knight who is constantly searching for a good and noble king to serve but cannot fucking find one for the life of him so he has to become the good and noble king himself.
and now all these other knights are coming around like “please let me serve you” and like obviously hes going to let them serve him thats the point of being a good and noble king but its also. very annoying. one of you become the good and noble king for once lets trade
Heya! I read your post on the differences in body mechanics in afab and amab people, and I really enjoyed it! My hema group is lucky to be large enough to warrant having an equality representative, which happens to be me :D
In that position, I've been meaning to implement some kind of sensitivity training and a productive approach to adapting strategies for different body types this year, and input from different hemaists is always welcome.
I was wondering if you still had any of the resources on women in martial arts you mentioned? Your observations make sense to me based on my own experiences, but I'd like to approach my guys with more than "This guy on tumblr says it works". Although if you'd be willing to compile your advice in a pdf or something of the sort, I'd happily take that too.
On an entirely unrelated and more personal note, WHAT are you doing with that oberhau with the greatsword. Am I tripping or is that a regular oberhau? With a montante?? Are you just messing around and having fun or do you have access to some obscure manual I've never seen? I admit that I'm more familiar with sources from southern europe, but the montante is my favorite, so if you're doing more than just providing a fun challenge for your squire I would like to know 👀⚔️
For resources on AFAB people, I actually don’t know of many studies on training methods. Instead, my group (Order of the Blade) follows an ethos of “work the lessons to the students”, and helped me focus on that. I actually had to deprogram a lot of HEMA mainline attitudes to integrate into a wider perspective.
To actually use resources though, I mostly talked to women in HEMA that do well or teach effectively. Emilia Skirmuntt, Kimberley Roseblade, especially, were people I paid close attention to. I then watched and listened to my AFAB students on what they found worked best for them, and where they struggled especially when fighting AMAB folks.
I did not entirely neglect the science, but I am a historian, not a scientist, so I’ll leave the explanations to biologists and sport scientists. It is worth noting that while men gain muscle mass faster, women gain muscle fibre at approximately the same rate as men, which is supported by recent studies. (Again, for anyone who is casually reading this without the prior post context: this isn’t for anti-trans arguments, this is for looking at how you can build up your body in the way you want for fighting sports)
On an entirely unrelated and more personal note, WHAT are you doing with that oberhau with the greatsword. Am I tripping or is that a regular oberhau? With a montante?? Are you just messing around and having fun or do you have access to some obscure manual I’ve never seen?
Jokes aside, the sword I’m using is a BlackFencer two-handed sword, which is really just a slightly upscaled longsword. At 145cm, it sits in that spot between a late longsword and early greatsword, as I wanted a ‘greatsword’ that could fill both niches. As such, I use it as much like a longsword as I do a greatsword, which as the Goliath manuscript shows, is not incorrect.
I’m also not a purist when it comes to using any weapon. Most greatsword manuscripts focus too deeply on group combat/crowd control, and I find too many HEMA folk are precious over the idea of greatswords being too dangerous to spar with. I use the synth greatsword as a longsword or a greatsword depending on who I am fencing and what we are trying to practise.
In the clips with Squire Jess, I’m just throwing basic cuts at her, because this was the 1st or 2nd time she’d ever used dual daggers. As she’s smol, she mostly gets attacked from above, so I made sure she had many attacks from that angle to work with. (The few rising cuts did, indeed, throw her off because it almost never occurs for her).
Things I’d like to add to this for any AFAB people, based on how I teach my AFAB students.
- Your leg and core strength are going to be the easiest thing to develop initially.
- Footwork is indeed your friend. Almost everyone complains about it, but footwork lets you dictate what your opponent can do, from what angle. If your opponent is already bigger and stronger than you, don’t let them dictate your movement to you.
- Rather than trying to cut with your arms and back, power your cuts from the hips and tensing the core as you strike. AMAB people can deliver more force at a base level without rotating, you can generate more by centrifuge. (So can AMAB folks, a lot of martial arts teach you to rotate into a punch or strike for this reason; the distinction is this is much more valuable to AFAB people as an initial action to power the whole strike).
- When making a step/passing cut or thrust, you want to drive everything from the legs and waist. Throw all your momentum behind the action from the legs, and you’ll be able to knock a big guy backwards if they don’t try to move.
- You aren’t going to (easily) win a bind against AMAB folk. It’ll still happen, but you’ll have the most success if you assume your sword will be displaced by their strength when performing the same action. Ergo, overshoot slightly for whatever you want to do against an AMAB person, and you can let their force autocorrect you to the middle. Aikido folks here will understand the concept better than most, I think.
- On the whole, AFAB folk tend to be smaller than AMAB. Sexual dimorphism is real. Don’t panic, as the Masters say, if strength and size were all we required, this would not be a science nor art. You are just going to have to embrace your small size, and focus on getting uncomfortably close to your opponent. I mean, so close you can hug them. So close you are basically shoulder-checking them. From there, you are essentially pressed against a pillar of meat, blood, and bones, and can insert your sword into this target as strongly and as many times as your wise bloodlust dictates.
