The "accuracy" of HEMA

[Tony Dismukes]

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he's HEMA. He has a very big channel on YT. I can't remember his name though b/c I'm really not that much into this Medieval stuff ....I'm like at Nerd Level 5 or something. These dudes get all dressed up and everything.

As you yourself pointed out, a person can be both a HEMA practitioner and a LARPer. Heck, if they have time in their schedule they could also be a kendoka and an Olympic fencer.

 

[jayoliver00]

As you yourself pointed out, a person can be both a HEMA practitioner and a LARPer. Heck, if they have time in their schedule they could also be a kendoka and an Olympic fencer.

His commentary throughout the video, was him separating himself from the LARPER. The main intent of his video was to critique LARPING; he whooped the kid to prove thatpoint....which was similar to what you were trying to say but he admitted right away that LARPING does work (as the kid got him like 40% of the time)....while it took me a few weeks to coax it out of you.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Since there are a number of LARP groups with varying rules, I'm going to make some generalizations, using the Dagorhir rules as a representative example.

I did make the point more than once that there are elements of LARP play which could carry over and be valuable in actual weapons use. (In fact I said that in my very first post regarding LARP.) For the sake of comity, I will list those first.

• It allows practitioners to get a sense of reach and distancing for various weapons - both the ones they are carrying and those of their opponents. This is a very important aspect of weapons use. The fact that melees often involve weapons of different lengths is an extra bonus.
• It gives practitioners experience with seeing weapons (or weapon-shaped objects at least) being swung at them. This can help in learning to read angles of attack, detect tells, and recognizing feints.
• Some of the techniques used in swinging and blocking with LARP weapons are more or less in line with actual weapon arts and could carry over without too much adjustment.
• Group melees force you to keep a wide angle awareness to keep track of potential threats from all sides.
• It's good cardio, which is valuable in any sport or martial art.

Okay, now let's get to the elements which don't carry over so well. I'm going to break this down in regard how they relate to stick fighting, unarmored sword play, and armored swordplay.

First stick fighting:

• Attacks to the head and to the hand holding the weapon are disallowed. In an actual stick fight those are the most important targets. It wouldn't take much adjustment for a LARPer to start targeting those body parts in a real fight. However defending against attacks to the head and weapon hand when you aren't accustomed to it is a whole other thing. That takes time and practice.
• Body dynamics for developing power. It takes a lot of work to develop reliable knockout power with a single handed stick. I just watched a few videos of Dagorhir battles and sparring. The overwhelming majority of "kills" came from shots which would not have stopped a determined opponent if delivered with a stick. (I do get that the weapons are intended to simulate swords and the like. I'll address that in the next section. I just mention it because you brought up LARPing originally in the context of someone practicing stick work for self defense.)
• As a follow up to the above, even people who are good at hitting really hard with a stick don't generally manage to land knockout shots every time. This means that in a real stick fight you have to be conditioned to keep on attacking and defending even after landing or being hit by a clean shot with a stick.
• Per the Dagorhir rules that I've found online, the allowable grappling doesn't seem to include throws or joint locks. (I don't see chokes mentioned, are those allowed? Also, if throws are disallowed, does that mean that ground fighting is out as well?) If you watch enough Dog Brothers fights, you'll see that throws and takedowns come up reasonably often in stick fighting. Sometimes joint locks as well.
• The rules also disallow punching and kicking, both of which can be very useful in stick fighting. (You did mention kicking the shield, which is a bit different.)
• Padded weapons do behave a bit differently from hard sticks when they make contact with each other. It's not a huge difference, but it's worth considering.
• The padded weapons and limited targets make the sport safe and significantly reduce the risk of pain and/or injury. This isn't a criticism - I approve. Even for martial training, I do my best to avoid injury and avoid an excess of pain and bruising. However it does highlight one of the tradeoffs we face in martial arts. As we make our training higher impact, we gain better understanding of the realities of a fight and condition our bodies and minds to deal with those realities. Unfortunately we also increase our chances of short term injuries (which can interrupt our training) and also serious long injuries which can adversely affect our lives. We all have to find the right balance of intensity and impact for ourselves. I've done more hard impact training than many people, but less than others. LARPing is on the lighter, safer end of the spectrum which is absolutely fine but does take it further away from actual martial application.

