Historical Injury vs Modern Tournament Targeting
Comparing the archaeological injury patterns from Matzke’s 2011 “Armed and Educated” to statistics from modern HEMA tournaments.
Articles by Sean Franklin
It’s Not “All in the Hips”
A colloquialism associated with generating power is “it’s all in the hips”, but this is a little bit misleading, as the hips themselves aren’t really the source of the power.
Don’t Give Points When People Withdraw From Matches!
In some tournament formats a competitor will be given a win and the maximum match points if their opponent doesn’t fight. This is a terrible idea and unfair to all the other competitors.
Geometry of a Flat Hit
You can tell when a sword lands flat. With MATH!
Tournament Season? Tournament Countries? Where and when does HEMA happen
Even though we have tournaments all year I kind of felt like we had a tournament season. I was wrong…
There is no horizontal zwerchau cutting plane!
That’s right, you heard me. Geometry forbids keeping your edge in line while the tip is below the hands.
Batting a cut out of the way – a.k.a. “How You Cut Your Hand Open”
I know it sounds ridiculous, but I have come across someone who thought they could bat a cut out of the way by hitting the backside of the blade with their hand…
Force, Deceleration, and how to stab through a tank.
It was the first two words that got you hooked, right?
What German Weapons are most common?
I was cleaning up my computer and I found yet more data that I had tabulated for my own interest. And then I remembered that time I threw some random data I found into an article and it became one of my most viewed posts.
What Can Go Wrong With HEMA Ratings
Differences in tournament format can have a surprising effect on the overall match results, even for the exact same fighting. Does that sound confusing? Read on!