Medieval Wrestling: Modern Practice of a 15th-Century Art (Medieval Martial Arts)

*Medieval Wrestling** by Jessica Finley AND the Art she presents can match anything I've seen. She presents Ringen in a very complete way ~ based upon Ott's approach, but enhanced by other Medieval sources and other wrestling / grappling old and new ~ to show that Ringen is SUPERB ~ very practical and effective via direct AND subtle philosophy, strategy, tactics and techniques ~ and relative to armed and unarmed / armored and unarmored self-defense and survival combat. There are even advised Fuehlen drills ( as in **Feel The FORCE** ) as Medieval folks called Ki / Chi / Spirit / Force simply **Feel**.The quality and integrity of Jessica Finley's research is matched by the quality and integrity of her work on Ringen under review. It is coherent and well-written via clear organization and very good layout, graphics and fonts. A new timeless presentation of an Old Art ~ being a Pioneering Classic. One Ringen to Rule Them All ~

I decided to buy this book as an alternative to simply reading the treatise, and Jessica Finely put a lot of work into organizing all of the plays and counters, with accompanying pictures. It is a great supplement to just going through the treatise on it's own.

The book was meh, bad editing and lots of redundancy. I bought the book as I’m half Austrian and was looking to learn a combat system reflecting my ancestry. I don’t blame the author for the lack of material as from what I can gather there is not a whole lot documented techniques of combat methods from this region during the medieval times as we find in Asian martial arts. The way the techniques are portrayed are for didactic purposes only as no one would ever engage in life or death combat like that. If you are looking for how to survive a street fight this is not your book and the few techniques you could realistically use in the real world would have to be adapted.

Jessica Finley has created an instant classic for practitioners of Historic European Martial Arts. The text is well written, thoroughly researched and eminently practical. I consider the work essential for anyone interested in learning or teaching medieval wrestling. After I read it, I bought copies for all my students.R. Swinney, Principal Instructor, Bramble Schoole of Defence

Outstanding

Studied many martial arts over the years, this is a welcomed edition of basic wrestling of HEMA.

some good, simple and effective moves, I would recommend this book

Learn to fight like a hungry peasant

I've been doing judo, fencing and kendo since 1988, and I have also competed in amateur MMA, BJJ. I don't claim any sort of mastery over anything - I am just a learner, but the first thing that struck me about this book is how familiar everything is! Wrestling is one art that never lost its usefulness and so I'd say that the modern world is in very good shape in regards to our unarmed fighting skills. Whereas over the years knowledge of how to fight with spears, halbards and shields waned, unarmed combat has flourished. I'd even suggest that unarmed combat is taken more seriously today than at times in the past when it was legal to walk around armed. Wrestling was very interestingly seen in the Middle Ages as not just a form of combat and a healthy activity, but also as a foundational exercise in developing the key combat skills and attributes for weaponed combat of balance, timing, aggression, strength, speed and courage. The movements in this book are all ones I am quite familiar with from acquaintance with the standing techniques of judo, modern wrestling, Jiu-jitsu and Catch wrestling. While, like I said above, I don't think the modern world lags in any way behind the Medieval one in terms of unarmed combat knowledge, studying historical wrestling systems like this one does have some special qualities and I'd like to highlight two in particular: 1. They make a direct link between unarmed skills and weaponry in stance, tactics, positions, movements, which suddenly turns your "impractical" fencing with Medieval swords skills into highly effective unarmed combat maneuvers! This is very nice! 2. As you can see by my list above of what modern arts share moves with this system of Medieval German wrestling, a big advantage to studying it is to study all these kinds of moves together in one place, in one wrestilng club what you would otherwise have to train in several arts in several different martial arts culbs at once to learn to do! I would encourage all fencers, hstorical or otherwise to incorporate some kind of historical wrestling into their practice in order to make the links between unarmed and armed combat and to unleash their ability to fight without weapons in today's modern common unarmed self-defence scenario.I'll add a note that as far as I know based on working with police, tactical squad and soldiers (and I was one for a short time too) the techniques in this book, which appear also in modern day unarmed combat systems, are indeed highly effective. They work based on a fine sense of balance and experience training, which are fine arts developed over years of training, but this book's techniques do indeed work very well and are worth learning! The more basic ones can be learnt quickly and even if done a bit inefficiently by beginners without a good sense of balance or timing, will have a strong potential to beat other inexperienced people "on the street". A skilfull wrestler who knows these moves at a higher level is in a very good position for self-defence indeed! Of course, for an all-round fighting system for the modern world you need to add in pugilism and ground fighting, but you will indeed be able to build these onto your base in this upright wrestling art. Both pugilism (boxing) and ground fighting operate on the same principles of leverage and timing as standing wrestling. I absolutely guarantee this book teaches very standard, well established wrestling/grappling moves good for both sport and "street".

L'autrice est renommee internationallement en AMHE ou HRMA et da plongee dans le medieval est prodigieuse et elle en tire la quitessence pour la joie des praticiens de maintenant.