their members ran out of members.
They are still posting UA-cam comments saying stupid shit about how they "destroyed" olympic fencers and regional champions. They also say they are between 14 and 23 and people like them don't grow old.
@@AlexusMaximusDE At least they've reproduced the medieval life expectancy right.
I was always told not to play with sharp objects as a kid. I guess they weren't.
You was probably raised a pussy
@@thorbjrnyuzen8501 Or I was raised by logical and responsible parents. Lol.
Or too often and they felt a desire to rebel.
Everyone here likes to play with blades or you wouldn’t be watching this video Right it just that there is a boundary of what’s reasonable and what’s not
@@LordEvan5 Yeah, and this is not reasonable lol. I was just making a comment about this in particular. I play with blades on a safer level than this haha, since I just flip balisongs.
Gotta say, its super nice to see you discuss this. I loved snapjelly's assessment of these guys, and you did not dissapoint in the slightest. Love your channel Skal!!!!!
It’s not even sparring, how do you win, first blood? That’s a real duel...
Depends on the specific duel. Sometimes face protection is used and only blows to the head win, and sometimes it's first blood.
This is an actual thing. 2 people died in Quebec City due to someone wielding a sharp sword. But they are in prison now
😔 rest in peace. I remember that news story .
They put the dead guys in prison??
@@captainkuijt What else ya gonna do with them?
@@JordonBealEat him, duh
I have to wonder what they say if they get hurt and have to go to the doctor. I mean, what would happen if you tell the doctor, "I was cut by a guy with a longsword in a duel?" It is probably not something the doctor hears every day... I remember when I strained an arm joint from too much sword practice. The doctor asked how I hurt it and I said too much sword practice. He didn't get what I meant and I had to explain historical fencing to him. Now imagine a guy showing up actually cut with a sword, the doctor would probably think he was on candid camera or something.
I've gone to the doctor with sword wounds, they just do their jobs. Most doctors are very professional. I had my thumb nearly severed and I told them how it happened. 20 stitches inside, 20 stitches outside, antibiotics and bandages then goodbye
@@davidoftheforest Wow. Glad your thumb was saved! (I mean, I've had injuries from things like grinding wheels and tools but thank goodness not one of my swords!)
@@thelonerider9693 thanks lol I was certain itd be amputated. It was literally hanging because the impact also dislocated it. I'm wiggling my thumb and shuddering remembering what happened lololol
My dad had to go to the doctor after getting a golf ball to the face because some idiot forgot to shout before launching it into the air. The doctor was not very professional - not because of insensitive jokes or anything - but because he didn't bother using any anesthetics or pain killers while stitching my dad's face up. Understandably my dad never went to that doctor again.
Man, I remember those two dorks sparring with sharp axes.
Scary stuff.
it was only one dude with a sharp axe, the other had a THIN wooden shield and some kind of mallet
....Okay so I do stage combat, and had to film a scene with a blunted bearded axe all of once.
And even understanding what *it* could do to a person if I fucked up was terrifying, so the FUCK you say?
Like I think I read the comment right but reading it still felt like a very tiny stroke at the prospect of people being *that* stupid.
It really isnt that scary. If one gets an axe in the head nothing important would get damaged.
This reminded me the other side of terrible "real" combat that was those dudes with tons of protection and blunt sword just flailing at each other while feeling next to nothing. They were also kinda cringe to watch and claim "this is real medieval sword fighting".
Notice how despite how different the situations are, they both do essentially the same thing.
M1-Medieval fanboys in a nutshell
Are you talking about Buhurt? Because yeah, those guys honestly piss me off. The have no technique and just flail weapons around then act as if that's historical. The reason HEMA is taught the way it is, is because we're not actually trying to kill each other so tournaments are done as if the combat is unarmored. If you have plate armor on the only way to be historically accurate with the fighting is if you actually try to kill your opponents.
Yea, that seems to be a very fun sport, yet, alot of people look at it and called it "Europe historical combat" and dissed HEMA just because the practitioners trying to "hit each other and not get hit back in the process". Thanks alot to Hollywood for all of the stupid tropes about medival combat (10kg longsword, people just bashing eachother with no techniques) in their movies that affected a mass of people.
@Ivan Vozjakov Not at all, it's grappling and guard/pommel strikes in armor
Don Diego: Do you know how to use that thing?
Alejandro: Yes. The pointy end goes into the other man.
Don Diego: [sighs] This is going to take a lot of work.
As someone who works with extremely sharp metals every day I can “safely” confirm that even seemingly serious cuts can often go unnoticed.
Remember: Swords cut
And guns shoot..what we learn?Nothing:)
@Fureori Can kill you if you do it wrong way.
