As I’ve touched on recently, a lot of martial arts principles and techniques can be found in many separate arts. Even in arts as separate as brazilian jiu jitsu and sport fencing, you can find yourself talking about drawing an attack to expose and opening then taking advantage of the space created for your own attack, or about keeping up a sequence of attacks so your opponent is too focused on defence to counter. Often there’s a considerable overlap in techniques, too. A thrust in sport fencing isn’t a million miles away from a straight left in pugilism or a stab in messer. Who would have guessed that a straight line is the quickest route or that you’d want to move your body behind it.

There are variations in technique that can be accounted for my differences in the environment of the fight. Traditional Jogo de Pau is focussed on fights with many participants and consequently has less thrusting work than many other staff styles, sabre with bell guards is likely to make more use of static blocks at the bottom of the strong than messer fighting with open hilts, Kyoshin karate bans punches to the head and consequently keeps the hands lower than Dutch kickboxing etc.

Differences in technique and tactics can come from within as well as without, too. Foreman and Ali both fought at the same time in the same type of gloves, same rules and other environmental considerations, but they boxed in dramatically different styles. Partly this is their physical differences, but it’s also just personal preference and the evolution of “games” in which different strengths reinforce each other and cover different weaknesses.

It’s common to see people (especially in HEMA, for various reasons) trying to universalize martial arts as they realise that there’s comparable techniques in different systems. At it’s most extreme end, this leads to the Strong Pan-European HEMA Heresy™, or even to claiming Ringen is the same as some obscure kung-fu system and clearly one descends from the other. Convergent and parallel evolution are alternatives, y’know. The armbar and the oberhau are just out there, waiting to be discovered by anyone who cares to fight and experiment. They don’t need to be transmitted by travelling pilgrims like syphilis.

When you’re presented with something that seems to lack something obvious (”Where’s the grappling?” or “No thrusts?”) or have something over-emphasised (”How many types of high kicks?” or “You only use this one hanging guard?”) the safest assumption is that there’s an environmental reason. Perhaps the art was developed in challenge fights on raised platforms, so pushing people backwards in an important skill. Maybe this fencing manual was written in a certain legal environment where sword thrusts were likely to be ruled as murderous even in self defence.

Or perhaps it’s just personal preference. The art’s founder had a kick-ass parry-riposte, so it de-emphasises the Vorschlag. Maybe Liechtenauer just really liked stabbing people in the face even when there were alternative attacks open?

Stories like these, which don’t quite explain whether it’s a feature of the art or a defect that you might want to hammer out, are a part of almost any art, but in HEMA they’re often not explicit, and require examination of the source together with a knowledge of the wider historical context to tease out.

It’s also important for instructors not to limit their teachings to their personal “games”, especially if we’re aware that we’re nothing like masters ourselves. Your students are likely to discover their own strengths, weaknesses and preferences, and it makes sense to let them develop rather than imposing your own favourite style on them.