Do not make the mistakes that I have! I make an unfortunately stupid habit of not wearing as much protective gear as I should, and I have many a bruise after practice because of it. Admittedly I am a poster child for why serious protective gear is necessary in martial arts like HEMA, but I also have to say that there is a major benefit to, at least occasionally, getting down and dirty (in a controlled fashion) with as little gear as possible. Even though the risks are a major issue, I would argue that if the participants are experienced and relaxed, this kind of sparring has many beneficial qualities.

So why willingly choose to forgo protective equipment that could save your limbs and potentially your life? Well, obviously I’m not suggesting that anyone go into full-contact sparring with feders with no gear on. This would be tantamount to suicide and would likely result in broken hands, ribs, and even a few cracked skulls. Instead, what I am advocating is half-speed or two-thirds speed sparring between partners who spar regularly and have at least a year of fencing experience. Putting two fencers together who meet only one or none of the criteria is not a recipe for happiness, so don’t do it. That disclaimer out of the way, I am convinced that there are a number of skills one can practice in this form of sparring that are not normally accessible when doing full speed sparring with full gear, namely peripheral vision, Indes, and Fuhlen.

In any martial art, your peripheral vision is incredibly important. From a boxing perspective, it’s how you see that sneaky hook looping over that you weren’t expecting. When wrestling it’s now you pick up on that angular step your opponent took that set you up perfectly for getting taken down. And when fighting with weapons, it’s how you notice sneaky and evasive attacks long before their power-arc is complete. Let’s be frank, a fencing mask basically gives you tunnel vision. Sure, a very skilled and perceptive fighter will still manage just fine with that problem, but having a wider field of vision that is not altered even more by the mesh of the mask (which, at least for me, completely ruins my depth perception) is pretty great. When you can fully take in all of the visual sensory information that is possible, it allows you to see the barely perceptible movements that are normally obvious tells that a particular attack is coming. It also makes it easier to see what’s happening when you are in the bind with an opponent, and I have found this particularly useful in avoiding snapping cuts coming from above once the opponent’s blade is pushed upward. Speaking of the bind, this leads quite well into a discussion of both Fuhlen and Indes.

Fuhlen means “feeling”, and it usually refers to the tactile sensory information you receive when your blade is touching the blade of your opponent. There is a tremendous amount of information you gain from touching your opponent’s blade, and while this information is easily picked up when one is fully geared up, it is easier to practice when moving at half-speed, and without the thick, heavy gloves that can dampen the vibrations carrying that information. When you have that extra third of a second to react to your opponent’s strong or weak bind, this allows you to make that mental “click” that tells you what to do. Once you have done this enough times, at least hypothetically, you should be able to make use of those skills in sparring. This mirrors the same process we use when ramping up our basic drilling from painfully slow to terrifyingly fast. Some might say that you can accomplish this same practice through drilling, but it is very easy to fall into a “going through the motions” feel when just drilling, and so this kind of sparring may be a very effective way to avoid this potential pitfall.

One simply cannot have a discussion about Fuhlen without discussing Indes, as they are both incredibly important concepts in HEMA. As you might imagine, I would argue that this slower speed but un-geared sparring is quite good at prepping a student for a better grasp of this, simply for the fact that (just like when I discussed Fuhlen) they have that extra moment to process what’s coming at them and reach their “a-ha!” moment. Acting in Indes requires a sensitivity and understanding of potential parries and attacks that calls for immediate responses to those potentials. This skills can be picked up through basic drilling and full speed sparring, but taking some of the pressure off by bringing the speed down can allow students to build those reactionary skills in yet another way. This kind of sparring would not act as a replacement for any of these tried and true methods of skill building, but instead be an occasional supplement, much like protein shakes when lifting weights.

As an example of what this sparring can look like, here is a video of the head of our spadone class and I in a half-speed sparring match. Before anyone laughts: yes, I know my shirt kept coming up. Admittedly I got vain because I dropped some weight and could fit into my old shirts….promptly forgetting that some of them are not long enough for me. So yeah, shield your eyes and enjoy the show.