Its same as bring your normal car on race track ofcourse you need to know track and your car well to lower your lap times and push car on limit this is same you need learn basic stuff and than more and more.
@@joe125ful si
It will keel
"Cut-parry-counter" is oldschool sabre fencing logic (for example Hutton), but with for example Liechtenauer it is different, he says that you pretty much should have a plan in mind, get the first cut (Vorschlag) and then immediatly follow up with another (Nachschlag), at least once after the first one.
Yea, each people will have their own style of fencing, some prefer getting into the bind, some not. I saw some HEMA clubs that have people originated from japanese swordsmanship and carried along that fighting style into HEMA (japanese don't like binding, they prefer parry counter like western sabre duel because their swords are not as durable as western longswords)
I read a Go Rin No Sho and it seems the same or similar to Lichtenauer tradition in many aspects. Musashi spoke in favor of taking initiative, immediate zero telegraphed strong cuts, he was talking about similar timing, it was different, of course, but core was very similar.
@Abrar Mukarram Setiawan Absolutely, but I was referring to the way fencing/teaching techniques are employed. Only recently sword fencing has been reconstructed differently, while before a lot of the logic came from Olympic fencing or sabre fencing or even Asian martial arts. But sword fencing uses different approaches, depending on who the manuals are credited to, and those recent discoveries I call newschool as opposed to (often moreo r less Hutton-based) oldschool. Measured by the time of the source material, Hutton would be newschool ofc and Liechtenauer oldschool. I was making my statement from a learner's perspective.
@@Tkoutlosh I wouldn't be so sure if it is different in essence - a comparison in theory and practice would be very interesting. While techniques differ because of the differences between a Katana and a Langes Schwert, martial art core principles are pretty much always the same, because they use biomechanical forces, leverage, and so on, and only the more crude martial "arts" rely on muscle power. One example from Liechtenauer sounds very "Asian", yet it shows that proper fighting is based off the same stuff anywhere in the world: Liechtenauer states that against hard force one should counter with soft force and vice versa. If an opponent strikes super hard (especially stright through the central line), you use techniques that utilize the opponent's force. If the opponent is too soft, for example weak in some way, you break thorugh his cover or parry with powerful strikes. It is in essence the logic behind the Yin and Yang-concept. Also Liechtenauer speaks of moderation in everything (!), he says everything has its measure, i.e. not too strong, not too soft, steps not too far, not too short; a fencer must be aggressive, not too aggressive, and so on.
This is the reason why a physically weaker opponent with better technqiue and understanding will (probably most of the time) beat a physically superior opponent who has no clue of techniques and fighting strategy - or at least higher chances.
I'm from the school of, "if it works, use it. If it don't, trow it the f--- out!"
Skall: Virtually stabs me in the face.
Me: 👁👄 X
This is fucking stupid. Take my like.
When I was a kid, we used these metal swords (self made... out of any steel we could find) and sharpened them as much as we could (luckily we weren't that pro) and then start fencing with each other... They weren't sharp enough to cut through anything TOO deep, but yeah, we were kids and we were idiots 🤦♂️
100% right about that ego rubbing stuff with sharp swords. If someone needs their ego rubbed like that, it's a sign of low self esteem and lack of confidence. Guys who do that: Don't be weak little fools. Train with training tools, it won't make you "less of a man". Or don't, and see how many thinks you're awesome when you're missing fingers, perhaps an eye... possibly an arm and you tell them the reason behind the loss 🤷♂️
I'm a knife guy myself and while some knife handling needs you to have the actual knife in your hand, anything that involves people around me will be done with dull plastic or rubber knives. If I'm just doing it by myself to get that proper feel to the knife, then yeah sure, use the "real deal". But sparring with someone? Only an idiot would risk injury when training.
"You can't hit each other hard on the head with blunts"
Buhurt fighters: "Hur hur, Helmut go Ding"
To be completely honest if it wasn't wild flailing it would have ended with a much more serious injury...
Oh I remember seeing a gif of one of them getting their arm sliced open. Its a core memory along with that suicide bomber that dabbed before exploding.
A suicide bomber did what
@@cahallo5964 Look, all I know is what I saw. A group of soldier were behind an APC and shooting at insurgents when out of nowhere some fucking maniac jumps from around a corner, hits a fucking dab, and explodes.
@@JessZomb Fucking zoomers, man.
@@JessZomb Link? That sounds fucking hilarious.
@@Griff1011 I'll try and find it again but if you're into that sort of stuff there's a subreddit called r/CombatFootage and r/CombatEdits. Great source for military footage and media, just expect to see someone die form time to time. Also, no jokes (most of the time).
