Early Gaelic Dress Guide

[Dale Seago]

It is more of a sport or a free-form martial art with a few safety rules and an honor based 'winner' system. Obviously they cannot kill or maim each other to determine the victor. Hits are thrown at about 80% force, enough to leave some serious bruising and welts. You can research all you want on fighting styles, but once you are on the field, there is no choreography, it is skill on skill. In eastern martial arts, you can go through all of the kata's till you can do them in your sleep, but unless you learn to fight, you are going to get your butt handed to you by a street thug.

T

Some of my Bujinkan students, as well as a few of their friends/colleagues from other Bujinkan dojo, are very much into armored SCA combat as a means of "live testing" their polearm (mainly yari and naginata) and swordsmanship (tachi) skills in as near a "battlefield' setting and intensity level as can be managed. And they're finding that what they've been taught works very well indeed. Now one of my black belts is spending nearly every waking moment at The Tech Shop working on sets of "functional" Japanese armor for himself and others.

[AllenJ]

oh I agree as well, T-Bone. As an MMA fighter as well, I'm painfully aware of how certain things just don't work once you get into something that really involves pain (even if it may not be lethal). For the record I find katas to be pretty darn useless outside of just a warm up and getting someone familiar with moves.
To comment on Dale- I would agree that spear and polearm techniques are probably the best choice in an SCA environment if you want to be as close to accurate as you can be under the rule set. There seems to be less restrictions there than the other weapons.