Both hands on longsword grip?

[Tracy Mellow]

I have been consciously practicing both in different techniques and found for me if I want more power to place my left hand on the grip. If I want to control the strikes to where I don't injure my opponent then it is easier to use the pommel.

Plus many techniques feel more comfortable using the pommel.

I think I agree with KF that the grip text may have been the authors own preference.

I'm also finding there are different ways one can grip the pommel also. The most comfortable for me is having my ring finger and pinky around the pommel and the others on the grip. That is what is natural to me.

[Mark W]

That said, I have seen JSA grips where you make sure to grip above that so there's a little peeking out below your left hand and ones where you actually curl the pinky below the end of the tsuka.

Huh. Learn something new every day. I've only seen the pommel covered with the pinky and the pinky below.

-Mark

[Mike Edelson]

I haven't been following too closely, but has anyone mentioned yet that the grip on a longsword should change frequently? The grip you have when striking a diagonal oberhau is not the same grip you have when striking a zwerchhau, and not the same grip when you are engaged in winding work (at least for me). When I cut, I never grip the pommel (except maybe at its base, depending on the sword) but my hand frequently drifts there when doing winding actions.

Since what they show in the fechtbucher are mostly winding actions and other close work, I think what one can infer from the pics is quite limited. If you took a 100 pics of me engaged in winding actions, you'd find my hand on the pommel quite frequently, yet if you came to my school and held the pommel while striking, I'd tell you to take your hand off of it unless you want to limit your ability to cut, which you could do equally well by sawing off both pinkies without annoying me nearly as much.

[Mike Cartier]

yet if you came to my school and held the pommel while striking, I'd tell you to take your hand off of it unless you want to limit your ability to cut,

Really? hmm interesting.
It has not been my experience that pommeling your grip effects cutting at all

What leads you to this conclusion?

[Mike Edelson]

yet if you came to my school and held the pommel while striking, I'd tell you to take your hand off of it unless you want to limit your ability to cut,

Really? hmm interesting.
It has not been my experience that pommeling your grip effects cutting at all

What leads you to this conclusion?

Do you want an academic answer or a practical one? I'll give you both, from my point of view. I do not pretend that these are the only answers, but this is what has worked for me.

Academic: pommels are not made as control surfaces. When both hands are able to guide strike alignment you get a more controlled, more powerful cut. Holding the pommel can also place your hands too far apart on some swords, which affects the ability to extend both arms evenly. When one arm is straight and the other is bent, the bent arm can interfere with control. In my experience, except for the velocity boost you get from the initial launch, cutting with the left hand on the pommel is no better than cutting with one hand, and often worse, since what doesn't help can only interfere.

Practical: I do a lot of cutting and have taught a lot of people to cut. I have seen what changes instantly improve results, and one of the biggest is, "Get your hand off the pommel."

Whether gripping the pommel affects someone's cutting really depends on what their goals are. If your goal is to cut plastic jugs, pumkins, watermellons and pool noodles, then it won't affect your cutting very much, because those targets offer little resistance and few indications of bad technique (but are still a great way to practice when you have no tatami). If you cut tatami and your goal is just to get through the mat then it may not affect it much either. But if you try to get five or six cuts out of a single mat with alternating sides (right, then left, then right, etc.) with precise angles (pick an angle and stick to it consistently, I like 45 degrees) and good spacing, good extension and flat trajectories (something that doesn't matter against mats but would matter greatly against a human torso as failing to do this could result in a stuck sword), then gripping the pommel will, in my experience, definitely affect cutting.

Now this is entirely my opinion, and I am no cutting master (though I've had the priviledge to learn from people who are and most of my opinions come from them). There may very well be someone out there who grips the pommel and cuts better than I do. But if there is such a person, I have no idea how he/she does what they do or how to teach someone to cut gripping the pommel. We can only do what we know how to do. I hold my opinions because adopting them has greatly improved my results, and I share them only to help others do the same. Take what you like, ignore the rest. It's a free country.

[Jeffrey Hull]

What about a rather ergonomic wheel pommel as per the replica sword that I posted earlier?

