For quite some time, I?ve debated two questions with myself: what should our main goals as HEMAists be, and what is the main use of tournaments? While some people would argue that these questions don?t necessarily have much to do with each other, I would argue that these questions are in fact highly related.
First, what should our goals as HEMAists be? For a long time I couldn?t decide if it should be historical accuracy or martial effectiveness. Yes, the H in HEMA stands for historical, so therefore we need to make sure that what we do is historically accurate, otherwise we are not being honest with ourselves, and we may as well do something other than HEMA. However, the MA is also an important part of HEMA, and my thinking was, what kind of martial artist would aim for anything less than the maximum possible combat efficiency?
I eventually decided that there was no possible conflict there because pursuing historical accuracy would make us more martially effective, and pursuing martial effectiveness would necessitate pursuing historical accuracy. However, at the risk of being controversial, this is not necessarily the case, depending on prior training (and possibly context too, but I don?t have time to delve into the context argument here). Say I have an advanced student with lots of experience in sports fencing and kendo, and who is therefore well used to fighting with his right leg forward primarily. If I force him to fight with a left foot forward Vom Tag as opposed to a right foot forward, then there will probably be a decrease in martial efficiency, because the type of mechanics and footwork that having the left foot leading involve are not well drilled into muscle memory. Or say I?m working with an advanced practitioner who simply doesn?t have the mindset that Liechtenauer advises, someone who is simply not comfortable with rushing forward and continually attacking, then trying to force them to fight in Liechtenauer?s style may not result in more martial effectiveness.
I have come to the realisation that our main priority must be self-improvement. When I say self-improvement I mean it in the broadest sense possible, including aspects like physical fitness, commitment and having a generally positive attitude. Self-improvement already includes both martial effectiveness and historical accuracy within it, because self improvement only happens through challenge. Broadly speaking, if you never challenge yourself, you will never progress. To increase your martial effectiveness, you will need to train hard, putting you outside your comfort zone. This will make you more used to leaving that comfort zone, and possibly expand that comfort zone. If, via training for greater martial effectiveness, someone?s comfort zone can expand from light exercise to vigorous sparring, then they have improved as a person. If someone has dedicated themselves to trying to stick to the methods shown in the historical manual rather than whatever else they want to do, even if it is harder to do so, and even if they temporarily lose some martial effectiveness in the process, then this means they have chosen not to take the easier path, but instead to challenge themselves mentally, and thus have improved as a person. To my mind, the pursuit of both historical accuracy and martial effectiveness are vehicles for self-improvement.
At the end of the day, if you ignore self-improvement, then what actually is the point of pursuing historical accuracy, or martial effectiveness? If you?re not fighting in a particularly historically accurate fashion, why does that matter? Will Liechtenauer roll in his grave with disgust at how you?re not following his teachings perfectly? If I?m not a particularly good martial artist, what does that matter? I?m never going to use a longsword in a real-life context, so if I?m not particularly good at it, why does it matter? My answer is that these aspects only matter in regards to self-improvement. If you are not pursuing historical accuracy and martial effectiveness in your fighting, you are not challenging yourself as much as you could be, and that means you?re not improving as much as you could be. The flip side of this is that why is it important whether or not you can perfectly replicate the 16th play of folio 24v of the MS.28546B (disclaimer: I just made that manual up)? If you?re pursuing historical accuracy for the sake of it, why is that important? I bet if you told anyone who didn?t do HEMA that you had perfectly replicated some particular play, they?d look at you blankly and say, ?So what?? What?s important is not the replication of the play, it?s the dedication and commitment, and possibly athleticism too, that made the replication possible.
I know that I have personally greatly improved through the practice of HEMA. It made me lose fat, gave me a reason and a motivation to build muscle, and increased my co-ordination and reaction speeds. It gave me confidence, so that while before I wasn?t comfortable talking to individuals, now I?m happy teaching large groups of people. It helped me to get used to the idea of dragging myself out of bed at 5 in the morning for a long day of training at one of the AHA?s event, when before I would have stayed in bed. HEMA has spurred me on to study history in a greater depth, rounding out my academic abilities and knowledge. The religious angle tied with KDF, such as the religious references we see in the Zettel, or in Talhoffer?s writings, or the fact that Meyer dedicated his work to a Calvinist, or the theorising that the Federfechter were the Protestant equivalent to the Catholic Marxbruder, led me to study the religious beliefs and divides of the era, which gave me food for thought about my own faith. The moral codes seen in some of the treatises, or in other related writings, like Ramon Lull?s Book of Knighthood and Chivalry (which I wrote about in an earlier blog post you can find here: http://historical-academy.co.uk/blog/2012/11/02/chivalry-according-to-ramon-lull/), made me think about my own moral code. In short, the practice of HEMA has improved many areas of my life, and gave me the motivation to start taking up other activities that I otherwise might not have done which have also improved many areas of my life, and I know that I?m hardly alone in that.
