More Practice Notes

Just so that I don't forget...

• I worked on my enveloping. I fought a dude who is taller than me and has very good distance and timing. He kept his sword low and center-line-ish. I tried to use standard opposition on him, and things worked badly for me. I then started off by sweeping his sword down, then rotating my arm such that his sword got scooped back up again. I think this technique has merit against people who keep their swords super low but still pointing at their opponents. I need to try this against a couple of other people who do similar things, but it seems like a very valid addition to my flowchart.
• Mentioning that - I should transcribe my current flowchart and keep it up-to-date. But "should" is a slippery word, generally meaning something that one feels bad for not doing, but still won't do.
• I need to figure out how to make my standard Capoferro Terza more effective against people who push hard against my blade. Feints? Switching to Prima? Who knows.
• Edit: Oh yeah, I've been doing really good passing steps on reaction to being out of distance.

That's all I've really got at the moment.

Practice Thing

I went to practice! There are a number of things to note for later, and I write them here.

• Destreza continues to be fun. Switching back and forth, I think I actually prefer using my shorter rapier for destreza-ing. This is not because of any inherent advantage to it - it's just that fighting destreza with a longer rapier ends up being very similar to my standard game, whereas fighting destreza with a short rapier ends up being very novel and teaches me interesting things.
• I also think that my destreza game when using a short rapier might be better than my Italian game when using a short rapier, and that is an interesting thing. This requires further study.
• I have been extending my arm when in safe measure to provoke a response, to which I pull my arm back a bit and then disengage around. This seems to work well, but I need to work harder at defense when doing this. Currently it is leading to many double-kills.
• With my long rapier, I have been slowly tracing down toward people's hilts and then disengage-lunging to their face or chest when my tip is just above their hilt. People tend to allow me to do this because they view having my tip near their hilt as an advantageous position. When in an appropriate position though, a disengage-lunge is just a touch above one tempo. This means that if I do something extra, this tactic works well. Additionally, it's something that people let me do, unlike standard find-gain-thrust mechanics or far-outside-line shenanigans.
• "Something Extra" includes:
• The afore-mentioned arm-extend-retract thing.
• Covering their obvious line with my dagger
• This also synergizes super well with long-blade destreza.
• Maybe I should be making special note to raise my hilt and perform body-voids to defend myself, if I plan to do this.
• Longsword continues to be fun. I am still working just above the basics, but working with my don gives me a large head start. Longsword makes me really want to do Cut and Thrust, though, and for that I need gauntlets. Perhaps I should make something very basic out of leather.
• Tick-reset-tick-stab is still an effective strategy using attentional blink and training of one's opponent.
• I end up fighting the same people quite a bit, because they are very enjoyable and educational people to fight. I should probably make an effort to branch out more.
• I need to work on Giganti's response to a leg/foot shot. Giganti basically says that you should pull your leg back, lean forward, and stab them in the face. The way I have been implementing this, I actually hop backwards a bit due to the momentum of my front leg and straightening my back leg. It was brought up to me that this gives my opponent just a bit of time in which they know where I am going to be, which means they can do horrible things. I need to relax the motion into something where I do the same thing, but don't hop. This would let me take a step backwards or forwards out of that stance, if need be.
• I also need to try circling a bit more. The particular sequence is:
• Circle to your opponent's left with a pass, ending with your left foot forward.
• Perform a passing lunge, ending with your right foot forward and bringing the circle into a tight spiral, such that you go smoothly from heading diagonally left to moving directly toward your opponent.
• This probably works best if you are in the middle of other circling movements.
• This is slightly deceitful of distance. It won't get you completely there if your opponent is completely on, but it will help.

Practice was very satisfying, though. I think I'll leave this post there, and not really mark out anything I need to work on in particular.

Triangular Thrusts OR Opposition in Motion

INTRODUCTION

This is a rewrite of a private post I made a while ago, back when this was a tumblr account and not a blogger account. I had thought I had posted this already, but apparently I just thought about it so intensely that I thought I had rewritten it.

