The DMZ Battle Hoodie: Close, But Not Quite

Intro

A new review! This time, a bit of an impulse purchase, because it just seemed like such a cool concept to me: the Battle Hoodie!

The Harambe Battle Hoodie is a hooded sweatshirt, augmented with foam plates and hard plastic inserts, and intended for HEMA training and sparring. It is designed and produced by Destroyer Modz (DMZ), USA, owned and operated by Josh Parise.

I bought this hoodie partially in preparation for the hot summer months, where in previous years, some days we didn't even gear up fully at all for fear of heat exhaustion. I was also looking to have some light and mobile protection, that would be enough to do light to medium longsword sparring with, without fear of serious injury. I felt that the more recent versions of the standard SPES AP jacket were made too thick and heavy, impeding mobility and breathability. For drilling and club sparring, and maybe even tournaments as well, this level of protection is unnecessary, in my opinion. That’s how I arrived at the Harambe Battle Hoodie. The concept is certainly very intriguing: a light jacket, light enough to wear as an everyday garment in fact, with enough added protection to also spar in, albeit with moderate intensity. Also, it’s relatively cheap, being a beefed up hoodie, not a full-on fencing jacket.

Caveat: I bought the hoodie mostly to use for light longsword sparring. I also used it with a few other weapons, like rapier, singlestick and nylon saber, but steel longsword was what I had in mind when I made the purchase. All criticism made should be viewed in this context. I have so far used this hoodie for less than ten sparring sessions, and less than five training sessions; no competitions, obviously, although there is a singlestick tournament in December that I might use it for.

Promotional photo by Black Armoury, showing the Battle Hoodie and it's protective plates. Note that the hard plastic top layer on the throat, chest and forearm plates are not shown here.

Customer service

Being in mainland Europe, I bought the hoodie through Black Armoury, DMZ’s official European distributor, as part of a larger order. There were some delays in getting the hoodie shipped to me, not down to this particular item but a delay in the production of another item in the order, but the people at Black stayed communicative and made no false promises. I would order from them again.

First impressions
As far as I'm aware, the hoodie, like all of DMZ's new line of products, is made by a subcontractor, Pakistan's Superior Fencing. I must admit that this did make me a bit uncertain as to what kind of quality I could expect. However, the overall production value on the hoodie looks good; no weird or wobbly stitching, and thick, sturdy looking fabrics. The outer layer has held up so far, and looks quite tough. I've been thrust in several places now while sparring and drilling, without discernible damage. The zipper looks like a good quality one and is reinforced at both ends by a snap fastener, which is a nice touch. The hood is removable, which I immediately did. So far, to be honest, I haven't really found a reason to put it back on, but it's nice that it's there, I guess. The hoodie has two front pockets with zips, so no sword tip can slip in there. Overall, it's obvious that some thought went into these details, which I appreciate. I did find one minor negative; the protectors are placed in pockets stitched into the hoodie, and closed with Velcro. The Velcro can be a little scratchy, and the stitching on the pockets looks a little thin in places, and I always put the hoodie on rather gingerly for fear of popping a seam there.

Slightly precarious stitching on the shoulder plate pocket.

I was surprised by the fit of the hoodie. I ordered a large, based on the sizing table provided, and it fit me fine in most places except the sleeves, which were surprisingly tight, especially around the forearms. Now, I'm not an especially small man, but neither is Josh Parise, the designer, so I assumed the hoodie would have been built more or less around his body type. Still, I have to really struggle to get the sleeves all the way on, especially when I'm already a bit sweaty.

Once properly put on, mobility in the hoodie is just fine. It rides up a little in high guards, but not problematically so. The shoulder plates took a little bit of getting used to, but after a few sessions, they're not really noticeable anymore. The elbow plates sometimes shift around and need to be budged back into place again, but never to an extreme degree. Overall, I would say that mobility is better than in my SPES AP jacket, but that the difference is less than what I was expecting.

I was also expecting the hoodie to be cooler. I wore it on a few very hot summer days, sparring for a few hours, and I was almost as warm afterwards as if I had worn a regular jacket. The inside moisture wicking layer does its job of absorbing sweat just fine, but the thick outer layer insulates perhaps just a little too well.

