It has been two days and I am still stunned by the glimpse of the unifying principle behind the Liechtenauer system. Conceptually, it is a very elegant choice of design (and also astonishingly practical): the idea is that the physics of action-reaction behind strike, bind and wind is independent of the weapon at hand. Longsword, staff, poleaxe, sword-and-buckler: no matter whether the hands move from hilt to handle, the very same physical principles apply. I found it enlightening. There can be few modifications to the posture, few tricks to exploit the absence of blades on poleaxes, or the symmetry of staffs, but the mechanics are identical. Ideally, with enough exercise, any object of adequate shape could fit into Liechtenauer's verses.
Often I find myself stuck on a wrong posture, a lack of support from the hips, or a bad trajectory of the sword-tip. Cycling through different weapons helped. Some required more focus on the posture, other on the movement of the feet, or the arms, and others just feel so natural that the whole action folds inside the muscles and it fixes there, in the memory.
"Strike, slowly. Feel the bind. Wind!"
Together with intensity drills, the bind-wind-free-play has, at its first attempt, been a very instructive activity. The duelists have to enter in a bind and from there find the way to thrust the opponent. It felt like a game of planning and quick thinking, probably pointing at the fact that I need to practice more the different winden. Yet, eliminating all the adrenaline-clogged introductory tagging dance helped and the following free-play was closer, faster and felt more natural. I'll be looking forward to more bind-wind-free-play.
P.S. a brief comment on bucklers: I dislike them. Besides my skin-feeling for such a wimpish option, I am not even sure they are of any practical advantage. They protect the left hand, fine enough, so that we can be sure to have one for the final handshake: at what cost? Still I am not completely convinced that a longsword, driven by two hands can't be as fast as a single-handed short sword. In addition, the choice of buckler may imply a different strategy when facing a longsword, a strategy of compromise between a weak attack, a weak bind, a sword with less inertia and a well protected left-hand: is it worth it? As of now, I think it is not.
The buckler is a weapon by itself.
ReplyDeleteWith a longer sword you can keep more distance and you are more effective, it takes longer time to recover and prepare the following hit. It is a matter of milliseconds, but in combat it matters. With a single handed sword you need first to get into a short range combat. The bucked helps you to deviate the opponent's drills and to get you into closer distance, at that point you can use the Buckler to hinder the opponent while trying to hit him with the tip of your sword or, when you are in even closer combat yuo can use both the end of the sword and the bucket to hit your opponent, while he is having just the end of the long sword to fight back. In this situation the best chance for your opponent is to drop the sword and hope the chainmail of his gloves is heavy enough to punch you down.
Things bucklers do besides protect your left hand:
ReplyDelete-- protect your right hand
-- stifle and deflect your opponent's sword *without* occupying your sword
-- create a braced "super-cross" with your sword for a very strong defense, followed by the option of controlling your opponent's sword while you disengage one of your TWO weapons for offensive use
-- smash faces
-- smash forearms
-- plus you can throw them and they will whistle through the air, disarm and bounce off up to 5 swords (depending on how hard you practice) and fly back to you