The baton was systematized in France during the 1800s and during the mid 1850s baton practice was one aspect of a gymnastics curriculum for French soldiers established at the Joinville military academy. Practice with baton was also popular in 19th century Savate salles. It is likely the baton was popular among various 19th century European…
Jogo do Pau (very roughly, ‘game of sticks’) comes to us from Portugal, home of Henry the Navigator and fine Port wine. This art, which typically employs a 5 foot (1.5m) to 6 foot (1.8m) long stick, appears to have originated largely in rural areas, particularly in the north (Minho and Trás-os-Montes), where the stick…
Various native forms of stick fighting including: Singlestick (British) Greatstick (British) Jogo do Pau (Portuguese) Juego del Palo (Spanish) Makila (Basque) Bastone Siciliano (Sicilian) Scherma de Bastone (Italian) Stockfechten (German) La Canne (French) Bâton Français (French) Bataireacht (Irish) Shillelagh (Irish). […] Examples of arts involving longsticks include Hutton’s Greatstick, Jogo do Pau, Juego del Palo,…
Two obvious ideas are the idea of a good “seat”, and an appreciation of distance and feeling. An effective seat is essential not only for balance and stability, but also for effectively communicating with the horse. Correct posture and weight shifting keeps us balanced and in control, and gives subtle cues to the horse. The…
In the interpretation there is the danger of wishful thinking and the self-fulfilling prophecy. If an interpretation is shaped by the wish that it should convey a certain law of the art of fencing as its core, or always has a teaching content, then the interpretation in the sense of historical fencing will suffer from…
This book is a training guide for learning the German Longsword. It contains Formal Partner Exercises, Basic Drills, Structured Partner Drills, and much more. It is intended to be used with the author’s “Knightly Art of the Longsword” to teach the reader how to go beyond mere techniques of the art to actually learning how…
Few terms used in the study of medieval combat are as often confused or misused as the word “pollaxe.”Partly, this is due to the fact that modern people want to apply modern rules of logic to medieval subjects, something which is not supported by actually reading what medieval men wrote.They also tend to ignore…
The reconstruction of a fencing piece seems to be not an easy undertaking. But in fact it is quite simple when having pictures. It gets trickier with texts, where first of all a transfer into a modern language must take place and this in several variants, if there are ambiguities of meaning. Continue reading on…
The original French word for fencing strip, planche (lit., plank or board), encapsulates the nature of the original strip and points at its inherent limitations, which required adaptation of the footwork by the fencers. The planche was initially conceived as an outdoors device: It could easily be placed on sand, gravel, or grass, and provide instant even ground……
Swords have been classified and organised into groups often by specific shape, function or culture. The question is what is the best method of classifying them, is it one or a combination of these methods. Burton (1987) suggests two which are common among collections being Topical and Geographical or Material and Formal, the former considers…