North West Historical Fencing- Full contact HEMA style sparring with sword and shield In this session we try experimenting with heater shield strap configurations based on historical artwork with very good results.
I dig it! Nice to see some board work in HEMA, I don't see that often (I'm a foam sword nerd). I'd be interested to see some development on leg shots. They have a high hit rate in these bouts. The fighter in the black seems to raise his shield above eye level and holds there a few times. With my admittedly zero HEMA experience, I would want to try out punishing that lead leg when black garb is holding their shield that high, maybe feint high to bait that response then drop to the leg along their shield side. It may force them to adjust their guard lower, and then you go back to the head and body strikes. Similar to the old body-body-head routine in boxing. Would love to hear your thoughts and to see more. My buddy that practices HEMA says the leg strikes are rare because it's a lot of risk for little reward, but just viewing the above bouts, there may be some space to be explored.
Foam swords absolutely have a place in HEMA ;) Typically you'll never see us drop the shield below the waist for this exact reason, the shield is just too slow for that. Instead you'll see us slip the front leg while making some kind of counter cut to force them to stop their advance, if the leg shot happens to be a feint then you've still got your shield where it needs to be. You can see examples of this at: 0:08 0:25 0:30 0:50 (hit landed) 2:11 (counter cut to attackers arm)
@@prophecy7777 its usually good form in HEMA to give yourself a tap to the area when hit to show your opponent you've acknowledged it but sometimes we forget or don't bother if we feel it's obvious, we will try to do so more in the future as I agree the camera doesn't always show this clearly
why is the heater shield center grip with no strap? trying to make a heater shield rn actually so i wanna know advantages/disadvantages and historical accuracy
This was based off some research I did a while ago looking at historical examples and artwork. There's loads of ways to strap a heater shield but I cant actually remember finding any examples of it being physically strapped to the arm on an angle like we are used to seeing in reenactment. When I did HMB back in the day we even had special gauntlets that allowed us to have the shield strapped because the normal hourglass gauntlet would conflict with it and it would be janky as hell to hold and use. It would also make it impossible to discard in an emergency like falling off a horse which is why I don't believe it to be a proper historical method for this time period, I'm not saying my method is the only correct way but so far its proved to be very effective and extremely strong in the bind
I noticed that there are no nails/screws going through the front face of the heater used in this video. Would it be possible for you to share the thickness of the shield and what you used to attach the straps and the hand pillow (or whatever it is called)?
@@SpearEnjoyer look at every extant example of strapped Heater shields in any museum. Ever They are a cavalry shield.. Most shields that are held away from the body are center bossed. Forearm strapped shields are held close to the body. Because they tend to be heavier and function from a purely defensive position.. You are treating the strapped Heater like a dueling tool. But it was a cavalry tool.
In almost all of the museum examples I have seen, the strap material has degraded beyond recognition leaving only the rivets that held them. Even with physical examples there is still a need for interpretation from the curators to fully understand how these items were made and used. That said, a five minute google search of period artwork will give you a bunch of different examples of strapping configurations being used both on foot and while mounted, by common soldiers and the knightly class.
![Sword and Shield Sparring [ HEMA ] Heater vs Round Shield Swordplay](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
