if you have aspirations to throw down like Enola Holmes then do you know what this
is and how to do it? If you do know please leave a comment. Possibly the more important question is
if you have aspirations to throw down like Enola Holmes can you fight in a corset? with steel bones
yeah hang on [weird wobbly sound] or whale bones, baleen, whatever. or plastic bones if you're cheap
and modern like i am. and possibly a big poofy skirt as well. I'm Jill Bearup and generally I
only pretend to fight people but for this video I did buy two corsets one with plastic bones and one
with steel bones so let's do this thing. entirely alone because who are you even allowed to fight
when you're in lockdown 2.0? And recalling that it's not mad science if there's no mad control
group we're going to do a couple of these things in regular workout clothes too just to give us a
comparison. Those of you who know anything about corsetry will be vastly unsurprised by the results
but here we go: warming up. We're warming up in the black steel boned corset with a midi skirt
and just regular workout clothes shockingly even the steel-boned one isn't presenting
much of an impediment to movement okay it's probably not so shocking when you consider that
corsetry in its various guises has been worn throughout history by women and many of those
women have had what you might term physically strenuous jobs. Women's torso-related underwear
throughout history has mostly been used for one battening down the hatches i.e securing women's
secondary sexual characteristics in such a way as to prevent them from like being all over the place
and getting in the way and causing them pain; two providing a structure onto which the fashionable
silhouette of the time could be applied possibly including padding; three back and torso support
this is particularly important for women of childbearing age because pregnancies particularly
if they're not very spaced out can be kind of hard on a body diastasis recti anyone and as any woman
who wore a belly band after giving birth will tell you sometimes stretched out organs just really
appreciate a little bit of extra support; four yeah I got nothing if you have any other suggestions
put them in the comments. so given all that and given that there used to be specific corsets for
pregnancy and breastfeeding it is perhaps vastly unsurprising that general light aerobic activity
does not present a problem to us that being said the big floofy skirt would give you some trouble
when doing push-ups. okay that's very exciting but what about punching? no problem assuming you
can actually punch properly in the first place yes, no comment, corsets don't impede your arms
or shoulders in any way and they don't prevent twisting it to a particularly significant degree
so yeah it's not really going to be a problem. ooh and having a rigid structure over your torso
may provide some degree of force distribution if someone punches you there so there's also that
what about deadlifting? you know in case you need to lift someone while fighting them? well a lot of
bodybuilders wear a lifting belt to help stabilize the spine so they can lift heavier weights and
yeah corsets are kind of just like a bigger version of that honestly quite like it it feels
quite secure but also feels like it might make your core a bit lazy in the long run
next let's try ducking stretching and bending maybe a couple of percentage points less in the
flexibility stakes when you're doing particular motions but nothing particularly significant in
most cases I would not expect a corset to present a significant impediment to martial adventuring
put it like that. The real impediment here is the skirt but that does depend on which skirt
you choose so how about kicking here's where I ran into my biggest problem and yes i am aware that
none of these clothes are particularly accurate to the victorian period but hey they're not
that much less accurate than the clothing Enola Holmes I'm kidding but I'm only mostly kidding
thing is corsets don't impede kicking because of course they don't they stop at your hips but
skirts most surely can my advice if you have to fight in ye olde attire pick a time period
or a silhouette which includes some structure. for example this hoop petticoat which I'm pretty sure
I bought off eBay in 2004 is fine for kicking in because you have plenty of room under there for
waving your legs about or just something with a lot of fabric in it so that it will move with you
and not tear at the seams. Length is not really an issue until it reaches past your ankles because at
that point it starts to kind of trip you up or if it has a train because then it will trip you
up. but anything too tight is definitely going to impede you and the longer your tight skirt
the more impediment it will provide. a midi skirt is totally fine as long as it has enough fabric
in it can you do this thing in it look I can't even do that thing without it i can't even do
an aerial, see? but I might be able to give you a hand with Enola's big finish: the corkscrew well
I'm having to practice on a lamp which i've weighted down with a couple of kettlebells
because again we're not really allowed to fight people outside of our own households right now.
like that? I think you hold on to their leg with both hands... like what you're supposed to do from here
i genuinely have no idea. let's see if we can do it in a corset and skirt as you can see neither
corset nor skirt really impedes you rolling backwards and wrapping your legs around the
base of a lamp or I guess someone's calves. If you're wearing a big poofy skirt it probably
will fall over your head while you're doing that though so be warned incidentally the same is true
of cartwheeling. for science you know. still and all I hope this has reassured you that Enola
Holmes style fight club in a dress is possible you just need to choose your skirt carefully and not
lace yourself up too tightly in your corset honestly having watched a few CosTube videos
I was not expecting a lot of trouble with the corset and i didn't really have any but
i hadn't really considered the skirt very thoroughly and i probably should have
that being said the first time I put on a corset i didn't even lace it up like at all and i still
felt like I was having a panic attack that feeling of pressure all around you even if
that pressure is very slight it's psychologically interesting if you're not used to it and so I
feel a little bit of sympathy for actresses who are stuffed into corsets and are like 'I don't
understand this feeling and I don't like it' I mean the second time I put on the corset I laced
it up nice and snug and then I wore it all day and it was fine but some people just don't like that
feeling so bear in mind that you might be one of those people. To conclude: yes, you can fight in a
corset but like any reasonably structured piece of clothing up to and including leather shoes
you should probably get used to just wearing it in normal situations first. If you'd like
to hear some historical anecdotes about corset stopping knives and bullets and also hear me do
a little bit of maths on the topic there should be a video for you next to my face. see you next time!