The role of sportive grappling in HEMA

[Stewart Sackett]

Basically what y'all need to do is integrate your ringen with your weapons practice. We're doing that down here. This Saturday, David T and I played daggers. We clinched and he threw me with Auerswald's short hip. It was well done. He had only practiced it in drills, yet he was able to apply it in free play. Just get to that point: drill the stuff and allow it in weapons play.

That will certainly be good for weapon play, but is weapon play the point?

I would argue that fighting unarmed against an unarmed opponent is as legitimate a component of the historical art as fighting with weapons. To view grappling as relevant only in so far as it supports armed combat is doing a disservice to the art.

[jdbermudez]

Hey, guys- sorry for resurrecting an old post here, but I'm hunting for Ringen discussions, and this one came up in the search....

I've been exploring Ringen and how it compares to other conbatives systems. Note I do not say "wrestling" or "grappling" systems- but combatives. Liberi, Talhoffer, Lichtenauer- these guys were professional killers, and the descendents of hundreds of years' worth of ther professional killers.

The unarmed techniques fed into the dagger techniques fed into the longsord and into the polearm techniques because it was a cohesive system of violence designed for the real world. Yes, there were ritualized aspects of it, and "sports" versions (just like King Rene's Tourney book has a sport version of combat, complete with specialized tourney weapons- all a far cry from the real thing), but we must take into account that a lot of the techniques in the buchs were designed to break, punish and injure another person.

That said, the fact is that the similarities will be self-evident between any complete combative system and any other. Why? Because red, yellow, brown or white, warriors will find and stick with what works. And, since people's bodies work the same way the world over, what works in sub-saharan Africa will work like a hot-damn on a Laplander, a Cree warrior and on a Samurai.

That's why Fairbairn's fighting system looks just like Paaschen's, even though its lineage was closer to Judo than to Ringen...

hobbling/castrating a system by trying to set limits on how much time guys can spend at range, etc., will not achieve a good martial result- it will achieve a ritualized combat sport similar to the olympic fencing so many of us sneer at for being a degenerated version of the real thing.


Who caresif it ends up lookign similar to other systems? That probably means we're doing it right.

[Jay Vail]

Actually, kampfringen is closer to old jujutsu than judo, which is, essentially, a sportification than a combative art which retained for a time some elements of its combatives.

[Jay Vail]

Basically what y'all need to do is integrate your ringen with your weapons practice. We're doing that down here. This Saturday, David T and I played daggers. We clinched and he threw me with Auerswald's short hip. It was well done. He had only practiced it in drills, yet he was able to apply it in free play. Just get to that point: drill the stuff and allow it in weapons play.

That will certainly be good for weapon play, but is weapon play the point?

I would argue that fighting unarmed against an unarmed opponent is as legitimate a component of the historical art as fighting with weapons. To view grappling as relevant only in so far as it supports armed combat is doing a disservice to the art.

Stewart, I wasn't suggesting that ringen's only purpose in our practice is to support weapons. Certainly it deserves study and practice as a stand alone art -- as it was practiced in the past. The value of ringen is its enormous adapatibility to many different situations: it is combative, whether with or without weapons, and sportive all at once.

BTW, I just bought a martial arts encyclopedia called "The Way of the Warrior: Martial Arts and Fighting Skills from Around the World." It is a world wide survey of just about all the fighting arts in existence, very comprehensive. The treatment of each is rather shallow but that can't be avoided in such an ambitious book. However, one of the most interesting features of it is the fact that the author includes longsword fencing and kampfringen along with other European fighting arts such as gouren and Scottish backhold wrestling. Pretty cool.

[Keith P. Myers]

hobbling/castrating a system by trying to set limits on how much time guys can spend at range, etc., will not achieve a good martial result- it will achieve a ritualized combat sport similar to the olympic fencing so many of us sneer at for being a degenerated version of the real thing.


Who caresif it ends up lookign similar to other systems? That probably means we're doing it right.

