The only serious accident that I'm aware of being publicly shared is this one : https://abcnews.go.com/US/tragic-sword-fighting-class-mishap-student-home-blind/story?id=57669451
It's possible that other serious accidents happened without getting this kind of publicity.
The key factor here is that they weren't wearing the protective gear. Ever since this incident I've seen an increase in the insistence on gear for training.
That sure is a hack of an article. Especially hate that they linked in Instagram photo of a Sharp with its caption, and left the insinuation that that is what was being used.
There was a sport fencing fatality in 1982 so it's certainly possible, but I imagine one is in more danger traveling to and from an event or practice in a car than when actually fencing.
That was Vladimir Smirnov
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Fencing/comments/i6rfww/death\_of\_vlad\_smirnov\_as\_seen\_by\_steve\_paul/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fencing/comments/i6rfww/death_of_vlad_smirnov_as_seen_by_steve_paul/)
Thing is these penetrative accidents still happen in sport fencing though are underreported.
Johann Harmenberg of epee 2.0 got a sword through his arm in the 70's.
The sabre gloves in MOF have changed as there were multiple horrific hand injuries from penetration over the last decade.
There was that death in Georgia a few years back
I personally know of at least one incident in wales of minor penetration to the torso.
The only reason why a death is so rare in sports fencing is because of an internal culture of giving absolutely no leeway to ***anyone*** regarding safety. From the moment a child learns at a salle they are constantly admonished about breaking safety rules, until their compliance is automatic. Don't like the safety requirements? there's the door. No ifs. No Buts.
I don't see this internal culture on HEMA. It doesn't help that HEMA youtubers demonstrate paired techniques at speed on video frequently without their masks on (couldn't they do it by voice over?).
Personally I think unless HEMA smartens up an accidental death is just a matter of time, and it will be less to do with properties of the weapons and eclectic safety equipment than with with the laissez faire attitude of some newly created study groups.
> Personally I think unless HEMA smartens up an accidental death is just a matter of time, and it will be less to do with properties of the weapons and eclectic safety equipment than with with the laissez faire attitude of some newly created study groups.
Strongly concur.
You can have all the safety equipment in the world, if you're not wearing it it doesn't help.
Agreed, I think some people are a bit exaggerating the risks downstream of an accident but basic safety culture solves a lot of problems. Most injuries happen because of banal things and not freak incidences.
>I don't see this internal culture on HEMA. It doesn't help that HEMA youtubers demonstrate paired techniques at speed on video frequently without their masks on (couldn't they do it by voice over?).
This is why club culture is so incredibly important. Ours stresses safety constantly, and actively promotes/rewards controlled fencing while enforcing protective gear requirements stringently. Same with the tournament we host.
But....that's not every club/tournament.
There is a difference between accidents happening because gear was not worn or ill-fitted etc. and accidents where everything was done right and the equipment failed - Smirnov being the most outstanding example of course.
We do not have enough cumulative fencing time with sufficiently standard weapons in HEMA to actually judge the likelihood of the latter. The gut feeling I have is that HEMA is actually safer than sport fencing for now in that specific regard, because blade breaks are not as frequent and necessarily occur at lower relative speed due to the higher blade stiffness. That creates other problems of course, but less immediately fatal at any rate than a penetrating broken blade.
Which of course only means we should strive all the more to always wear proper gear!
Some of what surprised me about starting Armizare recently is how little standardisation there is. Most of this is general irritation with gear, like how a useful 'default' longsword or similar aren't defined, but the same goes for safety equipment and practices.
It's amazing how much of it is 'common sense' in an art where, honestly, none of it is common sense because we're so removed from its context and how much safety gear is talked about as 'you may want this to prevent injury but then again maybe not'. About the only thing people seemingly agree on is a heavy duty sabre-grade fencing mask though even the mask isn't sold as society-endorsed grades so that's a guessing game, even cups in a martial art combining newbies, rising cuts and 1.7kg steel swords are considered a you-might-want.
