I think I've mentioned this before, but HEMA is actually pretty cheap- at least when you start off. You'd expect the padding and the other equipment to be expensive (and it can be). However, it should be a fairly long time before you're able to spar on a regular basis and if you're starting up your own study group you can do a sizeable amount of work without spending much at all.
The bulk of the cost comes from safety equipment and things which allow you to run through drills at full speed.
Understanding of control, maintaining an awareness of when accidents are likely to happen and building up your need for protective equipment over time all allow you to decide how much money to invest in the hobby.
A lot can be done with a couple of broomhandles and some leather. Providing you stick to slow, controlled drills and working out concepts from the manuals (which are out of copyright and available online).
The reasons you "need" to do non-cooperative, full speed drills/spar are so you can test yourself, you can see what happens at full speed and (most importantly) because it's a lot of fun.
But sparring should only be a fraction of your understanding. Without the slow drills and the core work and all the foundation blocks, your sparring will be substandard.
You can get a lot of things done with control, patience and a big stick.
The real expense in HEMA comes thanks to the community. It would be very easy to spend most of the year jetting around the world taking part in great events, picking up swords that you just don't want to put down, getting far too drunk with interesting people who have finished beating you up for the day.
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Now I have opinions, most of which are available on my blog, about different types of drills and how to train skill-sets. I'm not denying that there's a place for low-intensity, low-force, co-operative drilling, but any means. Equally, we're pretty open about what we get up to - you can check out various free-play videos on the blog and my YouTube channel, since I put them up regardless of whether I'm happy with them!
ReplyDeleteBut I would argue that there's a difference between being able to consciously understand techniques or concepts in HEMA, for which I accept that all you need is a stick and a teacher, and being able to perform well under pressure in a situation which reasonably represents a 'real fight' (whatever that might be.) In order to do the latter, it is important is to have practiced with intensity and with intent - that is to say, with 'aliveness'. You need to do so because you're learning to go through the motions, but not learn how to fight, how to unconsciously perform the right action under the right condition, how to immediately re-act in the most optimal way to a given stimuli. Slow intensity, low force training and co-operative drilling have a place in re-enforcing that behaviour, or displaying concepts, but they're a side show.
Personally, I like to get people new to HEMA involved in free-play within their first session or two, in order for them to understand what one of the most obvious 'ends' of my classes are. I also like to get them striking at me with reasonable force and intensity in the first session, and equally being hit in a similar manner.
There's a simple psychological reason for this - that I like to train with people who 'get' what we're doing, what I expect from them, and what they can expect from me. I have a feeling that IDC is one of the least formal HEMA groups out there, and part of that is due to my dislike of 'lazy' teaching - "Perform this throw against a tree a thousand times, until you have mastered it." or "Lunge a hundred times at the beginning of session, until that movement is perfect." It may be the case that by getting people out there engaging in free-play as soon as possible their sparring will be sub-standard compared to someone who has spent months (if not years) training before being allowed to engage in it. But what else could it be so soon? At least they are 'doing' HEMA, and not jumping through hoops to appease me.
Now, lately I've been getting annoyed with synthetic swords and the artefacts that they introduce into people's behaviour, as well as some people in the club wanting to own, and use, steel swords. That's what led to my blog-post about the costs of doing things intensely and with intent with steel training tools. Because, well, they're less un-sword-like than messing around with shinai, and with good protection then the arguments that steel introduces artefacts are much weaker. Equally for drills, some people can drill with steel, speed and aliveness like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByxdpgWS9GU - indeed; I'd love to try it. However, it's not something that I want to be held responsible for other people trying, so my options are either to teach without that level of intensity and aliveness, to get better protective equipment, or to not use steel.
To put it another way - you can teach concepts and techniques with diagrams and words. That's what the surviving historical documents attempt. But can they teach skill? Can you teach practical 'techne' by sticking to slow drills and working out concepts from the manuals? Compare http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-eQvEfgz9o and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln94E9AGYTc - they're both illustrations of techniques; however one is done with 'aliveness'.
(Incidentally, I think that this is one of those areas that Pete and I don't agree on - he believes that you can get more out of low-protection steel training than I think that I can responsibly run. Equally, I emphasise that to cultivate skill you should always train to attack with intent, he thinks that the nature of training a martial art involving tools and force-multiplying objects changes that, so you have to emphasise control over intent. Cool beans, that's what disagreements are all about.)
ReplyDeleteHello, Mike!
