There's quite a following in the female heavy fighting community for the style called the Armored Rose. Even some male fighters recommend it to women, and as I'll mention in more detail later, I know of a few men who, to my eye, seem to fight the style.
I'll use this web book to discuss why I think it is a bad idea to teach Armored Rose to women. I'm not going to address issues of psychology (though I am not alone in thinking that there are problems in that part of the Armored Rose book) nor will I address the depths of the medical physiology described in the book. I'm not a psychologist, nor a doctor.
But I have been fighting since 1986, I've been a knight since 1995, and I've trained an awful lot of people, including women. I also come from a kingdom where analysis of fighting technique is a well defined science. I mention this because I've seen very large differences in method, methodolgy, technique and terminology across the Known World. Some places don't seem to have any agreed-upon terminology for things like range, blows, or shield position. And unfortunately, some places where fighting happens don't seem to have any plan, method or style for training fighters. But more on that in another book.
This is a work in progress. Sections below may be nothing more than a sentence or two, serving to spur me to further elaboration. Please bear with me, please comment, but please keep examples to things you have either experienced or seen with your own eyes, not things you heard second or third hand.
First off, you can read this link to get an extremely detailed understanding of my technical prejudices.Yes, it's very long. It should be.
The proof is in the pudding as they say, and I've personally never seen any pudding. Everyone I've ever seen win with sword leg forward has been big or strong or fast or thick, or some combination of these.
The point I'm trying to get to is that in my opinion, successful sword leg forward style requires big or strong or fast or thick, and among any population of heavy fighters, women are least likely to be any of the first three, and no one should aspire to the fourth.
If women's bodies aren't able to move the same way as men's when throwing a blow, then why do female batters, boxers and martial artists move the same way as their male counterparts?
I've never met a healthy woman who can't twist her hips roughly 90 degrees from a rest position to point onto the same line as her back foot. Anyone who can do that can generate enough force to throw a killing blow. However, standing with the sword foot forward pulls the hip around, effectively removing most of the large muscles of the body from the blow. In fact, sword foot forward stance begins at the place where the blow with greatest amount of power generation ends.
The most power anyone can generate in a blow starts with your sword foot back. By taking a big step forward with your sword foot, your hips and shoulders swing around toward the opponent and as your foot lands, your blow completes. But if your sword foot is already forward, there's nowhere for the power to come from.
Further, standing with the sword foot forward requires a much more active shield defense. By bringing the sword foot around, less of her body is protected by the shield so the the fighter cannot manage small blocks to cover those portions that are now targets. An active defense is more work. An active defense is harder than a mostly passive one.
I had the chance to attend most of Duchess Elina's formal class at Pennsic in 2003. One of the most crucial things that I noticed in this class is that generally, the generic examples of "the way men fight" were correct in one primary and unfortunate way: they showed an example of bad style, bad technique, bad form that is all too typical in the SCA. The generic style used by almost everyone (though that "almost everyone" may be 60% or so) is an example of bad technique all the way around, and is quite exactly the sort of style you need to be physically talented with in order to have success. No wonder that most women who start fighting have problems, when they probably get shown a terrible stance if they get shown one at all.
What was that style? Much to my shock, a duke demonstrated it as if it were his own. (He was a duke from an earlier era, and I didn't catch his name. It was not Duke Stephen of Beckenham--more on his style later.) Mystery duke stood with his feet not quite square, his shield almost flat, his shoulders almost square to his opponent and his sword foot's heel completely off the ground. It didn't look terribly different from the stance any person off the street would take if you asked them to put on a shield, hold a sword and look like they wanted to hit someone. Terrible.
No wonder that anyone attempting this would have a problem, not just the women. Here comes the chorus:
To fight successfully (these days at least) with such poor form, a fighter has to be big or strong or fast or thick.
So what? After all, I'm supposed to be talking about how sword leg forward is wrong for women. Right. Here we go. When you justify sword leg forward style as better than "the way men fight" you aren't saying much when what you mean by "the way men fight" is badly and with little or no style or technique.
All right then, you ask, If that generic style is so bad, then why not teach sword leg forward to women? Because sword leg forward style relies even more on strength, size or speed for success. It may provide some of the same benefits that any style does: planning on how to do things for example. But it does not offer an easy block, a powerful shot or any of the other benefits that, for example, Bellatrix or Oldcastle style offer. See the next section for a breakdown.