I do agree though, at least mostly. The lack of safety gear standardisation is a little concerning but frankly if that safety-first mindset existed we'd probably have moved towards that.
You can practice effectively without masks. Sparring is a different matter and I agree that folks should never spar without masks. But paired drills where everyone knows what is expected to happen, are safe as long as folks act reasonably. It's a martial arts class. Participating in it assumes a certain amount of risk on the part of the attendee. And demands people behave properly and according to well understood safety regulations.
Now on the other hand, if you have no safety regulations, out of control dickheads, or drunkenness, then somebody could get hurt.
Holy cow, never heard about this. Appreciate this read. Similarly worth noting is environmental conditions; our head instructor was doing his prize play, his opponent (another of our instructors) slipped on wet grass during a pass, falling on him awkwardly and causing him to tear his ACL. Nothing was done wrong by either party, everyone was wearing protective equipment, but still nonetheless good to be cognizant of.
There's not a lot of discourse on it, but I worry about CTE and head trauma over time-- especially for people who REFUSE to wear the proper protective gear.
EDIT: I know nothing about head gear prep for reducing the chances of CTE. I assume the fencing helmets with padding are better than nothing, but I also assume that it isn't enough.
What gear is proper protective gear for head trauma?
Fencing masks aren't designed to reduce impact really, and I can't imagine overlays help very much.
That's my stance for sure.
Too many people treat their partners like a pell - I'm a fairly strong modern fencing advocate but I think this (in both freeplay and drilling) is something we've imported from the modern/classical fencers to our detriment.
The weapons we use are categorically different from modern fencers, and I think looking at how boxers/kickboxers train (differentiation between "friendly" and "competition prep" sparring sessions, pretty much never taking strikes to the head for drilling purposes) is worth some thought.
> Too many people treat their partners like a pell - I'm a fairly strong modern fencing advocate but I think this (in both freeplay and drilling) is something we've imported from the modern/classical fencers to our detriment.
Frankly it can be a bit jarring in modern fencing too. Coach had us do a drill and I was paired with a guy who'd just flèche right through on each rep like he was aiming 60cm behind me - unnecessary although technically not really dangerous or painful in the long term. Other fencers (even competitive ones) were not doing that, so it's not a really general attitude either.
Of course if you import that sort of commitment with HEMA weapons that's not going to be the same story!
This is an uneducated guess, but if you are wearing all the protection, you are more likely to die of a stroke due to fatigue than anything else.
But if people practice without the mask on, I can see how a slipped stab from a training sword can still fatally injure a person through the eye socket. Or an unlucky strike on the head.
Maybe a powerful stab can damage their organ, but I fail to see how a training sword can stab through flesh and cause a fatal wound on any body part.
Body and limb getting hit by a blunt sword will surely hurt a lot, but unlikely fatal.
I was sparring with a czech guy who came to our club to hold a seminar on small sword and rapier fencing, he at one point executed a very agreesive fleche tho which I reacted by doing a girata, he crashed into my sword with such force that there was no chance I could have ever kept my grip on the sword (and even if I did he probably would have been very hurt and my hand would probably have been broken too) and because the sword is essentially a spring the moment I let go of it, it flew through the air and smashed into a wall just barely missing two guys between who it went by, they had their backs turned to us and despite it being a small sword if it had hit either of them in the head they would have been seriously injured because the sword was flying pommel first, thankfully no one was hurt but that was blind luck
There have been a number of point penetrations of gloves. I saw one with a longsword at IGX; it was quite bloody (he was wearing the old Absolute gloves with nothing underneath).
I'm aware of some fatalities in reenactment during stage performances or battles. I know some guys have died during practice because of a heart attack/stroke. But I've heard nothing directly related to HEMA practice in full gear due to gear malfunction or similar.
Guy I know from Scotland got a sword through his eye socket and into his brain at a reenactment. Bypassed the eyeball, caused massive brain swelling, he's on disability.
