Episode 213: Armoured Martial Arts, with Jenny Häbry

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Jenny Häbry is an armoured martial arts competitor who has crowned UK's best female fighter in both 2022 and 2024, and again in 2025. And since 2024 has served as the Women's National captain. She has founded her own team, and her favourite discipline is pro fighting, where she remains undefeated. In 2025 she secured three World Championship gold medals, further cementing her place as one of the sport's leading fighters. Jenny also travels worldwide, sharing her expertise and passion through teaching. She runs Armoured Martial Arts Nottingham with UK men’s team captain Daniel Winter.

 

In our conversation, we find out what the modern sport of Armoured Martial Arts involves; the different elements of competition, the physical risks, how Jenny trains, and what this very small sport needs to grow. We also hear about her titanium armour!

 

Jenny also tells us about her recent trip to America, where the sport is much more popular. Here’s a photo of her winning the crown in the first female five-round championship fight:

Find Armoured Martial Arts Nottingham here: https://www.armouredmartialartsnottingham.com/

Transcript

Guy Windsor 

Jenny Häbry is an armoured martial arts competitor who has crowned UK's best female fighter in both 2022 and 2024, and again in 2025. And since 2024 has served as the Women's National captain. Her favourite discipline is pro fighting, where she remains undefeated. Well, she hasn't fought me.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Next week, then.

 

Guy Windsor 

Maybe not. In 2025 she secured three World Championship gold medals, further cementing her place as one of the sport's leading fighters. Jenny also travels worldwide, sharing her expertise and passion through teaching. She runs Armoured Martial Arts Nottingham with UK team captain Daniel Winter. So without further ado, Jenny, welcome to the show.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Thank you very much for having me.

 

Guy Windsor 

Oh, and I forgot to mention that you founded your own team in 2023. Okay, so I think we've established that you're pretty good at this. So before we jump into that, let's just orient everybody. So whereabouts in the world are you?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So right now, I'm based in the UK, in Nottingham for the past six years, and before, I've been born and raised in Germany.

 

Guy Windsor

So what brought you to Nottingham?

 

Jenny Häbry 

My partner, Daniel, I met him nearly 10 years ago.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, so you're what the Finns call a love refugee,

 

Jenny Häbry 

Sort of, yes.

 

Guy Windsor 

Because, you know, I've been to Nottingham and I've been to Hamburg, and I'm not sure I would choose Nottingham over Hamburg, just on their own merits.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Well, they're both advantages, disadvantages. Let's phrase it this way,

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, Guy just alienated all of his English and just got a bunch more German listeners just with that one foolish comment. Okay, so most of the listeners probably don't really know what this armoured martial arts thing is as a specific sport. I mean armoured martial arts to us is like reconstructing the armoured combat of the Liechtenauer systems or Fiore dei Liberi, or whatever, some medieval system. But armoured martial arts, as we're talking about them today, is a specific and organised sport. Would you like to tell us basically, what it is that you do?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, I would love to. So just to give an idea, I like to split it into three categories. We have the group fights, the armoured MMA and the duelling. So in the group fights, we do 5 vs 5 12 vs 12. And for the men, even up to 30 versus 30. And the goal is to get the opposite team onto the floor. The moment it hits the floor, they're out of the game.

 

Guy Windsor 

So it's basically the only winning move is a takedown?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Takedown throw or by strikes. If you strike hard enough and you injure them through that and they drop, that's a win as well.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, sure, but the only win condition is that they're on the ground. It doesn't matter how many times you hit them or any other thing. It's just, if they're on the ground, they're out. And if they're not on the ground, they can keep going.

 

Jenny Häbry 

That's it. And we like to kind of explain to people, it's like rugby in armour.

 

Guy Windsor 

Also a bit like judo.

 

Jenny Häbry 

There's a lot of cross reference and between combat sports in general and our sport. But for this, it’s team based so you do teamwork a lot. You do a lot of different techniques together. And I’m coming from a team background, nothing to do with combat at all, but that's what I love. I love having a team around you, and because it's combat, you would have to be like, okay, I trust my team that much. I'm sure they’ll watch my back, because I would have to really often put my back to my opponents and expect a hit, but I trust my teammates to look after me, and that's like the team aspect of the sport.

 

Guy Windsor 

What team sport did you do before?

 

Jenny Häbry 

It’s called fist ball. Nobody knows about it, but it's basically volleyball, but different. But you can compare it to volleyball, so nothing combat related at all. Okay, so that's a group area. Then we have the armour MMA. That's basically MMA in armour. So you can do kicks, knees, punches, groundwork, and obviously you do sword strikes as well, and there the goal is to win by points in a specific time given. The time given depends which organisation you're going to. But the professional fights are three rounds of three minutes, and that's nine minutes.

 

Guy Windsor 

That's nine minutes in armour going full whack. That's actually quite intense.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Very intense. Yes, you have to bear mind my duelling kit, or my pro fighting kit, is roughly 20 kilos.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, on the light side for armour.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It's on the light side but I'm only 62 kilos myself.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, so it's a third of your body weight. Let's put it that way, that puts it in a better perspective. So my, my equipment, would be significantly heavier than yours if it was in proportion.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, yeah, that's correct. And that's like the most intense category we do have,

 

Guy Windsor 

What scores a point?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So you can either sword strike, a punch, a kick and a knee.

 

Guy Windsor 

They all score. So if you're in armour, if I punch you in the chest, that counts as a point.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, that's correct. And then we have our duelling categories, which is bit more like fencing. So in the duelling categories, we have the longsword, the polearm, the sword and shield, and the sword and buckler and they’re all based on points and the given time you have. And there you don't do any kicks or knees. It's purely fancy striking.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, so the duelling category is like the MMA, just only sword strikes.

 

Jenny Häbry 

That's correct, bit more like Olympic fencing.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, okay, but in armour with big, heavy swords.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Longsword, or even a pole arm. A pole arm is a long stick with an axe at the end, just in case people don't know that. It can hurt as well. It's not just soft, it does impact as well, but it's very more technique and fast speed involved in this one.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, so in the MMA version, the armoured MMA, so you don't get any points for throwing someone on the ground.

 

Jenny Häbry 

So we have different rule sets, and some you wouldn't, and some you would, but a lot of them, and you do get some on the floor, and you are in a dominant position, and you do strikes, you get double points.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, so if you like, if you're pinning them down and pelting them you get double points for every hit. That's cool.

 

Jenny Häbry 

And on some we have time limits. So, for example, 10 seconds or 30 seconds on the floor, on the sum is unlimited. So you have to get back up off the floor in armour, which is a completely different challenge in itself.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yes, I've done enough armoured combat to know that, yeah, okay, in properly fitting armour, getting up from the ground isn't a problem, except that you're carrying all the extra weight, and your centre of gravity is about 15 centimetres higher than it was before, which kind of messes things up a little bit, but it's like that's more of an endurance problem than, you know, non-armoured people sometimes have this idea that someone in armour who's been thrown on their back to sort of lies there like a turtle, flapping their arms and legs. But no, you should be able to, like, roll to your feet, correct, and do all that sort of stuff. But it's hard, bloody work.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It is because, also, to bear in mind, we do have, I didn't mention it's in the group fights, we don't have any weight classes. So I'm like 62 kilo woman will face females, which are 100-odd kilos as well. So that's no weight class. But in the MMA, we do have weight classes. But then when you go to the ground, bear in mind, we have the same weight class out of armour. We both around, let's say 62 kilos. But then when I lay on the floor and she would be on top of me with 20 kilos on top of armour, I'm not just moving 62 kilos. I'm moving 82 kilos off me.

 

Guy Windsor 

Plus whatever of your own armour you're also moving. Okay, all right. I have so many questions.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Let's go.

 

Guy Windsor 

I guess my first one would be judging. How do the judges train? Because it's not a very big sport yet, and the one thing that everyone wants to do is the fighting, and no one really wants to do the judging. And so how do you get enough qualified judges that they can actually see whether the kicks and punches actually land, and strikes actually land. So how do you how do you train the judges?

 

Jenny Häbry 

We are quite lucky in the UK that we have a strong knitted community and an organisation, and we have a lady, Mary George, who is really pushing the marshalling and has trainees I think, over the last few years, 20 trainees. And it's literally pushing and trying to educate them is always on top of it. So then she has some qualified marshals, or always trainees around as well. You have to do some tests to be official Marshal. And there's quite a few steps to actually get to be an official Marshal, but the first few years, it would just be spending as a trainee, basically watching it.

