Some of the exchanges from my bouts at Vasaslaget-18 in Gamla Uppsala, Sweden. Hosted by Uppsala Historical Fencing School. The ruleset awarded bonus points for covering lines before and after attacking (with the sword or with sword and buckler together, but not with just the buckler) which changed the behaviour of the better, more adaptive fencers significantly. We were much more inclined to fence with sword and buckler together, “I.33” style, and the fencing lost some of the typical “cover high with buckler and strike low with the sword and then double” approach we often see in modern sword & buckler tournaments. With that said, you see me go for low targets alot, however it is almost exclusively “after” I have first attacked the high line with sword & buckler together and the opponents defence collapse and “they” separate their weapons, opening up for me to go low, or when I do it together with a leap offline. I often also go for the low line while still keeping the weapons together. The weapons used were rather heavy one handers from Kvetun Armouries in Russia. They were not feders, just blunts, and the weight and the broad blade really helped with focusing the fencing in the bind. They stung though… I really enjoyed this setup. I have competed in sword and buckler on and off since 2013 and this was the first time I saw such a focus on fencing in the bind from so many fencers (not all..). There are obviously alot of things to improve and tune with this ruleset and judges need to get used to it, but it was a good step forward in the development of creating an i.33 focused competitive environment. Oh yeah, as you can see I also tend to finger the ricasso even with the standard cruciform hilts. The control I get over the blade is in my opinion worth the added risk to getting hit on the finger (which hurts like hell and is a big injury risk no matter what gloves you use). For this ruleset and with these swords where big moulinettes were not really useful fingering the ricasso paid of. It also added more incentinve for me to cover my sword hand with my buckler.. Thanks to working with Kristine Konsmo (who took silver here) I am starting to pick up how to use the Obsessios to parry and wind, and my thrusts are easier to do with both weapons together. My distance management and ability to read opponents and set up situations help alot especially in allowing me to attack safely to my opponents lower openings (look for my short edge cut to the inside of my opponents forward leg, I am proud of that one) but I still separate my weapons too much, sometimes I leave the bind too soon and I still get tricked by Kristoffer Stansons fantastic distance games on a regular basis. The work to improve is never done. https://www.facebook.com/axelpetterss… www.saintmark.se

2 years ago

A rare treat; a competitive single rapier bout between Francesco Loda and Ton Puey, from Briscia Pro Challenge -17. Ton rarely competes, but made an exception for this tournament. He took third place while Francesco took 1st, however Francesco thought Ton should have been in the final and asked him for a competitive bout immidiately after the tournament, which Ton accepted and also won. Enjoy.

2 years ago

This is one of my favourite fencing images, a display of a Fechtschule event between Marxbruder and Freifecther. Join me as we go through some of the many amazing details of this image, and relate them to our own times. Courtesy of signore Roberto Gotti and, Gairthenix and MAM.

https://www.facebook.com/axelpetterssonhistoricalfencing/

2 years ago

Footage from a sparring bout with Ken Kot of Hong Kong earlier this year. We got video of the session from two angles, one is in slow motion.



https://www.facebook.com/axelpetterssonhistoricalfencing/

2 years ago

Kristine Konsmo and Axel Pettersson at Brescia Pro Challenge 2017. Axel took gold in the longsword tournament. 2 years ago

La Destreza Común: The Original Spanish Fencing School elsegno: mindhost: By Alberto Bomprezzi & Marc Gener In 1582 Don Jerónimo de Carranza, a cultivated Andalusian noble, devoted Christian and skilful swordsman, publishes in his book “De la Philosphia de las Armas…” a new system for sword combat, developed by himself. This system, completely novel, practical and efficient (as would later on be proven by a large number of fencing masters), used geometry and mathematics as a vehicle to explain fencing concepts with impressive accuracy and precision, and claimed to be, because of its rational nature, universal and absolute. From then on, slowly at the beginning but faster and as time went on, this system that he named “La Verdadera Destreza”, started to gain adepts and to spread widely all over Spain, mainly due to the activity and skill of one of Carranza’s students: Don Luis Pacheco de Narváez, probably the greatest Master of ”La Destreza”. Such was the impact the system made that at a certain point in the other European countries the Spanish fencing School was identified by many exclusively with La Destreza Verdadera. But then, if Carranza had indeed developed his new system at about the beginning of the second half of the 16th century, the logical question is: what kind of fencing was in practice in Spain before the appearance of La Verdadera Destreza?