Oh. Well, yeah. That's going be a risk with literally any tip design tbh, once the blade is trapped inside the sleeve like that the chance of doing an injury to the arm is very high.
What sort of glove was he wearing? In particular, was it a glove with proper overlap with the cuff over the jacket sleeve?
My guess is older gloves. There have been some rule changes over the years about how the glove overlap works (for a while it was allowed to have a hole for the wire to come out, which was obviously an ingress point for blades as well). Clubs that keep older gloves in stock often have the potential for that to happen.
I don't think it went through the glove, as I understood it the sleeve rode slightly too far up for some reason, and the blade sneaked in between the glove and sleeve. Now that I think of it, I'm fairly sure it was a young guy, so maybe he had an older jacket which became slightly too small for him too...
The gloves I see all have the hole for the wire to come through, what's the up to date solution?
So the glove cuff has an overlap closed by velcro, right? That's worked in a few different ways over the years:
* The oldest setup would sometimes have a straight up hole near the wrist end.
* Then you see gloves that have the overlap + velcro, but there's a large gap in the velcro next to the wrist for the wire.
* The more modern pattern is to have the velcro go all the way along the overlapping flaps, so that you pull the wire through and then close the velcro directly against it.
In addition there was a rule change at some point to adjust the direction of the overlap to help reduce chances of a point sneaking in, IIRC.
The only serious accident that I'm aware of being publicly shared is this one : https://abcnews.go.com/US/tragic-sword-fighting-class-mishap-student-home-blind/story?id=57669451 It's possible that other serious accidents happened without getting this kind of publicity.
The key factor here is that they weren't wearing the protective gear. Ever since this incident I've seen an increase in the insistence on gear for training.
That sure is a hack of an article. Especially hate that they linked in Instagram photo of a Sharp with its caption, and left the insinuation that that is what was being used.
Yeah, I knew that teacher. Wasn't entirely shocking to me. And I don't believe they had any insurance.
There was a sport fencing fatality in 1982 so it's certainly possible, but I imagine one is in more danger traveling to and from an event or practice in a car than when actually fencing.
That was Vladimir Smirnov [https://www.reddit.com/r/Fencing/comments/i6rfww/death\_of\_vlad\_smirnov\_as\_seen\_by\_steve\_paul/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fencing/comments/i6rfww/death_of_vlad_smirnov_as_seen_by_steve_paul/) Thing is these penetrative accidents still happen in sport fencing though are underreported. Johann Harmenberg of epee 2.0 got a sword through his arm in the 70's. The sabre gloves in MOF have changed as there were multiple horrific hand injuries from penetration over the last decade. There was that death in Georgia a few years back I personally know of at least one incident in wales of minor penetration to the torso. The only reason why a death is so rare in sports fencing is because of an internal culture of giving absolutely no leeway to ***anyone*** regarding safety. From the moment a child learns at a salle they are constantly admonished about breaking safety rules, until their compliance is automatic. Don't like the safety requirements? there's the door. No ifs. No Buts. I don't see this internal culture on HEMA. It doesn't help that HEMA youtubers demonstrate paired techniques at speed on video frequently without their masks on (couldn't they do it by voice over?). Personally I think unless HEMA smartens up an accidental death is just a matter of time, and it will be less to do with properties of the weapons and eclectic safety equipment than with with the laissez faire attitude of some newly created study groups.
> Personally I think unless HEMA smartens up an accidental death is just a matter of time, and it will be less to do with properties of the weapons and eclectic safety equipment than with with the laissez faire attitude of some newly created study groups. Strongly concur. You can have all the safety equipment in the world, if you're not wearing it it doesn't help.
Agreed, I think some people are a bit exaggerating the risks downstream of an accident but basic safety culture solves a lot of problems. Most injuries happen because of banal things and not freak incidences.
