You Suck

You suck. Yes, you. You're terrible. If you are reading this and you are saying "I don't suck, Mike's an asshole," then either you really don't suck (I only know two such people), or you're an idiot. Sorry, but today is hard truth day.

I too suck. And not being an idiot(mostly), I know it. That said, there are people who suck and know why they suck, and people who suck and make excuses. I'm too old. I'm too fat. I'm too young. I'm too skinny. I'm not really out to be the best, I'm just [insert bullshit here]. I don't have enough time. I didn't start training when I was young. And so on.

The trick is to be one of the people who suck and know why they suck. Because if you know why you suck, you can fix it, and that's what martial training is all about. When someone exposes one of your flaws, you should not be angry or hurt. You should thank them. You're alive, and you know what you have to work on. Knowing why you suck isn't easy, but then nothing worthwhile ever is.

It really sucks to suck and not know why. But even that is better than not knowing you suck. I once heard it said of someone that "he doesn't know what he doesn't know." Don't be that guy.

Why am I ranting about how much you suck? Because it is glorious. For a martial artist, there is nothing better than getting better, fixing a flaw, discovering a new ability, knowing that your hard work is paying off. That feeling you get when you suddenly start winning where before you were losing, when you start succeeding where before you were failing, it's like nothing else in the world. And I want you to have that feeling, over and over.

You suck. Now go practice and fix yourself. I'll be right there with you.

Composure

In battodo, it is important to maintain composure while doing kata or cutting. A lot of HEMA people I know look at that and say, “That has nothing to do with martial arts, so I think it’s useless.” Oh really?

Today in class we did an exercise I borrowed from Sang Kim sensei designed to identify and eliminate people’s telegraphs, or “tells.” People who dip their point before striking, or who tense up, or move their hands before their point or make other mistakes perform poorly. People who have few or no tells do very well. This translates directly to free fencing, where the same people who do poorly in this exercise are very easy to defend against because you can see their attack coming well in advance, while the people who do really well can sometimes hit you before you have a chance to parry.

What does this have to do with composure? Part of the exercise is to tell your partner what his or her tells are after the exercise is over. It’s a very good way to expose bad habits and bad technique and try to correct them. One of the most common tells is, “His eyes go all wide as he is about to attack.” Another is, “He smiles when he is feinting, but frowns when he attacks.” Or, “I can see it in his face when he is about to strike.”

You know…composure.

There are two lessons that can be learned from this. The first, learn how to control yourself. Not just how you move or cut, but your facial expressions and mannerisms. They can make the difference between victory and defeat.

The second, and please excuse my language, is don’t teach your father how to fuck. When you see someone who is practicing a martial art that is not recreated from books doing something you don’t understand, odds are there's something there worth learning.

Real Swords

If you are a martial artist studying ernstfecthen with the sword, you need to own a sword. A real one. A sharp one. A historically accurate one(should look, handle, cut and thrust like a period sword).

Just owning one isn't enough though. You need to practice with it. Every time you practice solo. In class and at home. Your sharp does not handle like your blunt. It is much more difficult to use, and you need to be able to use it, not the blunt, not the plastic, not the waster. Practicing with a sharp also has mental and emotional aspects not present with any simulator. It brings you closer to the reality of the sword, something we as a civilization have drifted away from.

Can you practice a sword art without a real sword? Sure. Much as you can practice it without a steel blunt, or even without a waster. You can go in the woods and get a stick and use that. Yet each step away from the sharp nets less and less returns on your investment of time, blood and sweat.

We today have the luxury of doing this as half assed as we want. Our lives don't depend on what we do. However, if we want to be true to our art, then we owe it to ourselves and those that came before us to do it right in every way we can. This is but one of those ways, and it is also an area in which corners are frequently cut. How easy would swordsmanship be if you didn't have to cut with all of your techniques? Or if you never had to put your skill to the test in free fencing, or were allowed to free fence without being expected to cut with every move? What a breeze, right? Well not using a sharp for solo practice is another way to make it easier. How great would it be if all of our swords were perfectly balanced and had hilts designed for comfort and were easy to swing around because they had no mass in the cutting portion of the blade?

You don't need a sharp right away. It's okay to wait until you feel you are competent enough to handle one safely. You also don't need one if this is just a casual hobby to you. This is why we have a cutting loaner. But if you're serious, and you want to take it to the next level, get a sharp, and use it. Every day.

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.

The purpose of intensity drills

It is important to remember the purpose of intensity drills. That purpose is to come as close as possible to real combat with a sword. An intensity drill simulates a single exchange that ends in someone's death. It is true in the body in every way--you advance, attack and defend the same way you would in earnest. Or at lest that is how you should do it.

The only way in which an intensity drill is not real, aside from the fact that real swords are not used (yet) and you are wearing protection, is in the mind. You know what's coming, and you know what you're going to do. Therefore, your mindset during such a drill is extremely important.

