Int21h

Mair covers fighting with some farm implements :)

Hi there! Very nice AMA, I would just like to clarify one point, since you're in the UK you're exposure to the SCA may be limited.

Quite a few of us are VERY serious about our study and practice of historic forms, we use steel weapons and only limit our practice as much as we feel is needed to keep it safe.

I have personally been training and teaching Italian forms (Giganti, Fabris, Capo Ferro primarily) for about 11 years and my teacher practiced for about 30 years before retiring. So we have a long history and a LOT of experience in reading, translating and practicing western marshal arts.

However one confusing point is that we have divided ourselves into two disciplines, armored and unarmored.

Armored in the SCA is practiced with sword simulators, usually rattan. Which don't behave quite like a real sword, spear, etc. This is what most people are familiar with. This is hugely fun, if you've never been on a field with 1000 of your closest friends with another 1000 opposite, felt the rush of the charge, the clash of shields, well you're missing out.

Unarmored on the other hand is practiced with steel sword, probably the same you're using, rapier, side/back sword, long sword etc. Since we are using historically accurate weapons it only makes sense that we study the manuals we have available and use them correctly.

We also have a large archery community, running for 48 years now, we have some VERY skilled archers, bowyers and fletchers, we recreate as much historic archery as we can from equipment to tournaments. This includes horse archery, I have the pleasure of living near some highly skills equestrian practitioners.

We are also exploring how to allow more diverse marshal activities, which still keeping our insurance. Some of us hope to have full BoTN style fighting, grappling, judicial dials all possible in the near future. The trick of course is that the SCA is large and must protect itself against lawsuits when expanding it's umbrella.

So I hope this did not come across badly, I practice with HEMA / WMA groups as well as the SCA and feel that the SCA often gets too little credit for it's contributions to the study of western marshal arts.

*edit spelling