BEGIN EDIT AS OF 2017-01-05

After some feedback, I added the one picture that was asked for. I had originally drawn out all of the pictures for this post, but the sheet of paper got lost to the winds of time. So, lazy. Also I want to discuss this, so not having pictures serves to increase the likelihood that people will ask questions.

END EDIT AS OF 2017-01-05

This post describes a particular type of offensive opposition that is relatively effective and reproducible. This doesn't mean that there are no exceptions - it just means that I understand what the exceptions are, and understand that the exceptions don't diminish the usefulness of the whole

The way people usually learn is as follows:

1. See a situation
2. Try a thing
3. Did it work?
1. If so, put that sort of situation in your memory as one that works
2. If not, put that sort of situation in your memory as one that doesn't work
4. Repeat

That is immensely difficult without a theoretical basis. Period manuals and other types of teaching help - they point out they type of situations that might work out. They don't tend to talk about why they work, except in a cursory sense. The why is usually assumed to be somewhere between "because I say so" and "because this is the way things are done". (As an aside, this is why I love Meyer - he goes relatively deeply into the why and the how.)

This is my attempt to codify things into a little heuristic I can run in my head during a practice bout. Obviously I am not going to think through a heuristic in my head while in a tournament bout - that leads to me possibly missing something that my opponent does or reacting slowly or something. During practice, however, this lets me analyze situations far faster, and learn which situations do or don't feel right. It's that feeling right which guides me during a tournament bout, and it's repetition in free-fighting which lets me establish that feeling.

This heuristic relies on three main principles, outlined in more detail below. They are:

1. Geometry
2. Timing
3. Opposition

Again, they are described in excruciating detail below.

You will also note that there are notations for where there should be images. I have been sitting on this post for about a month, so in order to follow the philosophy of "more content faster is better", I'm just going to publish it with descriptions of the intended images. If people ask for me to produce specific images in the comments, then I am much more likely to produce them. As it stands, I think that I have specified far more images than necessary for comprehension.

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GEOMETRY
Lines are Important

Fencing is about lines.

I'm not talking about the outside line and the inside line here - I'm talking about geometric lines. The connection between two points.

The simplest line in fencing is the connection between your hilt and your target on your opponent. The simplest case of this is that you take your sword, point it at your target on your opponent, and then push it forward until your tip touches them. If you don't react in time, then they will touch you and you will lose.

[DRAWING OF STRAIGHT LINE, TOP VIEW, FROM ONE DUDE TO ANOTHER]

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TIME
Movement and Tempo

Fencing is also about time.

There is a minimum reaction time. It is impossible to react faster than a certain number of milliseconds.

In my experience, the minimum time for someone to react is about the time it takes a skilled person to lean forward and extend their arm, without taking a lunging step. To me, this is the definition of "a tempo. This lines up with Capoferro's definition of tempo, in which he describes arm-only movements as half a tempo, a leaning thrust as one tempo, and a lunge as one and a half tempi.

It also follows that a disengage or any other kind of meaningful blade-repositioning consumes at least half a tempo, and usually a full tempo. Because of this, there are two main actions - jockeying for position, and throwing a thrust.

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EXPLANATION, PART I:

Physical Limitations

If one tempo is the minimum reaction time, then it seems useful to analyze actions based on what you can do in one tempo. This is the minimum that you can do without your opponent being able to react to it.

Using our earlier definitions, it also follows that if you are close enough to perform a leaning thrust, and your tip is pointed toward its end destination, then your opponent should by all rights be dead in one tempo. It should be impossible for them to react in time to save themselves.

If we place ourselves in our opponent's place, then we should realize that we need to never ever allow our opponent to be within leaning-thrust range with their tip pointing toward our bodies. This is the excruciatingly detailed justification for why we Find or Gain our opponent's blade. Here I am using the Fabris/Capoferro definition in which Find and Gain are synonymous, rather than the Duello definition in which Find comes before Gain.

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YOU CAN IGNORE THIS BIT IN A SMALL FONT, PART I:

But What If...!

Here are three tangents, for the initial arguments that I imagine people raising.


"But Lupold," you say in objection, "I parry people all the time because I know they are lining up to thrust at me."

