How important is strength in sword fighting?

>>34632882
If you have a truly balanced blade that is incredibly sharp, then not as much as you would think. Authentic katanas don't need that much, since they slice through things so easily.

>>34632882
Skill, precision and speed is more important. Reach is important too.

>>34632882
Depends on the weapon, the fighting style, if you have to punch through armour etc.
What is somewhat uniform is the muscles used aren't always the ones you use a lot in day to day life so you'll know about them after a serious workout

Not as much as you'd think. A lot of the power when fencing comes from the hips rather than the arms. A sharp edge, proper edge alignment and technique are all much more important to a cut then the strength behind it. When using binds (blades sliding along each other) strength is also not that important, it comes down more to leverage.

That said, stamina is also import. Which also related to muscle mass and strength.

Of course, being strong is still a bonus. It's just not the be all end all.

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Sharp edges and acute points would seem to decrease the importance of strength relative to fighting unarmed or with crushing weapons since you can inflict horrendous injuries even with very little force.

However, strength remains important. Explosive strength means you can move not just the sword, but your entire body quicker than otherwise. In the bind, a significant strength advantage can allow you to just push through on raw strength. Likewise if you're significantly smaller and weaker than your opponent, then you will have to be very careful about fighting at shorter ranges where the fight may transition into wrestling, whereas your stronger opponent has no matching disadvantage at longer range.

Plenty of these things can be handled through skill and technique, but it isn't that knowing a few techniques will just nullify strength as a factor, rather that if your opponent is stronger, but you're more skilled, then it can even out. So the greater the advantage in strength, the greater an advantage in skill is necessary to make up for it, though the exact "rate of exchange" is of course impossible to really quantify, and possibly far from linear as well.

The relative importance of various factors probably vary with the swords and fencing styles used as well.

If armored : a lot (not because armors are heavy, but because hitting the opponent with your blade is almost useless).

>>34632928
>A lot of the power when fencing comes from the hips rather than the arms

Ie a strong torso that can hold up as the power from the legs pushing against the ground is put through to whatever you're doing with your arms.

Depends on time period, location and type of battle. A 1700's duel vs. a 800's shield wall are very different things.

>>34632882
For typical fighting (group vs group, hard armor sparse), speed and endurance are key.

For something like a duel (1 vs 1, unarmored), speed and technique are what wins.

Only when fighting someone who has hard armor is pure strength necessary.

Then again, swords were not the main melee weapon of choice for regular soldiers, rather spears and hast weaponry reigned due to its greater reach beyond shields and such.

>>34632917
What blue collar work would adequately prepare a person for a swordfight?

>>34633055
Something that builds core strength and forearms.

>>34633067
Like breaking rocks in the hot sun?

>>34633055
Rigging
I do a bit of climbing and abseiling, uses similar muscles. There are a lot of use in the smaller muscle groups -upper arm, forearms and shoulders, all of which don't get as much use as you'd think.

But like I mentioned, really depends what you're doing. Thrashing around in a crazy melee with a cutlass, katana or sabre is a different technique to poking holes in someone than a smallsword or blasting shit apart with a zweihander- but a high level of cardio never hurt anyone either. Plus if it all goes to shit, you can outrun them!

>>34632882
In a group melee speed and awareness, both of your buddies and hte potential multiple opponents at any given point in time are at least as important as raw strength. Technique weighs in a great deal in speed, a good swordsman can move their blade around apparently effortlessly to always be there to block you, and likely end up in a better position move onto the offensive afterwards.

1v1 it depends hugely on exactly what you're using, a shield larger than buckler can be used heavily relying on strength to bulldoze a weaker opponent, larger shields you need a good deal of strength simply to use the thing to begin with. Without a shield strength (and weight) can make up for a significant deficit in pure technical ability, although I would include restraint in skill, if you're lighter and weaker than your opponent knowing when to (try to) strike is as important as the technical skill of landing the blow, since you want to avoid rushing into any attack likely to end up closing into any situation where you're locked with the stronger guys sword or where they can move into wrestling you to the ground.

I've personally only done tiny amount of dicking around with blanks at historical events but there's almost always several hungry skellington's that 'do' some form of swordfighting as a hobby (often fencing which seems to translate horribly into any other form) that're all full of talk about how much time they've spent training in the past and they can totally take me. Generally things go the same way, after a couple of parries we've either locked blades or they've left themselves open for me to close in on them, and in both cases I simply apply greater strength and weight to bulldoze them to the ground or into the edge of the ring we're sparring in. The ones that don't get crushed tend to be those with the patience to work on getting me out of position or for me to try and get offensive, at which point they're better at countering and can expose me.

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>>34632882
Muscles are very important in sword fighting. Strengthlets pls go while I bang thy maiden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip-_vEPotYo

>>34633134
To add to this generally swordfights are not the epic battles hollywood loves to portray, and are often resolved in a few seconds once someone commits to an attack, the few times it does end up playing out like that is when you get someone moderately 'better' trying to wear down the defence of someone notably stronger. It can be great fun when you end up in a matchup with someone that's better than you, not enough to quickly find a way through but enough to not leave themselves open for you to use your greater strength to much effect on, and you end up going at it for several minutes. But in that situation unless you also have siginificant advantage in fitness/stamina the more skilled person is likely to end up winning the longer it goes on since they can expend less energy through more efficient movement and use of the blade.
Still damn good fun for both parties, even the higher skilled guy often has to think and improvise more than usual when faced with someone like me with minimal training/ability simply because I often wont do any of the expected 'proper' things from any given position, which can make it far harder for them to try and manouvere me into a situation where they have the advantage.

>>34633055
Being an oarsman

>>34632901
>autistic katanas

oh really...

>>34632882
Short answer: it's not as important as you think, but it helps.

Muscle memory, stamina, knowing your weapon's reach and balance, and technique are more important. But having extra strength is always a good thing, especially if grappling is involved which happened very often. Many people are surprised when they discover that you don't have to put much force into cutting or thrusting when using a sharp blade.

So to sum it up: strength is a really good bonus to have.

it's mostly about stamina and technique.

>>34632882
>Rapier
>Shorter than a long sword

shit graphic

>>34632882
Not as important as you think. Also that graphic is the worst sword related graphic I've ever seen.

>>34636652
>>34636536

it's d&d

>>34638927
well its still stupid?

I do sport fencing and HEMA. Strength is extremely important.

Everyone who says "a sword fight is over in one or two exchanges so strength doesn't matter" or that "speed and technique are the only thing that matter" is technically correct but completely wrong in practice, because in order to build speed, technique, and get gud enough to win you have to train and spar a lot, and trust me, that shit'll get heavy fast. But the best way to build strength & stamina is to train and train constantly and there aren't really any lifts that mimic the motions you'll make fencing. So if you want to get stronger for fencing, go out and fence!

Except you should be doing diddlies squats & power cleans to develop that explosive speed in your footwork

Longsword is more forgiving but requires more core strength. Sidesword & rapier are probably the most demanding in terms of straight arm strength. It'll kill your forearms. Sport fencing requires almost no strength at all.

You have to have certain minimal amount of strength to be able to properly move and strike with it. Other than that, not much. Being some musclehead wouldn't be an advantage.

>>34632882
It helps.

Can you make your question somewhat more precise?