When, later on in life, I started learning to use a sword,
the first thing I needed, naturally, was a sword. Not a simulator or toy, but the actual sword
I was learning to use. How could I learn
to use something I didn’t own or understand?
And how can you understand something like a sword without picking it up
and using it? I learned this in the army,
where the first thing you learn that applies to combat (besides discipline) is
how to work the rifle and your other weapons...not a toy rifle, the real
one. Then you learn to use the rifle on
targets, so the next thing I needed to learn was how to apply my sword, that
is, to use it against targets effectively .
When the army taught us to shoot, they explained the conditions we would
be under when we fired on the enemy and what steps to take to survive them long
enough to prevail. They also showed us
what parts of the target represented what, and where we should try to hit if we
had a chance. At first it was center
mass because it maximizes the chance of a hit, but later on in my brief but
interesting "career," I learned about anatomy and how to kill better
by understanding where to shoot or stab.
This direct application of weapon to test target seemed so natural and
so necessary that when I learned about cutting it was just a simple extension
of that same principle. To me, when
someone claims to be practicing a sword art but doesn't practice cutting or
doesn't understand how that practice applies to the use of the real weapon,
that seems very strange, like a soldier who never shoots his rifle. I’m not saying it’s wrong, just that I don’t
get it.
In the army, once we knew how to work our rifles, how to apply them
to targets and how to do so under difficult conditions, they started teaching
us how to do so against an uncooperative opponent who shoots back. In swordsmanship, this is where free fencing
(sparring, bouting, whatever) comes in.
But what is free fencing if you don’t know how to work and apply your
weapon? If you start you training with
some plastic rifle simulator and shoot yellow plastic pellets and soda cans, then
what you learn when it comes time for force on force training is made suspect
by your lack of understanding of what is actually happening when you point it
at someone and squeeze the trigger. I
believe the same applies to swordsmanship.
To summarize, first, you start with the real weapon you are
learning to use. Then you learn to apply
that weapon, then you practice what you learned in a dynamic environment. This is my approach to swordsmanship. I’m not going to pretend it’s the only way to
learn, particularly the order I have chosen, but I do have a hard time understanding
other approaches (assuming martial swordsmanship is the goal). I understand that there are lots of games
involving sword like objects, and some of them can even teach me some of want I
want to learn, but they are still not "learning to use a sword,” at least
as far as I’m concerned.