 

Guy Windsor 

Why would anybody want to do that? Are they paid? Are they compensated in some way, or is it just honour in the community?

 

Jenny Häbry 

We are getting there. It's a payment. Unfortunately, we are not on the sport yet. We would like to be where we can pay them what they deserve, in my opinion, anyway. So it's the honour of the sport. It's just loving the community, loving the people that doing it, and really often it is partners as well. So we have, for example, one of the partners on active fighter, and one of them is an active martial so it's kind of probably like family day out.

 

Guy Windsor 

Oh, I see. So you actually have a lot of couples doing this.

 

Jenny Häbry 

We do have a lot of couples in the sport, yes.

 

Guy Windsor 

That's fascinating, there's absolutely no way in hell I could get my wife to do anything like it.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Just in my team, half of them have a partner who are fighting as well.

 

Guy Windsor 

Fascinating. I did not expect that. Okay, so, I mean, the reason I'm asking is that the armoured martial arts, sort of MMA style fights I've seen seem to be quite, I mean, I've only seen like clips on the internet. They seem to be very professionally run. And the historical martial arts scene has a large tournament scene as part of it. And again, the perennial problem is the organisers work too hard and don't get paid, and the judges work too hard and don't get paid, and it's difficult to persuade people, or difficult to get people to do the judging training to become good judges. And that's the choke point. If we could somehow make it like the best thing ever to be a judge, then the whole tournament scene would massively benefit, because everyone would want to do the training, and they'd want to do the judging, and they, you know, I'm just curious if there's anything the historical martial arts community can learn from yours about how to… motivate’s the wrong word, but it's the best one that can come up with motivate the judges.

 

Jenny Häbry 

I think it is, what is the nice of a sport like I have never been much of a marshal at all, but being on the side of a 5 vs 5, is quite an adrenaline rush as well. And I think that's what people love as well. It's just like it is this whole action and you are close to it. You're not just like watching it from a two, three metre distance. You are right there when it happens. And I think that's what motivates people in our sport. And it's a community we do have, like the marshals, if you have a tournament in Germany, it's not just German marshals, literally marshals from whole Europe come and support and help as well.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, so how big is the scene?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Small. We are very small, I'd say. So we’re not even seen as an official sport in the UK yet, because we don't have the 1000 membership. Don't put my name on the number now, maybe 500 fighters in this country right now, and in the UK with the benefit of being small, we have managed to really gather a good fundamental of people to bring the sport even further as well.

 

Guy Windsor 

And so, like, if you go to an event, say, for example, in Germany, I imagine this sport is pretty big in Germany. How many fighters would you expect to see there?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So it depends. So there are a lot of small tournaments. And then there's like, for example, once a year, the biggest tournament right now, even in Europe, which is called Way of Honour, which we go always to as well. And there for us, we as females, we have between six and nine teams, which is a lot of teams to have.

 

Guy Windsor 

Six to nine teams. And each team is five to eight people. So that’s like 50, 60, actual combatants, something like that.

 

Jenny Häbry 

That's Europe-wide coming.

 

Guy Windsor 

But that's just the women. That's just the women. I mean, this may be wildly off base, but I imagine there's more men doing it.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Oh, way more like in any combat sport, the females are the minority. We're not really doing anything. But I think in this sport, because of needing to buy the armour, which is quite expensive, needing to really commit, needing to travel, because the tournaments are not just around the corner, and there's not gyms in like in every big city, so you have to travel to training. It's even less. On the guy side, when we just have a UK tournament, it's just British teams. I think the best we have had was 16 male teams.

 

Guy Windsor 

Just 16 teams. Again, you're talking in teams, and that's a multiple so we're talking like, maybe 100 people.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yeah, a few more, even.

 

Guy Windsor 

And so it's your largest event in Germany, the Way of Honour. How many men total would you expect?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So because it's so popular tournaments, they actually have a cap on teams, and they allow between 20 and 25 each year. But if there wouldn't be a cap, I would imagine it would get up to 35 to 40 teams at that tournament.

 

Guy Windsor 

So that’s like 300 people.

 

Jenny Häbry 

That's coming from the Netherlands, from the UK, coming over, from Poland. So it's literally all coming together.

 

Guy Windsor 

But I think how many people would show up to the biggest tournament is a pretty good measurement of the community as a whole. Because the people who have the time and the money to travel and the training inclination is as much smaller subset of the people who just have the training inclination. So there's going to be for every one person who will fly to Germany every year for the event, there must be at least five in whatever club or country they come from, who can't make it that year. That actually puts it not too dissimilar to historical martial arts events. So for example, the Helsinki Longsword Open last year had about 210 I think, male longsword competitors. So that's actually sort of on a par with yours. I mean, I don't think the Helsinki Longsword open is the big event of the year for the whole of historical martial arts community the way this Way of Honour is for you guys, but it suggests to me that in terms of like numbers, we may be not that different.

 

Jenny Häbry 

No, I think we're pretty much similar. And hoping in the future, next 5, 10, years, we all going to be even double amount of the number.

 

Guy Windsor 

Honestly, I'm doing what I can to get as many people swinging swords around as possible.

 

Jenny Häbry 

This sport has only been in this country since 2013, so it's very green the sport. And the first time I saw the sport I didn't join because it was very different. They didn't have any gyms for the sport. It was all done the training in parks or back gardens, private land and all outdoors, really. Nothing was indoors and in, if was like maybe in a hall, but you couldn't use armour because of damaging the floor, so it was only soft kit. While now, we have nearly in every major city a gym.

 

Guy Windsor 

An actual dedicated training space. So tell me a little bit about your Armoured Martial Arts, Nottingham, as an entity. What sort of club is it? What sort of space do you train in? What sort of equipment do you use? That sort of thing.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yeah, so we opened our gym two and a half years ago in Nottingham, and before our club where we compete is the White Company, we used to train down in Whittlebury before we moved up to Nottingham, to mine and Daniel's space. So what do we have? We have a whole, I say a whole gym. We have a whole gym like just weights, kettlebells, slam balls, all those in the front area, and we go to the back area. That's where we have all our combat related, where we have our list. So we don't have a cage, you can have a cage as well, but we call the wooden frame, which is outside of an arena, is the list. So our list there, we have our soft kit, because we actually only train one to two times a week in armour, and the rest is all soft kit.

 

Guy Windsor 

We're going to get into the details of training quite soon. So I'm just making a note to come back to that, because that's fascinating. Okay, but carry on telling me about your space, like, how large is it?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Very good question. Next question. It is the largest we have in the UK right now. But don't expect a huge space, but it's a decent size.

 

Guy Windsor 

I mean, I ran a school in Helsinki for a long time, and in 2007 I think we moved to a bigger space, and we moved into a space that was 266 square meters, and that was enough for about 20 people with longswords could all train at the same time without getting in each other's way too much.

 

Jenny Häbry 

With a longsword you need quite a bit of extra space, as well.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, so, as a professional martial arts instructor, I am curious about the economics of this. So you have this permanent space, that must be quite expensive in Nottingham. I'm guessing you're not in the centre of Nottingham, in the most expensive real estate, if you're like me, you’re in the cheapest, grubbiest suburb in some grotty industrial area.

 

Jenny Häbry 

like not quite it is a good area. It is in Long Eaton, so it’s good access to Derby and Nottingham. It's kind of like quick switch of the topic, but just to understand what the space is. So me, my partner, daytime run an organic home delivery service, and we run it out of a corner in this area.

 

Guy Windsor 

Ah, okay, so you have another business supporting the training space support, that's an organic home delivery did you say? So if I want organic carrots and I live in Nottingham, I might call you up. Just like vegetables and what else? Free while you're while you're on the air, feel free to plug the shit out of your company that actually makes money, what is the name of your company? Where could we find it?

 

Jenny Häbry 

It is Trinity Farm, organic home delivery service. And we used to run a shop as well and everything, but we decided to close the shop and focus purely on our home delivery service as of last year, because that's the main focus in our business and company, and also that opened up to expand gym for us as well.

 

Guy Windsor 

So you took over the shop location and made it into training space. I totally approve of your priority.

 

Jenny Häbry 

No, it's just, to be honest, everything this day and age is online, everyone just wants to click and order, and everyone is so busy.

 

Guy Windsor 

How did you get into running an organic home delivery service?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Through my partner, Daniel. I met him 10 years ago on his farm, and that's how it all started, basically.

