Today in the Park

Fightcamp is coming up and I've realised how little sparring I've done since the winter. In fact I've been mostly theory and drilling (poorly) for the past 5-6 months. This means that I will get my arse handed to me in competition.


So, in an attempt to get past that, I spent today in the park with the Saturday Scrappers.  Well, two of them, and tried to get back up to speed. Not entirely successfully though.  I don't think I'm going to be much of a longswordsman, I prefer keeping my hands forward and they tend to creep to places that are only vulnerable because some fool forgot to put a complex hilt on my sword.  I'm certainly not going into competition until I've got that sorted out. Especially with the new synthetic swords- They're  pretty safe, you'll get some good bruises from them, but I really don't want to risk my knuckles in really hard play until  I'm more confident with my guards. Hand injuries are terribly inconvenient.



Since it seems I'm flexing my teaching muscles a bit more, I thought I'd run through a few ideas with the guys. Drills, basic concepts and a little sparring and analysis. Capo-esque for the sparring- It was more a matter of shouting "hold" explaining why they should move their blade in a specific way and then watching them do it a bit more- and Swetnam for the drills and explanations (I only have one dagger). The scrappers are longsword to a man, so I get to worry about the intricacies of rapier rather than distance and all of that.

I am starting to have quite a bit of confidence in my Swetnam interpretations, obviously they need improvement, but I know they're going in the right direction. Today was the first time I saw it from the outside and explaining it to people who were not my esteemed and honourable maestro.What  gives me confidence in my interpretation is how little movement is needed to defend- twist the dagger, straighten the blade and your opponent almost impales himself for you..
 
I set up the drill like this:

A takes the dagger in his left hand and holds in a guard.
B Thrusts at A's face
A parries with the dagger,   After they're used to the idea of blocking with their left, I give the defender a sword and tell them to reply with a thrust at the same time.

Repeat with other guards.

I chose this way for two reasons, as mentioned before I only have the one dagger, the other reason is that it forces you to get used to the concept of an off-hand weapon. I know the scrappers are competent fighters and not exactly a good benchmark for difficulty- however, the cackles and mild swearing as they kept on inconveniencing the attacker or suddenly finding a sword in their face suggests I've found a nice little drill to build up the reflexes and that I have got the guards held properly. They also followed movements through, which I didn't tell them about and pulled them off almost identical to how I think Swetnam describes it.

All in all, a really productive day and a good reminder of why we started these sessions in the first place.

Understanding.

I am a great advocate of teaching as a method of understanding something- So, in a bid to improve my
Capoferro skills and get a local sparring partner, I have started to instruct a lady who doesn't get on too well
with my honourable and esteemed maestro's teaching methods...These things happen, we've all had teachers who were good but not good for us.

Why does teaching help you understand a subject?

Well, I have said this before- revisiting the basics is essential. They are the basics for one reason alone- they are what you will use the most. And it doesn't really matter what system you use for a lot of them, the principles are basically interchangeable. Distance is always going to be knowing where you can stand to hit someone, footwork is always going to be about moving in and out of distance. Guards are related to a specific system, but the reasons for them and why they work are not. Methods of striking are dictated by the blade you're using but are still basically stab 'em or poke 'em while staying behind your blade. You will use these regardless of what weapon and style you finally choose. They'll vary a little here and there, and a lot comes down to personal preferences, but in the end- a solid base in these will hold you in good stead regardless of what you have in your hands.

The basics can get a little tedious after a while.  They are essential, but you will get bored with them until you've realised that your disregard for them is the reason behind that lovely bruise developing on your arm. Which brings me on to the next point.

There's a tendency to reach plateaus and stagnate in this kind of thing. You can get into your patterns and you don't push through to understand something that's been responsible for a different bruise because each time you do it wrong you get hit so your old instincts come into play and you avoid the blow in a different manner- making it harder for you to break through to the next level of understanding.

The best way to slow things down is to try to teach someone else.  Firstly you have to ask questions of the text- why is it like this, what's the best way to demonstrate it, how does this tie in with everything else, and so on. Then, during demonstration and explanation, you will realise you've missed a bit or the person you're teaching will ask a question that you really have to think about. This is good. It's even better when the person you've just explained it to replies with a sentence you wish you wrote.

And all through this process, you're teaching someone that you didn't even notice turning up to lessons. You. As you help that beginner, you're putting yourself through drills you long gave up on because they're boring or you had done enough. You're solidifying the basic rules of a fight.

Then there's the reward of a job well done. Just enjoying the dawn of realisation when an 'impossible' task is made possible and the allegedly complex is proven to be quite simple.

People think that sword fighting is complex, it's not. It has things that everyone agrees on and the rest is a matter of personal preference. What happens in a fight (especially competition) is that things go quickly and you never quite see the stages that make them up- that's the point. So you get a blur of movement, a few exchanges and then someone is hit. Daunting if you don't know how straightforward it is.

Today's session was an hour and a half. I reinforced the guards (which were discussed at an earlier time) then covered stepping into distance, controlling your opponents blade and recognising when your blade is being controlled and stepping out of distance as soon as possible. When she gets these down perfectly, it won't be a thrilling fight but it will be a very, very long one that she might win by accident.

Teaching techniques and things.

Well, there's no point learning a system if you don't have anyone to help you test it- so the first thing that needs to be done (once you've started to understand what the hell he's going on about) is to explain it to someone else, in clear and straight forward terms. Preferably in some kind of sensible order.

Flicking through the notes I've been taking while trying to understand Swetnam, has made me aware that they are pretty useless for teaching. Not only that, they're not very useful on the field- even in a natty little A5 ring binder that fits in the front pocket of my sword bag. How have I overcome this?

Index cards.

Not only that, they're typed, mainly because my handwriting is blasted shoddy. I am contemplating sharing them here, once they're done. Maybe in several stages, so you can follow the path of understanding that I am travelling. Maybe they'll help you, dear reader, maybe they'll just end up with you being confused.

It's quite likely that you'll end up being confused because I'm not one for 'correct' terminology. I have a hotchpotch education within HEMA and I pick up anything that looks interesting, learn some of those principles and move on. I think I'm more of a fighter than an artist- I don't care if it looks a bit sloppy providing I hit them without being hit myself. I also seem to have developed the English habit of throwing in occasional Italian terms where I'm only vaguely aware of what they actually mean. It's perfectly acceptable, on a historic level, but it's not helpful if you're writing for someone else.

I've also done this with Capoferro's plays- mainly trying to remove the excessive wordiness and translate it to movement rather than explanation, but I'm not sure how accurate they are since I've not had time to run through them or any form of double checking.