The Six Blows of the Sword
In his Discourse on the Art of Using Arms Safely (or, in its first English publication, His True Art of Defense), Giacomo di Grassi describes the blows of the arm as follows:
The Arm likewise is not in every part of equal force and swiftness, but differs in every bowing thereof, that is to say in the wrist, in the elbow and in the shoulder: for the blows of the wrist as they are more swift, so they are less strong: And the other two, as they are more strong, so they are more slow, because they perform a great compass. Therefore by my counsel, he that would deliver an edge-blow shall fetch no compass with his shoulder, because whilst he bears his sword far off, he gives time to the wary enemy to enter first: but he shall only use the compass of the elbow and the wrist: which as they be most swift, so are they strong in ought, if they be orderly handled.
Thus, di Grassi identifies three blows, those of wrist, elbow, and shoulder - and thus the anatomical drawing, from di Grassi, I have shown above. All of this is, so far as it goes, perfectly true. Unfortunately, it is incomplete. There are in fact six blows identifiable by this method. One of them is, funny enough, contained within di Grassi's diagram above. The other two happen below the navel. These additional blows are as follows: the blows of the finger, the blows of the hip, and the blows of the feet. Not all of them are equally applicable in every system - shinkage, for instance, neglects blows of the wrist for the most part in favor of a carefully controlled grip and fundamental sword structure. For the most part, most actual blows are a compound of these - for instance, a well executed flat snap is a mix of hip, shoulder, wrist, and finger - but each of these joints can be isolated to develop a better blow.
Note that there is no blow of the knee. This is intentional. Put bluntly the knee is too vital a joint to waste by rotating stupidly to generate power, and the knee is already fully articulated in the blows of hip and foot. Especially in blows of the foot, it is impossible not to articulate the knee to some degree. Thus, knees are already in play for the other blows, and because there is a high risk of damaging a joint I consider more important than shoulder or elbow - also prone to injuries! - I do not consider knee rotation or flexure to be worth developing independently as a blow generator.
How do we characterize these blows, given that in a well-executed strike, any number of joints in that chain may be mobilized? I would argue that it is not the whole chain but the characteristic joint required to execute the blow that best-articulates blows by this system. This may create confusion, especially with percussive blows - the same effect can be generated by shoulder, hip, and feet, and there is no one single answer to what the "right" way to execute those blows is. The purpose of this is to develop an awareness of body movement and mechanics, not to declare a One True Way to kill with a sword.
The blows of the finger are probably the hardest to articulate fully - the mobilization of the blade using nothing but a shift in gripping the hilt. They are as much a "stupid human trick" as an actual technique, and are not well-developed in period literature. I will be perfectly honest, I can identify these but not articulate them, and they are very rarely practical for the kind of fighting I do. They are more common in high-level rapier competition, and I can certainly identify people I think of as experts at blows of the finger (in Ansteorra, Master Robin and Master Cailleagh come to mind, and, come to think of it, Duke Kein on the armored field), but they are as familiar to me, and as useful in terms of longsword or armored combat, as coin or card tricks.
However, there are blows of the wrist in German longsword and in SCA armored fighting, as well as rapier, so I can comment somewhat fluently on these. The best example is Meyer's description of the Schielhau:
The Glancing Strike is also a High strike, but has been so named in that one closes with a small glancing blow, which is done thus: put yourself in the Guard of the Roof or Wrath (as shown in the third chapter) with your left foot forward, from which you will be striking, and while striking be sure to wind your short edge against his strike, and hit with inverting hands at the same time as closing with him, step fully with your Right Foot toward his left side, and so quickly take his head, thus have you done it rightly, and will stand as shown by the figures fighting on the left side of illustration G.
The asterisk associated with that, and the danger of Meyer's blow, is just as di Grassi describes - the blow is fast and deceptive, but is less likely to generate sufficient force to do more than administer a light wound. Now, in a dueling or sport context, that is sufficient, and a "light wound" to the eye is an eye lost, and a light wound to the abdomen, inner thigh, or inner elbow could indeed be fatal. The odds are, however, against it. In a wrap shot, that's mitigated by using body mass to apply a lateral, as well as rotational, force, and by applying as much rotational energy as possible through the hinge of the wrist.
Now, let's talk about blows of the elbow. In rapier, this is generally the extension of the arm from the elbow. In longsword, this same technique applies - the classic form of shinkage's sangakuen-no-tachi form includes a tsuki, or thrust, which is simply an extension and drop of the point from eye to throat level. The shoulders stay level, the wrists stay in the same firm grip, the extension is mostly in the elbow. In armored combat, in addition to thrusts from the elbow, the equivalent of this is the "hammer" shot - basically, the arm is driven in like a hammer and contact is high on the blade, a handspan or so from the guard. This can be done strictly with the elbow and forearm, but it is exceptionally difficult for the average person to accomplish because the mass mobilized is so small compared to the total body, and the average person does not have Popeye-like forearms.