We must look for the answer, among other places, in the texts of those who wrote about La Verdadera Destreza, where they use to call it, with intentional contempt, la Destreza Vulgar or Común (Vulgar or Common Destreza). This is the name used by Carranza, Pacheco and their followers to designate both the kind of fencing practised before the rise of La Verdadera Destreza and the style practised by those contemporary fencers of theirs that didn’t follow the principles of their school. This so-called, also, Esgrima Vulgar or Común (Vulgar or Common Fencing) looks for its first written references to manuals from the end of the 15th century. Thus it is mentioned Jaime Pons, a Master from Majorca who lived and published his treatise in Perpignan, by then under the sovereignty of the Crown of Aragon, in the year of 1474. In the same year, in Seville, appears the treatise of the Master Pedro de la Torre. A few years later, in 1532, the Master Francisco Román, also in Seville, published his treatise “Tratado de Esgrima con figuras”.



The next logical question, then, is: how the Destreza Vulgar was? Even though the old Spanish treatises are indeed lost, the treatises of la Destreza Verdadera describe with a good amount of detail the techniques (called tretas, that could be literally translated as “ruses” or “tricks”) of the Common Fencing School, and talk about it constantly as that natural enemy that has to be defeated. The AEEA has devoted itself to the study and understanding of these techniques with the purpose of reconstructing, as far as possible, the Esgrima Común as it was practised in Spain at the end of the 16th century and through all the 17th century. The conclusions reached so far by our study show that the original Spanish fencing school was, in its core principles, the same than the one practised all over Europe and, in its execution, very similar to the Italian school of the same age (beginning of the 16th century). It has, of course, its own characteristics, as well as a different formal approach and attitude, specially in the tactical side, plus a certain number of techniques we have not seen, so far, in the treatises of the contemporary Italian school. But, as has been said, it essentially follows the same core assumptions and principles. Does it, then, come form the Italian school? No. The unquestionable existence of a formal fencing tradition characteristically Spanish that reaches at least as far back as the 15th c. rather points to both schools sharing a common root and to a mutual influence along time, but they are unmistakably independent from each other. After the appearance of la Verdadera Destreza, the original Spanish fencing school did not disappear but coexisted for a century and a half with its antagonist, adapting itself not only to sharing the same physical and social space with another school but also to the necessary evolution of fencing dictated by the historical changes, evolving its original techniques and accommodating them to the new circumstances imposed by the passing of time, as might be for example the changes in the morphology of the weapons.

So, as a characteristic element, the implementation of the principles of the Spanish common fencing school for single sword is articulated around the so-called 30 tretas (30 techniques.) These were general techniques from which other, more particular, techniques could be derived. The whole system respected, obviously, the basic fencing principles of time, measure, placement, defence with the point etc.



The 30 Tretas of la Destreza Común for single sword:

1- La Estocada de Puño

2- Cornada

3- Botonazo

4- La Zambullida

5- La Manotada

6- La Estocada a la Mano

7- La Enarcada

8- La Engavilanada

9- La Torneada

10- Remesón y

11- Golpe de Espada

12- Llamar

13- El Quiebro (Desplante)

14- La Final

15- La Garatusa

16- La Ganancia y

17- La Reganancia

18- La tentada

19- El Arrebatar y Tajo

20- El Codazo

21- El Brazal

22- El Canillazo

23- La Treta Doble

24- Tajo Horizontal

25- Revés Horizontal

26- Tajo Ascendente

27- Revés Ascendente

28- La Escampavita

29- La Irremediable

30- La Defendida



For Armas Dobles (Spanish term for two weapons):



Tretas for sword and dagger:

1- La Encadenada

2- Empanada o Cobertera

3- Espinillazo

4- Manotear

5- Encomendada



Tretas for sword and cape

1- Encapar al Enemigo (to put the cape on the enemy)

2- Arrojar la Capa sobre la Espada (to throw the cape on the sword)



Summarising, we can say that:



a) In Spain there were two fencing schools:

- The original fencing school, later called Destreza Vulgar or Común, linked with the mainstream European tradition.

