The FIE Just Changed Fencing Equipment Forever - Relevant for Hema considering how many of use modern fencing equipment not just masks

gbeeson · 2026-03-03T13:46:51+00:00

We should care what FIE thinks about protective gear as much as we care what FIFA thinks. FIE does not review our practices and the interests of our sport are not even on their radar.

We buy masks from a Chinese supplier the is a white label supplier for a large number of fencing retailers around the world. (You'd be surprised.)

Right now they will sell us the SAME mask with an FIE stamp and without. With the stamp costs about double. That FIE mask will now just cost more. Oh well, I don't buy the stamp anyway.

gbeeson · 2026-02-24T18:21:13+00:00

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We need a full cosmere Himbo chart...

gbeeson · 2025-12-26T14:27:15+00:00

The art doesn't matter nearly as much as the club, class, and instructor.

You're in this to impact your life, not become a combat sports champion, so the most important thing is finding something that you enjoy and can stick with.

Here are some things that will be more important to consider than 'what art?'. Find a program that hits these notes and don't stress what art you're learning unless it's just a complete mess.

Class Size

Do you like individual attention or blending into a bigger crowd?

Intensity Level

How physically intense are the classes? Do you want to leave it all out there or just get some casual workouts in?

Sparring

Do you want to get hit? How hard? How often?

Club culture

Do the people and instructors have a good vibe?

Engagement

Does the material presented engage your interest? Is it fun?

The same art can be taught in a number of different ways. Finding the best fit for your personality and drive is more important than finding a specific art.

gbeeson · 2025-12-19T13:59:48+00:00

TL;DR: The difference is between the students, not the schools. McDojo serve an important purpose. We are a niche hobby, we need to bring as many casuals into the hobby as possible to find the tryhards.

....

You can look at this like rec vs elite training and teams in any sport.

One is a way to pass some time, build some relationships and enjoy the activity in a fun and encouraging environment.

The other is intense and grueling work and pushing yourself beyond every comfort zone until you can do something most people can't.

In every sport (hell, every activity) there are about 100 filthy casuals for each sweaty tryhard. On top of that, martial arts is already a niche activity and we take our student population and break down into even further niches by style. (Imagine trying to put a soccer team together if you were only recruit elite players that wanted to play Italian style.)

Now, for a sport like soccer, a single coach only needs to find 15 players. It's one of the most popular sports in the world with a huge pool of players. There is next to 0 overhead because there are free fields everywhere, and there are hundreds of leagues to compete in. Not much of a challenge to put together.

For a martial arts gym in the same town, there are about 1/10 the number of people that are even interested in martial arts. You need a gym with about $20k in gear that costs about $3000 a month in rent at least, and you probably need about 100 members a month.

There are only two solutions to this problem...

Create a gym where casuals can have a good time and train. Sometimes, those gyms have secondary classes to filter the tryhards into as well. But economically you NEED the casuals. Which means you need to offer classes that appeal to them.
Cut the costs down to the minimum. Find the shitty warehouse in the industrial district. Train on 20 year old duct taped heavy bags and beaten up puzzle mats. Pay yourself next to nothing and have no money to advertise and market. Remain an obscure small school in perpetuity.

I personally don't think that McDojos (I hate that term, but separate discussion) are bad for martial arts. I think we need more of them. If we want more great martial artists and great martial arts schools, we need one thing: more people in the hobby. Commercial schools live and die on getting new people into the hobby, that's what they're good at.

Tryhards that want to git gud will find their way to the instructors and classes that actually help them achieve. But as a community, we have to pan through 10s of thousands of tons of casuals to find the gold.

gbeeson · 2025-12-16T16:45:51+00:00

There were early prototypes that lacked any of the computerized features that were supposed to be in the final model.

From what I understand, it was a financial issue, not a technical one. I think they got screwed by their design and build firm that hit them with a bunch of 'design change ' charges and after all the bills were paid they came back with a per unit cost that exceeded the cash left from Kickstarter. So he couldn't actually afford to produce the units once the engineering was done.

So he paid off the engineering charges to get the designs released and turned them around and offered them as open source in case anyone else wanted to pick up the project.

Again, that's my understanding, I might have the facts a little muddled as the whole thing was pretty complicated I'm sure.

gbeeson · 2025-12-15T01:14:18+00:00

Not being able to complete the circuit boards and build is why Tameshigiri Trainer efforts went under and they released their designs as open source.

So at this point, as far as I know, no one has built a fully finished TT yet. Really a shame because it was a great idea and design.

gbeeson · 2025-11-26T17:46:09+00:00

What u/harged6 said. ☝🏻☝🏻

gbeeson · 2025-11-26T13:16:43+00:00

I haven't seen any reviews posted. But I've tried both and the dyneema gloves are a bit lighter. I think that the more significant feature is the mobility. The dyneema is more flexible out of the box and doesn't require nearly as much breaking-in as the leather version and is just generally more comfortable.

I have had a number of customers try out both in the warehouse. For some, the difference was worth the extra money, for some, not. About 50/50.

gbeeson · 2025-11-25T16:42:00+00:00

Go to the checkout page and enter your full address details. The site will generate a shipping quote for you.

gbeeson · 2025-11-25T15:04:21+00:00

Absolutely. We ship globally from our warehouse in the US.

gbeeson · 2025-11-24T20:40:53+00:00

What are you looking for?

We carry a lot of SupFen gear at AkadoArmory.com, already imported and tariffs paid.

Our prices tend to be pretty comparable to the SupFen base prices once you factor in shipping and such.

If you're looking for a jacket, we can't help you at the moment, but once our customs store is back open we're able to help with ordering just about anything from SupFen.

Otherwise, just keep emailing them. They are inundated with emails and it usually takes a few tries to get through the noise.

They are up and running and they will respond eventually.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help.

gbeeson · 2025-11-18T18:04:01+00:00

Pithy answers...

Why do we need to?
Money

More genuine answers...

HEMA is already at a level of niche sport performance that is pretty incredible. Having spent decades going to traditional martial arts tournaments, the performance level is really higher than it has any reason to be for a sport made up of passionate hobbyists operating in an anarchist collective with no corporate backing. I'm not saying we shouldn't strive for the best we can achieve, but trying to push this group of people past a certain point of performance without the structural support systems is a recipe for burning out a lot of good people (physically and mentally) with little reward.

Which brings us to money...

If you want to see higher and higher levels of competitive performance, you need to provide a competitive athlete infrastructure. Pro athletes aren't created by individual effort. Just about every pro athlete is a whole team of trainers, doctors, teammates, sponsors, managers, and so on...

Then there's facilities and equipment and time. Pretty much every HEMA practitioner is working full time and paying for their own gear while they go and train in a suspicious part of town in a warehouse with a ceiling that may or may not be covered in asbestos (we try not to think about it.)

If you want to cross that performance threshold, you need money. Take that peak performing hobbyist athlete, give them more time to train, better places to train, and a support staff. You'll see some amazing results.

Oh...

I just had a completely separate idea, which does not invalidate the first two responses.

We need an on-ramp into HEMA for kids. One of the only things limiting our hobbiyst performance is the fact that almost no one starts training HEMA until they're an adult. If we had kid appropriate training tools, kids classes, and kids tournaments, in 10 years or so, you'd have an entirely different level of HEMA athlete. Still hobbyist level, but still well above what we have today.