These blogs provide helpful articles both for HEMA instructors and HEMA practitioners alike and contain valueable information worth considering. Articles listed under Sample articles were picked as examples of the style of writing and insights that can be gained reading the blog.
Of course you can always read my german or english articles on HEMA.
Content
Hroarr
Hroarr is a HEMA Blog and News site run by Roger Norling, with a hard to google name, where everyone is free to participate and write articles. I have published some articles myself. If there’s a HEMA topic you can think of, it has probably been covered on Hroarr.
Sample Articles
- Hroarr OODA Loop by C.VanSlambrouck
- Checkmate! A workshop guide by Martin Fabian
- Troublesome Student – The Winner, the Solver, the Heretic by Richard Marsden
- HEMA Pedagogics Part 3: How to create a good learning environment by Roger Norling
Guy Windsors Blog
Guy Windsor was teaching full time in his School in Helsinki, before he moved back to the UK, has published multiple HEMA books, a HEMA card game named Audatia and writes extensively in his Blog. He used to cover mostly HEMA related topics and his old articles are well worth a read, but has since steered into the area of lifestyle blogging.
Sample Articles
Keith Farrells Blog
Keith Farrells Blog continues with similar topics and the same writing style as the Encased in Steel Blog, but features as the name suggests only posts from Keith himself.
Sample Articles
- What to read to begin studying longsword
- Improve your footwork – play games like children!
- Learning the position of Vom Tag
Matt Thornton & SBGi
Matt Thornton is the founder and head coach of Straight Blast Gym international (SBGi), a set of martial art academies around the globe that teach anything from Mixed Martial Arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to Military and Law Enforcement courses. The most famous SBG athlete today is probably Mixed Martial Arts fighter Conor McGregor.
His blog features posts on mindset, politics, martial arts myth and structuring martial arts training in general. Even though Matt and SBGi in general do not train HEMA, his posts on Aliveness and the I-Method have been the most insightful for me and became the foundation for my own approach to teaching HEMA.
As Matts posts tend to be rather lengthy I wrote up an article with HEMA specific examples on Aliveness and the I-Method as an introduction.
Sample Articles
Sword STEM
Sword Stem was started in 2018 by Sean Franklin (formerly Blood and Iron) and tries to explain HEMA with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. It offers unique perspectives on everything from sword material science to statistical analysis of tournament results and HEMA Ratings.