- La Destreza or Verdadera Destreza, that appears in the mid-sixteenth century.



b) The Common Fencing School coexisted with La Destreza Verdadera for 150 years, facing each other both in the practical and in the theoretical fields. And is in the latter where La Verdadera Destreza indisputably gains the upper hand, as is attested by the great number of treatises about this school, among other things, while the Common Fencing School presents only few literary references, and even these mainly through those same Destreza treatises.



c) In spite of the continuous efforts of the Destreza Masters to discredit the Common Fencing School in every possible way, truth is that la Esgrima Común was not a street fighting system fit for the lower social classes, but a complete fencing system with a corpus of well- structured and codified principles and techniques, inheritor of a tradition able to trace its roots back to the Middle Ages.



In short: practically speaking, la Destreza Común is a fully developed and extremely effective rapier combat system.

And is this system, with its principles, techniques, tactical approaches and all the history that surrounds it, including the Masters that practiced it, taught it and made it evolve so it kept being alive and useful at every moment, what AEEA is focusing its efforts in reconstructing, to the best of our abilities.



Even though only few people are working with Spanish fencing I hope this may be of interest at least to some of you. —

Published by Alberto Bomprezzi, Technical Director and Head Instructor of the Asociación Española de Esgrima Antigua in the SFI forum in 2005 (source thread)

Reading Godinho these days, this is handy. 2 years ago

(reblogged from )

via mindhost

A compilation of most of my exchanges from Brescia Pro HEMA challenge in December-17, my first competition in one and a half years. Being rusty I fall back to flinch responses alot; the left Zwerchau counter is great and all but I do it too often, and I should vary the target (elbows are often more difficult to defend than the head). I also use the upper Hengen too often, a Kron or lower Hengen parry leaves your sword on top of the opponent and defends better in general. My footwork kept up pretty good though if a bit too linear. I pulled off two mutieren, one duplieren, a half sword entry, a nice krumphau-schielhau combo and some nice combinations and thrusts, and I have not lost my ability to read opponents and set up situations, but I should be more relaxed and not launch the counter as soon as I bind. You can see my shoulders being tense when I do the left cut counter, embarassing.. I do like my low line parries, they saved me alot of times against Moreno Ricci and Jacopo Penso. You will see who they are by their agile footwork, long sweeping attacks from the Bolognese Spadone sources and their use of the Guardia di Croce. I really had alot of difficulties dealing with those powerful cuts, they blew through my Hengen several times. I really am a parry/riposte kind of fencer, to the detriment of all my years working with the Liechtenauer school of fencing. Its a philosophical thing, I think, or maybe more accurately a reflection of character, the way we fence. I think more of keeping myself safe than hitting the opponent, more foil than epee. And with that said I am not virtue signaling here, the Liechtenauer school and epee both advocate an assertive tactical approach of taking initiative and with few parries, “offence is the best defence” is true in alot of martial practices, and I wish i was better at it. I simply really love a good parry though, it is so artful. You never see a lion fig on Animal clean fencing is what gives me the absolute most joy, even though I might make it a bit difficult for myself by going on the defensive, “nach” more than I should. But I am in a phase in my competitive career where I have nothing left to prove so screw it. I do wish I was better at taking initiative and rely less on my parrying though, just to have the skillset.



https://www.facebook.com/axelpetterssonhistoricalfencing/

2 years ago

worldhistoryfacts: Leopards kill a Roman criminal in a Tunisian mosaic dating from the 200s CE. Some criminals who were set against predators in the arena were given weapons and expected to fight; others were simply bound and put at the mercy of the animals. The most famous group of “criminals” to be subjected to this punishment was the early Christian church. 2 years ago

(reblogged from iamafencer)

via Wikipedia

Long swords with short blades, what? The longswords you usually see at events and clubs around the world today are really on the long end of the historical spectrum, historically longswords were often shorter (though longer swords most definitely existed too). The trend with longer blades in modern practice started around 2010 when the Slovak fencers had longer blades made, at Swordfish we started to use longer blades as our competition standard in 2012 in order to encourage more blade contact and “Binden” techniques. Now it is standard in most places.