Clear your mind. Put aside thoughts of the day. Forget that you are tired, or hot, or thirsty, because a real adversary is not going to care about any of those things. Whether you are in the box doing the technique or you're the one being killed, forget about that. It hasn't happened yet. Know your role, know what to do, if you have to be weak, be weak, if you have to make a mistake so your training partner can do his technique, then make a mistake. But know all this in the back of your head. In the moment, it is real, and your life should flash before your eyes.

If you find that you are not in the right mindset and can't get there, let me know. To proceed under such circumstances would deprive both you and your training partner of a beneficial experience.

The morality of martial arts

When you study deadly arts in a group with others, every single time you do this, you place these people in your hands; their safety, their progress, their future and their lives. The teacher guides the class, but the students are responsible for learning, but not only for their own learning, for that of their fellow students.

Students must learn to cooperate in paired exercises and other activities, and not try to win all the time, or they compromise their own learning and that of everyone they are paired up with. To do this, students must have respect for the art, for the learning process, for their teacher, for themselves and for their fellow students.

Students must understand the danger of what they practice and limit themselves accordingly so as not to injure their fellow students. Swordsmanship is a dangerous art to study, and the more vehemently one studies it the more dangerous it becomes. One must find the balance between effective training and safety, and to do this students will need to develop a sense of responsibility towards their fellows.

Students must obey school rules. Rules and rituals exist to help people get in the proper mindset, to keep them safe, and to remind them of what is important when studying. A particular student may not need these rules, or may not understand why they are needed, but he or she must still obey them for the benefit of others. To do this, students must have respect for and trust in the teacher who creates these rules, and a sense of responsibility to their fellow students, for even if one student doesn't need them, others do.

Students must give everything they have to the art, to train hard and to practice hard and to make the art their own. To do less would be to leech the time and energy of their teacher and fellow students, because if a student doesn’t take the art seriously, then he or she shouldn’t be studying it. This also takes responsibility and respect, most importantly respect for one self, but tempered by humility. A student does not deserve attention just because of who he or she is. A student must realize that he or she gives back to the teacher and other students by giving of oneself to the art, and by learning the skills and values (as discussed here), so that this person’s presence in a school is a benefit to everyone, and not a detriment.

This, to me, is what it means to be a martial artist, rather than just a fighter or thug. The martial artist learns and teaches, and that is not something that can be done solo. Anything that takes a group to do requires cooperation, responsibility, trust, respect and humility.

Every fight...

There is a saying I've picked up along the way: "Step into every fight as if it were your last." The point of the proverb is to engender caution, since you never know if you will die in the conflict to come. Always treat your every opponent as if they can kill you and his every blow bearing such intent.

If you always train with that in your mind, then when it finally comes to blows, it will feel like you are training rather than feeling like an alien situation. Unfamiliarity breeds fear, and fear is the mindkiller. It has no place in your heart when you fight, and thus no place in your being when you train.

On a similar note, you must make your opponent believe that fighting you is a big, if not grievous mistake. The subtleties of this psychological warfare begin in your body language. Express the strength of your stance out of measure, make known the confidence of your stride as you come into measure, and strike with cold, calculated efficiency in krieg.

I believe this element of combat should be noted often, since I've noticed a significant enough lack of confidence in the actions of some of the students.

Questions

Personally, I love questions. I love to answer them, I love the look of "oh!" on people's faces when they understand the answer. The problem is, we have limited time in class, and I have limited mental energy to give you. So please stop asking questions during class.

Let me rephrase--ask questions about what you need to do at that given moment, as briefly as possible. These are necessary, because if you don't know, you can't proceed. However, general questions, such as why we train a certain way, why I do things a certain way, etc., these have to go away. They need to go away to a place called "after class" or the NYHFA blog. Breaks are not a good time for these questions, becuase breaks are limited, and as I have proven in the last class, my love of questions makes me easily distracted and I am prone to rambling on well past the end of the break.

The more important factor that comes into this, however, is trust. I know how to do something that you don't know, and so you come to me to learn. Good, that's why I'm here. Now shut up and let me teach you. You will come to understand everything if you let the knoweldge be absorbed at the right time. You cannot rush knowledge. I can tell you everything I know in an hour. Will that mean you will know it all too? Knowledge must be earned.

As my friend and colleague Jessica Finely said recently, "When was the last time you sat down with a child and explained to them how to ride a bicycle?" I replied, "Never, I just set them on the bike and yell at them 'till they get it." She said, "Exactly."

Our new training model is train more, talk less. This is for your benefit, not mine. As I said, I love questions, and I am going to miss them.

Welcome

This blog is the official journal of the New York Historical Fencing Assocation, a place for students and instructors to share their thoughts, experiences and ideas as they progress through their studies. Please feel free to post on any related topic.