And the fight goes on..

After the free fencing done last weekend with our friends at the Kunstbruder Fechtschule, and teaching class today at NYHFA's Poughkeepsie branch, I started thinking about how to deal with reconciling the sport-fencing mentality and the Ernstfechten mentality that we at NYHFA try to cultivate.

What are some of the pitfalls* of sport fencing?
* Assuming of course one's goal isn't to become the best tournament fighter in the world, ever. If that's your goal, then ignore all this.

1] Little or nonexistent cutting intent: sacrificing cutting ability (since it's "irrelevant") for an artificially increased speed in hitting, recovering, etc.

2] No fear of the weapon: because it's not a weapon, it's a flattened stick and no matter how hard anyone tries, it's not going to cut you. Adding masks, gloves, gambesons, etc., there's less of a chance that it will even hurt you.

3] Rapid-fire attack mode: because it doesn't matter if you get hit incidentally (see #2), and you're not actually trying to cut through anyone (see #1), you can attack in a frenzied, "suicidal" manner. Or, you can continue the fight even after receiving a blow that, with a real sword, would have incapacitated you and ended the altercation.

I'm sure there are plenty of others, even without getting into issues inherent with particular sword simulators.

Now, what can we do about it? Sure, one can get into an academic pissing-match in the salle or on the forums: "But he would've been dead if blah blah.." Or, one can be a little more Zen about it, "I'm fighting myself, there is no other opponent" (i.e. I'll fight as purely as I can, even though it probably appears that I'm slow, that I'm constantly losing, etc.) One can always just cross over and play their game.. but that'll probably end up degrading into a sloppy slug-fest. There is a synthesis to be found though, it's one that Mike and I have discussed a bit, which is fencing to punish bad fencing: They keep rushing in? Pommel strike to the face hard. Leading cuts with their forearms? Snipe their hands hard. This seems kind of vindictive—and let's be honest, it kind of is—but hopefully it will instill at least a healthy respect for the weapon in your hands and thereby force them to think twice about what it is they're doing.

Some thoughts on free play, and why Boris is fast becoming a killer.

I was thinking about our king-of-the-hill free play session yesterday, and about why Boris, a relatively new student, is getting more and more difficult for a lot of us to handle. Here are some of my thoughts:

Pressure. One of Boris' main strengths is his aggressive spirit. Sure, techniques are not always solid (this isn't meant as an insult, by any means; we're all learning!), but lacking any offensive movement from his opponent, he is typically the one to move in and attack. This does make for quite an intimidating opponent, and I for one certainly feel the pressure of his almost constant forward motion. When Boris is in the ring, he's out for blood and by god he's going to get some. On the flip side of this, when I'm facing him, either I'm not projecting any sort of pressure (more likely), or Boris is not sensing it (less likely, but still possible, since this is alien to all of us on some level—refer to Mike's handgun analogy).

Technique. Let it not be said that Boris doesn't learn from his mistakes. Going back just a few weeks, I could lure him into a particular trap: He'd go into high vom Tag, and I would take Alber. He'd take the bait, and I'd respond with the textbook catch with Kron and Zwerch to the side of his skull. I tried it yesterday, and whether it was a conscious decision or not, he did NOT try to Schietelhau me, opting to try something else instead.

One thing that we all need to do, as a class, is learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses, and be able to see our own. Like the drill we did yesterday to find each others' tells. We all have different skill levels and skill sets, different bodies and varying degrees of skill in using those bodies to affect technique. Watching two other people bout is just as important as being in the ring yourself; as combatants, we need to learn to size up our opponent as quickly as possible, judge their strengths and weaknesses. As students of a combative art, we need to be very aware of our own strengths and weaknesses.

Above all, we need to constantly practice and hone technique, otherwise there is no hope (or no point) in trying to exploit the weakness of others or lure someone into a trap by purposely showing your own weakness. Even Mike has a weakness—I don't know what it is, but even if I did (for example, if I talked to Sang Kim sensei about Mike's free play) my technique is probably no where near solid enough to take advantage of it.

