Belegarth

To'Gur wrote:use heavier weapons to practice with, then lighter weapons for actual fighting.

kit wrote:

To'Gur wrote:use heavier weapons to practice with, then lighter weapons for actual fighting.

I don't think this is a good idea. It's important to cross train, and using weights to build upper body strength is a good idea, but if you're going to compete with specific equipment, you should learn to compete with that equipment in the first place. Fighting with foreign equipment is almost always a disadvantage.

Use of wooden training swords are actually known to date back to ancient times. The Egyptians practiced a form of fencing sport using thin knobbed pointed sticks and the Romans specifically employed them for combat training. From Philip Francis’s 1743 translation of the Roman poet Horace we also find that, “The Gladiators, in learning their Exercises, played with wooden Swords, called rudes.” In B. Holyday’s 1661 translation of the Roman poet Juvenal we read: “The fencer’s staffe or waster…was call’d rudis (as some think) because with such cudgels they practiz’d the rudiments of fencing, before they came in publick to fight at sharp.” In the ancient Roman arena preliminary events occasionally included bloodless, sometimes farcical, duels between paegniarii or lusorii, who fought with wooden weapons called arma lusoria. Among the gladiators, if a man repeatedly survived the arena and lived long enough to retire, a symbolic wooden sword or rudis was awarded as a token of discharge from service (Michael Grant, Gladiators, Barnes and Noble, 1967, p. 74 & 100). One classical historian has concluded that Roman gladiators trained with wooden swords at a straw man or a two-meter high wooden post called a palus (precursor to the Medieval pell). The same source tells us to give the gladiators strength training these wooden weapons were heavier than the real ones. (L. Friedlander-Drexel. Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms, as cited in Grant, Gladiators, p. 40). The emperor Caligula himself was known to have engaged in practice fights against gladiators using wooden swords. (Grant, p. 97).

Describing the traditional training of soldiers, the Roman military writer Vegetius told how young legionnaire recruits were given a “double-weight shield frame and foil, so that when the recruit takes up real, lighter weapons, as if freed from the heavier weight, he will fight in greater safety and speed.” (M. P. Milner. Vegetius: Epitome of Military Science, Liverpool, 1993). The original Latin term used by Vegetius was not “foil”, but ligneas caluas, with ligneas meaning wood or wooden and caluas meaning cudgels, stick, or practice sword. In his 1572 version of the 5th century text on training of soldiers by the Roman military writer Vegetius, John Sadler used both the terms “wooden waster” as well as “cudgels” and referred to “great wodden cowgels as heavy agayne as their usual…wasters”.[10] Finally, Philemon Holland’s English translation in 1600 of the 7th century Roman historian Livy described, “Foule worke they made with their wodden wasters and headlesse pikes” (XL. vi. 1063).

But be careful to keep control of your swings.