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Here are a few of the trade offs in sword leg forward
It extends the sword range, at the cost of defense and power.
It removes the shield side leg as an easy target, at the cost of opening up most of the sword side.
It makes rising leg wraps almost impossible. (Such blows are pretty rare in the west, where Elina is, from what I've seen.)
Though few Armored Rose fighters will have experienced it, fighting sword foot forward makes them prey to any opponent with an open, forward shield and a willingness to go to very close range. By executing a moderately aggressive sword side pass, an opponent can end up with their shield right against the fighter's sword shoulder and or their basket hilt, effectively shutting down their entire offense.
And worse, most women don't have the strength or size to muscle their way out of such a shut down.
Further, the plus side of the trade offs listed above are not difficult to achieve. You can do almost all of them without suffering the negatives:
Range: Just stand closer to your opponent. It feels scary, but it scares them too.
Blocking the shield side leg: keep your shield against your forward leg. Less muscle work that way too.
With your sword leg back, rising leg wraps come easy.
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I've tried to understand this chapter, but after listening to the class, seeing the demonstration and reading the book several times, I'm left still shaking my head and thinking either "so what?", "Huh?" or "no no no."
I look at all the photographs of men's and women's fists, and all I can think is "So what?" These pictures don't have anything to do with where your hand is when ending about 95 1/2% of the blows fighters throw. Now and then someone brings their face toward the sword so fast that you never have to open up your hand, but these "punching" blows are very very rare for most fighters.
When I look at the opponent's-eye view of the male and female flat snap, my first thought is "Huh?" That's because as I look at those two blows, what I see are two different blows. I throw both of those blows, and in fact, in my experience, the "female" version of it is the one most common among men. The "female" example (I'll call it the second one from now on) is an extended, reaching flat snap, the classic definition of the blow and one that looks more or less like its illustration from the Fighter's Handbook circa the 1980's.
The "male" blow (I'll call it the first example now) is a crossing flat snap. It has less range than the extended snap, but better ability to move to the inside of a same-handed opponent's shield.
The second thing I think when I look at these pictures is "no no no", but I will admit that this reaction may be to a lack of clarity in the picture, and in all fairness the problem seems to be gone in the later pictures. Nevertheless, in both examples, the flat snaps displays one of the most basic problems new fighters have with this blow: it is too low. Beginners need to practice this blow's full extension at eye level, not the chin level displayed in the pictures.
But the critical thing here is that these are different blows which get past shields in different ways. Fighters who want to be successful at range need to be able to throw both of these blows.
Though I can't say I recall exactly, I remember that when demonstrating the part of the grip discussion at her class, the example of the flat snap shown as the kind that hurts a woman's hand was the most extreme, short range punching version of the blow. Around here in Atlantia, we don't even call that a flat snap. That's because the sword never snaps out. We call blows where the wrist and fingers stay in a fist "short stem" blows because they have very short range.
These same problems occur in "The Hip" chapter, pages 47-49, illustrations 16 and 18. While these may show differences in physiology, they absolutely show different blows. Duke Stephen's weight is more forward, his hand has crossed the center line of his body, and he is clenching his fist. By doing these things, he is "cheating" himself of a foot or more of range with the tip of his sword. Maybe he doesn't throw long range flat snaps. That doesn't mean that men can't throw exactly the blow being shown by Mari. Finally, I wish I could tell, but it really looks to me like Stephen has risen onto the ball of his sword foot. I hope not. Sword foot heels need to be on the ground at the end of a blow.
Both of the models in the section on the hip make significant errors with their elbow while posing for the camera, in the pictures mentioned above and in the mini-movies. In three examples: Bottom left and center of page 46 and 48 and Figure 1 on pages 125 and 127 the fighter allows the elbow out from the body far to early. Speed and momentum are gained by holding the force of any blow close to the body for as long as possible. By swinging the arm, and thereby the sword so far out away from the body so early, tremendous amounts of energy are expended and wasted and the blow is slower because the sword must travel in a larger circle around the fighter throwing it.
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I'm shocked that I just noticed now, and I hope that no one using The Armored Rose as an instruction manual notices either.
Thoughout all the pictures of all the stances, neither of the models ever bends their knees enough. Nor can I find any mention of bent knees in the text. Bending your knees is really important. In fact, I think it's the second most important thing for not getting hit. The first? You guessed it: keeping your sword foot back.
But really, even people who say that you shouldn't keep your sword foot back still emphasize the need to bend the knees.