I still love playing with shorter blades though, the Albion Meyer sword which features a shorter blade is my all time favourite sparring weapon (except that sharp schilt). With short blades the action is quick, dynamic and high energy, I love it! Lucky for me the womens longsword division in the Nordic countries use shorter blades so I get the chance to train with them alot when working with Kristine. Here are a few bouts with K and I from last weekend, note the short blades, light but well padded gloves (top secret St Mark project don’t tell anyone!) and unpadded or no jackets. Note: ALWAYS wear a throat guard or go sit in a corner.



Even if you are all about heavy competitive fencing, light or no gear training is invaluable to your skill development; you learn to place your sword exactly where you want it, exactly when you want to and with exactly the amount of force that you want to apply. You can also train longer and with less fatigue than with ful kit. Light gear or no gear training and sparring constitues a large part of my classes at GHFS.

2 years ago

Kristine finally has enough of my hand sniping and have at me (watch to the end), I deserved that one!



Context for the video:

1. I was going for alot of “cheap” and not so cheap hand hits in order to let K work on leading with a threat as well as her timing and distance management.



2. Between the Koning gloves and the Thomas Nyzell forearm and elbow guards Kristine is better protected there than on many other parts of her body, so stirking there means less pain on her part.



3. It was a funny moment we got to share together because we love eachother and we both love fencing. Being able to share the passion for fencing as K and I do is a real blessing to our relationship, and I see this with the many wonderful HEMA couples we meet on our travels across the world. There is nothing better than spending an entire weekend together fencing, lifting and talking about fencing and lifting. 2 years ago

A and B both starts in Pflug,

-A drops the point as queue

-B makes a single step followed by a longer single step or lunge and thrust to the face

-A parries

-B strikes around with a short edge cut and passing step, throwing the back leg behind the front leg after the pass in order to retreat away from the potential afterblow, and finds the opponents blade after hitting



-A sometimes allows B to land the initial thrust in order to guarantee honesty of action of B.



Just as much footwork and reaction work as thrusting, here Kristine and I train all the basic types of longsword footwork; short and long single steps for the initial thrust and a passing step for the strike around turning into a triangle step for our Abzug (retreat out of distance). The strike around is done with the short edge, for most people the long edge is easier to do and comes more naturally, but even though it can feel like it is faster it does not provide the same good structure and cover as the short edge cut, and the short edge cut allows you to “hook around” a potential parry. It also sets you up well for striking back around to the opposing side should the opponent parry successfully. Joachim Meyer almost exclusively teach the short edge cut in these situations, and it pays off to have them in your repertoire.



https://www.facebook.com/axelpetterssonhistoricalfencing/

2 years ago

An interview with Axel Pettersson by Maciej Talaga of ARMA Poland, done right after Swordfish.



“ Hello everybody,finally, I had some time to start preparing videos from what I recorded and experienced at this year’s Swordfish. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the name: it is currently one of the greatest and certainly the most prestigeous tournament in the HEMA world. You may watch a professionally prepared livestream from the finals here. I got invited there as an instructor and taught two classes: one for advanced fencers (focused on Zufechten and training methods for this concept) and another for beginners (basic swordhandling in the bind). Both played out really well, thanks to enthusiastic participants and provided me with some insights that I will try to share with you later.But my first video will not focus on my endeavours, but instead take you for an interesting talk with Axel Pettersson, who was kind enough to sit with me to discuss the current ruleset used at Swordfish - which is always a hot topic after such a big event, share his memories from his interactions with the Polish HEMA community, and reflect upon the relationship between training methodology and HEMA fencing culture, which is a topic I find very interesting and underdebated these days.I would really love to get feedback from you regarding the last issue and hope you will enjoy the interview.Take care!