The moral of my meandering post: Free play is an opportunity to learn. Watching free play is also an opportunity to learn. And practice, practice, practice.

Why It's Easier to Do it Half-Assed

I can talk about this for hours, but there's an easy, and better, way to understand this. Go out into the world and find yourself a child, preferably a teenager. Thirteen, fourteen, not much older. Girl, boy, doesn’t matter. Give this person an hour of training, just the very basics of attacking and parrying, and then fence him (we’ll assume it’s a guy).

Here are the rules. If he so much as touches you with his sword, you lose a point (and the kid has to know this). You, however, will be held to a higher standard. Each of your “touches” must be powerful and direct. Not hard, you don’t want to hurt the kid, but they have to be real cuts, with the edge, with enough distance between the start point and end point that it would work if it were a fight to the death. You can thrust, of course, but you have to pull it out and withdraw (or parry) before the kid whacks you back, or it’s the kid’s point.

How do you think you’d do? If you’re fantastic, you might win. More likely, you’ll barely survive with more double kills than you feel comfortable confessing to.

Well, whatsa matter, tough guy? Can’t beat an untrained kid?

Now make it harder for yourself. Now your cuts not only have to be with the edge, they have to be with the edge perfectly aligned. They have to be powerful enough that you could cut into a person’s body, covered in clothing, deeply, and have your sword cut through rather than get stuck in bone and flesh (don’t worry, we’ve covered the kid in padded armor, he’ll be okay). Your cuts have to be straight, so that they don’t scallop inside the body (and again, get stuck). Your thrusts have to hit vital organs or arteries, and you still have to pull them out, only now you need to make a visible motion of the hips, because that sword won’t come free easily. If the judges don’t see a hip twist to withdraw, you get no point, and the kid still gets to whack you.

Oh, and speaking of the kid, he still just has to touch you to get a point. Flat, edge, hard, soft, strong weak, big arc, small arc, no arc, doesn’t matter.

How do you think you’d do then? Would the kid kick your ass? Would it be double kill paradise? Starting to get the picture?

As the world of HEMA gets increasingly competition-centric, we as martial artists have to keep this idea first and foremost in our minds. The temptation to forget about all that stuff you'll never use and just do it half assed will always be there. Tournaments, free fencing matches, martial challenges, these are all extremely imporant for our art, but there are two ways to do them. The right way, and the easy way.

Unnecessary pauses

After all the free-play we did on our first day back, Mike mentioned to me (among other things) that one of my weaknesses in bouting is that I tend to pause after I score a hit (or after I assume that I should've just scored a hit..). I realized that this had been a problem back in my epée fencing days as well, particularly after lunges. It occurred to me that this is due to two main reasons, one psychological and one physical.

Psychologically, it's connected to my desire to not only hit, but hit cleanly. Pausing is me going "Look at what I just did. This was intentional, not incidental." I'm sure that this'll be beaten out of me quickly enough - consider a certain post-kill thwap to the head that I received..

Physically, it's about balance: A] I'm overextending myself in lunging, making a recovery very slow (still doesn't excuse me from taking a defensive ward like Ochs, I know..); B] My weight distribution in passing steps is less than optimal, making movement generally slow. For example, Zwerchau combinations could be faster, because I'm wasting time shifting my weight in between.

Course of action:
I need to do more "improv" pell-work. A gambeson-pell like Mike's would help, but I can make it work with a fixed pell. The point is, I need to get my feet more connected with my sword - and fluidly - so I can deliver multiple attacks in succession, as well as being ready to get the hell out of the way if necessary.