 

Guy Windsor 

What were you doing on his farm?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Volunteering. So after school, I decided I really to improve my English. I can't speak English at all. So I decided, let's go do some volunteering in England. And okay, and that's what I did after school.

 

Guy Windsor 

Wow, so you just went and volunteered on an organic farm, just LOLs and experience and to improve. Your English is pretty good, I must say. And so like, the whole organic farming and produce and delivery and selling carrots and whatnot, that's that Daniel's original business, and you're now sort of part of it. And so like, packing stuff up and driving it around to people's houses and, okay, I think Ipswich is a bit far for a delivery, but if I’m ever in Nottingham I know where to go.

 

Jenny Häbry 

And that's basically how we have the space, which is actually not a warehouse hidden away. It is on main road as well, and it is a good location. And we have some future plans, which I’m just going to drop in now. We can go more details later, but we're playing on having fight nights as of this year as well in our gym. And we have already seating all up. We are listing all the building work right now for it, and it's easy access, with buses and everything to get there as well. It's worth coming to Nottingham, I promise 100%.

 

Guy Windsor 

It’s the best argument for visiting Nottingham. Okay, because I've been thinking I moved here in 2016 and I was teaching like full time in Helsinki, and now I travel around to teach in various places, and I make most of my income online through books and courses. And I am missing having a salle. And the thing is, opening a salle in Ipswich would be expensive and difficult to get, basically, to make it work. Because, again, I'm not interested in, like, hiring a hall two nights a week and teaching classes that way. You know, if I want to have a training space, I can shoot my videos in and do my training in, and run classes in, and host seminars with guest instructors in, that kind of stuff. So that really means getting a place 24/7, which is big enough and nice enough that I can actually make it work. But to make that work economically, I would have to run a professional school the way I did in Finland, and I don't want to spend the time on it. It is an absolutely full time job and evenings and weekends too, because evenings and weekends you're teaching, and during the daytime, you are doing all the other stuff the school needs, like, in my case, writing books and producing courses and running a podcast and doing all these other things, but the notion of having some other business that pays for the space, basically, what you're telling me is that if I can just boost my online courses sales and book sales enough that there's enough money coming in, I can just, because I'm shooting the courses in the space, I can say, well, that's my organic delivery service that pays for space, and then I have whatever space I want for classes.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It is a concept. It definitely works for us. And obviously now the gym is, bear in mind two and a half years ago, we started with, we came up with 10 members only. So 10 members can’t support this.

 

Guy Windsor 

Obviously can't, and that is not going to support a permanent space.

 

Jenny Häbry 

No. And also, bear in mind, those 10 were all a long distance away, because they weren't in Nottingham. So that's basically started with zero members, but obviously now our gym is going way beyond that. So obviously it does support itself more and more and more now, but you're having a space where you can combine your businesses or living even, depends on what you want to do.

 

Guy Windsor 

No, I have children, and they would strenuously object from moving from our comfortable proper house into a salle. They wouldn't like that at all. And also, my wife would have words.

 

Jenny Häbry 

You can live there by yourself.

 

Guy Windsor 

No. If I had to choose between swords and wife and kids, I don't even have to think about it. Wife and kids.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Right answer. Well done.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, now we're going to get into the training and stuff and the armour and soft kit. But I think the thing that most people listening will be sort of wondering about is, you guys are beating the shit out of each other with swords and pole axes and you're wearing armour, sure, but people get killed in armour all the time in the Middle Ages. How do you make that activity safe enough for modern people's sense of risk?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So first of all, we don't do any stabbing and our weapons are blunts.

 

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, interesting.

 

Jenny Häbry 

All our weapons are blunts and have to be one millimetre thick and so they're not sharp. We do have some safety rules we have to follow. There’re certain strike zones we cannot hit, like the back of the neck, the back of the knee, on the feet and the groin. And they are also constantly looking how to improve it in the sport and if there needs to be any changes regarding safety as well. But yeah, and then obviously our own responsibility is to make sure the armour you wear is fitting us well enough so we don't have unnecessary gaps, because if the armour is not made to you, and it's either way too small or way too big, you end up having gaps, and then and swords comes in, but because it's blunt, most of time, it's just bruising. So if you think about injury weight, or in general, about the danger, it is not as dangerous as MMA, and it's kind of comparison to rugby. Okay, so MMA, obviously you get way more blood and broken shins and stuff when you kick, but because you have our armour on.

 

Guy Windsor 

You're not going to break a shin bone like that. Okay, so you restrict the strikes. You're careful about the armour itself, yes, and the no thrusts, I think it's maybe critical, because the one I mean, are you guys wearing sort of like a mesh eye protection, or is it an open visor?

 

Jenny Häbry 

You can choose. So we have a wolfrib which is like the bar, and there have been eye injuries with the wolfrib. So even my partner, Daniel had, just to bear in mind, it sounds a bit more brutal. He did have a sword going into his eye and had a surgery a few years back.

 

Guy Windsor 

Ow. Okay. But to put that in context, my friend Kieran about 20 years ago at a reenactment event, he had his visor up and in the press of the reenactment, a sword bounced off his armour, and it went, I mean, the bloke was not trying to thrust at his face. He cut to the armour, and it bounced up, and the point went through Kieran’s skull just above the eyebrow. And he ended up in hospital for months and months, and he had a big chunk of his skull replaced with a titanium plate and that sort of stuff. Yeah, yeah, it was a really serious brain injury, but it was a freak injury that the only way to prevent that kind of thing is to allow sort of modern, sort of mesh style eye protection inside the helmet. And that compromises, should we say historical authenticity.

 

Jenny Häbry 

And to be fair, we do have a lot of people wear visors, so it's very little gaps going towards the eyes, anyway. And something to do bear mind is as humans our reaction is to actually flinch away from anything coming towards the eye. So normally, if anything comes towards the eye, you are your own protector, you automatically already flinch away, and you wouldn't actually get it into your eye. That's something to bear mind as well. Like we are quite aware of the body.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, but again, not allowing thrusts, and presumably there are significant penalties for people who thrust anyway.

 

Jenny Häbry 

So first you get always warnings, and we have yellows and red cards as well in our sport.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, yeah, because, from what I recall, you don't have sort of rubber points or anything on your swords.

 

Jenny Häbry 

No, no, they're just blunted.

 

Guy Windsor 

Now, I mean, to my mind, the biggest risk would be joint injuries from wrestling.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Correct. So we have knees, which not everyone has knees anymore.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, knees are delicate,

 

Jenny Häbry 

Especially again, because with the knee. So I have my weight, my armour weight, and then I have the opponent and the weight of opponent's armour on my knee. And bear in mind again, in the group fights there's no weight class. It could be ranging between 90 and 140 kilos my knee has to take. And for me, so far, touch wood. I've never had anything I have trained, always very hard, and I always make sure I do weightlifting all of that around so I protect my joints from that. So be able to not just be surprised with the weight, to be able to have the weight on them before.

 

Guy Windsor 

But it has sort of similar risks to any other contact sport, like rugby. And I would imagine, like with rugby and even more so, like American football, concussion is a problem. Do you have any issues with concussion?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes. Obviously, the helmet protects us from anything breaking in a sense. It if your helmet doesn't fit, that's on you, and that's not because of the opponent, but we still get the impact of the hits and the concussion. And obviously, yes, we have the helmet on, but then we have someone with a metal buckler, which like a small, round shield blowing into your face, obviously the impact, and then the weight of them and the armour behind it. We do get concussed as well.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yes, is it just an acceptable risk?

 

Jenny Häbry 

I would say so. It's a combat spot. At the end of the day, you can put a bit more padding in. You can do the best out of it. But end of the day, if a two-handed pole axe comes towards you, yeah, it's part of it.

 

Guy Windsor 

So what you're saying is the best, the best safety thing, is parry. Don’t get hit.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Get out of the way.

 

Guy Windsor 

And just to put things in in context. I do some practices in my training, which some of my colleagues think is insanely dangerous, and I think is a perfectly acceptable risk. So for example, I will do sparring with sharp blades, just not to the touch. But of course, if you make a mistake, you can get a sword through your face, right? And I'll do that sometimes without any protection at all, because to me, the small but real risk of permanent, life changing or fatal injury is worth what I'm learning from that interaction.