It is worth mentioning also that Fiore's exchange of points is primarily a blow of the elbow(s). Let's refer back to that:
This play is named “The Exchange of Points”, and it is done like this: when your opponent thrusts at you, quickly advance your front foot off the line, and with the other foot step to the side, also moving off the line, crossing his sword with your hands low and with your point high into his face, or chest, as you see drawn here.
The "with your hands low" is why I say this is a blow of the elbow - no shoulder needs to be engaged in order to achieve it, instead relying on the elbow and lower arm to get the sword where it needs to be to make the cover, beat the point to the side, and deliver the thrust. Experience bears this out; engaging the shoulder is more likely to create a visual cue to your opponent, who will at that point do something other than the thrust they had planned. Could this be done as a blow of the wrist? Certainly - if you had wrists thick as tree trunks, everything could be a blow of the wrist. Similarly, it could be done as a blow of the shoulder, if you're fast enough to pull it off. But it works best, for the average person, as a combination of feet and elbow.
The blows of the shoulder are the most instinctive and in many ways least useful, with the entire arm mobilizing starting from the shoulder joint and extending most fully. On the rapier field, this is a perfectly useful blow, but the movement of the shoulder joint is a high-visibility movement, so triggers a stronger psychological response from your opponent. In armored combat, blows from the shoulder are a high-risk, high-reward proposition - rather than transferring the impact to a series of lower joints, a blow mobilized strictly from the arm and shoulder is a great way of stressing the shoulder joint.
In longsword fighting, most blows are, at a minimum, blows of the shoulder, as controlling a longsword from a standing position, and delivering sufficient force for a percussive cut, involves engaging the shoulder joint. Consider the mandritto fendente - the sword comes forward and down, and the arm and shoulder fully extend to deliver the blow. Shinkage, meanwhile, delivers a lot of shoulder-driven strikes, but very strongly emphasizes not moving the shoulder - no rise and fall, just rotation. However, few longsword blows are delivered from a standing start, with perfectly square hips.
So far, everything I have discussed is encompassed in di Grassi. However, di Grassi is less concerned with the blows of the hips, and considers what I am calling "blows of the feet" simply part of footwork. Blows of the hips involve mobilizing as much body mass into a strike as possible. There are several ways of doing this - rotation, dropping, rising, and lateral movement - but their shared characteristic is locking together the muscle chains from leg to arm by tightening the abdomen and clenching some of those muscle chains. They could just as easily be called blows of the navel for this reason. I call them "blows of the hip" here because hip rotation, translation, rise, or fall is the core of how I was taught to do it. This is the fundamental basic mechanic of SCA armored combat, and coincidentally of shinkage, Fiore's system, karate, and boxing - hit 'em with as much of the meat as you can engage. Blows of the hips are not a common feature in rapier combat or SCA cut and thrust because it turns out striking people with powerful sword blows is a great way of hurting them.
Strangely, blows of the hips are not slower than blows of the shoulder, because the muscle chains involved can compensate for the extra weight involved, and because the muscle chains fire more or less simultaneously, they do not have a particularly long lead time. A well-trained blow of the hip requires minimal mobilization distance because it relies on engaging more. Without drawing free-body diagrams, the blow of the hip activates more mass, and potentially accelerates that mass faster, than blows strictly thrown from the arm. A fully engaged hip rotation is a longer movement, and does give away the movement, but this full range is generally not necessary to deliver a good snap to a blow.
Finally, we come to blows of the foot. These are both the easiest and most difficult of blows to execute, and rely on the human mind to work. Basically, the sword walks into the target. At their most basic, blows of the feet involve the sword being in position for killing before the feet move. The tsuki in sangaku is one of these - the tip comes forward to extension and the feet shift half a pace, and suddenly what was out of measure is now in measure. Most movement in Fiore, for instance, falls under this, where the feet move the body, and therefore the sword, to where the blow is practical. The most extreme example I know of is a knight of my acquaintance, who will hold his sword out, as if for inspection, and just walk the point into an unwary opponent. There is no power on it other than that of his feet.
Now, this has run quite long enough already, so I'll stop here. Next I'll discuss how to drill each of these blows, to iron out the movements, and to make them as efficient as possible. That isn't "how to make them as powerful as possible," but to make them smooth, efficient, and repeatable.
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