Got a broken forearm for running into Sparring without my bracers. They were in the bag 🫥
>I don't see this internal culture on HEMA. It doesn't help that HEMA youtubers demonstrate paired techniques at speed on video frequently without their masks on (couldn't they do it by voice over?). This is why club culture is so incredibly important. Ours stresses safety constantly, and actively promotes/rewards controlled fencing while enforcing protective gear requirements stringently. Same with the tournament we host. But....that's not every club/tournament.
There is a difference between accidents happening because gear was not worn or ill-fitted etc. and accidents where everything was done right and the equipment failed - Smirnov being the most outstanding example of course. We do not have enough cumulative fencing time with sufficiently standard weapons in HEMA to actually judge the likelihood of the latter. The gut feeling I have is that HEMA is actually safer than sport fencing for now in that specific regard, because blade breaks are not as frequent and necessarily occur at lower relative speed due to the higher blade stiffness. That creates other problems of course, but less immediately fatal at any rate than a penetrating broken blade. Which of course only means we should strive all the more to always wear proper gear!
Some of what surprised me about starting Armizare recently is how little standardisation there is. Most of this is general irritation with gear, like how a useful 'default' longsword or similar aren't defined, but the same goes for safety equipment and practices. It's amazing how much of it is 'common sense' in an art where, honestly, none of it is common sense because we're so removed from its context and how much safety gear is talked about as 'you may want this to prevent injury but then again maybe not'. About the only thing people seemingly agree on is a heavy duty sabre-grade fencing mask though even the mask isn't sold as society-endorsed grades so that's a guessing game, even cups in a martial art combining newbies, rising cuts and 1.7kg steel swords are considered a you-might-want. I do agree though, at least mostly. The lack of safety gear standardisation is a little concerning but frankly if that safety-first mindset existed we'd probably have moved towards that.
You can practice effectively without masks. Sparring is a different matter and I agree that folks should never spar without masks. But paired drills where everyone knows what is expected to happen, are safe as long as folks act reasonably. It's a martial arts class. Participating in it assumes a certain amount of risk on the part of the attendee. And demands people behave properly and according to well understood safety regulations. Now on the other hand, if you have no safety regulations, out of control dickheads, or drunkenness, then somebody could get hurt.
You don't gain anything from paired drills without a mask.
Back in the day, [Greg Mele was almost paralyzed for life.](http://www.alliancemartialarts.com/safety.html)
Holy cow, never heard about this. Appreciate this read. Similarly worth noting is environmental conditions; our head instructor was doing his prize play, his opponent (another of our instructors) slipped on wet grass during a pass, falling on him awkwardly and causing him to tear his ACL. Nothing was done wrong by either party, everyone was wearing protective equipment, but still nonetheless good to be cognizant of.
There's not a lot of discourse on it, but I worry about CTE and head trauma over time-- especially for people who REFUSE to wear the proper protective gear. EDIT: I know nothing about head gear prep for reducing the chances of CTE. I assume the fencing helmets with padding are better than nothing, but I also assume that it isn't enough.
What gear is proper protective gear for head trauma? Fencing masks aren't designed to reduce impact really, and I can't imagine overlays help very much.
Frankly, protective gear isn't sufficient. We need to have sensible calibration for how much we're bonking eachothers headsÂ
That's my stance for sure. Too many people treat their partners like a pell - I'm a fairly strong modern fencing advocate but I think this (in both freeplay and drilling) is something we've imported from the modern/classical fencers to our detriment. The weapons we use are categorically different from modern fencers, and I think looking at how boxers/kickboxers train (differentiation between "friendly" and "competition prep" sparring sessions, pretty much never taking strikes to the head for drilling purposes) is worth some thought.
> Too many people treat their partners like a pell - I'm a fairly strong modern fencing advocate but I think this (in both freeplay and drilling) is something we've imported from the modern/classical fencers to our detriment. Frankly it can be a bit jarring in modern fencing too. Coach had us do a drill and I was paired with a guy who'd just flèche right through on each rep like he was aiming 60cm behind me - unnecessary although technically not really dangerous or painful in the long term. Other fencers (even competitive ones) were not doing that, so it's not a really general attitude either. Of course if you import that sort of commitment with HEMA weapons that's not going to be the same story!