 

Jenny Häbry 

I think it very much depends on what your goal is in the end of the day. In any sport, if you just want to do it casually, or you want to be top notch, and if you want to be top notch, and everyone like, that's my goal, and everyone who wants to be top notch, then they know themselves. They will do everything they can to get this 1% better. And if it's this, what you're talking about, will make you 1% better, that will take the risk any day.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, yeah, so this very much falls into the, you know, yes, it's dangerous. Horse riding is dangerous. Horse riding is the most dangerous sport in Britain by a mile, like, you know, like motorbike racing, maybe one fatality a year, horse riding, generally, maybe 100 fatalities a year, every year. I mean, it is, it is madly dangerous.

 

Jenny Häbry 

I think life can be in any sense dangerous. You can walk up the pavement and slip down in the snow.

 

Guy Windsor 

I think I understand how you guys categorise the threat. And it seems perfectly reasonable to me, not that you're here to be judged or anything. But compared to some of the other very dangerous things we do all the time, it has known risks which can be mitigated up to a point. Have you been concussed yourself?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Not fully, no. Well, had light concussions myself, but I've gotten away so far, very lucky, to be fair, but also to bear in mind when we are training, we do have rules of not hitting the head full power because, you don’t always have to use full power. Light sparring and stuff. You can get loads out of it. Or if you go full power punches, you just go towards the torso and so on. So like, you know that within the training, especially, we train a lot. There are some rules we do set to make the most of it.

 

Guy Windsor 

That makes a that makes a lot of sense. Like, yeah, in competition, you have to deal with full power head strikes, but you don't need to do those in training.

 

Speaker 1 

Not 24/7 anyway. No.

 

Guy Windsor 

That actually brings us. On to the whole “How do you train” thing. So maybe take us through what a week of training looks like for you.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, we now run our gym, so that's part of my training scheme or routine, now. Monday, stay off.

 

Guy Windsor 

Rest days. Everybody listening? Listen to this. Rest is part of training.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Jenny says, like, I used to make the mistake of not doing it, and actually it didn't get me anywhere. So, yeah, I've dedicated rest days, which are Mondays and Saturdays most of the time.

 

Guy Windsor 

Two days off a week.

 

Jenny Häbry 

So, for example, this week, we have national training. So I will be training on Saturday, but on a normal week, Mondays and Saturdays, I do have my rest days. And the reason I do this because the other days are quite intense. So and every day I train a minimum of three hours. Also, kind of people know how our schedule is in the gym, so Tuesdays, Wednesday and Thursdays, the first hour we always do fitness. Part of it is strength, explosive power and conditioning. And that's all. It's full body. Obviously, each day is slightly different. So we hit each muscle group we would like to hit. After this, we go into an hour of striking. That's all in soft kit, so our foam sword and our foam shields and like our foam helmets, like MMA helmets, basically.

 

Guy Windsor 

So you're just fighting each other.

 

Jenny Häbry 

So that's where we learn new striking technique, punches, kicks, knees as well. And then we go and finish the session off is light sparring, and that's in the first hour done of just striking. It's the same, if you go to any other MMA gym, is like the pad work they're doing.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, so it's the equivalent of pad work.

 

Jenny Häbry 

And then after this, we have an hour of wrestling, and this is focused on pulling, throws, take downs, teamwork, groundwork, all of these. And again, we learn new techniques in the session before we practice them on the moving target. And then go into live wrestling. And we are going into full live wrestling there so, full power, everything you got.

 

Guy Windsor 

So your basic training pattern is three hours. The first hour is conditioning, the second hour is weapons practice and fencing, if you like, and then the third hour is wrestling and sort of technical stuff, and then competitive stuff.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, so competitive is, like, even the striking we finish off with sparring, that's competitive as well. So, yes, so there's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

 

Guy Windsor 

That is a lot of work.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, yeah. Like, not, not many people can do these three full sessions and still get something out of it. Don't be wrong. People can be taking part and be like, I'm here, but not actually learning. There’s a difference of actually being there, and learning and listening and doing.

 

Guy Windsor 

I think I might do, the conditioning on Tuesday and the fencing on Wednesday and the wrestling on Thursday.

 

Jenny Häbry 

which is absolutely fine. That's what I do. A lot of students do that.

 

Guy Windsor 

So that's basically what's available, and you do all three. But a lot of your people come for one or other of the hours, or some combination.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Definitely always two. They very rarely only come to one session, and then it's up doing, for example, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they only do Tuesday and Thursday, or Tuesday and Wednesday. And then that's our soft training done for the week, and our strength training done for the week. And on a Friday, we gear up into our armour, and this where we do live sparring. So everything we practice in the week, you can then practice in armour, because armour is clunkier. Armour moves differently. You have different things you can grab. So, yeah, we kind of need to learn things twice.

 

Guy Windsor 

Armour is its own thing, yes, for sure.

 

Jenny Häbry 

So you learn out of armour first, but you do kind of have to repeat, repeat, repeat, and do it in armour yourself as well. And that's another two or three hours on a Friday night.

 

Guy Windsor 

Two or three hours training in armour. Two or three hours training in armour, fine. Two or three hours training in armour after three days of, three hours of training per day. I'm 52. I think I need a rest day in between.

 

Jenny Häbry 

And that's why I rest on the Saturday, because by then my body is like, yeah, I kind of need the rest. Give me some break please. And that's where I rest. And then on Sunday is where we have our heavy day. So on Sunday is where we focus on our group training most of the time. And this where we have people coming from across the country to our gym as well, because it's more accessible doing on a Sunday than during the week after work. And we start the day off with out of armour, with the first hour and a half, two hours just literally learning, again, teamwork, combination throws like all wrestling based, and this one, there's no striking base. And then we get up into armour and do another two hours in armour. Yeah. So Sunday is literally, we start at 1030 and I don't, because we need to obviously get everything ready, I don't leave the building till six. Yeah, so it's a long day, but people will stay out by four.

 

Guy Windsor 

I very much remember what it's like being the person who's in charge of the space.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It is something to bear in mind when we have tournaments, we are especially guys on the side, and you are in armour all day long. So you need to adapt your body to be an armour for a longer time, and not just an hour here and there.

 

Guy Windsor 

I mean, when I was conditioning myself for armour some years ago, I would just put it on in the morning and then just have my day, yes, like, you know, like, work at the computer.

 

Jenny Häbry 

You want that your kit or your armour feels like a second skin, and that's what my armour fits. For me. I put it on and I don't feel like, if it's heavy, it just feels normal. It's part of it. Okay, off we go.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, I think, to my mind, like half of armoured combat is conditioning to the armour.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, Armour conditioning is very different conditioning, and you can't really train it out of armour.

 

Guy Windsor 

No, I've tried. Armour is a pain to get on and off.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, takes time.

 

Guy Windsor 

So let's just talk a bit about the armour itself. Where do you get your armour from? How much does it cost? Because is it the same as the stuff that we're using, which is sort of like historical reproductions?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So not quite sure if it's the same. We do have dedicated smiths in our sports who are based in Poland, for example, or in America, we have quite a few there.

 

Guy Windsor 

Just making armour for your sport? So it’s sufficiently established, and there are enough people buying armour that it can support professional armourers just making armour for you guys.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes. The waiting list is a minimum of six months if you order made to measure. So they have the demand there too, to make it. Three of our new students are all ordered, and it's always when you order. The problem is it's you just give you an ETA, and it's always a few months later. So just if you have an ETA, just be prepared for it. But so with the armour, how it is, price wise, it’s very different depending on what you want, and for example, if you want it in new or second hand, and also something to bear in mind, there's a difference between having steel or titanium.

 

Guy Windsor 

So you use titanium armour?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yeah, my armour is to 90% titanium.

 

Guy Windsor 

Fuck. That is cheating. Well, it's cheating in a good way, oh my God.

 

Jenny Häbry 

So if I could, I would have, every female I can have a titanium armour, mostly like the helmet, for example, stay steel. There’re a few parts we want to keep steel.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, the mass can be a critical part of its defensive properties. So take out all the mass, it doesn't work as well. So absolutely you need a heavy head. It must have cost a fortune.

 

Jenny Häbry 

so I was lucky enough to get it now six years ago. The sport comes out of Russia. So now, with the war on Russia happening right now, there's a few smiths we don't have access to, basically of people, obviously, like same as us. We don't actually support them right now. So I got mine from a Russian guy six years ago, and I was lucky enough, I was his first female trial of titanium armour. So I got a good price, but if I could, I would have every female in titanium armour, because steel is just heavy for females, and we don't need steel. We do not hit hard enough to hurt through steel necessarily. Yes, we’re getting there more and more, like the female side of the sport is growing and we are getting stronger, and our hits are more efficient, but men use it, even my partner has titanium still and he goes with a mail. And it's just a steel just adds the extra weight.