Does it hold up?

To start with, I must say that the foam shoulder and elbow plate inserts in the hoodie are surprisingly effective. Of course they won’t stand up to a 100% intensity strike, and they’re obviously not meant to; I did take some rather solid hits on the elbow without issue. This is one of those cases where you feel the impact, but it doesn’t really hurt or feel like it would be damaging unless the opponent is really swinging with full intent. I’m impressed.

I do have a number of criticisms, mainly concerning the shape and placement (or lack thereof) of some of the plates. For one, the throat guard, while well made with both soft foam and hard plastic components, is insufficient in its current form, covering only a small horizontal band across the collar.
Any thrust from below, therefore, can and will easily slide underneath and straight into the throat, completely negating the benefit of having a hard plate there. Extending the throat guard beyond the collar and onto the chest would probably solve this issue. I also noticed that adding the DMZ throat guard not only not solve this problem; it’s also too bulky to comfortably fit underneath the hoodie. I find it kind of odd that two items from the same manufacturer can’t be used properly together, but this is a relatively minor quibble.

From underneath, it's easy for a sword tip to miss the throat protector.

The forearm plates were really puzzling to me. I'm not sure if I was wearing the hoodie wrong somehow, but with me, they sat on the inside of the forearm. I still can't figure out why you'd put protective plates on the inside of the forearm and not the outside, or at least covering the ulna, arguably the most vulnerable part of the forearm. I did like that these forearm plates had both a foam inner layer and a hard plastic top layer; I'm just confused by their placement.

The forearm plate, showing off its two layers of soft foam and hard plastic.

The forearm plate, situated on the underside of the forearm.

The hoodie also has a foam plate with hard plastic top layer on the solar plexus, similar in design to the throat guard and forearm plates. This protector is tiny, however, and I don’t see any benefit in having it there; it doesn’t stop the impact of a strike, and hitting it with a thrust would be more the result of dumb luck than anything else. If I plan on allowing thrusts while using the hoodie, I have to add a hard chest protector underneath, which renders the hoodie’s chest plate superfluous.

The interestingly-shaped chest plate.

Besides the two plates offering limited throat and breastbone protection, there is no added protection on the torso at all, which to me seems a mistake. At least some sort of foam insert for either the front or side of the stomach or ribcage would have been a huge benefit here.

The Xion Longsleeve Jacket PRO, with an in my opinion more sensible layout of its protectors.

Lastly, I would have really liked it if the outer layer of the hoodie were certified penetration resistant; I would feel much more comfortable using it for lighter weapons like rapier, which I think the hoodie could potentially be a good option for.

Conclusion

My criticisms might be seen as overly harsh; after all, if this is basically nothing more than an upgraded sweater, what kind of performance should I really expect from it? To that I would say that the hoodie was obviously made to fill some sort of niche, to be a useful training tool in a specific context. However, I don’t see any context that this hoodie would be truly suitable for.

Is it for light drilling? I usually wear light gloves, a mask and a throat guard for all my drilling, and I don’t really see what wearing the Battle Hoodie will add to this. Is it for heavy sparring or tournament use? Absolutely not, obviously, unless you're suicidal. Presumably then, it is designed with light to medium sparring in mind, or at least of the available options seems most suitable for that purpose. In this though, it falls short in several aspects. It’s not comfortable enough to wear as an actual hoodie, it’s too warm to wear as a light summer fencing jacket, and it’s not protective enough for sparring without added gear. Maybe I’m completely missing the mark here, but from what I can tell from Josh Parise's comments about the hoodie, I don’t think I’m too far off from his intentions.

To be clear, I like the hoodie, and I still wear it on occasion, albeit with a throat guard and a hard plastron underneath, and the forearm plates taken out. As such, it’s fine for light sparring. However, given that there are quite a few much more suitable light sparring jackets on the market, I would hesitate to recommend the Battle Hoodie; unless some serious design changes are made, it falls short of its goals. There is however one application where I believe the hoodie would shine: this hoodie would be perfect for singlestick. If you do a lot of singlestick sparring with light gear, this might just be the piece for you.

