History of the Pell

http://www.thearma.org/essays/pell/pellhistory.htm

I have created this blog to comment on various aspects in history on European sword techniques. One of my interests outside of school is the study and practice of European sword techniques. I am part of an organization called Arma (Assoication for Renaissance Martial Arts) that studies European fighting techniques from fighting manuals that were written in the 13th century through the 17th century. These manuals however did not just teach fighting with a sword. They included other things such as unarmed combat, wrestling, dagger techniques, pole arm techniques, sword and buckler techniques, and even mounted techniques. I have included the link to the article from our website and will keep bloging on various articles from our website. All the articles I will be commenting on from the site are considered public information by our organization and can be viewed by anyone by simply going to http://www.thearma.org/ and going to the articles and essays section of the site.

For this first blog I would like to comment on an excellent article we have on our site about the Pell. A Pell was typicaly a poll sticking straight up out of the ground that swordsman would have practiced their techniques on. Armies during the Medieval and Renaissance era started training on trees while armies were camped to keep their skills up. Evidence that soldiers and men-at-arms really practiced on trees can be found in numerous pictures and wood-block pictures of students of the sword doing this. Men-at-Arms practiced against pells sometimes with their real swords but they also practiced against pells with wasters (wooden swords) to save the wear and tear on their steel swords. We can relate practicing against a pell to our own time by noticing how boxers train by hitting punching bags, police officers hitting punching bags with their battons, and watching other martial arts practice hitting other stationary fixed targets. Perhaps the most obvious benefit of hitting a fixed target such as this would be to build muscule. I can tell you from many hours of practicing at my own pell (check out the picture on the top left to see my own home made modern version of a Pell) that it certainly does that. Another perhaps obvious benefit of practicing at the pell would be the practicing of angles to swing at a target at. You do indeed get to practice attacking a target at angles with the sword (which include diaganol, verticle, and horizontal cuts). Perhaps the most underrated advantage of practicing at a pell however are all the things you learn without even having a sword in your hand. If a person does not stay within strike range of the pell then you can practice approaching a target. This is extremly important because (just like with other martial arts) the moment a fight with the sword starts your opponent gets to work studying your movements and their distance to you. They look for the openings which you are presenting to them and move in to attack those openings. So, you can practice approaching a target and learning what distance you need to be in order to attack someone (beginners of sword techniques are notroious for their bad sense of distance and timing because they haven't learned to pay attention to this yet). The other thing that is underrated regarding the pell is the important of the body's angle of attack to a target. Anyone who practices sword fighting (fencers unfortuntly have a hard time with this because fencing has been turned into a sport and are not allowed to move off a line of attack because of the rules of their sport) knows that if you just stay facing your opponent face to face you will not last long. The reason for this is that once your opponent attacks an opening on you and they keep attacking you just keep backing away to try and get away from it is much easier for them to move forward and attack you then for you to move backwards and defend. So the answer to this delema is to move off to the side. Moving to the side helps to save your bacon when the opponent keeps you moving back. The pell provides a straight line for you to look at and practice moving off to the side at. In other words, the pell gives you a focal point which you can use to practice moving around. These are just a few of the advantages that knights, swordsman, and Men-at-Arms would have had practicing at the pell during the Renaissance and Medieval Era.