9:00 "there's no way to MESSER around with this"
I see what you did there ;)
Hello Skal! Sorry to bother you but speaking as a dude who's not a native English speaker + is a bit deaf, I really super duper hope there will be subtitles somewhere down the line, because I miss so much without them. I know that sort of things takes time and all, so if it's at all possible to have them, I'll really be grateful.
I still want to say that I truly appreciate the way you keep your elocution clear and slow enough that it's not simply impossible to me to appreciate your videos, even though a bit of lip-reading always helps. It's certainly very welcome to at least one unfortunate minority ;)
I was tempted already at Cammy, *but*, here is my upvote because of Chun-Li and your "and this is a big one". Just awesome =)
Me : „What backwards-thinking placed maniacs would do such thing ?“ .... „Hamburg“
Me living in Hamburg
>.>
ist dass wirklich in Hamburg? (die Idioten im video)
Akademische fechtung?
@@edward9674 das war jetzt eher um die Ehre und hatte wenigstens Form und war nicht so gefährlich (relativ)
@@finngeorgas4090 Ja, ihr Name ist ,,Holmgang Hamburg," wenn du bist interessiert ,,Holmgang" war das Altisländisch wort für ,,Zweikampf."
@@andrewk.5575 ah okay, danke für die info
bohurt after too many brain concussions "let's use semi-sharp swords and do the same idiotic thing we do but without armor " "technique and Hema is overrated bro" Lmao
Finally there‘s a good video about those guys. To give a bit more background information: Yes, they still are active as well as „practising“ with sharp swords, which they do in polish forests due to legal reasons. When not using sharps, they do what we call „Vollkontakt“, basically full contact sparring with less than safe protective gear. Another thing they like to do (tough I don‘t know if they‘re still doing it) is „Mensur“, a style of fencing with sharp swords popular with some student groups. Might be an interesting topic for another video
Mensur, from what I've read is actually somewhat safe. Modern Mensur schools were full chainmail and protective goggles and have a set distance between the two opponents.
@@PJDAltamirus0425 Yeah, it's safe in the way that you don't really die while doing it. But they are still fighting to injure each other. Because the dont protect the areas you're actually meant to attack (face and arms).
@@PJDAltamirus0425 the really bizar thing about Mensur is that essentially they want to be cut, because the resulting scar is viewed as a sign of honor and that you are part of a very specific in-group (Schlagende Burschenschaften - (mostly) very right wing student organisations)
@@zypherabe Yeah, but they are practicing with sharp swords, practicing basic blocks and I don't think the point of the exercise is to perfectly replicate life and death combat without the death, but to develop composure. Honestly, the more I learn they more I think repicating life or death combat in a single activity is a work of folly.
"If you can't be a great example, then be a horrible warning"
"Idk if they do it anymore. If they're all dead..."
Well that's a good indicator of what we can expect.
Ahh the gallowglass... gorgeous.
I’ve trained in Muay Thai and various other striking martial arts for years and it’s so cool to see the same striking principals in play with Hema.
Skallagrim "Buhtttttt..... and that's a big one right here"
And he delivered...
"There is no way to Messer-round with this"
"The best techniques are passed on by the survivors." ~Gaiden Shinji.
You're hungry, myrmidon! That raiment's getting a little tight..
These guys are real heroes! They showed so many people what not to do!
Please keep in mind that these people are pretty much a meme in the German HEMA community.
I feel like this is on par with people who call themselves samurai after buying a $30 katana off etsy and watching a youtube video on kendo or iaido
I would add that sharp sword simulators actually exist. For those who wanna learn how sharp swords feels and train the binding actions without actually endangering themselves.
Have a wavy "blade" ig
I gotta give it to the Hamburg blokes, I have been watching them for a while and they keep doing it, good on them.
The thrusting strategy proposed at ~6min reminds me of all my Epee and Foil training in my university days.
"There is one valuable thing about all of this..." yeah, natural selection 🤣
I'm kinda surprised that the makers of the synthetic swords don't put a non slip material of some sort on the cutting edge to better simulate what you were talking about.
I wonder if something as simple as emery cloth, that plumbers use, adhered to the edge would have enough grab against itself to add any sort of realism to the bind.
I think that could probably be a very easy DIY way to do it, just get that tape at the local hardware store and just put it on the blade, replace it anytime it stops sticking to the other blade
Make it happen, the HEMA scene is niche and you could easily make grip covers for both synthetic and blunt metal swords. You could make a fair bit of money and pitch the idea to a larger producer like Purpleheart or Regenyei.
