Josh Parise has always been into the martial arts, ranging from Mixed Martial Arts to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and taekwondo, from kendo to Western Martial Arts. After leaving the Marine Corps and learning Army Combatives, he found some videos and manuals on historical fencing and never looked back. In his pursuit of historical fencing, Josh established his Broken Plow school, where it offers everything from longsword to kendo, and sabre and rapier to ringen. Josh is very proud of his school and talks at length about Broken Plow’s culture and how that has helped raise the bar and standard for everyone at the school. Josh also discusses a soft split that occurred within the HEMA Alliance. Parental Advisory – Language. Special thanks to Suzanne DeCree for acting as mediator. All images provided by Josh Parise. This is the first part of a four-part interview. Read the second part here.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Thank you for joining us, Josh. We are looking forward to this conversation.
Josh Parise: So am I!
MAYTT: How and when did you get into historical fencing?
JP: So, backstory: I’ve always been into martial arts since I was about six years old. I got into taekwondo and some other stuff and realized I was getting my ass kicked using taekwondo, so I moved onto boxing. Then I got into athletics; I got into the marine corps and did combatives. I got out of the Marine Corps and started doing MMA and BJJ especially. Then I got into some stand up stuff.
I have always been interested in the sword fighting stuff; obviously fighting dragons and jedis and stuff since I was six years old. I kinda had a little interest in the SCA stuff – it looked kind of interesting, and it combined a few things that I enjoyed, with the combat aspect and the medieval history. But I was never really into the theatrics of it all, with the dressing up and everything. It looked cool, but it turned out that it was a scene that I wasn’t really into. Nothing against those guys; we have some awesome crossover with those guys; we even get LARPers, Dagofhir guys, the Buhler guys, the ARMA guys – so let your freak flag fly. We fight with everybody.
When I got back over to Pittsburgh, after leaving Los Angeles, I decided to get back into some stuff and I saw these online presentations and some of the tournaments that were coming out of Europe, and it looked more like what I was into. It had more action, people doing techniques, and not just beating the shit out of each other with sticks. [Laughs] I said to myself, “Oh shit, I want to try that.” I kept looking for some place to train and I found some guys that were doing some theatrical stuff and they actually owned a modern Olympic salle. I got in with them. I asked if I could work my way through these treaties and see what was what. They were really cool, and we started from there.
About every six months, I would check on the internet to see if anyone near Pittsburgh was trying to do anything. One day, this guy Jim Brooks answered the call. He asked, “Yeah, dude, you wanna go fight swords?” “Yeah. Fuck, that sounds great!” He was looking to do the trolls under the bridge. Offered to meet me at my salle and he showed up. To his defense, when he first showed up, I was about 220 pounds of shredded diesel, and I had my own gym. He was like, “What the fuck? This isn’t real!” [Laughs]
It kinda went from there. We went from two dudes and now we have between 130 and 150 members. So, it’s pretty insane. My guidance counselor never told me I was going to be a professional sword fighter. I was pre-law and football.
MAYTT: How would you describe the training you experienced when you first started historical fencing?
JP: I would say that I did a lot of self-study. What I always tell people is that there are some really smart guys in HEMA and Western Martial Arts that read Middle High German and they do really good work, as far as that’s concerned, but most of them aren’t exactly your douche alpha jock bros, so I got to be friends with a lot of those guys who were way smarter than I am. But I do have a history of martial arts and combat, so they would come to me and be like, “Hey, this is what I think it says, what do you think it says?” I would go, “Well, the human body doesn’t move like that. Are we looking at the end, the beginning, or the middle? What are we trying to do here? Are you trying to make it work, or are you trying to make it look like the picture?” Because no one knows what that picture is supposed to look like. It’s static; it’s a still from a motion.
So, it was a lot of reading books and watching videos and being like, “[Laughs] That doesn’t work at all!” or reading the books and knowing how the human body moves and kinesiology-wise, unless you grow a third arm, it’s all the same shit. I paraphrase obviously, but it’s one of our sayings at the school, ATSS – it’s all the same shit. You have to move your body in order to perform any technique, whether it’s a historical technique, modern, or some made up, woowoo, kung fu bullshido. You still have to be able to move. So, it was a lot of me figuring out what makes sense and what doesn’t or does work. I had some stupid shit like Marine Corps combatives and pugil, and bayonet training; it all kind of amalgamated into this thing that just made sense to me.
