The Gajardoni Challange fencing jacket, made by Gajardoni (Italy) is a new HEMA jacket made for longsword fencing in mind. You can find a lot more details on this link about this jacket, and I also collected some reviews about this product: http://www.gajardoni.com/en/home/53-challenge-jacket-800-n.html
The St. Mark Koning Glove is one of the new hot five fingered gloves on the HEMA market. Axel Petterson and Anders Linnard two really high profile fencer in the HEMA community developed them to be used for longsword and other weapons. I think they debuted at Swordfish 2015, and started to ship them by the end of March, 2016.
I haven’t had the pleasure/opportunity of trying them out, but I collected some reviews, videos and text about it for you.
The SPES Heavy Gloves are SPES’ take on the longsword hand protection market. So far I found these to be the most protective of all available options on the market, however they are also quite bulky and huge. Some small tweaks to the plates and some to the cuff would make these more comfortable and better in my opinion. Also I found that a lot of people use a fingertip protection for the thumb, but not on the other fingers. I only used them on a few occasions, so I won’t write a full review on them yet.
The Rawlings synthetic line is one of the most available and cheapest option when it comes to training weapons. Padded and wooden weapons can be cheaper, but still, they can be dirt cheap, especially when ordered in bulk.
I used the longsword simulator type of swords on a couple of occasions (some workshops and some tournaments, also in my class for a couple of hours) and my personal opinion about them is that they are not so great.
Cons:
– They whip around a lot. It is very hard to work from the bind with them, also it is hard to parry properly, the blade can just whip around your defense.
– They are very light (you can add weight with metal pommel and crossguard, but still the blade will be very light)
– They slide around a lot in the bind.
Pros:
– They are cheap and widely available.
– They can be disassambled and transported/stored easily.
– They are quite safe if you don’t go full retard with them. They are not toys, you can break hands and dent masks with them if you swing with great force!
For somebody just starting out HEMA and looking for a cheap training tool I would recommend something from Blackfencer instead (or save up more and buy some steel). But if you want a lot of swords to give out to beginners in your class maybe a couple of these can do the job, until the guys can get something better.
I don’t really want to go into the details about dussacks, what it is and what it isn’t, I will leave it to this excellent article by Roger Norling from 2012 on HROARR: http://hroarr.com/the-dussack/
If you’ve never tried dussack fencing, give it a try if you have the chance 🙂 They are excellent teachers of distance and tempo, and also require very good footwork, to escape after delivering a blow to your opponent.
I recently borrowed these pair of Purpleheart Armoury Dussacks from a friend of mine (thanks to Peter Regenyei) to try them out, and possibly design some dussacks of my own based on these.
The length of these dussacks is 70 cm and they weigh 667 and 687 grams. They feel lighter in the hands, the people I asked to guess usually put them around 500 grams or less. They differ slightly in the shape of the wood on the inside, as you can see on the pictures. The one with the shorter wood core has a bit more floppy point, but otherwise I didn’t notice any big difference.
The point of balance is around 30 cm from the end of the weapon (marked with a red circle on the picture), around 13 cm-s from the index finger if held like this, thumb on the back of the blade. They feel really good in the hand, when striking, it’s really easy to put together nice combinations with them.
I used them several times to spar with and also did some solo drills with them. Currently I’m working on a bit longer design (around 80cm) with some form of hand protection as seen in some pictures from Meyer and Mair. Probably it will be a bit heavier but still safe to train with.
But back to the Purpleheart ones. In short summary, they are excellent tools for free sparring and practicing the techniques written in the sources. They don’t collapse under strikes, so you can parry with them, and give nice, but tolerable blows if exercising proper control. You can thrust with them safely too.
They can be used in different levels of intensity.
If the force level is lower and the main aim is to teach respect for the weapon and proper control, you can use them without much protection at all. Just make sure, that you and your partner both understand, these are training tools and not toys, so you should respect them. If you are foolish you can injure someone with these pretty badly, think of broken fingers, nose, teeth or stabs to the eye.
If the level of force is a bit higher I would advise using a fencing mask and some sort of padded gloves (like lacrosse gloves, or Red Dragon gloves) or even a hard protection for the elbow. Oh and a cup of course 🙂 (think of the children! 😀 ).
I don’t think that fully gearing up is right for these weapons, because then all fear for the strikes will be quickly gone and the sparring might become a smacking contest. Also the constraint the gear might impose of you is much less with the amount of protection listed above.
I’m planning on updating this post with some sparring videos of mine, but until then here are some clips showing some of the brothers of these bad boys in action (or sisters and girls, or whatever):
Without much protection:
Mask, gloves and elbow protection:
Kids tournament with dussacks:
Short video about the dussack in action (hungarian):
If you do any type of martial arts, either armed or unarmed, usually you are not supposed to strike at the groin. But as we all know sometimes accidents happen, a thrust/cut can go too low, or a kick can miss the belly by a few inch, even a padded sword can put someone out of action for quite some time (please note the double entendre 🙂 ) … In these cases it’s really important, to have some protection for these parts.