@@MrSignman65 Honestly I don't know nearly enough about how this works to begin to recreate a realistic effect. Basically gluing sandpaper to each edge is about as far into this as I have thought lol.
@@mattf9096 You could also put lil teeth on the blades.
I thought about this too. Maybe just as simple as spray adhesive. Then clean with solvent or maybe fire?
"Man why do boxers wear those sissy gloves ?"
"So their career won't end after single match."
ironically gloves protect the wearer not the person getting hit
One of my favorite UA-camrs ever
It's is really interesting that your old instructors did so little binding.
Most of the training we do in my group is focused on binding situations.
I agree with most of the video, excellent job this time too. One thing i have to mention, that paradox when a proficient sword fighter/master fights an inexperienced individual, about the same athletic proficiency (or at least, ones body is not a hindrance in moving the weapon and performing) - there is a chance that the "noob" would surprise the master/experienced individual with some weird stuff: - a monkey business never really seen before and the brain goes like like wait, what the actual fuck? and boom gets hit. This has a lower chance of happening as a master has enough experience to tackle all kinds of shit, regardless of what form they might take.
- involuntary suicidal attitude/action from the unexperienced person, disregard for own safety, flailing away or going for a low attack while remaining completely open and losing his/her head but managing to slice a belly or a leg in the process. Because one lacks the mental foresight/the mental chess to assess danger properly. This can happen, an experienced person to do great with other experienced fencers, because its a known attitude - everybody wants to survive and avoid injury as a primary objective, but to be surprised and get a double hit against a lesser adversary, a loss actually (injury or death).
It brings in mind that famous Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court) quote "The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to."
So even if I would describe the chances of a master against a random flailing/irrational as very high, think they're not vastly in his/her favor, bordering invincibility. That might boil down somewhat to the state of mind, taking every opponent seriously, especially the unexperienced with who you cant have a "dialogue" through fencing, for they don't know the language.
it's all about mental conditioning and learning your opponents attack patterns
yea, when playing dark souls or elden ring, learning patterns might work.
Joke aside, i know what you mean. But you might not have enough of a pattern to go on - its one sword fight. Not much to go on except being able to generally identify a certain movement or action, given enough experience (vast number of inputs).
@@JohnHellscream I was thinking more-so smash bros. but mentally conditioning your opponent is an effective fighting technique whether it's a videogame or real life.
So you mean mentally conditioning your opponent as in reduce unpredictability and constrict your opponent to a certain number of possible actions (the lower the better) that you anticipate (at least statistically) and use as a setup.
If you mean it in this way, i agree 100 percent.
@@JohnHellscream yeah
The reason the guy had to have his injury pointed out is the "adrenaline" rush. One of the effects of adrenaline is to dull pain - that is, he doesn't "feel" the injury immediately. Athletes of all sorts are very familiar with this. That blow you suffer on the football field doesn't feel "that bad" at first, but 3 plays later you're taking yourself out and 20 minutes later you can't even walk because of the pain.
This would increase the danger of such "behavior" between sword swishers as well. You can't trust what your body feels, or doesn't feel, and in your zeal to continue the fight you ignore that you're life's blood is seeping from several gaping wounds...
Sword combat is brutal, and death often comes hours later, even to the "victors."
There was a historical account of a Landsknecht swordsmen who lost an arm in a battle and continued to fight for some time after suffering the injury.
How long the source doesn’t specify, but I doubt it was for too long
Best summed up thusly: never use a sword that's sharper than you are.
Dont know if you read comments Skal, I'm new to your channel, and not really that into swords or blades personally, but I have been sticking around due to your style of teaching.
I really respect that you are as knowledgeable and proficient as you are, yet you are very responsible and seem to have great respect for your common wo/man.
Good job my guy. Thanks for contributing to the world in a way that is beneficial and not just driven by monetisation.
I remember asking you to comment on this in one of your live streams a while ago. Thank you for giving your opinion!
I remember my first time getting in a bind during sparing, I didn't know what just happened and I got a cut (bonk) to the face (helmet)
I LOVE to spar. My fiancé and I do it on a regular basis trying out different things, it's a lot of fun.
I have NEVER understood people who use sharpened weapons in sparring 1 and 2 people who don't wear protection of really any kind while doing so. I've always been of the mind that if you're going to do it with a sharpened weapon then only do so because you're trying to kill your opponent.
Recklessness is immaturity and not masculinity. Very true, women can be just as reckless.
Absolutely love your content! You have a very likeable personality.
Not a HEMA practitioner myself, but I find it very interesting the overlap and similarities between these weapon-based martial arts and the unarmed systems I have more practical experience with.
