here are afew videos showcasing the efficacy of western sword arts. just have a watch of them and see. link
well ok thanks, just that seeing as they are using weapons in the vidoes it seemed better suited to weapons...
There are also some old vids on The Exiles website, you will have to have a look round, I think that they are under the Resources tab somewhere. http://the-exiles.org Regards Rob
It actiually might be better in weapons instead of western MA. SImply because it shows them in use and more for those who DONT know how wel they work. I dunno....
Rob Where on your site? I cannot find them (maybe I had too many shots to the head with wasters :bang: ). Looking forward to see the vids.
I don't know if you saw this one ... a guy slices through a whole deer carcass with a longsword in one clean cut.
Hi Ran, I would be surprised if you had not seen them, they are a couple of years old at least Try: http://the-exiles.org/vid_020629/vid_index.htm and http://the-exiles.org/vid_020609/vid_index.htm Not very good now and a bit embarressing I think. Still knock yourself out and have fun Regards Rob
I noticed the deer carcass that he cuts through has already been skinned and cleaned. Would it make any difference to the cutting if all the innards were still there and the skin was on?
I doubt it'd make a large difference. The "Oh! Deer!" video on that other site shows a weak one-handed chop with a sword on an unskinned deer that takes the head off except for a small bit of hide and flesh. I talked with Casper, the guy who split the deer, and he said that he used way too much power. He didn't realize that the longsword would go through bones, etc. like butter. You can see him leaning forward and that his longsword ends up in an extreme nebenhut as he tries to recover from the excess power. (That's a sharpened sword --- you don't mess with it. ) Also, at the time Casper had cracked ribs (you can see him holding his ribcage after the cut). This also agrees with what I see in the historic manuals. I've always been intrigued by the Talhoffer messer plate where an unterhau (upward cut) severs the opponent's hand, follwed by a oberhau (downward cut) to the head to finish him off. In the text it states that the man on left is stiking a zornhau, the powerful right-to-left diagonal cut, and that the man on the right counters with a strong unterhau, severing the hand. If you've tried that particular sequence, that particular unterhau as depicted is not a particularily powerful cut compared to others. Yet, it has corroborating evidence in other documents that the severing was not unreasonable.
well even if the skin and innards were still there that hit still went through the spine and ribs, so even if it slowed while passing through the innards it would still have reached them and mutilated parts of you that aren't meant to see the light of day. in other words even if he did not cut all the way through you wouldn't be getting up again anyway...
Bob Cherrone suggested a few years ago that Fiore drilled in fast combo's where you start with an upward-cut, followed up by a rapid downward-cut (Boars-tooth to Frontale to Boars-tooth again) -meant for situations where your upward-cut only nicks at the opponent. When a sword goes through bone and tissue like through butter, you don't really feel wether you've cut somebody lethaly or near-missed them. A sensei doing Kendo (or somthing) once told a friend of mine that the perfect technique is when your opponents sword strafes your clothes- he might think that he hit you severely.