There are lots of different options out on the market, I personally bought a PBT made protective cup and it served me well during the years, there are lots of different options, different manufacturers. It’s not a huge investment, but it is very much recommended to any type of training. Also it’s not only for men, women need this protection too, and there are specific products for them.
There are a few things to keep in mind:
– size doesn’t mean the size of the “package”, it’s about the size of the butt and thighs so don’t feel the need to buy an XXL Cup 🙂
– whenever you are training or sparring put the cup on before training, under the pants/protective gear for your lower body
-usually cups are NOT designed to be worn over other parts of clothing and equipment, they look silly and doesn’t really protect that well
-clean the cloth part of the cup regularly (just think about it, when you throw your dirty cup into your equipment bag where you’re gonna wear it soon)
-check the plastic insert, especially the sides, if the rubber coat protecting the edge of the plastic comes off the sharp edges can cause nasty wounds
Lacrosse gloves are pretty popular in HEMA circles as hand protection for a couple of reasons. First while they vary greatly in price, there are some quite cheap ones (40-50 euros), second they are easily available. Also they are very comfortable, you can move your fingers independently, and they are very durable. People use them in two main ways.
The first is right off the shelf, mostly for plastic, and sometimes steel weapons. They can work quite well for rapier or saber fencing, where the hand is well protected by the weapons built in protection, but for other weapons, like longsword they are not really that good. I would only recommend them for steel weapons if you only drill, or train with them with great control and care.
While the padding can be enough to stop the strike from a sword blade, there are gaps at the tips of the finger, usually the side of the index and pinky finger, sometimes at the middle of the thumb, and also at the knuckles. Any kind of reasonably forceful strike to these areas can easily cause a broken finger, and thus take the fencer out of action for weeks or months. Sadly I saw this several times, at competitions and also at simple trainings. The wrist protection can be quite sub optimal too. There are other problems too, for example some lacrosse gloves are very bulky so you can easily get hit simply because of the excessive bulkiness of the gloves.
The second way you can use your lacrosse gloves is as a base , that you upgrade with different materials. Most people I know use leather strips to upgrade the main areas where the gloves lack in protection.
I bought my lacrosse gloves around 3 years ago, and used them for the last 3 years for steel weapon sparring. I upgraded the index and middle finger, and also the thumb and the back of the hand with leather. I still got several very nasty hits and bruises on my fingers, but luckily I didn’t break any of them. I had some problems with my glove upgrades though, because it required a lot of maintenance, the leather parts were always flying off during training, sparring or competing.
Also if you plan on upgrading them, upgrade the left one too! 🙂
A great article about upgrading lacrosse gloves for HEMA:
http://www.instructables.com/id/HEMA-Hackers-Inserts-for-lacrosse-gloves/
If you plan to use lacrosse gloves in your HEMA training for longsword, I would recommend either using plastic swords, because the edges are much thicker then steel weapons, there is less chance for a strike to enter into a gap in the gloves. The other option is using swords with side rings, because they add a nice protection from one of the most common ways an attack can come.
These go into the glove to protect the tips and also littlebit to the sides of the fingers. I would recommend these to be used with size 13 gloves, because I found them to be too bulky for a size 12 (especially for a size 12 Red Dragon glove).
All things considered I would only recommend using them if any 2 of these are true:
– they are upgraded (either with leather, plastic or other means from the in or outside)
– if you use plastic swords (like Rawlings or Blackfencer)
– if you and your training partners exercise great control
If you use lacrosse gloves in your training please let me know in the comments, and also note what kind of weapons you use it for and what are your experiences!
One more thing: if you use padded swords they are OK, I regularly use mine for that at my beginners training, and haven’t received any injury.
Hockey shin guards are widely available, reasonably cheap (you can get a good one for around 35-40 euro) and provide excellent protection to the legs and knee. The main problem with most of them is that they are quite bulky so it’s easy to get hit because of the equipment.
The HEMA Throat protector from PBT is a great way to make sure, that you survive your training session when thrusts and neck shots come into play.
They are to be worn under the upper body protection of your choice and they give additional hard protection to the throat from the front and the sides. They can also be worn alone under the fencing mask to provide better stability to the bib of the mask when drilling. The flaps on the two sides provide protection to the collar bones, which is a nice touch. They are available in junior and senior sizes. I personally got the junior sized, because they were out of stock from the larger one, but they worked fine for me.
Available at: http://pbthistoricalfencing.com/products/
Plastic Chest protectors are great for two reasons. The first is, that they can protect against an occaisonal broken blade entering the body, if the protective garment, they are worn under fails.
The other reason is, that they protect the ribcage against thrusts and also spread the force of a blow on a larger surface. They are recommended to be worn under some sort of upper body protection, coat or fencing jacket. They can also be used by themselves for light sparring, or drilling. The main problem is that they don’t protect the lower part of the torso, so a thrust or blow to the belly can be quite unpleasant.
I recommend these (or other similar products) to anybody, who plan to spar with some intensity and force.
HEMA EQUIPMENT 