On the Sportification of HEMA
Tournaments Are Not Bad Things Yes, I've fought in lots of tournaments Let's not for a moment think that I'm in the "too deadly to spar" camp. I enjoy tournaments, and have fought in enough of them since about 2008 to have 25 or so medals hanging up in my closet collecting dust. Tournaments have had an incredibly positive effect on raising the skill level of HEMA practitioners over the years. Even for those who aren't tournament fighters, the lessons learned by their competitive counterparts help improve their club's interpretations of the techniques described in the manuals. And that's what we're all about, right? Reconstructing the arts described in the manuals as well as we possible can, yeah? Admittedly, some arts are basically completely reconstructed already, such as Italian rapier. Given that so much of rapier was preserved in Classical Epée, it was a fairly straightforward task, or so I'm told. I haven't done rapier since 2007 or so...