I recently got into longsword fighting, through Fiore; however, I cannot tell the difference between English, German, and Italian fighting styles. As I watch videos, I noticed that the Italian style uses lower guards more often (i.e., porta di ferro, cinghiale) than the other two countries and tries to fight from the bind more often (e.g., grab sword, pass for a wrestling move). It seems the other two countries use middle and high guards more often than the Italian style and try to bypass the bind state through cutting strike combos. Am I wrong? Can anyone explain the difference(s) in styles?
You're pretty much on the money, the German styles like the play from the bind quite a bit and while there is bind play in Italian in Vadi's style he says to rotate around the opponents sword instead? 🤔 I'm not a scholar though 😆 @Sinestra has made some great videos about Vadi's system on his RU-vid channel 😁
Apologies, I'm relatively new in my HEMA journey so I might be asking the obvious. Who's using English, and who's using Italian? How are they different?
@vote4wes (on the left) is using English Longsword and I (on the right) am using Italian longsword We're both roughly attempting to follow manuals written by either Englishmen like J. Ledall or Italian manuals written by Fiore de'i Liberi or Philippo di Vadi you can search for these guys over at wiktenauer.com/wiki/Main_Page They basically have different ideas on how you should use a sword and we're trying them out to see if they work! 😆
@@CafeUlg That's cool! I've only recently started learning Fiore's style. Seems like I have a long road ahead since I couldn't tell which style was which 🤣