P.S. While taking photos for this review, I noticed a seam on the inside of the upper arm had popped. I'm not sure what caused this, but felt it was relevant to mention.

The popped seam.

Wednesday HEMA: Now on Thursdays! No. 2

So, my plan to do a regular GIF of HEMA techniques being implemented in sparring or competition was disrupted right away by some traveling, but here it is, a day late! In the context of recent discussion on takedowns in HEMA tournaments, here's a GIF of a fight between Arto Fama and Simon van Gemert. It's a slightly longish one, as it involves a somewhat extended grappling exchange preceding the takedown, and I wanted to get it all in one shot. It's also a shame that I couldn't get the GIF to run entirely smoothly, but you get the gist I'm sure. Hopefully I'll get better at making these things in future posts.

Notice here that Arto clearly has no interest in engaging in the bind, striking merely as a diversion in order to get Simon to raise his arms up to parry. As soon as Simon does this, Arto immediately discards his weapon and drops levels for a full grip around Simon's waist. Simon is somewhat hard to take down, however, and Arto switches to an underhook in order to pull Simon over the leg and land in top position.

Now, I don't want to make this a political post per se, but what I do want to close this post with is saying that grappling, throws and takedowns in my mind at least clearly have a place in competitive HEMA, and this is an example of how it can be executed properly, with full intensity and intent.

Wednesday HEMA, No. 1

I'm planning on doing a weekly post on a range of HEMA-related topics every Wednesday. Mostly, this will be GIFs of manuscript being pulled of in competition/sparring settings, like my earlier post did, likely with some extra context and analysis added on.

The first one in this series is a nicely executed Duplieren by Cristoffer Holm on Axel Pettersson, in a competition that started each exchange in a bind.

Notice how Holm seems to let himself go soft in the bind for a brief moment before exploding into the Winding action behind Pettersson's blade, taking Pettersson by surprise. He also immediately covers any possible afterblow after making the hit. Good stuff.

HEMA technique gifs

I've been playing around with the idea of collecting gifs of sparring and tournament footage where 'textbook' techniques are being executed 'in the wild'. I don't have many yet but here's a few for future reference, and to play around with using gifs in blog posts.

Jin Ke Rapier Review

Intro
A few months ago, a Facebook user named Jin Ke advertised a new line of cup hilt rapiers on the Hema Professional Retail group, for 160 euros each. After seeing some early positive reviews, I decided to purchase one for myself. I wasn't really looking for a rapier, being more a longsword and sabre kind of guy, but noticing the Facebook post and the attractive price, I jumped on it; an extra toy is never a bad thing, was my reasoning, especially if it's (relatively) cheap. As such, I am an absolute novice when it comes to this weapons system. I had never trained or sparred with a rapier before this, and my exposure to rapiers is extremely limited. Any opinions expressed should be viewed in that context.

Service
I contacted Jin Ke via Facebook chat, and communication with him was quick and pleasant. He was very helpful and informative, and kept in touch, guiding me through the ordering, payment and shipping process from Ukraine, which was also very fast; I received the sword well within the two weeks quoted. Overall, nothing negative to report about this part.

I also ordered a pair of gloves with the rapier, and the whole package was shipped in two boxes: gloves, guard, cup and pommel in one, blade in the other. Both boxes arrived on the same day. Assembly was relatively easy, aside from the requirement of a pipe spanner or similar to tighten the pommel nut. I found it quite pleasant that a simple universal nut was used to hold the whole thing together, as this made possible future modifications a lot easier. The gloves look quite good, albeit a bit on the smallish side for a size L. They're leather, except for index finger and part of the palm, which is covered in some kind of tough-looking fabric, presumably to reduce wear. Clearly, they were designed and made by people who knew a thing or two about fencing, which is not surprising as I believe the production company is also a Kiev-based Olympic fencing store.

