(Part 2) Best fencing books according to redditors
We found 53 Reddit comments discussing the best fencing books. We ranked the 32 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
To add to this, his other book The Mental Preparation of Fencers and Others: Awareness-Based Concentrative Analysis and Mind Fitness Training is also an amazing read.
e: why did I get downvoted for this??
A Basic Fencing Companion by Paul Sise is really good, specially for beginners/intermediate fencers. It reads easily and has a great glossary that I used to get ready for my moniteur exam.
Another good one is Understanding Fencing by Czajkowski (who sadly passed away just last week). This one is more advanced, but it doesn’t read as easily. I took my time reading this one.
Here are a bunch of books you may be interested in. If you want a good place to start, look at George Silver first, then go from there. He doesn't talk about sword and targe, but he talks about timing and how to move correctly.
http://www.amazon.com/Master-Of-Defence-George-Silver/dp/1581607237/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1DF0FCFNQH8MXDQ3BWGK
http://www.amazon.com/Highland-Swordsmanship-Techniques-Scottish-Swordmasters/dp/1891448153/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=146FGG67D9GKR3T2HMCY
http://www.amazon.com/Highland-Martial-Culture-Heritage-Scotland/dp/1581606923/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=146FGG67D9GKR3T2HMCY
http://www.amazon.com/Highland-Broadsword-Lessons-Drills-Practices/dp/1581607288/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=146FGG67D9GKR3T2HMCY
http://www.amazon.com/Highland-Knife-Fighting-With-Sgian/dp/1581605668/ref=pd_sim_b_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=146FGG67D9GKR3T2HMCY (just because it's Scottish and nice to know.)
http://www.amazon.com/Broadsword-Singlestick-Quarter-Staff-Walking-Stick-Self-Defense/dp/1449917178/ref=pd_sim_b_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=146FGG67D9GKR3T2HMCY (way late, but may still be useful)
The single best book is Jiang Huangfu, Iron and Steel Swords of China, Tomorrow Publishing House (2007). In Chinese.
For stuff in English, the best might be some martial arts oriented books that have substantial chapters/sections/info on the swords themselves:
Otherwise, some general books on swords have a chapter on Chinese swords, or include info on them. Often only a few pages.
Also nice, though including lots on other Asian sword, originally published as a book by the Macao Museum of Art, and also available online: History of Steel in Eastern Asia
Edit: An excellent book in English is Yang Hong, Weapons in Ancient China. Not just swords; it covers armour, spears, ge, bows, crossbows, chariots, firearms. Mostly ancient - Song Dynasty stuff starts on pg 260, and there's less than 40 pages to go, much of which discusses firearms. There are various Chinese language books covering ancient weapons as well, but this one is more useful to the English reader.
>There is no reason to assume that artists of the time weren't just as susceptible to misconceptions of what combat looks like as modern artists are.
At least some of the pictures linked above were from combat manuals (such as the picture with priests). They would have been made keeping in mind that misinformation would have been deadly. Stuff like that are still made, such as this one here.
Some of the pictures were probably not witnessed first-hand (such as the siege), but would think that the artist would be aware what sort of wounds different weapons cause.
I may have misread the OP, but I don't think that the claim was that sabre is comparable to longsword, but that the differences between longsword and epee is about as much as the difference between epee and sabre. The weapons and their use are very different, but both can be taught within the same general framework.
As for a coach teaching you to move correctly - see my earlier post. A modern coach with no interest in HEMA will obviously not be able to teach you to move correctly for longsword fencing, but a modern coach who also knows longsword will be able to adapt their teaching style to train you to move correctly.
One thing that is tricky about fencing is that the way it is presented to students is usually different from the way it is presented to coaches, so if you've mostly learned within a club, you probably have less exposure to the theory and the pedagogy of teaching as someone who's been training to be an instructor. There are a couple of books that are written from this perspective that you might be interested in:
Understanding Fencing by Zbigniew Czajkowski
Fencing and the Master by Lazlo Szabo
Foil Fencing by Istvan Lukovich
As mentioned, kenshi247.net has plenty of articles. One you probably will be interested in would be on shinai kyogi: http://kenshi247.net/blog/2012/02/02/shinai-kyogi/
The book "This is Kendo" contains a lot of history: http://www.amazon.com/This-Kendo-The-Japanese-Fencing/dp/0804816077
One individual you may be interested in is Yukio Mishima. He was a Japanese writer/author, who was an extremist and really fought to bring back the "old Japanese ways". Mishima (who did kendo and iaido, though apparently wasn't very good) eventually attempted a coup, and then committed seppuku.
As an example, he wrote a short story about Kendo titled "Ken", which was made into a movie by the same name. The movie concluded with the main character committing suicide out of shame for his fellow club members. One particular quote uttered by the main character near the beginning of the movie, upon learning that one of their classmates committed suicide, was: "only a coward or a very brave man is able to kill himself".
While it's not exactly on topic, you might want to angle this story as exactly the kind of thing that the Americans wanted to prevent when they banned many militaristic martial arts (thus the conversion of bujutsu into budo). Maybe link that with atrocious war crimes Japan committed in the past (e.g. Nanking).
What's keisa-hitzone?
This: armor and equipment can protect you from cutting and stabbing, there’s nothing to protect you from the blunt force trauma of collapsing your spine.
Davenriche in San Jose, Ca runs periodic quarter staff workshops, but even then the instructors are very careful, and it’s primarily choreography based out of distance. This is a school that has weekly full plate sparring nights and hosts regional competitions. The owner literally wrote a book on longswords .
This is the book I refer too. It's pretty good: http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Far-Mountain-Tuttle-Martial/dp/0804832455
Hi. I studied Katanas a lot as well as learned some iaido and kendo from a student of a Dr. Gordon Warner, who wrote this book. I know more about the actual art of using the sword but I remember some stuff about it's dynamics.
To add to this, Katanas were wielded only by the Samurai. They were viewed not just the warrior's sword, but also their soul.
Their forgery was a very delicate and mastered process involving the development of which parts of the sword had hard metal and soft metal. The metal used was tamahagane I believe and it was very strong because of the carbon in it.
The curve of the blade (which was caused by the forger choosing the perfect time to cool the metal by plunging it into water during the forging process) was very key in the actual art of iaido and iaijutsu. (iai is japanese for sword).
PM me if you have any questions!
EDIT: also the curve of this katana in the picture looks wrong. I posted it so you could see the cross section of the blade.
There aren't that many modern fencing books out there, and there are practically zero modern Sabre books. Only one I know of is "Modern Sabre Fencing" by Zbigniew Borysiuk. Having browsed through it, I can say it is.... OK. Only a small portion really concentrates on fencing, with chapters looking at the history of the sport, the 'impact of electric', nutrition, "diagnostic tools", and so on. I know there is also a DVD that goes with it, but I've never seen it, so can't comment on that. So anyways, I wouldn't recommend bothering with it probably, but if you really have no other option, you could probably do worse, but frankly, I think you could learn more by watching YouTube videos... I know there are a lot out there geared towards instruction.
A Coach and Referee I know just published Journals to help you make the most out of tournaments for Epee Foil and Sabre