Thank you for the video! It really looks more like the fencing from the books. In the club we practice sparring without protection, only in masks. Even without sharp swords, this changes the picture of the battle. You are cool!

This has been - in my opinion - the most interesting video of the Dreynevent 2021.

Excellent work guys. These aspects have been spoken about to the point of total cliché so it's just amazing to see people finally testing these hypotheses out properly. You did it in as safe and professional way as possible too. I will take away your observations to think about my goals in teaching and what I want my fencing to look like. Very well done.

Amazing work, friends! Your methods solve some of the inherent issues with sport-style HEMA (namely, the ridiculous, suicidal speed and disregard for the deadliness of the weapon), and I really applaud your efforts here. Excited to try this myself. Cheers!

More such videos please! Interesting!

Exactly: "the faster you move the smaller your time window for reaction becomes and that means less control". Couldn't be summarized better. The sport fencing and bad HEMA are pushing for a body/speed performance oriented practice. IT HAS DEFORMED THE ART.

I always thought the Winden stuff seems kinda useless in real combat but this explains everything! Thank you so much!

Nice! It's always interesting to hear more about these things, since it's pretty difficult to discuss it without people in the community getting antsy. Perhaps for good reason, given all the videos flying around, but still. I've done something similar with a kendo buddy(I don't do kendo myself) when we got into deciphering the original kata from the Imperial-era, which is pretty far-removed from modern sport kendo. We started with bokuto and moved up to sharp katana and it's just a world of difference. Modern kendo standards for what you should do and how precisely are insanely high compared to what you can do with a heavier, sharp katana and you can see it reflected in the really old kata videos, too, and the concepts of distance, timing, pressure and edge alignment(defending with the back of the blade, pressuring with the flat against flat) is much, much more noticeable. I'm hoping to move on to longswords with him soon and testing out the angle of the blade in the bind to see how it changes things, like how Ablauffen works with a sharp blade in the equation. Another thing I have noticed while chopping wood, is that the blade is a surprisingly good tactile instrument, for sensing how fresh or rotten, how dry or wet the wood is, much more than a feder is against another feder in a bind. With the katana there is really no edge-on-edge binding, so I'm hopding to experiment more with that with longswords, too.

I've been wondering about this since I got into HEMA. It always seemed like tournament fencers fight with unrealistic abandon because they're not afraid of getting hit and because the tournament setting rewards aggressive offense more than conservative defense. I always wondered how things would look if both fencers were deathly afraid of getting hurt. I even jokingly thought about outfitting the fencers with gear that would zap them when they got hit to instill that fear 🤣

Excellent and Realistic, good job, this is the proof I needed.

Thanks! Fascinating stuff. I love hearing more about it, similar to Roland Warzecha and his freeplay with a sharp arming sword with buckler.

Thank you for the useful insights.

Thank you for sharing this really interesting work!

Would you say that how sharp swords behave in a bind is in any way comparable to how leather dussacks behave in the bind?

You're more worried of getting hit, ok. But you also fear hitting your opponent badly. To me you've fixed some of your understanding while creating another prolem elsewhere.