ARMA of Birmingham

01/09/2024

Hey all, because of changes in the way facebook operates, our primary platform to connect is now the ARMA-Birmingham group page. I’ll figure out how to post a link in the comments

11/07/2021

Oh, the carnage 😀

07/24/2021

07/01/2021

There's a popular misconception that swords were historically too heavy for women or small men to lift. Thus this comparison chart was created based on the actual weight of historical swords in the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, UK. If you're strong enough to pick up a baby, you're strong enough to lift and to wield the heaviest sword.

Image Credit: Carrie Patrick

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We have turned off public commenting for this post as so very many people purposefully missed the point. Swordwind is a Historical European Martial Arts (aka HEMA) School where men, women, and teens of all sizes, races, ages, orientations, and physcial abilities can (and do!) learn historically accurate sword techniques. We, as a group, intend to continue to disabuse notions that historically accurate martial arts must be limited to large, heavily muscled cis men.
Lifting a sword is the first step in the process. Anyone who can lift it is capable of learning, of practicing, of sparring, and with enough practice and dedication: of winning.

05/10/2021

CHECK YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR‼️

We say it all the time, but we can never say it enough.

⚠️ Ego is the opposite of the art.
⚠️ Ego will stagnate your growth.
⚠️ Ego will get you hurt.

Martial arts should be about HUMILITY and RESPECT as much as SELF-DEFENSE.

YOUR COMPETITION should be yourself. Everyday you should be trying be better than you were the day before.

If you can maintain this mindset one day you will become WORTHY OF A BLACK BELT.

04/22/2021

The f word article he references is from the ARMA website, written by John Clements.

New article by Arturo Camargo: How to train like a knight from medieval times

https://historicalfencer.com/how-to-train-like-a-knight-from-medieval-times/

04/09/2021

Food for thought from our director.

The great European sword historian Ewart Oakeshott once related to me in personal conversation his deeply held conviction that swords must be viewed in their historical context as fighting instruments and never as "dead art objects." That fascinating conversation has long resonated with me. My frien...

10/11/2020

Cool idea

At DHFA, we've been working hard the past year to actively make our outreach more welcoming to minorities and women. We believe it's not enough to just have a code of conduct or to be inclusive just to the people who break through any pre-conceived barriers they might have about hema being the domain of cishet white men.

One of the perennial challenges that has irked and exasperated us is the vast majority of the historical artwork depicts only white men, with virtually no depictions of women (in fact, I strain to think of any outside of *one* that has women fencing as equals).

In an effort to solve this particular problem, we have commissioned a number of artists to reimagine the art of Joachim Meyer, the author of our primary source, to include a diverse cast of different genders and people of color.

These artworks by themselves obviously do not solve the diversity problems that exist in the historical fencing community, but we believe deeply that everyone should be able to see themselves fencing and be able to learn the joys that come from it.

Over the course of the fall we'll be releasing other images from artists we've commissioned. These arts are shareable and you're allowed to use them without modification on social media - please attribute DHFA and Brianna the artist by linking to her Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bri_lin_draws/).

This project isn't just for DHFA - We're hoping in the future to provide these as an open-source project for other clubs to use. We may open a shop where the proceeds will fund additional art commissions or to a charity, but we want to work out the particulars first and make sure we're as transparent as possible.

We want to thank the part of the community that works hard to expand access to historical fencing, breaking down barriers and making space for people who have just as much of a right to feel empowered with a sword in their hands as anyone else. You make historical fencing worth fighting for.

07/11/2020

A powerful new approach to quickly and more easily teach or learn the essential fighting stances / guards / postures as well as strikes and basic footwork of...

05/29/2020

Where there's a will, there's a way.
-> https://goo.gl/nYi66K