Mike vs Paul Martial Challenge Longsword Sparring 

@GhostOfHarrenhal Actually back then, over two years ago, few people ever tipped longswords. They are quite broad tipped, the only risk is penetrating gloves. Mike's tip stays on during the fight as it is leather covered in silver gaffer tape, making it almost invisible. The norm these days in most groups is to tape the tips on as they can become easily caught and snagged. Years ago nobody really saw the risk of longsword tips, fortunately most have now realised it and made changes.

As a rule we only train with weapons where there are surviving documentation of how they were used. The earliest manual on swordsmanship that is know to exist dates to around the late 13th century, so no we don't. That doesn't mean we won't experiment for such things for fun. We do use the German grosse messer, which is close in size to a gladius. They will stand up to a longsword, but we tend to only mix stylea that could have realistically faced eachother in their time period.

wow, beautiful location.

Great video, what is the make of longsword that Mike is using?

Good point, forgot to add that on the description, Paul is in the red jacket, Mike in the black.

Jogging has really improved my reaction time and wind.

do some some stuff on your basic footwork, its bad. Peter von Dazig cod. 44 A 8 (10 r): "wiltu kunst schauen Sich linck gen vnd recht mit hauen vnd linck mit rechten Ist das du starck gerest vechten." If you want to reach mastery, look left and step right and go with your strikes, and after a left step comes a right step, that means you have to fight with power.

@Akmon87 this is the first rule in every manuscript about swordfighting with a longsword no matter if it is german or italian. I am sure you practiced a lot of stuff mentioned in this books, so try to use the things you have learned

Thanks for the reply, would you consider the arms and armouer Fechtbuch Sword from the Grange to be a good option for steel sparing? Thanks.

Aren't modified shinai worse than wooden swords because they bend and flex too much? I know that shinai make for poor representations of katanas.

Nice work. But -- Cover the Mic! Listening to the wind howl through it was distracting. And where did the nifty red coat come from?

do you guys do any training with short swords, like the gladius? could shorter blades ever stand up to a two handed long sword?

It is a Hanwei/Tinker, however we have almost completely stopped using them in the club as of the maybe 15 we had, only two remain. They were not robust enough. We currently use Albion Meyers, Peter Regenyei feders and Knight shop synthetics.

It looks like you both lost your rubber tips by the end of bout 1... isn't it kinda dangerous?

Thanks, can see a few things such as my priority given to left pflug and vom tag though this is in part to cross-dominance with my handwork. Hand and army cuts I can also see are less exciting though are obviously very important to the martial art. Always things to learn.

@YongyoonKim Well the reason they have been used by many is safety, wooden swords break bones, shinai and much safer. As a club we don't like them and therefore don't use them, but it was Paul's standard training weapon, Mike's normal being steel, hence they did a round with each training tool to make it fair.

Also, this challenge was fought at British Camp, in the Malvern Hills at the highest point we could find.

who is who?

There can be only one!

Ever heard of footwork…?