I guess I was one of those fortunate people that was athletic enough and had enough background to piece stuff together. Now, I’ve been absolutely wrong a hundred million times, but I got really good people that are like, “Yeah, that’s not what it says at all.” We try to maintain the historical validity of it, even though it’s a martial art – what would it have been like then while wearing body armor and fighting with plastic swords? [Laughs]
Honestly, it’s all bullshit. I hunted down the tournament scene forever because I wanted to validate myself through shiny bits. You start getting them and I was placing in Dark Horse and all of these tournaments – once again, I was athletic enough or by the grace of god or the maker talented to keep me from dying – so I started moving up the ranks pretty quickly. But the same five dudes would beat me all the time and it started to be frustrating, but it was, “Are you losing or are you learning?” That kind of frustration. “What am I not doing to beat these guys?” Eventually, I became good friends with all these guys who were, unbeknownst to me, the HEMA hierarchy – the elitist, as the kinder, gentler participants like to call them. But they started to show me how to do things and said, “Trust the book; trust the treatises; trust the technique.” Then I started to get it; “Ah shit, this stuff actually works.” Which is crazy. They helped me through that and actually helped me get to the place where I am.
Associating those guys and earning some respect was how I was able to do so well so quickly and also build Broken Plow so quickly. I had a lot of help. While it’s a struggle, it’s not a one-man adventure.
MAYTT: That is an interesting way of looking at it. In what ways have you seen the training change and evolve over time?
JP: So, you get the good and the bad with all that. It started off, like I said, with guys as trolls under a bridge and beating the shit out of each other in their garages like that. There were some well-established schools like ARMA, which was doing well on its own. Regardless of what everybody thinks about John Clements, he had the fortitude to actually put something together. A lot of people didn’t agree with him, and I don’t personally agree with some of the stuff, but at least he had the fortitude to go and do things like that. So, you had groups that were established like HEMAC; those guys were smart dudes who got together to hit each other.
So, you had solidified programs as far as the concept. The concept was there – the proof of concept was there. Then you got like Jake Norwood and Michael Edelson who had the discipline and the training, and they had the athleticism. Mike did Japanese sword arts for a hundred years and Norwood was classically trained to put down brown people, so he had some concept of violence. So, you had people like that who were more out of the norm from, say, your neckbeards and stuff like that. They started to excel and started to do well. So, you had programs like that that were coming up and were really trying to solidify a pedagogy and make it practical, which was good. That was a really good time in HEMA. I’ve been in this for about twelve years, so I got into it right when those guys were the pinnacle of what you wanted it to be. So, for me, it was like, “I’m going to be better than that guy.” I’m going to headhunt. I’m going to go look for the Europeans. I want to fight these guys and I wanna lose. I want to figure out why I’m losing. I had a really good mentality as far as, “There is not losing, there is only learning. I’m going to put myself to the test with these guys that I know can beat the shit out of me.” Not really, I’ll fuck them up in a dark alley. But with the sword, these dudes can handle themselves.
The way we started was, “We’re going to perform, but we’re going to perform in the pursuit of excellence.” Let’s say the pursuit of perfection, on the knowledge that the pursuit of perfection is perfection because it’s unobtainable. So, it’s the journey. You had some guys that were taking that way in, and you had the other guys – and I was one of those guys – who wanted to get HEMA onto TV, and we’re going to do this, with the next reality show, which all the guys tried to do. So, you had the mentality of, “I’m going to start a real martial arts school. I’m going to promote this thing because you can’t have this stigma of nerds swinging swords.” There are tremendous athletes that do what we do. Now, there are just blubbering neckbeards that can’t move their own feet, which is fine; I don’t care. Whatever you are doing to better yourself if you said in either category, I’m good with it.
I think what happened in that pursuit of accepting everyone in and trying to make this a legitimate endeavor and showing that there wasn’t just a stigma. Look at me, I’m a United States Marine, 5’ 10”, 250, I’ve been doing martial arts my whole life, college scholarship to play football, but I’ll roll dice with anybody. It just so happens that god made me a linebacker but I’m also a nerd. So, it’s a nice combo for me; I get to do the best of both worlds.