Fit and finish
If assembled properly, everything is super tight, and the cup rings like a bell. After the first sparring session, the guard did loosen slightly, but I have since replaced the regular nut with a locking nut, which should solve that problem. The blade is buffed to a nice shine, and the hilt furniture is sandblasted, which gives an attractive finish. The cup is rather big, and the grip is quite long, which does give a bit of an odd look to the sword. Presumably this was done to accomodate larger gloves, but it seems like overkill to me. What also seems like overkill is the thickness of the cup and guard bars; this thing should stand up to heavy (ab)use. Overall though, very high quality looks, far above what could be expected for the price.

Handling
As I said, I have almost zero experience with rapiers and rapier fighting. I do however, have some experience with single handed weapons, and in my relatively ignorant opinion, this rapier is quite heavy. It's advertised as being 1.3 kg, and mine is just over that. This is well within the historical spectrum for rapiers, though being on the heavier end- and usually, cup hilt rapiers were relatively light when compared to other models. However, while being technically historically accurate in terms of weight, in terms of practicality, I had difficulty using the sword for extended sparring. This wasn't a problem of balance, which was quite good; the point was easy to maneuver yet remained stable in the thrust. It was just that the static weight of the thing caused my forearm to cramp up after a while, especially using the extended-arm posture that Spanish rapier fencing often uses. Now, this could just be my inexperience, but I have never had this happen with any other weapon.

If one looks beyond the weight of the weapon, however, the blade itself performed quite well. It´s not whippy at all, as I heard is a problem with other cheaper makes of rapier such as Hanwei. It is more than flexible enough to be safe, though. Strong thrusts delivered straight to the throat did not hurt or cause any injury. This is probably also a result of the nicely large mushroom tip, which made adding any kind of thickening over the end, such as a rifle cartridge case or rubber tip, quite unnecessary. This thing is basically ready to use when assembled, which is quite nice and from what I've gathered, not always the case with rapiers. The blade edges are also relatively thick, and the heat treatment seems quite good, with no bends and minimal scratching after a full-tempo sparring session. The edges are a bit square though, and could stand to be rounded a bit more to make them even more durable.

Conclusion
Overall, this is a really good sword for the price. It's cheap, durable, well made, and good looking. I am however not entirely sure whether it would be a suitable training weapon for everyone straight out of the box. This is mainly a function of it's weight. I plan on doing a little HEMA hacking on it, maybe changing out the rather bulky cup for a lighter dish to improve handling, but if the makers themselves could put the hilt on a diet and have it shed 100-200 grams, and maybe shorten the grip by about three centimeters, this would be an amazing starter sword. As it is, it's very decent.

Authorship, proof, and basic assumptions in HEMA

This post is intended as a kind of follow-up to my earlier post on my research into the link between historical fencing and esoteric practices. As that post was of a more general, introductory nature, I would like to devote this and a few other, future post to some specific examples of what my research entails.
One of the main difficulties I encounter when trying to write about my findings is substantiating my claims. A lot of things that by now have become basic assumptions for me, may actually be incorrect, and need to be verifiable by my audience, and in order to do so I need to provide a thorough description of my reasoning and the way I approached my sources. In this post, I like to take a stab at doing that with one of my basic assumptions.

This basic assumption concerns the manuscript Hs. 3227a, also known as the Codex Döbringer. The reason for it being called the Codex Döbringer is part of another basic assumption as to the authorship of the book, but that is a can of worms I'll try to crack some other time. I do, however, want to discuss elements of the authorship of the manuscript. I believe that whoever composed the manuscript, while copying numerous texts from other books, did not copy the Glosse of Liechtenauer's Zettel contained in the book, but was the Glosse's original author.

There are several reasons why I believe this to be the case. The first reason concerns the use of personal pronouns, the second reason concerns the links to other texts in the manuscript, and the third reason concerns the structuring of the contents of the manuscript. The very nature of the book also plays a role, albeit only tangentially.