 

Guy Windsor 

Like I am absolutely sure that if Galeazzo da Mantua in the late 14th century had the option for titanium armour, he would have taken it because it would have made him faster than anyone else on the battlefield.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It protects well enough I have my armour for six years now. I have dents, but everyone has dents, right? Like even the steel gets dents, no cracks. I had a crack in one of my steel parts, but not in my titanium part.

 

Guy Windsor 

So say I wanted to get into the sport, don’t worry, I’m a bit old.

 

Jenny Häbry 

There was a guy called Brian. He was 60, so there's no excuse.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, but I like my brain in its current state. I don't mind risking getting cut open, but I don't want to risk a broken elbow or a concussion.

 

Jenny Häbry 

You would be fine. Just the training, no tournaments. We do have a lot of people, just jumping on this.

 

Guy Windsor 

That might be fun. Next time I'm passing through Nottingham on the way up to see my mum, she lives in Scotland. Yes, I should drop in for one of your training sessions and you’ll find me sort of curled up in a corner quietly puking my guts up.

 

Jenny Häbry 

And that's how it should be.

 

Guy Windsor 

So to order a suit of armour for your sport from these guys in Poland. Now, yeah, I have relatively expensive tastes, but let's say I tone myself down a little bit and sort of go middle of the road, good enough to do the job, nothing fancy. What kind of money are we talking about?

 

Jenny Häbry 

We always say between two and a half, four thousand pounds.

 

Guy Windsor 

That is not much.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It’s quite a bit.

 

Guy Windsor 

Decent armour for historical recreation purposes, like I was expecting the bottom line to be around £8000 so you can get armour that, that works for, like, 3000 pounds. Is that, like, complete, like, that's, that's cuirass, legs, arms?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So you wouldn't have everything to compete most of the time. So, mean, like, you need a tabard, something you above the armour to recognise which team you're in, and that's another £100. So that's like things that do add up a bit more. But yes, you can get roughly for three. And the one we recommend right now to our students are more like between three and a half and four. The only thing opposite to bear in mind, living in the UK now we do have import fees, so that's kind of ramping the price a bit more up, unfortunately.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, but that's 20% or so. I have a VAT registered company, so I'll just buy it through the company and get the get all that back. That's fine. Or you can just visit Poland on holiday and just come back with a heavier car than you went with.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Exactly. I mean, that would be the ideal.

 

Guy Windsor 

That’s against the law. I am not recommending this. This is very wrong and naughty. Don't do it.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Never heard anything you said, what do you mean? But yeah, so that's something to bear in mind. But a lot of the smiths do accept monthly rates as well. So a lot of people don't actually need to get it all in one go. So there are ways and me and Danny, we're always looking for second hand gear so we can pass it on to our new students. Because it's not just when you buy it new. The problem is you are waiting at least six months.

 

Guy Windsor 

That is quick. Yes, I mean, my cuirass took at least 18 months.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Wow, yeah, that's long.

 

Guy Windsor 

But then it was very carefully made to medieval specifications, and it was very beautifully done. That was a little bit on the fancy side, because, you know, like I said, I have expensive tastes.

 

Jenny Häbry 

the problem is, so what is when you come that's not specific our gym might. Maybe our gyms do differently, but we have to rule that, basically, you don't compete till you have your own armour. So we do have a club armour they can train in rent off us. But problem is, in competition, the damage it can take is just something we can't do without armour only that would just get destroyed, and then we wouldn't have the chance for new fighters to actually take the chance and get into armour. But if you have six months, then it's like, you'd start training and like, oh no, I want it. And then you have to wait another six months, and sometimes 7, 8, 9, 10, because of the delays. And it's like another season is over, and you're like, God dammit. So people do get frustrated at it.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, I mean, it’s basically true, for sword suppliers and all sorts of people, like most, most of the sort of people who have the personality to make armour or make swords do not have the kind of personality to run a reliable business. It's really rare to get those two things in the same person. Normally, if you have a reliable business in that regard, you have at least two people. One of them runs the business, the other one makes stuff, right. And I think I remember like 25 years ago, Deltine in Italy, they had the longest wait time of any sword maker we had any connection to, any sword maker we could find. This is like 1998 and, various sword makers normally say, like, three months, right? And three months goes by. You don't hear from them, you contact them, oh yeah, you'll get it in a few weeks, and by the time you actually get it, it's been maybe eight months or a year. Deltine would say nine months. And you give them your money, and nine months later, your sword arrives. Every time they were 100% reliable at getting it to you by nine months. And I would take that over the kind of the soft six months. Then, you know, like, okay, if I order it now, I will have it in time for this.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Trust me, I'm German. I know what you mean. Don't go with the deadline. He gave me a deadline. Now I want it. But I think the issue is like, because you and I know it takes time, and we kind of aware of it, but then a normal person, like, because everything you order now you get the next day. So we’re used to this constant flip over getting stuff within the next few days while, then suddenly you can't get in the next few days. You will have to wait months and months and months. And I think that's what people are kind of struggling with.

 

Guy Windsor 

Although I think Kickstarter has helped with that, because a lot of people order stuff on Kickstarter, whatever, and they know it's going to be in three months or six months or a year or whatever. And so that's helped train them to be a bit more comfortable with waiting.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, so that's purely steel, which is what we recommend right now for beginners, especially males. So just have steel, because when you're a beginner, you're just not aware enough to protect yourself well enough so you don't want to go and take the risk. But titanium, right now, the prices are through the roof. Let's phrase it this way. You're looking at quite a bit more.

 

Guy Windsor 

So maybe double?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes.

 

Guy Windsor 

And that's not unreasonable.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It depends, I think, where you're at in your life and how you want to invest.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, okay, put it this way, I spent more money on my best sword than I spent on my car at the time, and I spent more money on an original copy of Capoferro's Gran Simulacro from 1610 than I spent on my car at the time. I mean, it's just priorities, I'm quite happy to drive a 12-year-old car and own a 400-year-old book. I mean, come on, priorities.

 

Jenny Häbry 

That's my point. Everyone is very different in this aspect. And I think for some it seems so much as I don't think they can afford it. And for some they're like, oh, actually, I think, you know, I could do it. For some it's like, oh, whatever I can pay it the next day, so I think it depends where you’re at. But obviously you have the armour then you want to buy yourself ideally.

 

Guy Windsor 

Ideally you want steel armour to train in, and titanium armour to compete in, because it will feel like it will feel like flying.

 

Jenny Häbry 

So you say that, but personally, I wouldn't want to do that, because when I would be training, I want to have the equipment on I'm going to compete in because I know exactly what I can do.

 

Guy Windsor 

I don't mean just put the titanium on for the competition, but like, let's say we're doing, like, your Sunday training thing, wear steel for the first three hours and titanium for the second two or three hours, right? And then when you go to the competition, you're just wearing the titanium, but you've done hundreds of hours in the titanium first, so you're used to it, but you've also done hundreds of hours in the steel, so you're conditioned for steel, but wearing titanium, I think that would be almost cheating.

 

Jenny Häbry 

So I never thought about that, to be honest. And also, because we obviously still do our strength training anyway. So it's not like we just go in. First of all, I think affording it would be for most people not workable.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, this is like, ideal, like, oh my god, wouldn't it be nice if…?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Good question. Because I wore Buhurt armour before I had my own armour just to test it out, and that was mostly steel. And actually, I came to a point where I want to quit the sport, because I hated it so much, because it just didn't fit me at all. I was like, what am I doing here? I can't even lift my arms at all, because it's catching on everything. Not miserably, but to a point where just it didn't let me do the things I can do now with my armour, basically, which was made for me, but it's a very interesting thought.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, I'm sorry if it ends up costing you a fortune.

 

Jenny Häbry 

I mean, if you want to invest in it, I can be your guinea pig, if you want to see how the difference is.

 

Guy Windsor 

No, honestly, if I'm going to be spending eight grand on a suit of titanium armour, it's for me, or maybe one of my daughters, if they got into the sport. But neither of my daughters have the slightest interest in swords. I brought them up with swords, but by the time they were like six or seven, they just had no interest at all.

 

Jenny Häbry 

They're like, no, thank you, Daddy.

 

Guy Windsor 

And now, of course, they're teenagers, so whatever Daddy does is, by definition, not cool. My daughter had a party recently, and one kid arrived early and actually talked to us a bit he said, “Oh, you do the swords stuff. That's really cool.” And I told my daughter, “Actually, your friends think my job is cool.” And she was like, “Yes, and that's really annoying.”

