Earlier this year, I started occasionally hearing some odd things from newer HEMA people about Wiktenauer and HEMA's source material. It bothered me so much that I wrote a relatively long post on my private Facebook wall about the origins of Wiktenauer, why it was needed, and how it morphed into what it is today as the most valuable HEMA resource online. I think it's time to address the Longpoint Longsword Triathlon in a similar way to realign some ideas that we want to promote, inform newer competitors as to the context and need, and to combat some conjecture coming from outside the competitive HEMA scene.



Back in the olden days, meaning 5-10 years ago, the idea that competitions would take the H out of HEMA may have been a majority opinion, at least in the US. This was even an opinion held by Longpoint Director Jake Norwood and myself until around 2010 at the latest. The first few competitions in the US were dirty, and I would have agreed then that, except for one or two guys in any given competition, you didn't see much of what we want to see from the sources displayed. Every hit, no matter the quality, type, or location, was given one point, and matches were to a set number of points or time.

We needed this. The part of the HEMA community that competed in the US progressed in skill significantly faster between 2010 and 2012 than that same group of people had progressed from 2004 to 2010. Today, we see the upper half of competitors consistently pulling off techniques and concepts from the manuals they work from in competitions. It's still dirty, because fighting is dirty and, as they say, the other team is getting paid to win, too. But it's there. To deny this is to all but admit that you only want to see artificial, partially cooperative drilling or sparring.

There are certainly risks, however. Tournaments are games, and poorly designed games can be easily broken or exploited by unintended behaviors. Over the years, Longpoint, Swordfish, and other event organizers have developed new rule sets, tweaked old ones, and progressed down the path of developing a game that brings out the kind of fighting that we want to see. At Longpoint specifically we update our rules with the goal in mind that the best way to exploit our rules should be to fence technically and correctly.



Do we think this is enough? No. Not at all. Fencing tournaments have their own downsides. Judging is a problem, so the rule sets can't be quite as robust as we would like. Blunt steel swords, while sexy and useful, do a poor job of replicating the bind of sharp steel, changing the usefulness of a surprising number of techniques. While injury can still happen, fighters are often able to rely on their gear to protect them, and are perhaps willing to take some risks they wouldn't take without that protection.