The myth of Full Intent

Right, I see a lot of complaints about not fighting with full intent and suchlike. Now, let's be honest- nobody fights with full intent. And as the rattling of sabres and general harrumphing starts up, I shall go further and say you should never trust someone who- in this day and age- fights with full intent, for they are a callous fuckwit.

How dare I say this? Well.. We're good people. We don't fight to kill, or even injure our opponents. We have padding and safety measures to enable us to fight with more intent than we could otherwise and we aim for blows that would be fatal in a real fight. But. You would feel awful if you severely injured your opponent. Sometimes your actions are directed by where you know the padding is soundest, sometimes you avoid shots where you know your opponent is unprotected- you do not go for a groin shot he isn't wearing a box. There's a range of disarms that I will not attempt with the rapier unless I know my opponent is holding their blade in a certain way. Not because it's ineffective, but because I don't want to break their fingers.

In reality, the ideal would be to kill or seriously wound your opponent by any means necessary. I don't know about you- but the idea of doing that to someone fills me with horror.

We will (hopefully) never be called upon to use a sword in a duelling context and that fight- where your life is literally in the balance and it is kill or be killed- is going to be different to even the most intense competition fights. I will admit that I don't fight with intent, I commit to the attack and do what I can, following martial principles and suchlike. But at the back of my mind is the fact that I could seriously injure my opponent and I am wary of it. I'm not big on winning or losing, in fact I consider a poor fight as a loss regardless of who got the most hits in.

Obviously, "fair" intent is a moveable feast. My competition head is very different from my freeplay head, which is different from my "let's see if I can do this under fight conditions" head. For me, I think that my intent is related to how pressured I feel- and I suspect that's the same for most people. There are a lot of compromises necessary to keep things safe and as realistic as possible.

Swetnam says something along these lines- Be cautious of calling yourself great simply because you can beat your friends at play, for they are all gentlemen and do not wish to kill you. It may give you an idea of how good you are, but you will never know your real capabilities until you are forced into a live fight.

Although this is a martial art and it is taken seriously by practitioners, there are concepts of "acceptable injury" at play all the time. It's why we wear padding and use foiled swords. We do not want to wound our opponents, let alone hit them with a devastating blow.

With HEMA, there tends to be only two types of people you fight- people you think you want to have a beer with afterwards and people you know you want to have a beer with afterwards.