So how does this tie into tournaments? Well, the main goal of HEMA must be self-improvement, and what do I think is the main value of tournaments? Challenge. And what is essential for self-improvement to happen? Challenge.
Other possible answers to the question of what is the main value for tournaments could be finding out who the best fighter there is, their potential as a learning environment, or validation of techniques. I don?t really like any of these answers though. Due to subjectivity, and the fact that judges are only human, tournaments are never going to entirely accurate. While on the whole we hope that if one competitor?s hits aren?t seen, then some of the other competitor?s hits won?t be seen either, so it would balance out, this may not be the case. Sometimes people loose fights they should have won, or vice versa. Even if we train referees to the highest possible standards, judging will still never be entirely accurate. Unless we want to go into the realms of having multiple cameras so that exchanges can get played back in slow motion, and electric sensors of whatever (something which I very much do not want), we can make judging more accurate via training judges, but I don?t think it will ever be accurate enough to say that the winner of any given tournament was definitely the best fighter there, and that?s without taking subjectivity into account.
People sometimes talk about tournaments being a valuable learning environment, and I mostly disagree with this. They may be useful for learning some psychological skills as I?ll discuss below, but I don?t think people are really going to learn much else. Given a combination of tournament stress, and the fact that people are unlikely to be adventurous in a tournament setting, what fighting skills do you expect to learn that could not better be learned in sparring? Personally, I think that if anyone is using a tournament as a learning environment for anything other than learning to deal with tournament stress, they?re not ready for tournaments. As for validation of techniques, if a technique can work in a tournament, then yes, it is validated to an extent, but my point of view is that unless you have already validated a particular technique with a variety of tests and sparring partners, why on earth are you using that technique in a tournament?
For me the greatest value of a tournament is the challenge that it will provide, and the self-improvement that that promotes. The first time I entered a large tournament, you do feel nervous and you do get butterflies in your stomach. Simply entering is physiologically taxing, and the only way to get past that is simply to do it until you get used to it. If we make it a habit of doing things that are intimidating (such as tournaments), then we will no longer find them intimidating (which ties back into some of the things I was saying in one of my earliest blog posts About Being Fearless, According to Dom Duarte: http://historical-academy.co.uk/blog/2011/04/01/about-being-fearless-according-to-dom-duarte/).
If you don?t enter tournaments, are you challenging yourself as much as you could be? It becomes too easy to get used to only fighting a select group of people, and to get comfortable with your level of progress, and to not advance particularly as a result, and participating in a tournament can be a rude awakening that no, you actually do need to progress more.
Even if you don?t need that rude awakening, it is my belief that nothing is equal to competition when it comes to motivating people to improve themselves. Every time I go to a HEMA event, I come back with a new fire and determination to train harder, and then over the next few weeks or months, that slowly starts to die out as I?m not being given the same chance to stay competitive as before. Regular competition therefore is critical to reinforce that motivation to train. Similarly, the same effect happens when you have a tournament upcoming, you often find yourself training more because you know you?re going to get pushed out of your comfort zone at the tournament, and this gives you to motivation to train harder to bring that comfort zone a little closer to the level of the tournament.
For me therefore, the main benefits of a tournament are psychological. This of course means that not everyone will benefit from tournaments in the same way. Some people may have become entirely used to tournament stress, so the main value for them would not be learning to deal with activities outside of their comfort zone anymore. Those types of people may start seeing less benefit from tournaments, or they may be benefitting from the higher levels of intensity that can be present in tournaments, challenging them physically.
It also worth saying that some people simply are not ready for tournaments (unless it is a tightly controlled beginner?s tournament). I am a bit concerned over students being encouraged to participate tournaments very early on in their martial careers. Such students are often simply not ready to be hit hard, as Keith argued last week. They may not have the required experience, training or equipment, yet they are often encouraged to take part in tournaments regardless.
I?ve been talking a bit about strength training recently, and one of the reasons I like it is that is the challenge it provides. In some ways, I?m coming to appreciate that over the muscle and strength gains. Every time I go to the gym I know I will challenge myself, and it?s easy to tell that you?re going to be challenged more than you were last week. If you add more weight on the bar, you are more challenged than you were last week, and this is easily measurable. People who look into strength training will hear a term called progressive overload, which is exactly this, increasing the challenge regularly. Your mind and body adapt to the challenge, leaving you stronger at the end. However, it is important that this is gradual. While it shouldn?t be particularly be challenging for someone with even a relatively small amount of experience in weight training to say squat their own bodyweight (i.e. load up a barbell with your own bodyweight in weight plates, then squat with that on your back), it would be deeply idiotic for someone who?s only been to the gym a few times to try that. That is far too much challenge.
