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Ξ May 30th, 2008 | → | ∇ Fitness / HEMA |
“Mommy, why is that man in the car next to ours holding a can or something to his ear?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“There’s blood. He frightens me.”
“I’m scared too, honey.”
Between cupping a block of ice to my left ear with my offhand b/c driving with proper signaling trumps habit, and realizing that forgetting my glasses while driving down commercial office parks and residential streets with patchy lighting poses a navigational challenge… I’d say this evening lacked even a soupçon of what normal people would call good sense.
Lately, my glasses have become noticeable and thus tiresome, b/c I spend so much time not wearing them (in the shop, while working out, fencing, beating small animals…). My vision is so sufficient for < 20 feet and reading / computer work that I’ve repeatedly walked out of the house or office without my glasses on. Earlier this evening, I walked out and drove off to HEMA practice before I realized it.
I can’t read street signs at useful driving distances, but spotting traffic during daytime is no problem. Nighttime’s a bit more challenging, so at least I stayed off the freeways after dark. During the early evening, only got on a freeway for 1 exit and rode the exit lane the whole way.
Delivered an aluminum waster tonight. Got in a medium workout. Refined my performance in a few drills. I’ll spare the world the gory details.
Geared up, went at it with the shinai. Rough start — we hadn’t really warmed up during drills despite the workin’ and sweatin’. Shattered two hardwood crosses tonight; one had been previously smashed and subsequently reassembled with wood glue. The original guard lasted 3 weeks, the glue for another week. Coupled with roughly 5 laths broken (all since April), of 24 laths total (6 shinai) in use since January, I’m wondering whether we might need to tone things down.
Probably not. Our club is always watching out and keeping strike impacts down when we can. Somewhat independent of the actual force landed, we can tell if the other guy could’ve landed a real log-splitter, he was at the end of his reach, or even if he had the window to land a hard one but actually got psyched out and deliberately covered defensively with incidental contact.
“Light on me, but you coulda had it.”
“Light touch on you, but I was totally trying to block in Pflug. I won’t take it.”
“Hard flat to the head. Stunned enough to get killed on your next action. I yield.”
“No actual touch, but you had me dead to rights and I think you totally pulled your thrust out of courtesy. Yours.”
But some of our passes have gotten to 5th, or even 7th intention and it’s a little harder to pull a blow when you’re desperately coming around before the other guy clocks you with that whopper of a zornhau wind-up, and then you realize a little late that he jinked when he should have juked.
A little gear might be necessary, though. Having fenced at 10-20% intensity a few times with wooden wasters / bokken, aluminum wasters, and steel simulators — and very little else (maybe a mask, gloves, T-shirt, shorts) — I think I can say I have gotten the barest glimpse of the kind of big brass ones it takes to face down a man with a sharp and out for blood. Things get a lot cagier in those cases. And I should remember that even if we’re using fairly nonlethal shinai. We get 2 of most items (10 for a few, 1 for certain critical mechanisms), no saves and no restarts. So yeah, not so much with the crazy bare-bones free play experiments. Thinking I should assemble the brigandine whose plates are rusting in my shop, or cobble together some slightly simpler coats of plate.
The main event of the evening came when Scott was barreling around in said 7th intention, and I jinked when I should’ve juked. Got clobbered on the side of the mask. Stung like baby Jesus was widdling in my ear. Pulled my mask off to shake my head, when Scott said, whoa, dude, watch out! I got my hand under the ear and only dripped on the floor once.
Turned out I got a whopper of a pressure cut on the top of the ear. Maybe it could use a stitch or two, but it’s an awkward place and I’m too preoccupied to go get it taken care of. Odds are good they’d just hit it with a dollop of superglue, give me a Motrin, and bid me good evening. So I washed it out, and put some antibiotic cream on it.
Had to cut my hair first, though, b/c it’s getting long enough that it was A) bothering me, and B) brushing the top of my ear and thus the cut.
Some thoughts:
The best (that’ve influenced my learning):
Liechtenauer by way of Ringeck
Northern Mantis kung fu
Fabris
dall’Aggochie
Meyer
I.33
parkour
(so… not favorite, but most competent: longsword, rapier, cut’n'thrust aka sidesword in that order — but despite *significant* and unique differences, the universal fight basics are, well, universal.)
