So. . . I recently watched the Agilitas.tv 'Sword & Shield' DVD, which draws almost exclusively on MS I.33 as a historical source (the sword and buckler of Hans Talhoffer, Paulus Kal, and Andres Lignitzer are briefly mentioned, but more for the sake of comparing technical differences due to changes in sword type than actually delving into their instruction.)
They spent some time discussing their interpretation of the Priest's stance in I.33, and what they've come up with strongly resembles the sort of stance taken by a modern collegiate wrestler (rear heel up, heavy bend in the knees, leaning forward at the waist. . .); this is explained as a way to supplement the limited reach of the weapons used at the time (apparently averaging 33" blade length) and to mitigate the effects of uberlaufen. They said that, apparently, as swords became longer with narrower blades the stances swashbucklers took became more erect, because their reach was better.
Now, to get to the point of this post, I wanted to ask if anyone else here thinks it would be reasonable to presume a similar "wrestler's" stance would have been used by people when wielding messers for reasons similar to those stated above? They are also single-handed weapons with blades comparable in length to the ones used in I.33, and seem to result in greater emphasis on binding and grappling from a bind than does the sword-and-buckler (I presume the lower, more forward stance should have provided some of the same advantages to the fencers in a bind/clinch that it does to modern wrestlers. . .)
The illustrations I've been able to find have been inconsistant with how erect the stances are in messerfetchen, but I'm starting to get the impression that the fighters are more upright in the later manuals than they were in the earlier. This could just be a case of me finding what I'm looking for, though.
They spent some time discussing their interpretation of the Priest's stance in I.33, and what they've come up with strongly resembles the sort of stance taken by a modern collegiate wrestler (rear heel up, heavy bend in the knees, leaning forward at the waist. . .); this is explained as a way to supplement the limited reach of the weapons used at the time (apparently averaging 33" blade length) and to mitigate the effects of uberlaufen. They said that, apparently, as swords became longer with narrower blades the stances swashbucklers took became more erect, because their reach was better.
Now, to get to the point of this post, I wanted to ask if anyone else here thinks it would be reasonable to presume a similar "wrestler's" stance would have been used by people when wielding messers for reasons similar to those stated above? They are also single-handed weapons with blades comparable in length to the ones used in I.33, and seem to result in greater emphasis on binding and grappling from a bind than does the sword-and-buckler (I presume the lower, more forward stance should have provided some of the same advantages to the fencers in a bind/clinch that it does to modern wrestlers. . .)
The illustrations I've been able to find have been inconsistant with how erect the stances are in messerfetchen, but I'm starting to get the impression that the fighters are more upright in the later manuals than they were in the earlier. This could just be a case of me finding what I'm looking for, though.