That's nice kid. This is because you anticipated their shot - before they lined up their action, you initiated an action to parry it. Don't deny it - the impulses from your brain were firing as soon as you saw them line up their shot. Maybe you saw a tell or some such. For our purposes today, this is Bad. This is because a tell can be a lie. Or someone can halt their sword for a split second mid-thrust and then start it moving again. It turns life into a guessing game, rather than a reproducible means to be successful. When daggers are involved, this is frequently how things go - I try to tell you a lie to get you to take a tempo with your dagger, parry wrong, and then stab you.

Dagger actions are half-tempo. Unfortunately, our brains operate at a rate of one tempo. So you can queue up anticipation all you want, and can might have success with it. But when it comes down to planning your initial actions, you have to plan them in one-tempo chunks. Anything smaller than that is guesswork and chance. You can make high-percentage guesses, and if you analyze the possible motion of swords then you can move your dagger from place to place to parry their sword. But if you aren't conscious of the limitations of your reactions, then you will eventually get overwhelmed and fail.

This realization has been key to my progress.

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YOU CAN IGNORE THIS BIT IN A SMALL FONT, PART II:

Weirdness in Timing!

One type of action bears particular note - a lunge with a late thrust. I actually do not mind this type of action, so long as you lunge in a good defensive posture which doesn't allow your opponent a one-tempo counter-thrust. Then, after you have moved forward some and you are in position to launch a one-tempo attack, you do so. Most opponents will attempt some sort of opposition when they see you moving forward, but if your sense of opposition is better, you can probably thrust in such a way that their sword does not have the strength to parry. Be careful when doing this though - it is likely that your opponent will think that you are undefended, then they will attempt to thrust or lunge. This action will begin in the middle of your thrust, so make sure that your thrust will land, but not hard.

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YOU CAN IGNORE THIS BIT IN A SMALL FONT, PART III:

Further Weirdness in Timing!

This sort of lunge can also be performed if one begins with one's sword far off-line. This can be used to force one's opponent to guess what angle the attack will come from - after all, you only have about half a tempo of information before you have to react, given that your reactions are one tempo too slow to act. In this situation, you must choose an action that shuts down all options - the easiest of these is to step backwards. Failing that, use body positioning to limit their targets and perform some sort of defensive action or counter-thrust. Failing that, you can probably guess where their arm is going.

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EXPLANATION, PART II:

Triangular Thrusts

As such, we want to push our opponent's tip away, such that they cannot touch us. Our opponent will probably do the same. If they do not, then they are dead and don't know it yet. This is the base position that we will find ourselves in, if we get to leaning-thrust range. Both of our tips are pointed away from each other, limited by the other person's sword.

[DRAWING OF TWO PEOPLE, NEITHER HAVE A STRAIGHT LINE AT EACH OTHER]

For the following, imagine two people with a single rapier standing positioned in the outside line. There are slight differences in how to think of the inside line, but we will get there in time.

Because of this positioning, the smallest movement that we make will be a sort of triangle, formed as we move our blade into a line pointing at our opponent and then as we extend it. One side of the triangle is formed by the movement forward of the hilt (Line A below) and the end position of the blade (Line B below). One side of the triangle (Line C below) is drawn by the tip as it moves from its starting position to its ending position. And the last side of the triangle (Line D below) is formed by the initial position of your blade. How quaint! I will call this a Triangular Thrust henceforth.

Two stick figures. One has a sword. Why don't they have hips or legs? I don't know.

And yes. This triangle would be described as AB-C-D, since A and B combine to form a single side of the triangle.

As such, you can move your opponent's and your blades around. Maybe you thrust, maybe they do. Maybe you thrust at the same time! This is the most dangerous. After all, if all we have is what has been covered thus far, we have no way of knowing whose sword will strike home. But in general, we have two principles here.

1. If our opponent does thrust, they will not touch us.
2. If our opponent thrusts, they might touch us.

If our opponent does not touch us, then we are fine. We live to fence more. However, if our opponent thrusts, they might touch us. This is scary. We don't want that. With what we know thus far, we live in terror and as such cannot attack ever.

There is, however, one more part of fencing that I have not yet elaborated upon - opposition.

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STRENGTH
Strength of the Blade

Fencing is about strength.

