this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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Do people do Bartitsu anymore? Because dressing like an Edwardian Dandy and throwing your hat and using a cane would at least have the element of surprise.
People DO do Bartitsu still, yes, in the HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) community. It's a small minority, though. Most of them are focused on reconstructing historical sword martial arts from surviving manuals and manuscripts.
Amusingly, the Bartitsu is probably one of the things you could learn in a HEMA club that's most practical - in addition to the cane stuff, which is useful with any stick, they combined a bunch of Japanese and European wrestling and boxing styles that were popular at the time, so it's kind of OG MMA.
After that it's the medieval wrestling, which works fine if your club actually trains it well (no ground game but that's not hugely relevant in street fights a lot of the time anyway). After that the general knowledge of how to use a weapon is useful with any improvised weapon you can get your hands on.
Still one of the least 'practical' martial arts, but as far as I'm concerned the most practical martial art is the one you'll actually do for an extended period instead of trying it awhile and then dropping it. The historical element appeals to a lot of people (like me) who have no interest in normal martial arts for their own sake. Plus culturally they tend to be a LOT better about queers and women than pretty much any other martial arts subculture, which is very relevant for a lot of us. I'm not eager to go train BJJ with chuds as a visible trans girl, but my local HEMA club has multiple trans woman instructors, and they train the wrestling material - so this is the most realistic option I'm actually going to enjoy and practice a LOT, which is what matters most at the level of normal person combat with people who might maybe be medicore boxers or BJJ guys at best.