DeleteI think my view is not quite what you portrayed it as. The difference is subtle, but I think there's a distinction between intent and force, and that I can still train with intent reasonably well even if I break the force generation and transfer, and stop short of hitting someone hard or at all. This would be as opposed to "intent is only there if I whack him hard". "What works to cut with a sharp" isn't absolutely tied to "what works to injure someone with a blunt", and vice versa. You've cut with sharps, so I hope that makes sense. I believe I can keep someone safe with a blunt with relatively minor deviations from what would hurt with a sharp, and leave the bulk of the technique unaffected.
Of course, my angst over aliveness v simulation is well known to anyone who's talked HEMA with me. I agree with you that nylons/feders and more protection allow for greater resistance and aliveness, but the decrease in simulation and consequential changes in the sparrers' priorities are very problematic. The protection-and-intensity schema certainly produces people better at sparring with that equipment, I just perhaps weigh the artefacts each approach generates differently, in terms of fighting blossfechten with sharps as the unachievable end goal.
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DeleteDead drills are perhaps necessary to introduce concepts (to steal the 3-Is model). But they're terrible to train the technique.
ReplyDeleteI also think there's a necessary class of conditioning drills (and I go against Aliveness101 here slightly!) to build up physical fluency in movements specific to the art but which we aren't "naturally" capable of easily doing. Sport fencing lunges, wrestling sprawls or BJJ shrimping are all good examples. Anyone doing these sports/martial arts will benefit from solo training huge numbers of reps. But simple proficiency in the movement does not equate to skill in performing a technique involving them without alive training to develop that Timing-Energy-Motion triangle that means the technique is being performed with sincerity, aliveness, and proficiency.
Hey Pete, sorry if I mis-represented your position, and I agree with you that intensity and force levels aren't the same thing (indeed, increasing one without the other is something that we've been working on in IDC). I was trying to present the counter-point to my views that you've expressed before, for example in the comments on http://indesidc.blogspot.com/2011/02/thesis-i-intend-to-nail-to-door-of.html
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you that you can perform a technique with intent even if you perform it without force. We've sparred, you've seen free-play at IDC. [Hell, I've asked you to lower force-levels in free-play before]. However, fighting-with-lots-of-force is an option, both historically and today, and experiencing it in high intensity situations allows you to develop skills to counter it!
Take for example krumphau-ing to the hands, scheitelhau-ing or drawing cuts from High vom Tag. They're canonical Liechtenauer techniques. But you can't practice them with any intensity or aliveness without protection because there's an inherent amount of force involved.
We both agree that being good at sparring shouldn't be what we do HEMA for. And I agree with you that often people are pretty crap at doing it as a learning exercise, while not-being-a-dick. Equally though, I think that if you cannot do well in free-play or sparring then you're probably pretty crap at HEMA. I'm not talking about 'well at Swordfish', but rather 'If we grabbed masks, swords and had a play, could I recognise that you were more skilled than me?'
Equally, I'd argue that dressing up like a storm trooper doesn't inherently decrease the amount of simulation. Fencing for an audience, not recognising and being honest about what's going on affect the level of simulation. Being-a-dick-in-sparring decrease the amount of simulation. But wearing Ensifer Sparring Gauntlets, so your opponent can krumphau your hands and you can still go to work the next day? That's protection allowing you to have a less in-accurate simulation.
In short - I disagree that good protection introduces more artefacts than learning in t-shirts. I do agree with you that having poor free-play priorities and poor sword-simulators introduces artefacts into play.
Let's look at it this way. Training with intensity and protection merely results in fighters able to develop skills for high-intensity situations. I disagree with you that wearing good protection results in more artefacts than wearing less protection (unless you want to re-create a Meyer fechtschule, but screw dem Meyer-ites. AM I RITE?). You can train at intensity with less protection, if you're willing to accept more risk (for example, broken fingers, bruises or shattered blades puncturing lungs. No-one's perfect, and no-protection is perfect, but I'd rather minimize risk). So to develop skill at high-intensity, with the minimum of risk, you need protection. And the current 'standard' for protection is over half a grand.
As for conditioning - I only have a couple of hours a week to run a HEMA class at the moment. I don't think that dead conditioning drills are a responsible use of that time. People have freedom to do them in their own time, and if they want to get good at HEMA then I'd recommend them. (Now, cutting-at-the-air as part of a warm up and stretch? I'd count that as making those activities more HEMA-alive...)