Military Sabre Sparring #3 - with Commentary [HEMA]

Another sparring video from last night's session with my club mate Max. As always, I'm the one in red. Comments and feedback welcome and appreciated!

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Intro Music by Sound Of The Past

[typorad]

Good fights, it appears to me green is a bit too focused on landing a hit and not trying very hard to block incoming strikes. Green mostly follows being attacked with an attack. When played well you land a hit, step back and parry. Other times he suicide cuts into your cut and you double. Best for green yet is he seems to rely on his good reach and that your cut is just out of range.

[zer_pp]

Absolutely loved this, i've always wanted to do sabre sparring but since i'm in France and in a small village there are only olympic fencing trainers and such, none about sabre.
Hope one day i'll be able to do something like this, love u mg keep this up :)

[jeffhreid]

Excellent video. The commentary describing the cuts parrying and ripostes is especially helpful. Nice to see sparing that isn’t a hack and slash fest all hitting with no defense. Nice form

[jimbogood]

Green (and maybe Orange too, but harder to tell) seems to be making all of their cuts by lunging with a bent arm, then straightening it to make the cut when they make ground contact with the front foot, while the back foot drags forward a bit as the cut lands...

Basically, Green is lunging forward & then making a cavalry-style "pulling" cut only after he lands the front foot.
It definitely works in terms of making a solid hit, but it limits your ability to make a clean "getaway" with a quick recovery from the lunge... If you're looking at post-1817 Brit Infantry Sabre (I don't know about earlier stuff), you basically want a clean "power line" from the back foot to the front hand when giving a cut, and then use that "pulling" phase after your front foot lands to both catch the sword (if you missed the target or are just drilling) and to pull you back from the lunge.

Green appears to be using the back leg to drive himself forward but not to power the cut; when he lands the front foot, he's using its' "ground connection" to pull the cut (which you can see also pulls the back foot forward a little bit as the sword comes forward) instead of using it to "catch" his sword and start his recovery.

I have NO idea if one is more powerful/effective than the other fencing-wise, and there's tons of footage of modern HEMA sabre people winning bouts and even tournaments using the same cutting technique as Green; but if you're looking at the 1817 & 1845 Henry Charles jr. ( & maybe Edward Anthony?) Angelo Army manuals, they're pretty insistent on the back-foot to front-hand connection for the cut, and that the cut lands just before the front foot arrives.

[bockskarr]

Really digging your channel!! I love how you have sparring and commentary!! I'm new to all of this but I can't wait to get fully immersed and get my first sword ty and keep up the great work 👊🏻

[esgrimaxativa]

Orange, keep working on the path you are on. It will work. At this point, your skills aren't quite enough to beat what Barbasetti calls the "naturist" (at least this one) but your path will get you there. Green, you are the one who provokes the doubles most of the time with footwork that lacks composure. Your hits are by chance and you need to go back to the basics and perhaps spar with minimal gear to cure you of your flailing about reactions. I suggest sparring with no masks, using the spes foam sabers as a starter. I also suggest to always visualize that they are sharp but if this is hard for you to remember, then pain is the only real solution to get you off the path you are on and on to the path of not getting hit and hitting if you can without getting hit.

[beardedbjorn]

This is my first video of yours that I’ve watched. Saw you comment on Matt Easton’s latest video. You have really good footwork man.

[expansivegymnast]

The drills and guards make a A LOT more sense seeing them used against someone

[coronal]

Since comments seem to be welcome: Green needs to focus on retaining mobility through and after actions. He missed many opportunities on ripostes and was hit many times because his feet could not move him where he wanted to go. Also needs to be more cautious and do not expect everything to go well. The quarte parry followed by flank ripostes by orange succeed almost exclusively because of bad footwork, false timing and failure to retreat to guard. (Also because orange seem to be well practiced in that particular play.)