First, the use of personal pronouns. Usually, a Fechtbuch is prefaced with some kind of introduction, explaining the nature of the Glosse, but also quite often an explanation of the identity of the author of the Glosse. Because these texts are usually found in compilations by third parties, the authors are usually referred to in the third person. The use of the first person, where the writer of the maniscript refers to themselves in the first person, is exceedingly rare. in the few examples of it being done, such as in the works of Fiore and Talhoffer, it is clear that the first person is used because the author is referring to themselves. There is one example, in the Hans Medel Fechtbuch, where the copyist is referring to themselves in the first person, but here the scribe is quite careful to distinguish between themselves and the author of the text, Hans Medel. The Glosse in the Codex Döbringer, while being anonymous, does contain sections where the first person is used, while no reference is made in the third person to an author.

My second indication concerned the link between the Glosse and another anonymous text concerning fencing in the manuscript. This essay, if you will, on the general principles of fencing, precedes the Glosse. It is, however, quite similar in style, as well as in the nature of the principles being explained. On multiple occasions, emphasis is made on what the author considers the foundation of longsword fencing, which he considers point-centric, lean and simple, and devoid of any superfluous techniques. The phrasing of these principles is so similar, that I would be very surprised if the author of the essay preceding the Glosse and the author of the Glosse were not the same person.

My main reason for thinking that the writer and original owner of the Codex Döbringer is also the author of the Glosse, however, lies in the way that the book is structured. The martial arts sections seem to be structured with the intent of providing a complete system. The Glosse is the meat and potatoes of the treatise, to be sure, but it is preceded by a foreword of sorts; it is summarized; and, it is followed by 'chapters' on a variety of weapons and their use, all described as deriving from Liechtenauer's system. Strangely, though, interspersed between these chapters are texts on a variety of other subjects, which ostensibly have nothing to do with martial arts. On top of this, many of the chapters seem unfinished, some even breaking off mid-sentence. It's almost as if the author decided to write a general treatise on martial arts, set aside a bunch of pages for each chapter, and got quite far into his first draft of the manuscript, but never quite got around to finishing the entire thing. But, books are expensive, and there's no sense in wasting a good notebook, so the empty pages were used for random notes from other books that interested the author.

This last bit is obviously merely a hypothesis, and a lot of the evidence is circumstantial, but I do believe I made a strong case for it. The above points are the main pieces of evidence I have, but there are lots of other little bits that pointed me in the direction. At the very least, the possibility that a professional scribe wrote the manuscript for a client can be excluded. For example, the book is quite small, pretty much the size of a modern Moleskine notebook. Also, while the handwriting is the same throughout the book, there are indications, such as in the color of the inks used, that the author went back and forth within the book, adding sections within paragraphs perhaps days or weeks later. Not only that, but a lot of sections are striked through, to be rewritten or discarded.

All these little things give me small indications as to the identity and perhaps even character of the author of the manuscript. Since the manuscript is anonymous, this is all I have to go on, but now, aside from knowing his interests through what he chose to copy from other books, I can also say with some confidence I have access to his original thoughts.

Swords and Sorcery: my research

This post is mainly meant to summarize the current state of my research on the link between medieval martial practice and esotericism. I want to use it for both selfish and generally informative purposes. Selfish, because I can use it to get my current lines of thought in a little more coherent shape, and maybe build a base to springboard my thesis off of. Generally informative, because I believe my topic is a genuinely interesting side of HEMA research, and underdeveloped topic within a deeply underdeveloped academic genre.

My interest in the link between HEMA and esotericism began when I had to pick a topic for my Bachelor's Thesis in Religious Studies. I figured I'd pick a topic that involves something you like investing large amounts of time in, so swordfighting wasn't that far around the corner. The main guideline for the thesis topic was that it had to have some kind of connection to magic and/or witchcraft. I happened to recall an online discussion that mentioned the swordfighting instructor Hans Talhoffer had some kind of connection to Kabbalah, so I thought that was as close as I was going to get. Some research got me scans, photocopies and transcriptions of most of Talhoffer's manuscripts, and while looking through them I got two surprises. First, there was no real Kabbalah in there to speak of. One of the two manuscripts had a Hebrew alphabet, yes, and some other Hebrew scribbles, but that was about it. However, there was quite a bit of other very interesting material there to work with. One of the manuscripts, for instance, contained all sorts of devices for predicting the outcome of a duel through combing the letter-value of the names of the combatants with the date and time of the fight, a particularly rare kind of divination called onomancy. Another manuscript was filled with strange illustrations of all sorts of machinery, semi-alchemistic recipes, and, on top of that, a whole chapter devoted to astrology and physiology, complete with Medieval humoral teachings. In short, I had more than enough material to devote a thesis to.