Winden across all the armory

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 Triumvirate of Training Types

Michael Chidester from True Edge Academy recently asked me to explain my idea of the "triumvirate" of training types...cutting, free fencing and drills. First, it's not my idea, it belongs to Sang Kim Sensei, and though I've been training that way almost since I first picked up a sword, it was Sang who put the idea into words for me and crystalized the importance of each of these forms and how they relate to each other. Our dojo mon (I say ours because I am, proudly, a member) is three dragonfly in a circle, each one representing a form of training, which is slightly different on the Japanese side--kata, gekken (free fencing) and cutting.

The reason for this post is that I made some effort to explain this concept to Michael and I want to share that post with you here:

"I grew up in Brooklyn, then served in the military, so I saw (but fortunately did not participate in) a good deal of violence. I’ve seen people who want to kill each other with a bat or a knife or a crowbar (or whatever) stand a few meters away and hop on their feet, taking cautious swipes, probing, but that is just the preamble, and is not the norm. If a man wants to kill another with a crowbar, he comes at him with everything he's got, fully committed (even if, on occasion, he hops around a bit first to get up his nerve). The other man either dies or gets one chance to do something, and usually only one combatant realizes that the fight has begun.

So if you look at a description of a play in a fechtbuch..."when he strikes A at you, you do B," it's basically a description of this type of violence. The drill that evolves from that, when done with full power and intensity, is therefore the closest you can actually come, in my opinion, to a real confrontation with a sword. It is artificial because you know it beforehand, but it is artificial only in the mind, not the body. So performance in drills, to me, is therefore extremely important. We do what I call "intensity drills" where the drills are done with 100% of what you've got. It's a bit dangerous, but worth it.

However, even with drills you have to ask yourself, what am I doing? What is the point of swinging this plastic or wooden or metal stick around? That's where cutting comes in. Cutting is the element of fighting missing from both drills and free play. By itself, it is imperfect, because the target does not move, is not armed, and does not fight back. However, it is only a piece of the puzzle. They are all a pieces of the puzzle...in drills, the target is cooperative, in free play, you just have to tag someone who is acting unrealistically (not coming straight in intent on bloody murder). Keep in mind we're focusing on the worst possible scenario, not all combat is uniform.

So what cutting does is it shows you what you're actually trying to accomplish when you swing your sword, and teaches how you have to move to accomplish it. Free fencing quickly separates the bullshitter from the fighter, cutting, the way I see it, separates the sport fighter from the martial artist. Approaching a target, timing your strike, getting your measure right, coordinating your body, keeping your center, maintaining your balance, composure, awareness, etc. etc. etc., and most importantly, that subtle motion of the sword along the target that is so hard to explain and teach but just comes to you naturally when you've been cutitng a while.

So after you learn to cut, you apply that same criteria to your drills, you strike at your opponent the way you would a cutting target. Now you have two pieces of the puzzle combined, and you practice both to maintain them. Finally, when you free fence, you come in fully committed, striking as you would a target, reacting as though a sharp sword is about to get you. This gives you all three pieces of the puzzle, if you can pull it off (I am still struggling).

I hope that answers your questions."

Free play with steel

Aside from the expected scrapes and bruises, bouting was exceedingly fun. I was a bit gun shy at first, so one of my main goals is to keep pushing forward.. or at least not retreat so much. It's a strange phenomenon, where once I found myself in a bouting situation, I was either thinking too much (and getting hit in the rather large tempos I was providing), or not thinking at all, and reacting with ineffective "oh sh!t" parries. Here are some mental notes I took away from the experience:

• Acquire a gambeson. While the fear of pain is good to help self-correct against "suicide attacks" or other stupid actions, too much pain/fear of pain will cause me to hesitate too much, and lose that forward movement.

• According to Mike: "When in doubt, wind to Ochs."

• Moving in is good, but being able to get out again before I get thrown onto the ground is good too.

I do see the value in free play, and how it teaches in a very different way than the highly-controlled intensity drills. However, I think what would be very valuable (and I seem to recall us—or at least the more advanced students—doing this at some point) would be a healthy medium: intensity drills wherein the agent has a limited variety of attacks to use (say, 2 or 3), and the patient must react appropriately.