Here's another frequently asked question. "Why do we at Blood&Iron and in historical European martial arts in General,
tend to place our offhand, either on the hip or behind the back when we're doing sparring or cutting practice with
One-Handed swords?". So there are reasons and looking fancy is not one of them.
In other martial arts you have different approaches. For example in
Filipino martial arts, stick fighting and sword fighting, they tend to be very close. Pretty much toe-to-toe
And they use both hands a lot. so they may..
you know.. deflect an incoming attack
by actually brushing the opponent's arm to the side with their own left arm and then
counter attack on their own. So in HEMA we don't do that
We prefer to be as far away from the opponent as our reach allows us
And there is definitely some sniping to the hands and other limbs
involved and if you have the hand out here as you're fighting this is another target, so if a
cut comes through, pass your defense. say you're in a high guard they slip a
cut underneath and you don't react in time
cut that would have missed your chest, especially when you take a step back, a retreating step.
A cut that would [have] missed your chest may still hit the hand when it's right there and
also a cut that would be
superficial on the chest
would hit the hand pretty much full. While you're focused on your opponent and what's happening and
your paring and counter attacking
Sidestepping and thrusting all that it's there's a lot of things to keep track off of course if you have the hand here it
May eventually just move more and more without you
Realizing it may kind of hover and you may you may make extra movements and such and then eventually it may end up right here
And then they can just pop your hand right there when they couldn't otherwise attack your body
So it's just an additional target. It's of course not a primary Target
but
The opponent takes what they can get basically and you want to do the same so even though eh
even if you don't end up using your left hand during that fight
of course the pain of a cut and the blood loss and so on, would still affect you and
it's kind of nice to keep all of your five fingers right? so you just don't want to have that available as
Another target, so that's why we [would] put it either on the hip on the back
And we don't do what you see in Chinese sword fighting.
Where the off hand has a tendency to to always kind of follow along and it can be on the wrist and
Sometimes they even push on the wrist to make the cut more powerful almost like kind of a hybrid
Two-handed Grip if you will
so.. since we're not doing that there is no particular reason
We do of course grapple, so if you get very close
With your opponent to where you can actually reach out and touch them. Then you may start to wrestle. So.. at that case
Of course from here the hand is right there, so it's a bit quicker
But it doesn't make a world of difference really. From here, I can still bring the hand forward really quickly and
It's actually not that terribly much slower than going from here
Extremely minuscule difference really in speed and it's a personal preference whether you put
The hand on the hip or on the back. On the back
I personally find a little awkward. So.. I just prefer having it here and
It also personally, it gives me a bit of a sense of stability to have
The the hand here. It's also a way to
remind yourself to remain upright. Because in HEMA, you don't want to do this. You don't want to lean forward
Because that compromises your structure, makes you more vulnerable to cuts. You want to
stay upright during the cuts
so this is a way kind of a reminder to, you know, remain upright as you're moving and
as you're cutting. So I hope that answered the question and thanks for watching. let's end the video with a mordhau!