Emergency Negativity Vent

In seeing a lot of discussions on FB about HEMA that are reminding me exactly why I can’t find any joy in it these days. Or at least find little in most of the community.

I mean there’s the odd voice of reason, but so many that just make me facepalm.

I’ve written before about the need to accept as well as manage risks and this week my dice roll came up snake eyes.

My own stick bounced back while doing some pattern drills and cracked a tooth in half. My mouthguard was in its box ten feet away.

In hindsight I was probably pushing my competence at the drill with the energy and movement we were adding, but this is about the worst consequence I can foresee happening from that drill goig awry, and Im cool with it. I’ve already had the tooth glued back together.

Dear Diary

I’ve not been training HEMA much if at all of late. I went to Ireland and spent a week mucking out stables and relaxing with the Gassmanns - and getting my butt kicked in sparring by them and their clubmates.

Still impressed that Sam G was the only UK+Ire guy to leave longsword pools and Minsk and Jack G got Bronze (for Switzerland), but they were definitely in good form while I was rusty and unenthused about HEMA. Still, the opportunity to try basic horsemanship was amazing.

After that it was almost straight to the Vieira Bros BJJ camp in Spain for ten sessions of BJJ with world champions. It was, oddly enough, not so much intense as cumulatively overwhelming. There wasn’t that much new material (for me, but I’ve regularly attended Rico Vieira seminars over the years) but the overwhelming impression was that I just need to apply what I know to improve, not learn more.

Between that and a new copy of BJJ Training Diary (more to follow on that) I’ve been trying to be as intentional and focused in training as possible, and focusing on improving my game as applied rather than what I think my game is.

What does that mean?

I like the four stage competence ladder model of learning, ever since Scott Brown first introduced me to it.

My BJJ journey is at a point where I know a lot of things that I should do, and I can dom but don’t do. I’m at the stage of conscious competence, in other words. I can drill the technique right, even use it when I’ve got it in mind during a roll.

When I need it most, when the problem that it addresses has just appeared out of nowhere? Then the technique isn’t to hand.

What’s the solution? Well right now I’m trying hard drilling and lower intensity sparring to bridge that gap and get some new techniques appearing reflexively in sparring.

My first gold since the HEMA Break, in the least serious or prestigious tournament possible. The May Melee ran a team relay, with each team of three fielding one fenced with a synthetic, one steel federschwert, and one steel one hander (not rapier).

Stefano (left, sabreur) was keen to win, and insisted I join his team. In revenge, I and our synthetic fighter Olly named the team “Pineapple Pizza”, after Stefano’s worst fear.

Stefano was disappointed by my performance, however. I was carried though the pools by the other two, who did well enough that we exited #1 into the semi finals, which were delayed until the next day.

I managed to sleep very well on Saturday night, largely based on exhaustedly collapsing fully dressed while searching my tent for beer tokens at 8pm. On Sunday my more competent fencing helped take us to two victories - finishing with me realising a 6-2 lead meant that I could double my way to winning.

Was it good fencing? No. Am I proud? No. Did it satisfy Stefano’s dragon-like lust for gold? For now.

Actual event review to follow.

“What do we say to the God of Rapiers?”

“Meh.”

I enjoyed yesterday’s training. It was the first class I’ve lead in ages, and it was structured very differently. Rather than “let me show you how I do X” or “the book says to do this when you want to X”, I went for “go do X and show me how you found works best”. A different way to approach teaching, but it seemed to meet the Fit, Fun, Functional goals pretty well.

I’ve got perhaps three more sessions of material in mind on the same theme of “inventing I.33”. Hopefully, we’ll start with basic premises such as:

• I want to hit someone with a sword [I’m likely to cut down from my dominant side]
• I want to protect my nearest targets from the other fencer’s sword [using the buckler to protect an extended sword arm is a good idea]
• If I stand there and cover a cut, there’s a risk of leg hits if they’re actually cutting low [Possibly ways to counter this are to immediately threaten a thrust off my cover, to retreat with the cover, or to make the legs a relatively less shallow target by hip hinging forwards]

And via sparring games/focused drills we’ll invent I.33. Hopefully.

The first session was extremely basic cuts, learning how an arming sword handles and coordinating it with buckler cover of the sword hand. We then introduced using the sword and/or buckler to cover a direct “caveman” head attack. It semi-organically led to a bind situation! Success!

Next session will be similar stuff on the other diagonal axis, and then thrusts and breaking them, going as far as schilt-schlach and stich-slach if we go fast.

I find that knowing the “why” makes a huge difference in the quality of repetitions - for example, the final drill we did of attack/counter-cut where one person is trying to cut to the head while not exposing the sword hand and the other is trying to cover the cut while likewise not exposing additional targets and lining up a thrust. It’s easier (in my brain anyway) to know what I want the technique to achieve and work to do that than to record a perfect and idealised form of it to mimic.

If you can handle his prose style, I have some good Luis Preto stick fighting books that discuss “ecological” training as superior to teaching forms.