Okay, I have a couple of questions I ask all of my guests, or most of them, as you have experienced, guests, get the questions in advance and are at liberty to decline any question they don't particularly want to talk about. So what is the best idea you haven't acted on yet?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So, which we touched on earlier are the fight nights. So something I really want us to bring further, not this, just this year, takes time. But I'm not sure if you have seen the Armoured Martial Arts League in America, which I managed to go to and they have big events and massive stadiums where people are watching, and there's even live music, and done amazing job over there. And I think is helping to move the UK towards something like that. It’s something I think would not just benefit the fighters, but also benefit recruitment, benefit supporting the marshals, with money, and I think would just change the game of the sport in this country.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay? And so, what is a fight night?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Okay, so the Fight Night is where you have you can, obviously, depends how you want to do it, but we have basically same as an MMA fight. Have you ever been to MMA fight nights?

 

Guy Windsor 

I’ve not attended one personally.

 

Jenny Häbry 

No. So it’s where you have, basically an under card first, so it's one on one under card, then you have your main card, and then you have a finisher. It's either a bout fight or, in our case, we're looking at doing a big five vs five. So a group fight at the end.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, so basically, it's sort of a high stakes competition between a quite small number of competitors. Because when we say “fight night” in historical martial arts, it's basically anyone in the club can come and fence each other completely opposite. That's why I asked for a clarification, because I was pretty sure you were talking about something else. Good that we got that clear. So you're talking about basically, like a proper boxing match. You show up, and there's a couple of contender fights, and then there's the thing you actually came to see with, like, the named competitors, and see how that goes. Okay, that for AMA in the UK.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yeah, I would like to, obviously, we would like to start in our gym this year. But then long term, that's something I would love to be part of, from the outside, watching inside the sport, if that makes sense. So not sure, competing itself, just helping from the outside.

 

Guy Windsor 

But you'd quite like to be one of the competitors too?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Oh, yeah, as long as I can be, I would like to compete, obviously,

 

Guy Windsor 

Because actually that reminds me, because I mentioned in the bio, the intro, that you're crowned best UK female fighter, right? But that's not actually clear to me, and probably to most of the listeners, what that actually means. So how is that? Is that just like a popularity contest, or is that a competition, or is that kind of an aggregate of competitions that you've been in and looking at your rankings? Or what actually is it?

 

Jenny Häbry 

They kind of look back on the season. So you look back on the season, which includes the group fights and the one-on-one competitions as well. So they're all going into one pot. So it's not just one category. And then they look at how much impact a specific person had in the group fights to take a win, for example, for their team, and so on, and then same with the one on one. How many have they won? Are they, for example, like myself, undefeated in a category. And so those are things we're looking back on the season to make the decision.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, so the organising body sort of picks the overall best female competitor in the sport. So just being the best duellist isn't going to get you there, and just being part of the best team isn't going to get you there. But if you sort of represent across all three disciplines and do really well. I suppose it's a bit like Man of the Match in football.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, to be honest, to be fair.

 

Guy Windsor 

So that's actually more impressive to me than simply winning a tournament.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Because, yeah, so for me, for example, we don't do statistics yet. So it's kind of hard to say in here and there for me, but for me personally, it's my own wins. Like, when I go to America, I took the crown this year, in the first female championship fights.

 

Guy Windsor 

What was that like? What was the event like? Tell me all about it.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It was a different level. It was amazing. That's where we had live music, a massive stadium, and it's the second time I've been to America now, and we had a mini golf carts to get us from A to Z, because the location was so big, and then you went there, and then you have the crowd.

 

Guy Windsor 

Where were you?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Ohio, America. So it was just amazing, because you go in there and you have just people cheering, not always for me, because I fight against the Americans.

 

Guy Windsor 

So you showed up to America, which is a much bigger scene and that, and you were doing the AMA, in the ring, in the cage, armoured combat, to points.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes. So it's AMA and on this one, why it was so special is the first time we had females doing five rounds.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, five rounds of three minutes?

 

Jenny Häbry 

This was two minutes. So, like I said, different leagues have different rule sets, so they do two-minute rounds. And was the first time that in this league they don't use belts. So you know, when normally be like a boxing champion, you get a belt, and this one they give you crowns. So it was the first time a female was crowned. And it was quite special. Those things are for me that really, for me, like, I train hard to go there, I fly out to America and then do my thing, and that's what I love.

 

Guy Windsor 

So there's a big event, I imagine, are these fights up on YouTube?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So some of them are, yes, okay, they do have an app where you pay a subscription, where you can watch the fights back as well. But there is a fight for myself from not the crown fights the year before, is on YouTube.

 

Guy Windsor 

Send us a link to it, and we'll put it in the show notes. Okay, so how many women were you competing against?

 

Jenny Häbry 

In the one on one? It's a match up, so it's just one fight. So I flew all the way over for one fight. Yes, if people are question is, that's what we do. I fly to Poland for nine minutes. Basically, I fly to America for nine minutes. So who did you fight? Shauna Knight. And I did fight her prior as well before, and she has been seen as one of the best American pro fighters in her weight class as well.

 

Guy Windsor 

Okay, and what was the score?

 

Jenny Häbry 

I don't actually know. I would need to ask. I didn't ask at the end.

 

Guy Windsor 

You didn’t care.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It’s not that I didn’t care. I had my fight, and then just after me, my partner fought, and then another teammate fought as well, with three of us over. So we kind of just, I was done, get undressed, get the next person ready. I was just like, kind of, boom, boom, boom, boom.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, fair enough. Okay, so you know the extraordinary pain of flying with armour.

 

Jenny Häbry 

I do yes.

 

Guy Windsor 

So how do you how do you pack it? There are lots of approaches. I mean, I know one person who literally puts it carefully packed into these giant plastic things, and then ships it, doesn't actually take it in suitcases on the plate.

 

Jenny Häbry 

So I just my I have a backpack, basically. So if I go, it depends what I have to bring. If I have to bring a bit more than I had to have two suitcases to give us a weight, not a not a space, but the weight. But I have a backpack and a suitcase, and let's just put it all in. The only thing I make sure of that something might help people. So when you have your sword, you want to make sure there's something on the edges. Otherwise it’s going to poke through. Other than that, it all just goes in. I make sure I have a tracker in there and a locker on it so no one can just open it.

 

Guy Windsor 

So you put a like, one of those tracking tab things, that’s a good idea. Why have I never thought of that?

 

Jenny Häbry 

Age. Too old. It's our generation. They have obviously been raised and grown with it.

 

Guy Windsor 

It's a bloody good idea because I'm actually flying to Germany for a tournament this weekend, and I should, you know, I don't normally travel with swords. I normally just use whatever swords are available when I get there, because I'm kind of sword agnostic. I think if, if you can only do the thing you're trying to teach with your own sword, it's sort of, well, is it the sword, or is it you? Whereas if you take the student's sword and show them the thing, they know it's not the sword, because it's their sword that wasn't doing it before now is doing it. So, you know, they know it's them, not the sword, and they can make their sword do what you just made it do. So I don't usually bother travelling with swords, but obviously at a tournament, you have to bring your own gear, because it's not fair on the organisers to expect them to provide stuff. So okay, so I need to get a tracker. What kind of tracker do you use?

 

Jenny Häbry 

I have iPhone, so for me, it's Apple tracker, but there's loads of different other versions if you have an Android. So my partner's on Android, and don't ask me to remember, literally, on Amazon, popped it up.

 

Guy Windsor 

And, okay, yeah. So, so this is something that you can just like, buy and get. That is a brilliant idea. Why have I never thought of that.

 

Jenny Häbry 

If people ever ask you what you're travelling, don't say you’re travelling with weapons.

 

Guy Windsor 

It's sports equipment or stage fighting equipment.

 

Jenny Häbry 

There you go. So then you will be absolutely fine. I never had any issues. And I've been all over the world with my armour.

 

Guy Windsor 

There are only two places I've been to where I couldn't take swords, and I got into the habit of not taking swords because I was going to these places. So Singapore, you cannot bring a sword into the country without a license. If you ever travel to Singapore, you can't take your swords, and the organisers will know that, and they'll provide you with swords. And if you ever need a sword in Singapore, let me know, because I have lots of friends in Singapore who have swords.

 

Jenny Häbry 

There you go. Sorted.