Next, unarmored sword fighting:

• Many of my points regarding stick fighting still apply. (Especially the point regarding target areas.)
• One difference from the stick is that a sword can deliver potentially lethal or disabling blows with much less power than required by a stick. The shots I'm seeing in Dagorhir fighting are hitting hard enough that they could very well be effective if delivered with a blade. What I'm not seeing so much is attention to edge alignment. Good edge alignment is crucial to effective cutting with a sword and is much trickier to achieve reliably then you might think. (Thus the need for cutting practice in sword arts.) I'm not seeing consistent edge alignment for "kills" in the video, the rules don't seem to mention it as a requirement, and it's honestly just harder to judge with padded weapons than with steel weapons anyway.
• Steel against steel behaves very differently in the bind than padded weapons. Actually, I'm seeing just about no use of the bind in the videos I've seen so far. Not all sword arts work extensively in the bind, but many do.
• Since even a lethal or disabling blow doesn't usually stop an opponent immediately, a non-suicidal swordsman should develop the habit of controlling the opponents sword on the exit after delivering a hit. Knowing that you landed the first shot is small consolation if you both end up dead. Per Dagorhir rules, it appears that most competitors do the honorable thing and stop fighting immediately when they are hit with a "killing" blow. This means their opponent doesn't have to develop the habit of exiting safely. (To be fair, this is a common problem in most weapon combat sports, including some HEMA competitions. There are ways to mitigate the issue and those are currently part of my training focus.)
• The whole "fight from your knees when your legs are cut" is totally unrealistic and the "fight with your off hand when your other arm is hit" is possible but not that much more likely. I do understand that it makes the game more fun - we had the same rule in the SCA, but it's not indicative of reality.

Finally, armored sword fighting.

• Dagorhir rules for armor are such that it effectively gives one extra "life" in video game terms. Two hits with a one handed sword to a given target zone is enough to "destroy" the armor and land a lethal or crippling blow. In reality, armor (especially metal armor) is highly effective against swords. If you're facing someone wearing chainmail or brigandine (typically with a gambeson underneath) you can hack at their torso all day with a broadsword and probably not inflict anything worse than some bruising. If they're wearing plate, you probably won't even do that much. Tactics against armor generally involve a) aiming for unprotected areas, b) grappling them to the ground so you can stab through vulnerable spots like the visor or the joints, or c) using weapons which actually have some ability to damage the armor, possibly penetrate it, and do concussive damage - such as poleaxes and warhammers.
• Also with armor, we're back to the importance of developing the body dynamics to generate lots of power - more so than I'm seeing in the videos online.
• In fairness - developing a method to practice armored fighting sparring which is both realistic and safe is really, really hard and I don't know that the HEMA community has figured a great solution either. The majority of HEMA schools focus on unarmored fencing methods and we use protective equipment to avoid injuries. On a medieval battlefield, your goal would be to negate the opponent's protective gear and kill or disable them anyway. Kind of a tricky thing to train realistically.

Well, that took me over an hour to type and it's getting late. I'll continue with my thoughts on SCA fighting, Kendo, Olympic fencing, and HEMA competition tomorrow.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

His commentary throughout the video, was him separating himself from the LARPER. The main intent of his video was to critique LARPING; he whooped the kid to prove thatpoint....which was similar to what you were trying to say but he admitted right away that LARPING does work (as the kid got him like 40% of the time)

You might want to go back and re-listen to the narrator's commentary.