My main working question revolved around trying to figure out why, exactly, Hans Talhoffer decided to combine these esoteric elements with his seemingly more down-to-earth fighting arts instruction. While I never quite came up with a conclusive answer to that, the work did serve as a gateway to other manuals combining esotericism and swordsmanship in similar ways. For instance, along the way I discovered that another swordfighting manual, the Hs. 3227a, also called the Codex Döbringer, contained what a catalog entry called "astrological texts, magical and medicinal recipes, onomatomancy". Here was another manuscript combining onomancy and swordfighting! I would have loved to include an analysis of the particular kind of onomancy contained within the Döbringer manuscript, but unfortunately, as opposed to the Talhoffer manuscripts, no transcription or translation of the relevant folio's could be found. In fact, I had quite a bit of trouble getting a hold of good quality scans of the relevant folio's, let alone a transcription. This meant I would have to do the painstaking work of transcribing and translating a particularly tricky passage of a hard to read manuscript myself, with no experience in such matters. Did I mention that, while the sections of the manuscript were in German, the esoteric bits were in Latin? Clearly, a compare and contrast of Talhoffer and Döbringer were quite beyond the scope of a Bachelor's thesis.

So, I figured I'd continue my research during my Master's program. I have now had roughly two years of a Research Master behind me, and this is what I have so far. After quite a bit more work than I anticipated, I was able to transcribe the section containing the onomancy. I wasn't exactly sure which folio contained the relevant information, so I had to transcribe around fifteen pages. Then, after taking a course in Medieval Latin, I attempted to sort through the raw data. Besides the onomancy, which turned out to be roughly two paragraphs of quite a bit more primitive devices than the ones contained in the Talhoffer manual, the pages contained a great variety of other hugely interesting material. A brief overview should give an idea of the nature of the texts. For instance, a table connecting the four humors, the four seasons, the four elements, and the four stages of a man's life, in various ways. Or, a poem describing the different months, with their nature or the activities one undertakes during that time. A few medicinal recipes, for instance a drink that purportedly gets rid of a tapeworm. The previously mentioned onomancy. My personal favorite section, however, is a copy of an alchemical manual called the Liber Vaccae, or the Book of the Cow. This rare and historically quite demonized book contains a variety of what can only be described as scientific experiments of a generally quite gruesome, visceral nature. For instance, one experiment describes an application of the Medieval scientific principle of spontaneous generation by transforming a dead calf into a swarm of bees, or vice versa. The procedure is quite complex, and involves beating the calf to a pulp with a black dog's penis and  I am not even kidding. Another experiment describes the creation of a homunculus by impregnating an unidentified animal with various herbs and stones, sealing up all its bodily orifices, and storing it in a dark place. After this, it's stomach is cut open, and the resulting product can be used to produce all sorts of miraculous effects, among which control over the weather, invincibility and invisibility.

So, with this material in hand, my plan for this year is to finally compare and contrast Talhoffer and Döbringer. there are a number of questions I would like to have answered. Who were these men who wrote these books? What was their education like, or their social context? What caused them to be interested in both martial arts and esoteric topics. Were these interests related in any way? Did Talhoffer, perhaps, have entirely different reasons for including the material than Döbringer? Of course, perhaps not all of these questions are answerable, and new questions might arise during the coming months. This is, however, where I stand right now. It's kind of exciting, really, as I believe no one has ever done this kind of research, at least, not that I'm aware of. It can also be kind of lonely though, so if anyone is working on the same kind of thing I'd very much like to hear about it.

Future posts will probably go into more detail, but I hope this was of interest to those already involved in HEMA, but perhaps unaware of this side of it.