Hello!

And welcome to the forum! Can you provide a real name for us?

I haven't gone back to read the entire thread again, but I assume your comment above may be in reference to groundfighting. So I'll aim my comments at that. Please correct me if I am wrong.

First, clearly there were two ways to do grappling/ringen historically. There was what we can call "kampfringen", which was the combative form used to support the use of weapons and to fall back upon if your weapon was lost. This shows up in many of the historical manuals. Then there was what we can call "ringkunst", which was the more sportive version that was likely a regular feature at county festivals and such and likely a part of most young men's education while growing up. Fabian von Auerswald's text is a perfect example of this. Someone coversant in ringkunst could very easily turn it into kampfringen when the need arose. The primary intent behind kampfringen was to break the opponent....to hurt him to the point that he couldn't continue the fight. The primary intent behind ringkunst was to do an armlock or throw the opponent to the ground. Obviously, breaking your opponent each time you grappled wouldn't be a good idea amongst friends!

Now on to the issue of groundfighting. We just don't see much of it in the manuals. That's the bare fact! When we do see it, it is most commonly in the context of armoured fighting and is used to hold the opponent on the ground so you can bring your dagger into play and slip it in between the gaps in his armour. We don't see much groundfighting at all in our ringkunst sources. I think the reason for this is straight-forward. If your ringkunst is looked upon as preparatory training for kampfringen, then groundfighting wouldn't be a big element. If you are doing kampfringen on a battlefield you certainly wouldn't want to find yourself on the ground for any length of time or someone is going to come up on you from your blind side and spear you! So again, groundfighting wouldn't be a big element. I think we see the same thing in the Japanese arts. The koryu jujutsu methods didn't have a lot of groundfighting. Groundfighting to the extent that we see today in Brazilian Ju Jitsu is a modern development.

So should we "hobble" ourselves or "castrate" ourselves by limiting the amount of groundfighting we do? (and please note that I said "limiting", not "eliminating" completely) Or should we just go forward and develop it like Brazilian Ju Jitsu has done? My opinion.....I am interested in bringing back the historical methods. The historical sources that we have don't feature much groundfighting. I figure that if someone wants to be good at groundfighting, just go study BJJ. But if you allow BJJ type rules in what is supposed to be an historical european style grappling tournament, then it is no longer an historical european type grappling tournament. So if someone wants to include a lot of armlocks and chokes on the ground like we see in modern MMA, then go for it! But don't call it historical kampfringen/ringkunst.

Just my 2 cents!

[Jay Vail]

It is also interesting to note that almost all folk wrestling plays to the fall and does not continue the contest on the ground. For ringkunst to follow this model is not surprising.

[Mike Cartier]

Groundfighting to the extent that we see today in Brazilian Ju Jitsu is a modern development.

Sorry I have to interject a disagreement on this wording. Groundfighting as we know it in modern MMA and BJJ was alive and well in the ancient world and in every way as technical. My research into this years ago has clearly shown to me that everything we see in modern ground fighting, mma and BJJ existed in the ancient world under Pankration (see my website on it http://historical-pankration.com), Greek wrestling and the Roman versions of same. Now this in a duelling context though, battlefield ground fighting is a bad idea of course as is battlefield thumb wrestling, arm wrestling and paddy cake. However its is a necessary skill and it was included in the martial art of the hoplites (Pammachon) for good reason, when put on your back you have no choice but to groundfight to get out of it or you die. The sportification of any art can be beneficial or not depending on how you use this new sport, if it supports the martial art then its valuable if it replaces the martial art is useless.

As long as we realize all this there is no reason not to train anything, as long as we understand the context.

[Jay Vail]

It's true that there was ground play in pankration. However, from all the evidence, it was a lonely exception.

[jdbermudez]

Hi, Keith! Thanks for the welcome . Considering how many pdfs I have lying around right now with your name on them, I have to say, "thanks!" also for the research help.