1. The narrator was not either of the fighters. In fact he stated that he has sparred both of them and respects them both.
2. The narrator refers to both of the fighters as LARPers and the implication is that he has sparred both of them under LARP rules.
3. Per the narrators "About" section of his YouTube channel, he is a LARPer. (In fact that's the first hobby he lists.) Therefore it seems unlikely that his intent was to critique LARPing. Nor does he actually do so at any point in his commentary.
4. The narrator states that both fighters have HEMA experience, specifically George Silver's backsword system. Thus his title of "HEMA fighters at LARP" as opposed to your characterization of "HEMA vs LARP."
5. The narrator states that the fighter is blue has more experience and is more technical. I think he means in HEMA, but he might also mean in LARP, he doesn't specify. The other fighter has experience in unarmed systems and is more athletic.
6. The narrator correctly points out that they are sparring under LARP rules, which changes certain aspects of the technique from actual historical application.
7. I'll just add my own comment that if it had been a video of a pure HEMA practitioner against a pure LARPer sparring under LARP rules, then I would expect the LARPer to win more often if they had equal experience and physical attributes. In the same way, I would expect a Kendo player to win more often against the LARPer if they fought under Kendo rules or a point karate competitor to beat a BJJ practitioner if they fought under point karate rules.

 

[jayoliver00]

You might want to go back and re-listen to the narrator's commentary.

1. The narrator was not either of the fighters. In fact he stated that he has sparred both of them and respects them both.
2. The narrator refers to both of the fighters as LARPers and the implication is that he has sparred both of them under LARP rules.
3. Per the narrators "About" section of his YouTube channel, he is a LARPer. (In fact that's the first hobby he lists.) Therefore it seems unlikely that his intent was to critique LARPing. Nor does he actually do so at any point in his commentary.
4. The narrator states that both fighters have HEMA experience, specifically George Silver's backsword system. Thus his title of "HEMA fighters at LARP" as opposed to your characterization of "HEMA vs LARP."
5. The narrator states that the fighter is blue has more experience and is more technical. I think he means in HEMA, but he might also mean in LARP, he doesn't specify. The other fighter has experience in unarmed systems and is more athletic.
6. The narrator correctly points out that they are sparring under LARP rules, which changes certain aspects of the technique from actual historical application.
7. I'll just add my own comment that if it had been a video of a pure HEMA practitioner against a pure LARPer sparring under LARP rules, then I would expect the LARPer to win more often if they had equal experience and physical attributes. In the same way, I would expect a Kendo player to win more often against the LARPer if they fought under Kendo rules or a point karate competitor to beat a BJJ practitioner if they fought under point karate rules.

It's been a while since I watched that video. I'll watch it tomorrow and possibly look up his channel for you, he's not a LARPER. He complains a lot about LARPING.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

I'll watch it tomorrow and possibly look up his channel for you, he's not a LARPER. He complains a lot about LARPING.

Here is his channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheProfessionalHobbyist/videos . His videos are pretty much all footage of LARP events, along with some instruction on how to do LARP fighting and discussion of LARP game design. You might be thinking of someone else.

 

[jayoliver00]

Here is his channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheProfessionalHobbyist/videos . His videos are pretty much all footage of LARP events, along with some instruction on how to do LARP fighting and discussion of LARP game design. You might be thinking of someone else.

Crap, I'm sorry, I gave you the wrong info. It's been a while so I got it mixed up going by memory (and not even listening to this video that I posted). I thought the guy in BLUE was the narrator of this video....he's the one with the gigantic YT channel. This guy only has 1k subscribers.

I've seen the guy in blue's videos on Larping and he complains about it while also giving it credit. He is indeed, HEMA.

 

[Deleted member 39746]

As you yourself pointed out, a person can be both a HEMA practitioner and a LARPer. Heck, if they have time in their schedule they could also be a kendoka and an Olympic fencer.

I still stand by LARP being pretty good force on force training, pending ruleset. And i also stand by some re enactment societies when they do "tacticals" are effectively enaging in highly realstic and historically accurate LARP.

LARP doesnt have the stigma it once had for it to be really used as a insult/should be taken that way. Its just the best descriptor for some things. (and you shouldnt listen to children about things anyway, just bonk them on the head with your foam sword and be done with it)

On the last comment, Doing kendo and olypmpic fencing is a weird combo, i wonder if anyones actually done that and what their reasoning is.


