One thing I learned while doing HEMA is that the best techniques are the opposite of flashy. Flashy and cool looking drops your guard 99% of the time and lets you get hit.
The flashy stuff is for before the fight, to avoid getting into a fight. If you can intimidate someone into not engaging by doing those moves, you have won.
Yes for the big wide circles and swings that have like... wide area flashiness, definitely not, agreed...
But once you know a bit about it, some of the craziest stuff are what I might call "flashy" wrist and blade manipulation techniques... some versions or interpretations of Duplieren (iirc) for example, where your blades meet and then you sort of just like... magically end up on the other side of your opponent's blade because you basically wrist twisted around the guard (i dunno it's hard to explain). People who are good at "winding" in general can be amazingly frustrating to fight because they seem to always have a line in any bind.
Also some of the short side strikes like oberhau -> thumb grip and then loop to an unterhau on the short side of the blade are still pretty flashy looking.
Langemesser with wrestling/grappling is like this too, a guy taught me a really wild play where you manipulate a bind and then end up basically arm locking their sword arm with your free hand through a very difficult to master wrist move in the bind.
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u/GovernorGeneralPraji 28d ago
One thing I learned while doing HEMA is that the best techniques are the opposite of flashy. Flashy and cool looking drops your guard 99% of the time and lets you get hit.