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Ouch.

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Sir Edward:
Spotted this in a thread on myArmoury:


--- Quote ---As for historic kidney protection...well by SCA rules, a lot of armor that cover that area is adequate. However some fighters who do that end up urinating blood the next day sometimes and a weight belt pretty much elimates that level of damage to your kindney (rememer the SCA uses wraps...and a lot of times, they land on your kidney)...and historical or not, why would you NOT wear one under everything for that added safe guard? I mean it can just serve as a 20 dollar don't wanna piss blood armor piece...
--- End quote ---

(--P. Cha http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=151684#151684)

Ouch, that seems kind of... excessive. In terms of the abuse taken by the fighters. The SCA combat looks like a lot of fun, but I have a hard time justifying in my head the emphasis that's always placed on power.

I thought it was telling when I read a message on another forum that was quoting an SCA tournament report from 1970:


--- Quote --- Also, the insistence on a “solid blow,” is steadily escalating us towards someone getting killed on the field. Fighters are repeatedly having an opponent not call a blow because, “it wasn’t hard enough,” and then not calling blows upon themselves, for the same reason. This, I think, puts us in the same boat as the controversy between “tussling on the ground” and “weapon-work only.”  I feel more and more that, if we are truly concentrating on style, then solidness of blow should be discounted in favor of cleanness. The sharp, precise, blow and block of good sword and shield work is beautiful to watch. When people have to put roundhouses into every blow, they don’t have time to be precise.  As things are, Sir Frederic of the WestTower has a shoulder muscle which may or may not recover (it hadn’t fully recovered when I saw him Sunday night), and Kevin Peregrine may have the nerve trunk to his right arm permanently damaged (I haven’t heard anything on this since the Tourney). Something has to be done, I don’t think armor for all is the answer.
--- End quote ---
(http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1278414#1278414)

Anyway, not intending to criticize, but I continue to be surprised (or not) when I read some of these things, and it makes me glad I'm doing something else. :)

Sir Wolf:
hehe lets get some historical looking foam boffers and beat the living hell out of each other ;)

Dragonlover:
That's another one of the issues I started seriously thinking about Sir Edward.
It was getting to be a sport of swinging a round-house axehandle, instead of
improving on your form and being honest with calling a blow. To me, even if a shot
was light to my helm or face, I obviously didn't see it coming and would therefore
call the shot. Bugged a lot of marshalls would would say it was light, and I explained
the situation. Another reason why I liked fighters in Meridies, their rules forced a
fighter to not get hit period..... ;)

Sir William:
Sounds like this goes hand in hand with the 'rhino' aspect of SCA fighting that I've heard about.  Some injury is going to occur at some point in a sport like this; I think it is up to the participants to decide whether or not they really want to participate in the event.

SirNathanQ:
The justification of the SCA demanding a "solid blow" is (someone correct me if I'm wrong) they only count blows that would kill. By that logic, historically you wouldn't have anything like ridiculous wind-ups, and piss blood strikes (with the exception of warriors using maces, warhammers, flails, and some types of pole-weapons). If the goal is martial effectiveness (which is what the logic seems to be getting at) the rules should specify against windups and roundhousers! Doing that in a real fight, especially a mass battle, would have got you killed historically. Even if you were wearing the nicest plate harness around, a windup smiler to whats seen in SCA would result in getting taken down to grapple with any opponent with his wits about him! Also, you don't need overly powerful blows to kill. It's more about edge alignment and technique than anything. In fact, if they wished to approximate history closer in the calling of shots, they should be judged on martial effectiveness, technique, and cleanness. In fact, a draw cut, which requires no "power" at all is a viable and effective way of killing someone (although just like all the rest of the strikes, obviously not so effective against armour).

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