But in this pursuit of everyone can do this, everyone forgot that not everyone can do this. So, you start to get people instead of vetting out your athlete or making them understand that maybe the athletic part isn’t for them, maybe it’s the historical – maybe drilling and live cutting is their end – we started getting schools that been open for three weeks and they want to get into competitions and they start letting loose their own version of the treatises onto the interwebs where just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean you have to vocalize it.
I think there was a big split about five or six years ago – I think that’s when the world went wrong. There were people who had no business and literally no business sense running organizations, trying to start up schools. I’m not saying don’t go for it – fuck it, go for it – but as a student of history as well, I say look to the past and see what was successful and what can you do to make successful better than successful, not what are you doing with failure and then thinking you can do it better. You have some respect for what came before you and you can look at it and say, “These guys are doing this. That’s what I want to accomplish, but that didn’t work” type of deal. There was a big split where people literally had no ability to do the things they wanted to do or try to accomplish it and were so accommodating, “Hell yeah, everybody in the pool.” Well, turns out, when we get everybody in the pool, turns out that you lose half the water, and some people get the fuck out of the pool.
We’ve been around for ten years officially with Plow, and we do things a certain way. We’re always willing to adapt and take in new stuff, create new study groups – there is no one way. There’s a saying, “If your way is better than my way, your way is my way now.” You gotta be willing to grow and expand, but you gotta be willing to lay down ground rules for how you’re going to accomplish that. I think you wound up with the elitist that wanted it one way and you wound up with, “Hey, I want to swing swords on the weekend.” But then you have this majority middle group who were afraid to say in their own groups that they wanted to do this or that. If you just want to fuck off on Saturdays and hit each other with sticks, go for it. That’s your thing. I’m not going to take fun and joy away from anybody. But if you also want to take it more seriously or if you want to get more athletically involved with it like if competition is your thing or legitimate sparring, or cutting is your thing.
There’s something to be said for gatekeeping in the sense of, “I know that this is the historical stuff that I want to work on.” That means, if you want to work on something else, feel free and fucking do it but don’t tell me that I can’t do this when I’m telling you to do whatever you want. I think in regard to the school, you wound up with really good ones, really ridiculous ones, and that happy medium where people are trying to get along with each other to figure out what’s what. But I think it’s also education by committee and that doesn’t work, necessarily, so you have to pick the path and see where you want to go with it.
MAYTT: When did you first start teaching? What was that experience like for you?
JP: When I was about eight years old. In eastern martial arts, as you advance, you elevate – not yourself, but those behind you. So, when I started at six, by the time I was eight, I was being utilized a la red belt to teach six-year-olds, showing them forms and things like that. It only makes you better at what you do because it’s in perspective. You can see how it works by how to properly teach somebody how to do it. It started young and then went all through life in general. With the military, having to be in charge of other people, you have to educate those people. It’s not like you’re the all-powerful being. Regardless of my rank, if everyone else dies, I’m the new private, so I better know what the private knows how to do. [Laughs] It’s one of those deals. Generals can become enlisted really quick when everyone else is laying in a puddle, so you gotta know all the jobs. You gotta know the job above you too. That’s part of the thing in Plow, we have a senior mentorship program where your job as an instructor is to make sure everyone is better than you at the end and anyone in that class, if they so desire, can be able to teach what you know, and teach it effectively and efficiently.
MAYTT: I have talked with other historical fencers, and they were talking about the best way to move HEMA forward and mentorship came. I am glad that you and Broken Plow are doing that.
JP: We had this huge discussion the other day. We used to run several programs and, once again, it’s not gatekeeping for the sake of keeping you out, it’s gatekeeping for the sake of do you want to elevate yourself to get behind this gate. With the program, we used to have the Punisher Squad. We also used to have something called Fech Ops. What these programs were designed to do was if you wanted a different style of training, if you wanted to elevate to the next level for competition or for physicality’s sake, we would do this. It’s what you want. Once again, I’m not going to make a 105-pound person go wrestle a 300-pound dude because I say so. If it’s something you want to learn, if it’s something you want to do, here’s an outlet for you if that’s the train of thought or if that’s what you want to try and accomplish. Even if it’s for the sake of, “Wow. I wonder if I can fucking do that?” Not everybody should climb Mount Everest but there are a lot of idiots that give it a whack.