The rest:
Capo Ferro
Codex Wallerstein
Talhoffer 1467
Giganti
Paulus Kal
dei Liberi
Vadi
Silver
Jeu de Hache (sp?)
baguazhang
muay thai
capoeira
tango
yoga
(re: weapons, I dig sword and buckler, but haven’t had the time to make it a primary weapon. I’m not so well-versed or attracted to dagger, poleax, quarterstaff, wrestling — though we do grapple at the sword and round out our practice with appropriate elements)
Essentially, all of Chivalry Bookshelf’s lineup through 2004 or so. :D Plus several Greenhill and Paladin Press books.
Since Jan, I’ve trained with Scott Brown, who is hands-down the best overall trainer I’ve had, of the two dozen oftentimes int’l instructors I’ve taken classes with (via WMAW mostly) or the 3 I’ve studied long-term with. *He’s* had some serious time put into a lot of German manuscripts I do and don’t know.
The caveat: I don’t really have a favorite manual yet / anymore. I’ve realized I don’t know enough to even really understand any one of the manuals in a full-speed full-intent way. Getting there, but it’ll be another year at least (with proper training from the start that didn’t exist at the time, I could’ve gotten to this point in ~2 years, not 7). And then 1-3 years more before I could meaningfully compare any two manuals.
The more I (and then we, inc. Scott) got into longsword training, the more I saw (or was forced to see) that you could almost go back to AEMMA’s Longsword Book I PDF book from … 2001?
Why? All the book refs and credits in the world meant squat, when what we really needed was:
drills for 400 reps / hr (200-300 *minimum*!)
2+ hrs / practice
30-60 mins free fencing
2-3 practices / wk
Those drills focus on the universal fight basics: timing, distance, control of lines or an understanding of the time-space relationship between the two swords and opponents involved, footwork. Cutting figure-8’s against an opp doing the same (then running through the Italian segno). Stepping and swinging / thrusting through every 2-8 step combo permutation of guards, long/short edges, and footwork combo we could think of. No actual techniques from the books; well, not many.
Obviously, I’m being a little unfair to the books, b/c 7 years’ worth of working through them definitely gave our group a mental framework or concept of the entire longsword fighting picture. But that was 30% of the way to being a dynamic fencer.
And all the while that you drill, the brain has to be engaged. Otherwise, dumbly doing reps of something inane is not exactly pushing your limits and challenging you to learn, yeah? So book-learnin’ has its place. :D
Last year, we’d stepped up our drilling to where we were picking a few basic 1-2-action sequences, and drilling them at roughly 50-100 / hr. And we were pretty proud of ourselves. I’d say many groups I’ve seen or dealt with are doing well to reach the low end of that (many just free fence haphazardly). Usually, analysis paralysis during the initial interp, ADD (jumping through 10 different complicated 5-step techniques in one practice), and friendly-yet-off-topic kibbitzing are usually the culprits. We were and are guilty of all these things to some degree. We’ve solved most of that by putting it off until after practice, when we’re tired, winding down, and going out for drinks to talk smack, recap, and count coup.
Our major failing (and a common one) was we almost never free fenced until Jan. A lack of .. bloodthirst due to our older avg age (~30+) meant we never prioritized finding the gear or making accurate simulators. So we started, late last year. And thus had just begun to see how far we had to go in order to apply our book-learnin’… when Scott showed up, and in a very friendly and engaging way proceeded to stomp the snail snot out of us.
We immediately doubled our reps / hr, as he saved us the time of inventing drills from scratch. The rest was building up the stamina so that we *could* do more than just 200 reps / hr. :P Chris doesn’t bother with most upper body weight machines at the gym any more, and sometimes skips his cardio with a clean conscience.
The funny thing is, I’ve just written the keys to the kingdom. Do thusly, and you will become the closest to a master swordsman the Western world has seen since Turin was lost to the French. The devil, natch, is in the details.
Tonight in 2 hrs, we put in 600 reps with footwork *and* put in 40 mins of fencing and bleeding. If Chris and I were more aerobically fit, we might’ve managed ~800 reps, 1000 if we were more fit in other ways and could step up the intensity. But we’re not in a rush. It’ll come when it comes, and we won’t realize it until well after the fact.
on July 29th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Your entire page is a book unto itself! Why bother with trying to obtain the original manuscripts from the masters when you have thus delved into, and exposed all their marvelous secrets for us? Six hundred reps w/ footwork? Of what? I hurt even thinking of doing six hundred of anything.But, alas,I am advanced of age and, thusly, must be kind to myself.I cannot do what men younger than I am capable of.So,I let the younger showcase,knowing that even the most unstudied can land the blow that fells.Even as we speak,both sides along the lower ribcage, hurts, from three sessions of sparring.But, it’s a good kind of pain, for we all know that pain is simply weakness leaving the body. There sure is alot leaving me………………can someone pass me the codeine?