Maciej” 2 years ago

ordinaryvisionary: (via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mj6aiYlT-Y) Behold! The 2017 livestream is online. By now, even my friends that know nothing of HEMA and have no idea what Swordfish is, know that I couldn’t attend it this year because of injury. Luckily, our unofficial worlds has been live streaming the finals for a good few years now so I could be there in spirit, watch, cheer and keep up to date with the historical fencing competitive creme de la creme. “Bravo!” to the team behind the livestream, pulling off three hours of high level historical fencing without a glitch. As familiar faces as well as new ones competed in final after final, the highlights of the evening for me have been the wrestling and the longsword. In the wrestling, I appreciated the simple ruleset and the new scoring system: 10 points for Gryffindor! I mean, for a clean throw. And we did see a lot of clean throws this year, didn’t we? Loved it. I did feel for Staffan Ninjaboy, as I’m sure many did, but congrats to all the winners. The women’s longsword final was so exciting! Elena Muzurina from Russia and Majken Roelfszema from the Netherlands kept a tight score from beginning to end in two rounds where none of the fencers dominated the fight. They’re such different fencers, both of them keeping to their own game, none falling for the other’s tricks for longer than one exchange. Elena’s win at sudden death concluded a final where, if you ask me, both fencers should have gotten the gold. The open longsword bronze final was a milestone for UK HEMA. After no UK fencers managed to reach a Swordfish open longsword final since long before my time in HEMA, this year not just one but two of them did, as London based Alexander “Sasha” Makarov from School of The Sword/Waterloo Sparring Group faced Scotsman Mark Wilkie from The Institute of Historical Arts. And what a final! Both skilled and dedicated competitors, Alexander and Mark are as different fencers as they come. Sasha’s a tall strong man (Good luck trying to knock him off his feet in grappling!) but while he can and does bring these qualities to his fencing, his strength lies more in his superbe use of tempo and distance and in his rational and calculating style, while Mark is a true Lion, bold, aggressive, going all out all the time. I love a clash of different styles! Sasha is my friend and long time training partner and when I saw his face on the screen as he entered the arena, I knew it was on. He looked so focused, he kept his mind on top of the game all the way through and managed to finally show in a Swordfish final what I’ve long known he’s capable of. I mean, did you see THAT parry at the end? My heart skipped a beat there, I swear. Already a rapier champion, who moved to London from Russia a few years back, his longsword skills have been skyrocketing in the last couple years, making him the currently highest ranking UK open longsword fencer and one of the most active competitors on the international scene. I would have liked to be at Swordfish to compete, of course, but when I saw Sasha winning, I just wished I could be there to cheer for him in person and then give him a big hug and celebrate with him and the rest of my friends. I enjoyed the gold final as well. Swedish longsword phenomenon Dennis Ljungqvist (Dennis The Menace, like my kid calls him) once again showed us how it’s done as he defeated Ivan Novichenko from Russia. I can’t get tired of watching Dennis fence to begin with, but I hadn’t been so impressed by a comeback after a huge gap in the score since Kristine Konsmo won the rapier & dagger final vs Kristofer Stanson in the 2016 Nordic League (You haven’t seen it? Watch it NOW!). With the skill, the experience and the mental strength that are the mark of a champion, Dennis never lost focus, never gave up, caught up with his opponent until he evened a score that seemed doomed, prevailing at sudden death with a blow to the head. That made him not just this year’s gold medalist but the first fencer to win both the Nordic League and Swordfish in the same year. Let it go down in history that Dennis the Manace grew his beard and broke the curse! Now I feel so inspired that I can’t wait to get back to training and, injury permitting, work my hardest to get back to competition and join the fun again for Swordfish 2018. 2 years ago

(reblogged from ordinaryvisionary)

via youtube.com