- Similar to this, get comfortable with a degree of wrestling. It doesn’t have to be throwing people around, but feel comfortable using your offhand to control your opponent’s sword or their dominant arm. Having powerful upper body strength in AMAB folk is a bit useless if they cannot swing the sword in the way they are attempting, and if you also happen to be in their face and waving your own, there’s a good chance they will panic first. At that point, you can call yourself Jack or Jill, because you’re about to become a giant slayer.
I hope this is useful to anyone who is thinking about this topic, and if they have anything useful to add that works in their experience, please do add it. :)
I’m including the addition in my reblog because I think it’s super cool and helpful. Thank you so much for the exhaustive answer! I haven’t checked all the links yet, but those I looked at led to interesting studies already. I have looked into studies before but didn’t find much (probably because I didn’t look for them in English haha whoops).
It’s interesting because on a personal level I know what you’re talking about. I’m quite large and burly for a woman, and so I was really surprised to find that 1) I’m absolutely losing the bind if my male opponent knows what he’s doing (but that’s what we’ve got Meyer for hehe) and 2) I’m enjoying footwork because despite being pretty clumsy I improved rapidly and can now outdance many a man. I never connected either of those before I read your post though :D
I hope they prove useful! :)
On those points, I’m really glad some of it resonates, and might be useful to your own experiences. 😊
As said, jokes aside, I don’t think many people realise the Goliath is as much a longsword manuscript as a greatsword manuscript, so I hope you took the humour in the way I intended it. 😅
It’s definitely a resource I enjoy, so I’m glad you get to take it up now too. Longsword and greatsword are, unsurprisingly, quite similar.
Heya! I read your post on the differences in body mechanics in afab and amab people, and I really enjoyed it! My hema group is lucky to be large enough to warrant having an equality representative, which happens to be me :D
In that position, I've been meaning to implement some kind of sensitivity training and a productive approach to adapting strategies for different body types this year, and input from different hemaists is always welcome.
I was wondering if you still had any of the resources on women in martial arts you mentioned? Your observations make sense to me based on my own experiences, but I'd like to approach my guys with more than "This guy on tumblr says it works". Although if you'd be willing to compile your advice in a pdf or something of the sort, I'd happily take that too.
On an entirely unrelated and more personal note, WHAT are you doing with that oberhau with the greatsword. Am I tripping or is that a regular oberhau? With a montante?? Are you just messing around and having fun or do you have access to some obscure manual I've never seen? I admit that I'm more familiar with sources from southern europe, but the montante is my favorite, so if you're doing more than just providing a fun challenge for your squire I would like to know 👀⚔️
For resources on AFAB people, I actually don’t know of many studies on training methods. Instead, my group (Order of the Blade) follows an ethos of “work the lessons to the students”, and helped me focus on that. I actually had to deprogram a lot of HEMA mainline attitudes to integrate into a wider perspective.
To actually use resources though, I mostly talked to women in HEMA that do well or teach effectively. Emilia Skirmuntt, Kimberley Roseblade, especially, were people I paid close attention to. I then watched and listened to my AFAB students on what they found worked best for them, and where they struggled especially when fighting AMAB folks.
I did not entirely neglect the science, but I am a historian, not a scientist, so I’ll leave the explanations to biologists and sport scientists. It is worth noting that while men gain muscle mass faster, women gain muscle fibre at approximately the same rate as men, which is supported by recent studies. (Again, for anyone who is casually reading this without the prior post context: this isn’t for anti-trans arguments, this is for looking at how you can build up your body in the way you want for fighting sports)
On an entirely unrelated and more personal note, WHAT are you doing with that oberhau with the greatsword. Am I tripping or is that a regular oberhau? With a montante?? Are you just messing around and having fun or do you have access to some obscure manual I’ve never seen?
Jokes aside, the sword I’m using is a BlackFencer two-handed sword, which is really just a slightly upscaled longsword. At 145cm, it sits in that spot between a late longsword and early greatsword, as I wanted a ‘greatsword’ that could fill both niches. As such, I use it as much like a longsword as I do a greatsword, which as the Goliath manuscript shows, is not incorrect.
I’m also not a purist when it comes to using any weapon. Most greatsword manuscripts focus too deeply on group combat/crowd control, and I find too many HEMA folk are precious over the idea of greatswords being too dangerous to spar with. I use the synth greatsword as a longsword or a greatsword depending on who I am fencing and what we are trying to practise.
In the clips with Squire Jess, I’m just throwing basic cuts at her, because this was the 1st or 2nd time she’d ever used dual daggers. As she’s smol, she mostly gets attacked from above, so I made sure she had many attacks from that angle to work with. (The few rising cuts did, indeed, throw her off because it almost never occurs for her).