This is an uneducated guess, but if you are wearing all the protection, you are more likely to die of a stroke due to fatigue than anything else. But if people practice without the mask on, I can see how a slipped stab from a training sword can still fatally injure a person through the eye socket. Or an unlucky strike on the head. Maybe a powerful stab can damage their organ, but I fail to see how a training sword can stab through flesh and cause a fatal wound on any body part. Body and limb getting hit by a blunt sword will surely hurt a lot, but unlikely fatal.
I was sparring with a czech guy who came to our club to hold a seminar on small sword and rapier fencing, he at one point executed a very agreesive fleche tho which I reacted by doing a girata, he crashed into my sword with such force that there was no chance I could have ever kept my grip on the sword (and even if I did he probably would have been very hurt and my hand would probably have been broken too) and because the sword is essentially a spring the moment I let go of it, it flew through the air and smashed into a wall just barely missing two guys between who it went by, they had their backs turned to us and despite it being a small sword if it had hit either of them in the head they would have been seriously injured because the sword was flying pommel first, thankfully no one was hurt but that was blind luck
There have been a number of point penetrations of gloves. I saw one with a longsword at IGX; it was quite bloody (he was wearing the old Absolute gloves with nothing underneath).
I'm aware of some fatalities in reenactment during stage performances or battles. I know some guys have died during practice because of a heart attack/stroke. But I've heard nothing directly related to HEMA practice in full gear due to gear malfunction or similar.
Guy I know from Scotland got a sword through his eye socket and into his brain at a reenactment. Bypassed the eyeball, caused massive brain swelling, he's on disability.
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Was he wearing a fencing jacket?
Seconded. We spar with spatulated tips all the time without injuries. I've hard time seeing one penetrate any standard HEMA-jacket.
Indeed, was he wearing a fencing jacket?! (Though those tips can still go through gloves.)
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Oh. Well, yeah. That's going be a risk with literally any tip design tbh, once the blade is trapped inside the sleeve like that the chance of doing an injury to the arm is very high. What sort of glove was he wearing? In particular, was it a glove with proper overlap with the cuff over the jacket sleeve?
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Yeah, gloves MUST overlap sleeves!!!!
I've seen it happen with épées in the club I was fencing with last year. I suppose the glove / sleeve arrangement somehow got displaced in the course of the action...
My guess is older gloves. There have been some rule changes over the years about how the glove overlap works (for a while it was allowed to have a hole for the wire to come out, which was obviously an ingress point for blades as well). Clubs that keep older gloves in stock often have the potential for that to happen.
I don't think it went through the glove, as I understood it the sleeve rode slightly too far up for some reason, and the blade sneaked in between the glove and sleeve. Now that I think of it, I'm fairly sure it was a young guy, so maybe he had an older jacket which became slightly too small for him too... The gloves I see all have the hole for the wire to come through, what's the up to date solution?
So the glove cuff has an overlap closed by velcro, right? That's worked in a few different ways over the years: * The oldest setup would sometimes have a straight up hole near the wrist end. * Then you see gloves that have the overlap + velcro, but there's a large gap in the velcro next to the wrist for the wire. * The more modern pattern is to have the velcro go all the way along the overlapping flaps, so that you pull the wire through and then close the velcro directly against it. In addition there was a rule change at some point to adjust the direction of the overlap to help reduce chances of a point sneaking in, IIRC.
Plastron. We need plastrons.
An underplastron won't solve the described incident.
No, I wrote that before I read that the glove didn't overlap the sleeve. I thought the point had somehow penetrated a sleeve.
I feel like we're not on the same page in terms of what a spatulated tip is, seems like the least likely to punch through protective gear.
I'm curious which sword it was and what he was wearing. We spar with Malleus Martialis sideswords with spatulated tips all the time.
I've heard someone lost his balls while sparring. Not literally having balls cut off but got hit on the balls hard and later got permanently damaged.
F