James over at Hell In A Handbasket has a great video comparing and contrasting modern military combatives against Renaissance combatives. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Honestly, this doesn’t surprise me too much to see. The body can only move in so many ways, you can work against the body in only so many ways, and in the end it’s all either a push, a pull, or a twist. It’s not like it’s possible to suddenly discover some new way the body moves or doesn’t move and thus invent some new attack vector. When you get down to it, all martial arts ultimately teach the same stuff, the same movements, the same techniques; what differs is mentality, focus, approach, philosophy.

But still, it’s a neat video to watch.