[Fenderstat]

Your doing great man. Green is messing it up and is causing the doubles. Alot of his lunges are bad and most of them he enters into close distance and flails around, sometimes he doesn't even bother lunging and just advances. Something longsworders seem to do when they pick up the sabre. Most of your "doubles" are afterblows anyway caused by green not choosing appropriate defences, maintaing a safe distance for himself and chasing the hit. Still, most fencers who aren't european sabre trained or just inexperienced will do this and we must learn how to deal with them. I have middly success against them as well, just like you but here are my tactics. I try and go for the arm on ripostes or do high opposition attacks because they try and do timings, end up in close distance without an exit plan and rarely choose to parry past the 1st attack. By not overly commiting and going fo those shallow targets you get a bit of time to escape their afterblows. It's your responsibilty to creates a safe space for you to react as they will continously ruin it by making advances on attacks and not lunging or alternatively, doing bad lunges that push them along the ground and shoot them into close distance on the recovery. I try not to cut horizontal below their hilt as they tend to just attack downwards without defending themselves anyway (see everytime he hits you on the hand when you cut his body) so I try and do 3's and 4's with the hilt very high, most of the time they run into the sword and it interupts my cuts but every known again it works and I get a hit on the body, having your attacks fail because they are interuppted is better than doubling out. Cut's 5 and 6 are almost always delivered to their shoulder or head and very rarely below their hand to stop them trying to cut back. You are the one who has to maintain distance because they are not fencing responsibly to the style. Make attacks that cover your head and don't be afraid to back off or traverse away if they are up in your biz.

[viktorkachovski]

Good fencing overall, I am seeing a lot of Roworth here. Nice parries on inside, outside, solid footwork. Feints were good, though both of you tend to cut rather low when initiating and allow yourselves to get hit by an overbind from a solid diagonal 1 or 2. Also you tend to overswing on cut 6 to the torso after you parry on the inside, which leaves you extremely exposed and relying only on voiding for defense, which is not very optimal, use the momentum to bring the hilt up into a hanging/half-hanging parry at least, if you cannot rotate to inside again. Not seeing much legs slips, outside of voiding the entire body, but there were no intentional hits to the legs too. For the doubles, try to initiate in a little wider measure, as you will have time to react if you start at the same time.

Good job, keep going :)

[eme_voltigeur]

Am I colourblind or you? That sure looks like orange to me :P.

[Dumadunala]

I would say that if you describe thought process behind exact actions of yours it would be a great improvement for a video, since audience could see the things happening with their own eyes most of the time anyway.

[TyLarson]

Nice form overall and better than me I think. As an youtube armchair fencer right now I'm surprised that there wasn't much thrusts going on with cuts dominating and I don't remember seeing very much binds or beats which can be really dangerous with a heavily curved sword. Some cut 3 from either fencer would have hit a few times as the cuts were just under the forearm or elbow and a rising cut like a 3 would have been nice or that hungarian move where you use the false edge apply the curve of the sabre to "spike" thrust into the under wrist. I fence a guy who murders me with that move and Richard Marsden pulled that on me too. It is super unintuitive how it can sneak in on you. A few normal thrusts using the curve to the elbow would have worked too.

[wika.prasetyo]

What weight is the saber? And are they have same weight with the real one? I always curious about that.

[July__Frost]

Thank you for sharing, beatiful fight. As always, perfect video quality + commentary make it even better.
What gloves do you use, btw? I also noticed, that after successful hit you usually disengage only by increasing distance, without raising sabre back on guard.

[bentblades]

The fencer on the left stands too high, leans forward too much. I love the posture on the right side, there are some troubles with retreating though. It's cleaner fencing than a lot I've seen, imho

[Gwarganisht]

Hey, student of Hutton again. I’m not too learned in other traditions, but the guards here feel stiff; almost knee-jerk. Normally fine in light sparring, but the point of your blades aren’t posing any threat to your opponent, when Red is concerned. There nothing keeping your opponent at a distance, and thus allowing him within your measure if your opponent gets aggressive. Perhaps I’m overanalyzing. Either way, really enjoying your videos.

[commanderslamwich]

Are you wearing the SPES wrap-around forearm protectors as chin guards? If so, thank you! I don't know how using them as such escaped my mind. I got new forearm protectors to replace the wrap-arounds and was about to buy new chin protectors, but the SPES forearm guards work great on my chins!

[michaelvillasis]

Hi Peter, I noticed you tend to use more open hilts for sabre sparring. Would you think that mittens would work with those hilts? Am looking to get a first pair of gloves but not sure if SG mittens would be alright (I do want to get into longsword eventually haha)