Long overdue here is a really good article on teaching methodology for HEMA by the great Maciej Talaga. You should read it, both as a teacher and as a student. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Maciej! On Individual Lessons in HEMA
These pages will be focusing on the teaching of HEMA, sharing tips, articles on pedagogics and methodology, examples of curricula, syllabi and more.
You are of course all invited to publish your thoughts here!
The whole site is currently undergoing some radical changes aiming to improve how useful it is to the HEMA community. Please be patient while the work is completed.
The work is expected to take at least a week of fulltime work. Please consider supporting HROARR via Patreon.
Long overdue here is a really good article on teaching methodology for HEMA by the great Maciej Talaga. You should read it, both as a teacher and as a student. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Maciej! On Individual Lessons in HEMA
Ours are fighting systems that are under (re)construction. Those of us who consider themselves researchers ponder their brains out in order to understand martial instruction from the past – often several hundred years old– preserved in old books and pictures. This may...
Finally, after a lot of hard work by the jury, and some delays in the organisation, we are extremely happy to present the awardees of the 2017 HEMA Scholar Awards, given for outstanding research published in English in 2016. Want to know who they are? Run off to the...
A problem that we commonly encounter in the training and teaching of martial arts in general, is the issue of how the "loser" of the training exercise is supposed to act and behave. Some common issues shine through both in videos explaining the techniques, as well as...
Ours are fighting systems that are under (re)construction. Those of us who consider themselves researchers ponder their brains out in order to understand martial instruction from the past – often several hundred years old– preserved in old books and pictures. This may...
This article will present an analysis of Johann Georg Paschen’s (1628-1678) Kurtze iedoch Deutliche Beschreibung handlend von Fechten auff den Stosz und Hieb (Short though clear description treating of fencing on the thrust and cut) published in 1661 in Sachsen....
While sounding like a simple thing to define, sparring can have quite a few and very different goals and purposes that are sometimes hard to keep in sight in the heat of the sparring session. With experience this becomes easier to separate as you get accustomed to the...
Few men are born brave; many become so through care and force of discipline. - Flavius Vegetius Renatus Many pages have been written on the subject of medieval and renaissance combat treatises, every year new translations, books, essays and blogs are added to the...
As a teacher, you prepare to show a student a technique from the treatise of your choice. You have art, text, and experience, you're qualified, you know what you're doing. Everything is set as you prepare to share your hard-earned wisdom. Besides! Said student came to...
My first contact with what I know now as HEMA took place in the spring of 2009. I was attending a military re-enactment event at Jamestown Settlement in Williamsburg, Virginia. One of the re-enactors gave a demonstration on Fiore de Libre’s Armizare. I was intrigued...
This article describes how full contact martial arts handle sparring intensity like Mixed Martial Arts, Dog Brothers Martial Arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Luta Livre, Freestyle wrestling, Kendo and what we can learn from this for HEMA.
Prolog: Epic Meaning The goal of every HEMA-fighter is to “survive” a duel - fought with protective equipment and as little rules as possible - achieved through years of training, practice and research. Certainly not an easy task as each group, club and organization...
Tactical intelligence tends to be made out to be more complex than it actually is, by being seen as weapon specific. Furthermore, it also tends to lack specific and straight forward training guidelines … which has tactical skill being frequently cast aside as a...
The most knowledgeable of instructors can also be some of the least effective teachers. There are many reasons for this, but today's article will focus on alleviating boredom in students. First, what is boredom? It is when a student is no longer actively engaged. What...
This is the third part of my brief article series on HEMA and pedagogics. Starting with the first HEMA Pedagogics article where we looked at the gymnastics and pedagogics pioneers that laid the foundation for modern teaching we then looked closer...
Continuing from what we examined in the first HEMA Pedagogics article where we looked at the gymnastics and pedagogics pioneers that laid the foundation for modern teaching we will now look closer at the implications of the 15 points listed at the end of that text....
This three-piece article, while aimed more at teachers of HEMA is also relevant to students of HEMA, since we are all students and the difference between learning and teaching can be a fine one. Furthermore, the article speaks just as much about learning as...
An often overlooked aspect of historical fencing is how to go about turning all the information contained in a fencing text into a structured means of teaching and learning. At first it seems as if this would be pretty obvious- do what the text tells you and mimic...