 

Guy Windsor 

Sorted. So I was going to Singapore, so I couldn't take swords, and then went to Australia and whatever. But the other place is in the state of Victoria, in Australia, you can take swords in if you have paperwork, and you have to get the club that's inviting you to give you the paperwork, to show it customs, and then then it's no problem. But yeah, everywhere else, nobody cares, because they're just bits of metal. They don't blow up and they don't send projectiles through people at 50 yards distance. They're just bits of metal,

 

Jenny Häbry 

Something we do recommend, speaking about the paper, to always wherever you go, just have the invite of the tournament you're attending with you, because, just in case, it can't harm you printing a piece of paper.

 

Guy Windsor 

So if immigration asks you what you're doing there, you can say, I am attending this tournament. Here's my invitation. And so yes, you're clearly not there to try and sneak into the country and stay there forever. All right, I normally ask this question to historical sword people, so let's just rephrase it slightly. Somebody gives you a million quid to spend improving armoured martial arts, the sport of armoured martial arts worldwide. How would you spend it?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So probably would put into sections. I know it says worldwide. I would put my focus on the UK first, just because that's where we are. That's the scene we are at most of the time and then spread it over. But what I really want to spend the money on is, right now, we have on and off seasons because our weather and we only compete outdoors most of the time, because we have no indoor venues, and the mat is big enough to host a tournament we can only do six months of the year tournaments, and then there's six months a kind of a break where there's very few competitions. And I would like to be able to invest into a venue which is big enough to also host tournaments in the current offseason, in the winter season. November or already starting in February, and make it like a big thing, and make sure, with this whole tournament going smoothly, is that we spoke earlier the marshals. It's everything that's actually taken part is fairly paid for, and get back what they put in. There will be just like a small section of it that would be like this, where I would want to. To grow this, and I want to have way more gyms, way more equipment inside gym, because a lot of people are struggling to just do the first funding you need to build up the gym, because it's not just the rent you have to pay. You obviously need to get your mats, your soft equipment, so on, so on, so on. And just like helping people to actually do the startup in the gym. So improving gyms, tournaments.

 

Guy Windsor 

So you start out with a big facility which has all the stuff for training and for hosting tournaments and what have you. And then that also be a fund for people to set up their own local gyms, to help with, like the setup costs.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, absolutely. And then the fight lines we spoke earlier about, obviously, with more funding, you can go into bigger stadiums, you can get the word spread. Our problem is, I think in general, is all the niche sports which are so small, is that no one knows about us. Like, if you were asked a random person on the street, what is armoured martial arts, they’ll be like, what are you talking about?

 

Guy Windsor 

And okay, I've been in the sword world since forever. Early 90s. I've been doing historical martial arts professionally since 2001 and I only had a very vague idea of what it is you guys do.

 

Jenny Häbry 

That's my point. So people just don't know about us. So a lot of money would be going into advertisement, into spreading the word, into that's what we do, that's how you can join, so on, so on, so on. Because now we have our gym and something we've realised the demand is actually higher than we think it is. The problem is just no one knows.

 

Guy Windsor 

Putting gear on and whacking each other with swords is fun. It's cool. Everyone wants to do it from the age of about three.

 

Jenny Häbry 

And it's like, people, if they would, because that's what we do. We probably haven't, because never had to. But in the past, we paid for advertisement to just get our beginner courses running, and it's just like the marketing is just spreading the word. And I think a lot of money would be literally going into making people aware of what we do, who we are, and so on. Because with more members, what means it gets recognised as a sport, sponsorships can come in and like it's just can start rolling as getting even more professionally done. So just having the startup of more members, so a lot would be going into marketing. And this all done in the UK - spread it to Europe. Same thing. Have them the chance to have proper gyms, or like the other proper gyms, but helping people doing startup gyms, marketing, social media spread the word, having tournaments. Like past weekend, a tournament outdoors in minus eight degrees in Germany.

 

Guy Windsor 

In armour. Armour is fucking cold. Yes, that metal just leeches the heat out of you.

 

Jenny Häbry 

That's what people forget. So when you're in there and it's warm, you’re boiling because it's like 12 degrees warmer, or whatever, in the armour. But when it's cold, you are cold. It's metal around you, and it's like those things at a tournament in the cold with some fire pits trying to keep warm. And it's like just raising the standard of the sport and tournaments higher. So those things don't have to happen anymore. They can't if people want to. obviously, but there are other options available for them. Okay, so same there's like, get this out in Europe.

 

Guy Windsor 

You’re going to need a lot more than the million quid.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yeah? Well, you know, imaginary money. I’m dreaming here!

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, why don't we start you off with just 100 million, because you're going to need, like, 20 to build your facility properly, to get it really nice. And then another 10 million in marketing. And, yeah, yeah, I can see it.

 

Jenny Häbry 

That’s how I see it. So we, so we have an organisation and we have big organisations worldwide, and we as members, we pay yearly fees, to have help with admin and insurance and so on. But if you think about if you manage to make it more professionally, more members, which means more money rolls in, and then this automatically creates more money.

 

Guy Windsor 

But also, there's a fundamental difference between an activity where the participants are financing everything and an activity where the spectators are financing everything, like if you look at any professional sport, the money is not being paid by the practitioners. It's being paid by the spectators. And primarily the money's coming from advertising, because people are watching and they're receiving the ads, and they're going out and buying shit, right? So the money is coming from the spectators and the participants are getting paid, and that is a fundamentally different thing to when the participants are paying to do the thing they want to do. Yeah, it’s such a fundamental shift that it comes with, I think it comes with pretty significant downsides.

 

Jenny Häbry 

You mean downside if the participant pays or if the crowd pays?

 

Guy Windsor 

Well, there are downsides to both. There are upsides to both, and downsides to both. But the shift from one to the other, as soon as you get professional participants, they're usually paid for showing up and doing the thing, and they're also paid for winning, right? And when you get significant prizes, you get significant gamesmanship to win those prizes. The same is true at the Olympics. Like, if you look at what happened to sport fencing in the Olympics between 1970 and 1990 when, oh, I actually happened to have it here, when Johan Harmonberg got into epee in the early 70s and he and his coach developed a way for him to win according to the rules. It had no real relationship with what fencing was originally, and it that sort of thing happens because there's a prize that's worth it, right? In Harmenberg’s case, he won the men's individual epee gold medal, and the men's team epee gold medal in the Olympics in 1980. So when you have those prizes, you have people competing for those prizes, and their interest is in doing what you need to do according to the rules to win the prize, right? And that is not the same as someone who has a sense of the art for its own sake or the activity for its own sake. Again, this isn't a one is good and one is bad. It's just, if you professionalise the thing, you have to be prepared for how it is going to change.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Oh yeah, it really changes, absolutely.

 

Guy Windsor 

It will change in ways that are difficult to predict, but the closest you can get to it is looking at how things change when they go to the Olympics. I think that's a reasonable analogy.

 

Jenny Häbry 

I know where you're coming from, but I do think from my perspective, because obviously I want to do it high professional. I'm doing it as high professionally as maybe few percent in our sport doing it is that if I would get a match, I would be able to get sponsorship. Get paid every time I travel, which I only get paid part of the time and don't have to do a day job, yeah, only an evening job.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah, you want to do it for a living. So this makes 100% sense for you. And again, the professionalised sport doesn't prevent people from doing the amateur sport, and it creates a gigantic market for equipment and coaching and training courses and all sorts of things because of the money piled into the professional side of things has all these spillover benefits which can benefit the amateur side of things, right? I mean, the existence of sport fencing made the development of historical martial arts in the 90s and early 2000s much easier because we had access to things like fencing masks. And, you know, you can use a foil or an epee to sort of simulate a small sword. So there were some things you could just take from the sport which were easily available, readily available and not very expensive, because the market created by the more professional side of the sport.

 

Jenny Häbry 

They can just jump on this one being more accessible. It's what I imagined, dreaming again, you say we have the armour competition, but because we do actually compete a lot in soft kid, and no one below 18 can compete in armour, we would create, I think, way more competition, with like a soft kit. But also for kids, we have no kids’ classes because we are not there yet. But like, if it's all would be way bigger and more professionally. So you have people in armour professionally, but some doing it, not professional in armour. Then you have the next section, soft kid, some professional, some unprofessional, or like, hobbyist. We call them hobbyist. And then the kids as well.