Addnedum: I just thought on something, LARP is generally pre gunpowder, so tests swords pretty well, and like with any sort of sport it rewards learning the rules and how to use things. You could sort of apply the same logic to paint balla nd airsoft and tactical shooting logic. Obviously take into account and acknowledge some exeptions, like cover for BB's and paintballs isnt the same as cover from actual firearms, but the logic of taking cover, hiding from peolle, flanking etc is true.

Id be intrested to know if the parrells with say LARP and sword fighting, are the same or imilar to the parells with paintball/airsoft and tactical shooting. (given people use effectively paintball, and airsoft as cheap training tools)

 

[Gerry Seymour]

What's that? I forget.

Obviously.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

It took a while though, right. I'm so glad I stayed on point

It took a while for you to get the point. The rest of us understood it immediately.

 

[lklawson]

He admitted that he did tak a shot at Larping, so you're wrong.

Good thing I held onto it, just like you are; yet not complaining like you.

Oh good grief. You're still misunderstanding what he wrote. At this point I must believe that it is deliberate so I'm done with your nonsense.

 

[jayoliver00]

Oh good grief. You're still misunderstanding what he wrote. At this point I must believe that it is deliberate so I'm done with your nonsense.

well nice talking to you.

 

[jayoliver00]

It took a while for you to get the point. The rest of us understood it immediately.

Some people needed clarification.

 

[jayoliver00]

Here is his channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheProfessionalHobbyist/videos . His videos are pretty much all footage of LARP events, along with some instruction on how to do LARP fighting and discussion of LARP game design. You might be thinking of someone else.

Ok, this is the guy in BLUE of the Larp vs. Hema video I linked: Shadiversity

I've only watched 5-8 of his videos over a span of 5+ years, so I wouldn't know for sure that he's HEMA; I just think he is.

https://www.youtube.com/user/shadmbrooks/videos

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Ok, this is the guy in BLUE of the Larp vs. Hema video I linked: Shadiversity

I've only watched 5-8 of his videos over a span of 5+ years, so I wouldn't know for sure that he's HEMA; I just think he is.

https://www.youtube.com/user/shadmbrooks/videos

Shad does a little bit of HEMA, some LARPing, some fantasy stuff. He’s sort of a sword nerd with toes in the water on both the historical and fantasy ends of things.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

BTW, I haven’t forgotten my promise to follow up my earlier post on the benefits and limitations of LARPing in learning weapon skills with similar analyses of SCA fighting, Kendo, Olympic fencing, and HEMA itself. It’s just been a busy week and it takes me a while to write those up in detail. I’ll try to get at least a couple of those up over the weekend.

 

[jayoliver00]

BTW, I haven’t forgotten my promise to follow up my earlier post on the benefits and limitations of LARPing in learning weapon skills with similar analyses of SCA fighting, Kendo, Olympic fencing, and HEMA itself. It’s just been a busy week and it takes me a while to write those up in detail. I’ll try to get at least a couple of those up over the weekend.

Here's a good video of HEMA people praising LARPing as virtual equivalent to HEMA in the mechanics of swordsmanship.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Here's a good video of HEMA people praising LARPing as virtual equivalent to HEMA in the mechanics of swordsmanship.

I’ll take a look when I get back from practice later today. I almost posted another video for you with a prominent HEMA guy saying some nice things about LARP, but I haven’t had a chance to finish watching it myself. In the meantime, feel free to offer any commentary or criticism of my post above where I analyze the advantages and limitations of LARP with regard to weapons training. Since you have more LARP experience than I do, you might be able to point out any mistakes I made with regard to LARP practice.

 

[Deleted member 39746]

Here's a good video of HEMA people praising LARPing as virtual equivalent to HEMA in the mechanics of swordsmanship.

Oh no, im going to say it. that looks like Kata.

 

[jayoliver00]

Oh no, im going to say it. that looks like Kata.

I think this is where Kata would work really well as you just need to touch to cause damage.