Hunter Armstrong

As Director of the International Hoplology Society (founded by Donn Draeger), Hunter Armstrong is professionally engaged in the research and development of hoplology--the study of human combative behavior and performance, and he has spent considerable time on field research in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India, researching the training and fighting arts of those areas. Armstrong and his family lived in Japan for ten years spread over a 25 year period. Starting in karate in the early 1960s, he has been training consistently for the past forty years. Now primarily concentrating on classical Japanese martial arts, he has also trained in a number of Chinese combative arts. In addition to Asian weapons and fighting systems, Armstrong has also studied classical European weapons and fighting systems and the relationship of bio-mechanics to the development of weapons use. Concurrently, Armstrong has been involved in strength and conditioning training and study since the mid-1970s. In that area, his focus has been on the enhancement of performance capabilities through functional training methods. Working both with athletes in sports conditioning and non-athletes in more general conditioning, Armstrong has developed unique training programs that integrate fitness with body-mind-spirit performance enhancement, as well as programs specifically aimed at martial arts performance enhancement (to that end, Armstrong authored a training text titled Strength and Conditioning for the Combative Athlete). Armstrong has written numerous articles on combative behavior and performance, including work on European non-firearm fighting and weapons, and he has translated several Japanese articles and texts concerning both classical and modern Japanese fighting arts.