The note about binding swords and feeling what your opponent is doing is very similarly explored in the style of karate I do (Goju-Ryu) emphasizes touch sensitivity a lot, because there are a lot of self-defense situations where you can barely see what your opponent is doing at all. And yes, if you don't know what you're doing in the clinch (kind of the unarmed equivalent to the bind), it is very, very confusing and distressing. My very, very brief stint with a medieval-style sword-fighting group (not really a HEMA group) had them telling me in definite terms NEVER to do that. Shows what they knew, eh? 😆
Also the nature of distancing is very similar, if not identical. The preferred fighting distance is just out of reach of the opponent, so that they have to step forward in order to get you and that gives you the extra nanosecond to react. Getting in close and maintaining physical contact with the opponent is also good in some ways because you can feel what they are doing, and there are certain techniques which are much easier to defend against up close. Just like in armed combat, the real dangerous distance to be in is hovering within your opponent's striking range without having any grip on them, because you can't feel them and you have no time whatsoever to react to them. People tend to eat knuckles when they do that.
I could go on (the topic of sparring realism and safety for one thing), but basically martial arts of all kinds are cool and I appreciate their similarities.
Jolly good video, Skall, I will continue to avoid sparring with sharp things. 👍
Never too late for a video like this. People get excited when watching history videos, then buy a blade, and sometimes they hurt themselves or others. Took a semi-sharp cut to the knee one time from a idiot in class after he was messing around with a sword he bought online.
I think the concept of sparring with sharp swords is a cool idea because of the type of safety gear and possible scoring it would bring up. Imagine if you did sharp sword sparring for the purposes you mentioned, but then you wore a suit of sturdy polymer that is a bright color (ie bright pink) covered by a thick black paint or even a full suit of metal armor that has been rubberized on the outside. Then it would remove the need for an actual score keeper to call where the strikes are made, and whenever the damage is done to the gear it could just be covered by tape.
What are your thoughts on this idea?
First rule of Fecht club: Never talk about Fecht club.
13:56 That was such an amazing clip of defense by offense in defensive step back.
Great video as always! I especially liked the greasy garlic finger metaphor. My brother and I are practicing sword and staff fighting just for fun, though both of us have a martial arts background. We make our own practice weapons from wood and foam. Even with these we manage to hurt ourselves and each other every now and then when things get wild. So far no serious injuries and we're only getting better at it and more careful with time. We never use sharp weapons, we like our extremeties the way they are.
A quick question:
I'm not really experienced with swords, altough it seems to me that coatin the edge with a high friction material, like rubber, would let you train binding as effectively as a sharp sword, while being way safer. What am I missing here?
Could also chop some small notches into the "blade" to simulate better friction
For rubber to stick, it would need to be fairly soft, and a soft rubber edge wouldn’t have the durability to survive hours of striking for very long, then you’d have to go out and buy a new one. If it’s a hard rubber, it could make the blades bounce instead of stick, and might still break and fall apart.
Notches would have to be deep and wide enough to stop a blunt blade from sliding along the edge. This could negatively impact sparring because while blades can bite into eachother, they don’t lock in place, especially during fast exchanges. They could also wear down, which could either result in the notches deepening too much, or ceasing to exist at all, which means you have to buy a new one or figure out how to maintain it.
Not sure but maybe that changes the weight and the equilibrium of the sword.
The problem is, for one, durability, and the rubber would make the blade bounce in the cut, which is not ideal either.
There is a reason that no one has found a good substitute for sharps yet, it is that all the aspects of sharps are only simulate-able one by one while having to sacrifice everything else.
Magnets? Then the blades would always stick, not just edge on edge. Rubber? Would make cuts behave differently. Sharpening portions of the blade? Safer, but less realistic, obviously.
Personally, I think the key to fencing safely with sharps lies in personal protective gear that can withstand cuts. But then you get into armoring up, which makes the whole simulating blossfechten moot. And also remove the fear of dying from the fight.
Really, the only thing you can do to truly simulate the real thing ... is going out to actually kill each other. Otherwise you can only get close, but no cigar. Which I prefer, personally.
sharp sword simulators exist:
ua-cam.com/video/P6FuKxld5to/v-deo.html
Damn I'm very early today xD
Keep it up Skall, love your educational content :D
These guys have already had one reported death in their group. Pretty dark seeing the montage of injury and laughter after each video knowing this.
I'm going to say one of the most valuble things about these videos isn't actually to show proper technique or skill, but it does provide a fairly accurate depiction of what a swordfighting injury would look like. Something that no sane person would be willing to demonstrate.
My favorite UA-cam channel