GD4H

Tag: HEMA

  • Causing Attraction: Non-Dominant Foot Forward in Longsword Fencing

    In ecological dynamics, the term Attractor or Movement Attractor shows up every now and then. Attractors can be seen as preferred motor pattern solutions in the current activity context. When an action is seen as intuitive or habitual, it might be the attractor at work. Habit and intuition can be nebulous concepts however, so to…

  • How I Learned To Stop Trying And Finally Fixed Knee Collapse

    I spent a lot of time trying to fix people’s knee collapse. But the solution ended up being to stop trying to fix it, and just give them more realistic training activities.

  • CLA Class Example – Body Language and Deception

    This is a writeup of a class I ran recently which I think makes a good case study in using the Constraints Led Approach to teaching.

  • Hitting Hard Is A Strategy – You Can’t Figure Out Safety Until You Accept That

    Hitting Hard Is A Strategy – You Can’t Figure Out Safety Until You Accept That

    Force levels in HEMA competitions are a hot topic for discussion, and that’s a good thing. But in order to properly explore the solutions we have to understand it’s role in the tactical context.

  • You Suck At Writing Rules – Here Is How You Can Do Better

    You Suck At Writing Rules – Here Is How You Can Do Better

    You heard me. If you’re reading this you probably suck at writing rules (documents).

  • Why I Don’t Allow Gayszlen In My Tournaments

    Why I Don’t Allow Gayszlen In My Tournaments

    This is pretty simple to introduce, I don’t allow Gayszlen in the tournaments I write rules for. The reasons for this are actually pretty multifaceted, including: Before we start, I want to emphasize that any of these reasons alone is probably not enough. These types of one-handed strikes are probably not an egregious enough violation…

  • Types of Training Games

    All models are wrong, but some are useful George Box To say that you can easily classify training games would be a lie. You can probably come up with multiple different taxonomies that are all mostly accurate, and all have different strengths and flaws. The usefulness of such a model isn’t in the fact that it…

  • My Journey to Right-of-Way

    At this point in my longsword career, right-of-way is one of my favorite rulesets to fence under. Before you get disgusted and click away, hear me out – I wasn’t always like this, I used to be a right-of-way hater just like most of the HEMA community. It was a slow transition over the course…

  • AG Open 2023 Stats – Point Values vs Targets Hit

    I haven’t posted my usual Friday article for the past 2 weeks. Two Fridays ago it was because I was at the AG Open event in Plymouth Michigan to compete, ref, and lecture. Last week I just forgot. But now we’re back, and I’m going to post something related to the event. Something that I…

  • The Flexible Value of Sparring

    A concept that often gets discussed in my HEMA coach circles is “value above sparring” (VAS). The concept is that there should be measurable value added by non-sparring activities in your classes which makes it more useful for fencers than simply sparring for the same amount of time. This is an important measure to gauge…