Opposition is the idea that, when one sword pushes against another, one or the other will "win" and go where it wants, or they will be "equal in strength" and both swords will not come on line or whatever.

In general, a blade will win opposition when the point of contact between blades is closer to its hilt than the the opponent's hilt. This is because in the muscular system of your arm, the weakest part will always be the wrist and hand. As such, your blade acts as a lever on that joint.

If the point of contact between your blade and your opponent's blade is closer to your hilt than to your opponent's hilt, then this lever is less disadvantageous to you than it is to your opponent. You win opposition.

[DRAWING LABELLING WINNER / LOSER]

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YOU CAN IGNORE THIS BIT IN SMALL FONT, PART IV:

But Some People Are Really Strong!

"But Lupold," I hear you cry once again, "Some people have really strong wrists! A guy once pushed through the middle of my blade with his tip! It was terrible!"

Yes. This is true. In this case, you have to imagine that the point of contact is farther out on your blade than it actually is, for the purposes of opposition. It sucks, but that's why strong wrists are nice luxuries for fencing. Fortunately, naturally weak wrists tend to come with benefits like arms which are not wide across and thus are hard to touch. This is why the inside of the elbow is such a nice target on big, strong guys. "Oh hey, look at that nice huge arm." *stab*

This is also what you need to do if someone's arm is really long. The idea here is that when everything in your arm is straightened, your strong will be at a certain place, as will your opponent's strong. If they have longer arms or stronger wrists, this place will be farther forward, either by virtue of being able to push harder or by virtue of it actually being farther forward.

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YOU CAN IGNORE THIS BIT IN SMALL FONT, PART V:

Blades Don't Work Like That!

Another exception - in reality, the triangular thrust is probably not a perfect triangle, depending on how your sword is weighted. I use a forward-weighted sword, so my sword moves slightly differently from a backward-weighted sword. The actual shape it creates, instead of having two lines converge on the hilt, has two lines converge on a point about four inches down the blade from the hilt. But that's not something that one strictly needs to understand for the purposes of this. There are interesting bits of physics going on here that are not super-relevant to this. I have spent a long time thinking about those physics-bits, and I am relatively sure they don't matter.

[MAYBE A LITTLE TINY DRAWING OF A TRIANGLE WITH A POINT ON THE BLADE, NOT ON THE HILT.]

The important bit is that strength and opposition remain the same, because the main factor in opposition is the effect of the lever which is your sword on the fulcrum which is your wrist - not the point your sword wants to rotate around.

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EXPLANATION, PART III:

Pushing Through Their Blade

Considering opposition, it becomes clear how we can win if our opponent does not move. If we make sure that a stronger part of our blade touches a weaker part of their blade as we perform our Triangular Thrust in, we can nearly guarantee successful opposition. That leaves one more pesky case - what happens if our opponent thrusts at the same time we do?

[DRAWING OF THRUSTING THROUGH SOMEONE'S TIP]

To figure this out, we should consider what happens during the already-mentioned Triangular Thrust. As we extend our hand forward, our blade comes on-line. As we rotate our wrist to come on-line, the stronger part of our blade moves forward, in addition to the entire sword moving forward.

[DRAWING OF ROTATING A SWORD CLOSER TO POINTING FORWARD, WITH THE STRONG PARTS LABELLED]

Because of this, it seems as though the person whose sword is closer to pointing toward their final target has a more advantageous blade position, if both triangles intersect each other.

[MAYBE ALSO A BEFORE/AFTER DRAWING OF TWO PEOPLE, ONE MORE OFF-LINE THAN THE OTHER. BEFORE SHOWS INITIAL POSITION, AFTER SHOWS THE OTHER PERSON GETTING ON-LINE FIRST.]

This is all well and good in a toy example. But there are many complications. For example - we don't necessarily know what our opponent's final target is. They could want to point toward my face, or they could want to point toward my hip. These are two very different targets.

However, since a direct thrust is the only single-tempo action we care about, then we can imagine the worst case. My opponent's blade will be strongest when thrusting toward the target closest to their tip, because that is the place at which they are closest to on-line. So, if we are on the outside line, they will thrust to my shoulder, head, or the right part of my stomach in rare circumstances, depending on where their blade is. I will call this the opponent's Strongest Target.