 

Guy Windsor 

Yeah. And also, I would imagine any sport where physical conditioning is so important, youth is an advantage. And so what you want is someone who is 20 years old who has 10 years of experience. At the moment, you're only going to get someone with 10 years’ experience when they're already 30. So to so you are going to need the kids sort of training ground, I mean again, look at soccer. It's 18-year-olds at international level football players, they didn't start when they were 16, they started when they were five, yeah, if they were that late to the game, right? And the same is true of music. Like world class solo performers, they always start when they're young. That's because that's the only way you can get the necessary amount of practice in before you hit the age where you can actually make a living.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Well, also, to bear in mind, if you look at how we live this day and age, if people start like we do in the late or mid-20s, let's say average, maybe mid-20s, what happens in the next 10 years? People are going to have kids, family, careers, and it's all actually piling up together, so you need this fresh blood.

 

Guy Windsor 

I have lost so many students to children, and good. And the best thing, the absolute best thing, is someone, some student, comes up and says, yeah, I can't train anymore because, you know, babies and whatnot. And you go, of course. Absolutely, good decision come back whenever, and then 15 years later, when the kids are old enough to and they don't want their parent hanging around all the time, they come back. Yeah, it's the best thing. But of course, they come back, like, age maybe 40. And I think for like combat sports, you have to be younger to be able to recover in time.

 

Jenny Häbry 

So I think that's nice thing about our sport. So yes, okay, if you're young, you're going to be faster. You're going to be able to grow your muscles quicker, and so on. But because the armour does slow you down, what it means when you get older, you obviously, you lose your reaction a bit more. You’re slowly slowing down. Comparison, if you have about this MMA, only the younger one has a way bigger advantage than actually in armour, because the slowing down of the armour and the experience of the older guys right now gives people in our spot the chance to be in the light and in high competition.

 

Guy Windsor 

Interesting. Yeah, the slowing down effect of armour mitigates some of the speed advantages in the young, that's interesting. I mean, the recovery time, I think, is quite critical.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, no. So what my partner says, he's mid 30s now.

 

Guy Windsor 

He's practically dead. My god, he’s so old.

 

Jenny Häbry 

He is. So he has, has five years in pro fighting left, which is the armoured MMA, so the most intense we do. But he does seem safe having another 10 years in the group fights, because the group fight’s not just on you. You have a team around. And even if you're a bit slower, you can still contribute towards the team and the team effort.

 

Guy Windsor 

And the experience is especially useful.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Yes, but so there's a bit of a difference. And to be honest, hopefully when we are older, or whenever the sport has gone that far that there will be age brackets, because we don't have age brackets. Yes, that's those things like if, if there would be money and we would be able to get the sport out there, I think so much would change for the sport, or in general, for any sword related sport that would be able to just push it and be like, do you want to do something cool? Join us.

 

Guy Windsor 

Now, there is, there is something I wanted to bring up because it's, it's clear from our discussion beforehand that you're very much into the sport. You're very much into, like the fighting in armour. You're not actually that into any of the historical stuff. Is that fair?

 

Jenny Häbry 

That's correct. So there's a lot of nerds in our sport, and I'm not one of them.

 

Guy Windsor 

That's fair. I'm just curious, because most of the people I interview who do sword stuff, and that's most of the people I interview, they are actually interested in the history, because it tends to attract people with that sort of common interest. So I want to phrase this in a way that is entirely non pejorative. So why not, what is it about how people were fighting in armour 500 years ago that isn't interesting?

 

Jenny Häbry 

I think that's more about that I had never had the interest in history, and I think it comes from the way my school ran the History lecture, it just never made it interesting at all for me.

 

Guy Windsor 

And honestly, I wasn't much into history either. I'm into martial arts. And the reason I am interested in the historical stuff is because I'm interested in winning sword fights. And I reckon that people who did it for real, and if they screwed it up, they died, probably know more about winning sword fights than a modern person who's never actually had someone tried to kill them with a sword. So my interest in history is that, right, which shocks and appals many of my colleagues. Who are they can tell you exactly who was Duke of this place and that period, and what army was doing, this, when and where, and all that stuff is, is interesting kind of and it gives sort of colour and context, but unless it affects how you actually hit people, I'm only peripherally interested, right? Like all the material culture stuff. I have friends who literally sew their clothes by hand, because then it's exactly properly period. And some of them even make their own thread to sew their clothes by hand. And I have no interest in the clothes at all. I mean, I have the gear, and you have to test interpretations in the period clothing, because clothing affects movement, and so you have to make sure that the thing that you think they were doing is something that you would do if you were wearing those clothes, right? So there's that. And sometimes clothes have some sort of protective element to them which may influence things as well. So you have to take the clothes into account. But, you know, many of my friends have wardrobes of historical gear, and stuck in my wardrobe upstairs, I do have some historical clothing that I have used for various research purposes, and I don't even know if it fits anymore, because I haven't worn it for just because my thing. So I get that for you, the history isn't your thing. But I'm just wondering whether, in the sport as a whole, obviously you get people who are quite interested in the history, are people like studying medieval armoured combat sources to figure out how to fight better in armour or not?

 

Jenny Häbry 

So I would say yes, some absolutely do, obviously we have to be historically accurate with our armour as well. They do check our armour. We're going to be in 1500 to 1600s for example, period. So the armour needs to be kind of in one period.

 

Guy Windsor 

And so the style of the armour. But, like, I mean, your armour is titanium, so it's a question of the kind of the external form of the armour has to look right for a particular period. And the period you say is what, like, about 1500?

 

Jenny Häbry 

It depends on what you choose. So my 15 to 16. That's currently the one that's the most sport efficient to use for the sport. And people definitely do that. I mean, my partner's he loves the history, like he is into everything we got this. He knows about, like he knows about all the world wars, but he also knows about the fighting. He goes into it. And I just, I think, like, people come into sport, they're like, interesting in the history. And for me, when I entered into the sport, for me, I purely see it as a sport. I see it as something that challenged me, something I need to trend incredibly hard for to be good at. And I've never seen it as anything beyond that. So same as hockey. I see it as a different sport, and I think because I never had the interest in history, it just never kind of came from that.

 

Guy Windsor 

Also, most of the stuff you're supposed to do historically is quite rightly illegal in your competitions, like armoured combat without thrusting is not armoured combat at all from a historical perspective, because you don't kill somebody wearing a suit of armour by whacking them on the head with a sword, because it ain't gonna work. You have to get in there and shove your point into their armpit or whatever, or the groin or the foot or the back of the knee. All the places you are not allowed to strike because they're difficult to armour are exactly the places you should be striking if you're doing it historically.

 

Jenny Häbry 

Okay, but I think there's a big argument, which I can't really put much into it. But sure, some people are saying, well, our sport has nothing to do with medieval here and there, and then the other side saying, actually, there's a lot to do with medieval. And personally, because I don't have the background of the knowledge, I can't really put my opinion onto this, but there's a bit of different opinions about the sport, how it's related to the medieval period.

 

Guy Windsor 

It's a complicated question, yes, because I mean, fundamentally, you are absolutely training the fundamental knightly virtue. And they had all sorts of medieval training environments, the melee, for example, and medieval tournaments where it was different and the rules were different, but basically you're armouring up and you're going into a dangerous situation where someone is really going to try and fucking hit you, right? And that is frightening. And by going boldly into it, you are practicing the virtue of boldness. You're basically demonstrating to your peers that you are brave enough to go charging in when there's a whole bunch of people wearing metal who are trying to belt you.

 

Jenny Häbry 

I tell you, the adrenaline goes high!

 

Guy Windsor 

I do see a relationship to the medieval attitude towards tournaments. I think what I need to do is maybe talk to your partner or someone else on the team.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It’ll be five hours, though, I tell you that. He doesn’t stop talking.

 

Guy Windsor 

Actually, it’s interesting to know, we were talking about age earlier. The next person I’m interviewing – I’m not sure what order these will come out, but the next person I’m interviewing is 74. She’s doing historical martial arts, not the armoured combat competitive stuff, so the notion that you can’t do it past a certain age is something we are definitely trying to de-bunk. And I’m well aware that I use my age as a completely spurious excuse not to do something that’s terrifying.

 

Jenny Häbry 

I think in general it’s something to do with combat sport, your age will limit you, but you always have to try. It doesn’t mean you have to compete. You can train for it, have fun with it. Why limit yourself? That’s the point, you can’t lose anything by trying.

 

Guy Windsor 

Well, I mean you can get belted in the head a few times.

 

Jenny Häbry 

But what do you lose? You’re either going to enjoy it, or you’re like, I tried it, not my thing. Move onto the next.

 

Guy Windsor 

Fair enough. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Jenny, it has been lovely to meet you.

 

Jenny Häbry 

It has been a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.