As far martial arts are concerned, it’s always, “How do I elevate myself?” What we did was we had patches. If you get out of the pool, you’d get a patch. Some people complained that we were doing the elitist stuff. No, it’s not. It’s all about you. You don’t have to get the patch; you don’t have to be ashamed that you don’t have the patch, but if you want that, go get it. I’ll help you get it. It sounds stupid, but everyone wants a cookie. In Eastern Martial Arts, you have the ranking system. In kendo, we have a ranking system. In Historical European Martial Arts, God bless, better men and women than me have tried to initiate these ranking systems, and it doesn’t pan out because there’s no real tradition in our historical European stuff that is, “You’re a red belt now. You’re this and you’re that.” Maybe within certain salles or schools back then. Certain masters had aft pupils that were allowed to teach for them. That’s fine, but that’s what I love about Eastern Martial Arts so much is that there’s that regimen, there’s a goal, and there’s an end game. Even if it’s unobtainable, there’s an endgame. I think that we’re going to reinstitute that back into Plow because it’s a whole another generation now, which is fucking funny to say, which is ridiculous. I think I was technically third generation, as far as the jock bros. You had ARMA and those guys going off of it, then Norwood branched out and found the HEMA thing, and I was basically third generation coming up but under the tutelage of guys like Corey Winslow, Jake Norwood, and I had Mike Edelson. A lot of really great instructors. Chris Taun, this lanky, Rasputin motherfucker, but he knew what he was doing.
We actually just had this talk yesterday [July 31, 2023], if you want to get to a certain level or if you want to do this – think of it like merit badges. We’re going to boy scout this shit. If you get in there and you break your hand or arm or leg, guess what, you’re going to get the white gauntlet patch. Not everybody wants it, but everybody deserves it. There has to be cookies, there has to be something for people to say, “What’s the next step?”
For me personally with kendo, I don’t do kendo so that I can become an eighth dan, because that’s never going to happen. I’m going to try my best to get there, but for me, kendo is the pursuit of kendo – am I bettering myself, is my kendo getting better? I don’t need the ranks – that’s not really my gig, but for other people and a lot of people, it’s, “Am I going to swing this sword for ten years and what am I getting out of it?” My inner response, my esoteric, is, “A sense of sword and self, and you are fulfilled in the journey.” But the reality is, people are always asking for their red belt. [Laughs] Sure man, I’ll get you fucking red belt. But it’s business minded, it’s business sense, retention-wise for these clubs, you have to have an incentive program. Even if you don’t really believe in it, there’s something to be said for it.
It’s a curve. We have really good retention because we have one of the most unique clubs in the US – I may say the world. So, we do a lot of stuff as a community that other schools don’t do. For me, it’s not that big of a deal for retention. A lot of people just treat it as a social club. They come and workout, but they’re there to hang out with people they enjoy. So, it’s just one of those deals I enjoy. I won’t say that I get involved in the culture war, but I have taken a lifetime to create my culture and I will fight for it. [Laughs]
We have our intro classes; we run about three or four intro classes a week, between ten and sixteen people. And the first thing that they see is me, and that’s how I want it. And I literally just vet out the entire class, not in the sense that I pick who’s going to do what – who’s going to be my killer, who’s going to be my warrior – but in the sense that I lay down my very simple ground rules that it took ten years to develop. If you set a standard and you set the bar, you set the rules, then no one is disappointed by the fact that they didn’t know anything. I think that’s what a lot of people do, “Oh yeah! Come in and swing swords and it’ll be great!” And then you find out that that person’s a douche and they’re stuck there. I weed out the douches on day one. not only douches, but if this is not your gig and you like Lord of the Rings and you want to swing foam swords, fuckin’ a man, I got fifteen people that do that on the side. Give me your digits. I’ll hook you up with the right people, and we can find you your joy. This may not be it. Once again, I don’t want to take anything away from anybody, I want to help people with what they want.
This is the first part of a four-part interview. Read the second part here.
Broken Plow is hosting their Blood on the River this Labor Day Weekend [2023]. For more information, follow this link. To purchase tickets, click here.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 