[jeremymcanally]

I got into HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) fencing last year through a club in my little town. Olympic/sport fencing is fun, but imagine (safely) swinging a 4lbs. steel longsword with two hands at your opponent instead. It's a ton of fun, a great workout (I burn ~1500 calories per class), and competitive so it keeps my interest.

Then there's the whole nerd layer of reading all the original sources from the 15th century, attempting to retain the historical character of the techniques while engaging in real combat, etc. It's both intellectually and physically stimulating.

[elric]

+1 for martial arts in general. Depending on the art it might not be niche (I'm sure karate and taekwondo are too big for that). But things like HEMA, iaido, eskrima, all kinds of archery, ... are great fun and typically come with smallish & fun communities.

Edit: before you think these arts are immune to tech, I once had a student who built a (truly awful) sword fighting "robot" to help train deflecting strikes. Not quite up to par with Dune's robot swordmasters.

[tmtvl]

Seconding or thirding martial arts (MA). I do Kung Fu, but I'd bet all the internet cookies there's at least one Brazilian Jujutsu practitioner on HN.

On the point of tech in MA, I recall seeing a documentary where some people got a Xing Yi Quan master to perform a form in mocap gear so they could analyse his movements. I think there's still a lot that kinesiology could learn from the way different people move (especially from Inclusive Karate practitioners).

[hermitcrab]

HEMA looks much more interesting than olympic style fencing.

[dmoy]

Olympic style fencing is pretty interesting too, to be fair. Physical Chess

Also it's less... scary? At least you'll get less scary-looking bruises (though probably more total number of bruises)

[hermitcrab]

>Olympic style fencing is pretty interesting too, to be fair.

It just seems incredibly divorced from it's martial origins. To each their own.

[dmoy]

Oh for sure it is very gamified. It's still very interesting in its own right though.

Just don't go into it if you are looking for realism.

[hutattedonmyarm]

Agreed, HEMA is incredibly fun!