The same is true of tournaments. Challenging yourself too much too early can be incredibly dangerous, both for you and for your opponent. Beyond not being ready to be hit hard, we must also look at the ability to hit hard safely. Beginners often lose that ability when put under stress. I?ve seen much more unsafe hitting coming from beginners who are flustered, scared, or pumped with adrenaline, than I?ve ever seen from a more advanced combatant. Whether they will be a danger to themselves or to others, beginners simply should not be encouraged to join tournaments that will present too much of a challenge for them to safely cope with.
I?m especially concerned about this issue when it comes to female combatants. Some instructors encourage their female beginner students to take part in female tournaments, when they are clearly not ready for it. Perhaps because female tournaments can be seen as being the easy alternative, then female students are sometimes encouraged to join female tournaments more than male students will be encouraged to join open tournaments. The problem with this is females can still hit hard, therefore if a female beginner enters a female tournament, she could be injured because she was not ready for that level of challenge. The fact that it is a women?s tournament is not an excuse to send in unprepared students, especially if there is, as I believe there can be, bias towards encouraging female beginners to take part, when male students might not be encouraged as much to take part in an open tournament.
The other issue relating to female tournaments and to challenge is that female tournaments will, generally, be less challenging than male tournaments. I don?t want to get into a biological argument, so I will leave it at saying that female tournaments are smaller than male tournaments, simply because there are more males in HEMA than females. If a tournament is smaller, it will probably have less rounds, so you will probably fight fewer fights, and fewer other competitors that you have to compete against. Plus, if it is a female tournament, you don?t run the risk of coming up against people like Axel Petterson or Jan Chodkiewicz. I?m not a female, so maybe people will get upset and say that I couldn?t understand, but I?m going to say it anyway, because I think it needs to be said. If you are a female who is ready to take part in an open tournament in terms of training, experience and equipment and you take part in a female tournament instead, you are not challenging yourself as much as you could be, and so are limiting your development.
I have heard arguments that men are on average taller and stronger than females (which is true), and that the Codex Wallerstein explicitly tells us that in a friendly encounter, the stronger fighter has the advantage (in the context of wrestling, not longsword, but it still holds true to some extent), therefore women should fight separately. Tournaments are, to me, not about providing a level playing field. You must fight with people that are bigger and stronger than you, because that will put you out of your comfort zone and develop you more as a human being. If you are shorter, or weaker, then you must challenge yourself to overcome that. Ultimately, it?s not the strongest fighter who has the highest advantage, it is the best swordsman, as Matt Easton said in this thread about the recent Dreynevent final between Arto Fama and the AHA?s very own Keith Farrell:
http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=19806
And how do you become the best swordsman? By consistently challenging yourself, not by coming up with excuses. Which is of course easier said than done, but that?s what we should be aiming for.
Which brings me onto my next point. One of the things that annoy me is people complaining about the result. ?Oh, the judge didn?t see my hits, but I should have won?, ?the rules disadvantaged me, and I should have won?, etc. As long as you tried your best, and challenged yourself, that is all anyone, including yourself, should ask. It doesn?t matter if you won or not, or if you should have won or not, because winning is not the goal here. People will probably disagree with me, but to repeat myself, it is not winning that is important, it is the dedication, commitment and athleticism that made winning possible.
All of this is not to say however that tournaments are the be-all-and-end-all of HEMA. They are useful for challenging yourself, but they may not be necessary or suitable for everyone, and focussing too much on tournaments can lead us to neglect other areas. For the upcoming HEMAC Glasgow, Keith and I decided not to run a tournament this year, because last year?s tournament took a lot of time, and didn?t really give all that much benefit. We?re using the time that we would have spent on a tournament on a combination of coached and free sparring, as we feel that combination will provide much greater benefit, and may challenge people more. People will probably get to fight more, and the coached sparring will challenge them to focus on specific areas that they might otherwise ignore (as a sidenote, HEMAC Glasgow will be amazing, and there?s still time to book: http://www.historical-academy.co.uk/hemac-glasgow/index.html).
To sum this all up, what is important in HEMA (and in life really) is self-improvement in a variety of areas. There are multiple ways to pursue self-improvement, such as striving to be more martially effective, or more historically accurate, taking part in tournaments, or sparring. Whatever you do, make sure you are challenging yourself enough, but not too much, and you will grow. I hope that you find some of those thoughts useful, and that the motivational speaker-esque rambling wasn?t too bad.
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