Real name= Javier De Jesus Bermudez Prado.. or, JD Bermudez works.

Note on terms: I'm going to use "kampfringen" for the martial art, whereas I'll use "Ringkunst" as the sporting rule-set.

I appreciate what you're saying as regards ground-fighting, but you'll notice in my comment I was speaking to the (perhaps mistaken) perception that we were discussing limiting the amount of time spent at range. I was probably unclear as it was dirty late when I wrote it. What I meant by "at range" is at the extremity of striking distance as opposed to the clinch, which I'll readily admit is where the bulk of the manuals spend their time.

That makes sense to me, since a) there are only so many attacks you can make at range, and b) they are less mechanically complicated than throws, breaks and locks, so they require less elucidation.

However, by making artificial requirements that the opponents in a bout close to grappling range, we're changing the nature of the fight unnaturally, which I object to. If a guy wants to throw nothing but belly-kicks and jabs, that's fine by me... that just means his adversary needs to close and throw him to the ground.

I would score throws and locks higher than I would strikes (unless the strikes result in a KO) because they open the door for a conclusion. So while KO might be hard to achieve, a good grapple that places the opponent in a position that exposes him to a "finishing move" could, in my eyes, end the bout quite satisfactorily. You'll see guys close inside range and grapple more, but you're not making it mandatory- Frankly, in a real brawl, I want to close, throw/break/lock a guy up anyways... an opponent that still has the ability to move and hurt me is less desirable than one who is whimpering on the ground because I'm doing ungentlemanly things to his shoulder. From a sportive perspective, I want to go for that tap-out or that ability to say, "You're Dead, Sir" when the desired exposure is attained and I mime a finishing maneuver (throat-chop, brachial stun, rabbit-punch). But by not making it mandatory, you're allowing the good strikers out there a chance to provide a good training exercise for the grapplers (and vice versa).

That said, I agree re: not going "to the ground" if it can be avoided. It is a dangerous and undesirable place to be. The Meisters seemed to prefer a good Wag/Stable Base/"Interview Stance" above all. The first thing you are taught in modern combatives is to get your head up ASAP- being on the ground means your assailant's friend can come along and stomp you into next Tuesday. Also, rolling around, means that he can hurt you at least as badly as you can hurt him- just like with the "stand-up" fight. That's also why MCMAP/MACP/CF CQC, as well as the manuals, don't teach high, fancy kicks like some of the Eastern arts... kicking a guy in the head is nice and all, but I'll keep my stable base, thanks. I want to get back to Wag as quickly as possible and stay off the ground. That's a key theme of the manuals, as you say.

From a sportive perspective, maybe only "substantial" blows (that is, blows that rock the opponent, knock him down, knock him out) should be scored. Throws would be scored equally with these blows if they did not lead to a conclusion ie. "that's nice, son, but he's still capable of attacking you". Making a guy tap, knocking him out, TKOs, and creating an opening for a "conclusion" would be the ways to score a clear (ie., not decision) victory. Too much time spent on the ground could perhaps penalize points, making it harder to gain a decision victory should it come to that (this would avoid excessive "ground and pound" scenarios)...

Just thoughts... I want to keep kampfringen vital, and "martial" in nature, while still making it a dynamic and exciting sport when we bout under ringkunst rules... I do not see the two as mutually exclusive, I just want any ringkunst rules that we employ to keep eachother safe and to keep the flavour of kampfringen distinct, not to impede its "aliveness".

I am a little short on sleep, so I apologize if I rambled..

[jdbermudez]

I guess, I would like to hear what everyone's thoughts are on a unified set of rules for competitive ringen?

length of a bout?

Conditions for victory? points system?

fouls?

grappling only, or striking?

limits on types of striking (ie- I can't roundhouse people in the head, which I like to do in Muay Thai and Kung Fu, but which the Meisters seem to have frowned upon)?

maybe two competitive tiers or systems? One for technique-oriented ringkunst and one for more "full contact", closer to kapfringen, combatives?