marozzo.com

There’s a lot of things going on at the moment. Not only are we pressing forward with the Espoo Association of Historical Fencing, but also other things as well.

Late next week I will head to Italy to take part in a competition organized by Guardia di Croce, where I will perform the Primo Assalto of the sword in two hands of Marozzo.

I have been somewhat diligently practicing – I could’ve done more – but the circumstances have been quite demanding. Regardless of how well I will perform in the competition I’m looking forward to a relaxing and enjoyable trip, meeting a lot of new people and getting to know the Italian part of the HEMA community.

Exciting times. With some other stuff going on in my personal life, which is no point mentioning here, it has been taxing. But I remain in good spirit, looking forward to great times of progress and learning on many fronts.

Regarding the progress of our new club, we are still looking for space, and are organizing training equipment and suchlike so that when time comes to start the training, we will be prepared.

This also means that I am writing up a curriculum for teaching – to help myself and assist those who will be covering classes when I might be prevented from doing so. Theory is easy to pack up, but analyzing and choosing basic exercises that would form the foundation for starting students is challenging; the amount of material covered by the original sources is vast, and since much of it is simply different ordering of the basic actions to create (sometimes very) inspired combinations it is a though call to decide which ones to pick as fundamental.

On the other it does not make such a great difference, since any actions will serve just as well to teach the basics: the guards, strikes, parries, turns and steps. Through a great array of examples the students will eventually learn to freely express the basic theory and actions.

The new club has already generated a lot of interest – it is my humblest wish that when the time comes this interest will also show in way of participation for the classes. I promise to do my best to make the time invested worthwhile!

Meanwhile there will be a seminar on the Bolognese fundamentals at the School of European Swordsmanship Salle on 13th of November. More details will follow on that!

While of course that news might interest more those from Finland, if someone from abroad finds themselves near by during the time, they are most welcome to participate!

I may have explained here how I have been in the process of starting to run weekly classes in my home town, Espoo, which is next to Helsinki.

Of course this is not so much news to the readers outside Finland, but sort of important as something to blog about.

Today we launched the website of the club, and we are looking actively for a venue at the moment, and once we get some sort of training space sorted out, we are ready to go.

We are aiming to start the classes still this year, or early next year latest. Check out the website at www.ehms.fi, even though it is only in Finnish for now.

Browse through the book online, or download PDF.

Muscle chart from Allén's book

Recently I came across the oldest book on martial arts (wrestling) and physical culture published in Finnish. The book is called “Handbook in Wrestling and Athletics”, and it is written by Carl Allén in 1904. He published the book both in Finnish and in Swedish during the same year, and I am not 100% sure whether the Finnish version is a translation or originally written by Allén.

The book details a systematic progression teaching Greco-Roman, or French, or French-Finnish wrestling, includes a short history of wrestling (with some faults regarding the medieval era, which were corrected by another Finnish writer on wrestling only 8 years later in his book, where Fabian von Auerswald and even Dürer is mentioned. How well the author knew these works is unknown however) and a separate section of athletic training and physical culture including short advice on diet, bathing, sleep and such.

The attached image shows a map of muscles on a man holding up a heavy bell. I will post a full PDF of the work here later on, after editing it together. These maps are copied from Sandow’s System of Physical Training, published ten years earlier.

Allén’s athletic system is based on Eugene Sandow’s works (as Allén readily admits), and consists mostly of lifting Sandow’s grip dumbells, specified to be of 1,5 to 2 kilograms in weight. A 24-day program of exercising is also laid out, to be then repeated with heavier weights or sturdier springs. If someone knows where to get spring-grip dumbells today, please do let me know!

Interestingly, Allén also describes lifts with a barbell, explaining one-handed snatch and bent press, and the ‘almost-ancient’ form of three-phased clean and jerk, where the bell is first brought atop the stomach before being cleaned to shoulder level. He also did the jerk without squatting or splitting, but instead stepping back with one foot to make sure not to lose balance. Truly special, although technically inferior to a more ‘later’ way of lifting where the barbell is only moving directly upwards. Well, I’m sure Mr Allén still lifted more than I do, so I won’t go further to comment on his technique. It is still interesting to see how these were the times when this skill was so new as a science, and was bound to be refined and developed greatly during the next 50 years or so (after which all the interesting aspects, like one-handed lifts, had been dropped from Olympic lifting).

The wrestling style is typically old-style Greco-Roman, very heavy on neck bridging for both offense and defense, which at the time was considered to be one of the strongest aspects of Finnish wrestlers. The book also has a section on illegal holds, that do not include anything related to leg-takedowns, but show a face-lock stopping airflow through nose and mouth, a few choke-holds and a ‘stomach-twist’, which was supposed to prevent the opponent from continuing after a while, even though it didn’t immediately stop the match (the matches might have gone on for hours at a time, being slit in 15-minute rounds with 1 minute of rest in between). As pointed out by Risto Rautiainen, it is also important to notice that these illegal-holds were ‘pure’ of any ju-jitsu influence, since it is highly unlikely that there would’ve been any contact from Japanese fighters yet at that time, although this was to change very quickly after this book was published.