Does anybody find getting grippy with such to be folly?

Any specific thoughts on that specific design and wielding?

[Mark W]

What about a rather ergonomic wheel pommel as per the replica sword that I posted earlier?

Does anybody find getting grippy with such to be folly?

Any specific thoughts on that specific design and wielding?

Tell you what Jeff, buy me one of those beauties and I promise to give it the proper attention. It's the only way to be sure, and after all, it's for science.

Seriously though, I'll break out my wheel-pommeled sharp again and try it out. Can't do pell work with it to gauge the force transfer, but I'll give it some serious swinging.

Best regards,

-Mark

[Mark W]

OK, I spent some time with my Albion Agincourt last night, experimenting with different grips and whatnot. Keep in mind this is just my preliminary opinion.

Personally, I didn't like gripping the whole pommel. Having it in the palm of the hand was sub-optimal for force transfer for me. I couldn't squeeze properly and get the right "oomph". You could feel the edge alignment well though.

Gripping the wheel partially was quite satisfactory however. My best results were to have the ring finger where the pommel meets the grip, and the pinky on the pommel. This allowed a measure of control and power I'm accustomed to from my other training. It allowed me to use my bottom two fingers to grip securely and get the rest of my hand in the right place.

Gripping off the pommel was interesting considering the short grip on the Agincourt. It wasn't bad, and IMO better than gripping the pommel, but not as good as What was interesting was the pommel was a good brake against the wrist when stopping the cut in longpoint.

So there you go!

Best regards,

-Mark

[Mike Edelson]

I don't want to take away from anything Mark said (I don't have any issues with what he said or his findings, for what little that's worth), but I do want to point out the dangers of experimenting to determine what is the proper grip without taking those experiments far enough. Presumably whoever was doing the ranting in Dobringer got his information either directly, by killing people with swords, or indirectly, from someone else who killed people with swords. Obviously we can't do that today, but we can conduct experiments that bring us close enough to determine what is and is not a proper grip. Such experiements should involve consistent results against a variety of media, including textiles. Results that factor in the various realities of striking a human body with a sword, such as cutting through, not getting stuck, not losing control as the sword is passing through the target, etc.

To focus a moment on the last item above, there is a cut in battodo called "dodan." You set up a bunch of double rolled mats horizontally and stack them one on top of the other, then you come up to it, measure yourself, cock all the way back (even bending over backwards) and see how many mats you can cut through on the way down. Now at first glance this would seem to have little to do with combat. After all, who is going to let you walk up to them, take a massive prestretch and cut? But that initial impression couldn't be further from the truth. Dodan is one of the most combatively applicable cuts I've ever done. As I understand dodan, its purpose is to test your grip as your sword passes through a massive and dense object...the human torso (there's probably lots more to it, but I'm fixated on this one aspect). If your grip is good, the sword will continue straight down and either stop in the target (if you run out of steam) or on the wooden stand below it. If your grip is flawed, you will lose control of the sword and it will torque inside the target.

The first time I tried dodan I discovered that my grip on the sword was very flawed, because I lost control deep inside the target, the arc of the cut wandered off to the side and the sword bent (and was difficult to extract). So if I had executed a powerful cut that hit my opponent's torso, I would have lost my sword and been killed by the guy next to him. After that, it was back to the practice space for hours and hours and hours of working on my grip.

These are the kinds of experiments we can do to see if holding the pomel can give proper results. Anything less just won't do, because we don't have the experience to determine by feel what works and what doesn't. Or we can just listen to Dobringer. The only text source in the medieval German tradition that tells us how to grip the sword (when striking, as opposed to when doing binding actions/close work) tells us very specifically not to grip the pommel.

[Jeffrey Hull]

Tell you what Jeff, buy me one of those beauties and I promise to give it the proper attention. It's the only way to be sure, and after all, it's for science.

Seriously though, I'll break out my wheel-pommeled sharp again and try it out. Can't do pell work with it to gauge the force transfer, but I'll give it some serious swinging.

Best regards,

-Mark

I am still waiting for Royal Armouries of the UK to donate the rebuilt original to me.