Svebor is a martial art originating in Serbia. The word Svebor can mean either "srpske veshtine borenja" or "sve vrste borenja" which translate as "Serbian martial arts" and "all types of fighting", respectively.

Origins

Before the advent of firearms, soldiers in the Balkans used martial arts to assist them in fighting their enemies. Svebor is based on these martial arts used by Serbian knights in medieval times.

Some believe that Svebor is actually even much older than that, and that the Serbs didn't invent it but assimilated it when they arrived in the Balkans. One theory proposes that those ancient Balkan martial arts were introduced to Asia by Alexander the Great's soldiers when they invaded India, where it blended with Yoga to become the first regimented Oriental martial art. Then several hundred years later in the 6th century, an Indian buddhist monk, Bodhidharma, journeyed to the Shaolin temple in China where he taught this new martial art, which gave rise to many Oriental martial arts.

In any case, the ancient battlefield techniques of Svebor were passed down from one generation to the next in Serbian village culture where it was irrevocably linked to the Serbian Orthodox religion and its monasteries.

The leading authority on Svebor is Predrag 'Bata' Milošević, a professor from Belgrade University who has devoted most of his life to researching martial arts.

Features

Svebor is a highly adaptive form of hand-to-hand combat which also includes weapons such as knives and axes. It is best described as a "rough and ready, no-nonsense" martial art intended to be used on the battlefield, with none of the artificiality of many martial arts in which attacks and defences are so stylised as to be worthless in a real fight. The emphasis is on effectiveness, not on looking pretty. Its footwork includes leaps, falls, and rolls, and takes into account that real fighting can happen while the combatants may be running, possibly on an uneven surface. Svebor includes low kicks, punches, strikes, head-butts, throws, wrestling, and even stone throwing.

Some basic strikes with Svebor:

• Danga - a direct strike forward with the palm
• Dandara - slap with fist
• Žandarska šljaga - a slap with thumb tip supported at the root of the pinky finger, executed with a thumb-knuckle
• Čuburski udarac glavom - head-butt
• Dvoručni udarac - holding one hand in other and swinging from hip up and across the opponent (could be used to knock a horseman down)