What Do We Actually Do?

Honour & Arms is a completely independent club dedicated to the study and competition of Full Contact Medieval Combat to HMB or IMCF rules. HMB is a modernised sport version of the medieval trounament fighting of old. Focusing on many differing disciplines, it involved full armoured, full contact fighting.

At Honour & Arms we aim to enable our students to practise in a safe, controlled and informative environment. Our training sessions are diverse and varied, and we cover a wide variety of techniques and combat styles, but each training session tends to follow a similar format.

To begin with we make sure we do an active warm-up to get the blood flowing and warm the body ready for the session at hand. This is enough to make sure the muscles we’re going to use are warmed up and stretched well.

Next we go through the fundamentals for the style of weapon in our rotation. This will usually involve a few drills and footwork exercises to keep the essentials sharp and on point. As with any martial arts practise, the fundamentals being a solid foundation is the key to progress and development. After this we will move onto the new technique or skills we’re focusing on for the session.

Led by one of our experienced fighters or instructors, the technique aspect will cover the exploration of a technique taken directly from our dedicated source manuscripts. The best part of this is that we have to interpret and develop this interactively within the session. We will work closely with you to refine and hone the technique and also open the floor to the groups thoughts and personal interpretations. Techniques build into technical or tactical drills which encompass all the techniques covered during the session.

Finally for those who have  the relevant equipment to meet the safety standards, we finish with some contact sparring, where the techniques and drills studied can be put into practical combat secanrios against your clubmates. Those without full kit will work on controlled sparring exercises, which builds precision and technique into combat experience.

This structure is ideal for continued teaching and development of students’ techniques, whilst making sure everyone has a great experience of HMB and ultimately enjoys themselves.