[FRONT-VIEW DRAWING LOOKING AT AN OPPONENT. YOUR SWORD IS SHOWN. TIP HIGH, INSIDE LINE. SHOULDER IS STRONGEST TARGET, AND CIRCLED. SIMILAR FOR INSIDE LINE.]

Generally the Strongest Target is the face, just inside the shoulders, or just inside the hips, since these are the edges of the "kill zones" on your opponent's silhouette.

[DRAWING, FRONT VIEW, WITH FACE, SHOULDERS, AND HIPS TARGETED. MAYBE INSIDE OF ELBOW TOO, AS AN OPTION?]

Anything else either consumes more time or is weaker. If you are thrusting with good form, you should be able to close off your opponent's attacks to other places if you gain opposition first.

It follows that if you could perform quick calculations of whether your blade is more on-line than your opponent's blade, you could figure out if thrusting would win you the bout, when you are within leaning-thrust range. As it happens, I have a way to perform this calculation.

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EXPLANATION, PART IV:

This Is The Point Of This Post

Seriously, If You Read Nothing Else, Read This

Imagine a line connecting from your hilt to your Strongest Target on your opponent. You can tell roughly how far off-line you are by thinking about how far away from that line your tip is. If you tie some twine to your hilt and have your opponent hold the twine to their body, you can measure it with a yardstick.

[DRAWING OF SIDE-VIEW, ONLY YOU HAVE A SWORD WITH CONNECTING LINES FROM HILT TO STRONGEST TARGET. SECOND VERSION, WITH YELLOW YARDSTICKS DRAWN IN. EXPLAIN ABOUT HOW FAR OFF-LINE IT IS.]

Then, imagine a similar line, from your opponent's hilt to their Strongest Target. If the yardstick-measured distance from their tip to that line is more than your yardstick-measured distance from your tip to your line, then you should win opposition if you thrust. This yardstick-measured distance I will call the Strongest Line Width.

[DRAWING OF SIDE-VIEW, BOTH HAVE SWORDS, LINES, YARDSTICKS. SHOW WHOSE IS SHORTER. MAYBE AN AFTER-SHOT OF THE WINNER THRUSTING THROUGH THE LOSER?]

This isn't a complete definition. If your opponent is using a 35-inch sword and you are using a 45-inch sword, then you need to pretend that your tip is 10 inches closer to your hilt in order to determine your Strongest Line Width. If they are stronger, or have longer arms, then you need to pretend that your blade is longer for opposition purposes as well, since that allows them to put a place of equal strength farther forward in space. Aside from that though, this is a pretty simple calculation that human eyes are pretty good at.

[SAME DRAWING, BUT ONE PERSON'S SWORD IS MUCH SHORTER. YARDSTICK MEASURES FROM SOMEWHERE BEHIND THE TIP OF THE LONGER BLADE.]

How to use this method:

1. Ignore the "Before the Fight" steps when you are starting out using this. They are included for the sake of completeness.
1. Before the Fight: 
1. Determine Modifiers for determining Strongest Line Width.
1. Start off by thinking of blade length. If your opponent's blade is shorter, get ready to think opposition in terms of the point on your blade that is the same length as theirs tip from their quillons.
2. Are their wrists stronger? Start imagining your tip as being a bit farther out.
1. The reverse is true if their wrists are weaker.
3. Are their arms longer? Start imagining your tip as being a bit farther out again.
1. The reverse is true if their arms are shorter.
2. During the fight:
1. When in Leaning-Thrust measure, if the following are true, thrust and you win:
1. Does a stronger part of your blade contact a weaker part of theirs (or not contact theirs at all), if they don't move?
2. Do Triangular Thrusts to your and their Strongest Targets all intersect?
1. Is your Strongest Line Width Shorter than theirs?
3. Yay, you should theoretically win!

[SILLY DRAWING OF SOMEONE SMILING, SWORD THROUGH THE OTHER PERSON.]

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CLOSING

Things are in reality more complicated than this. But this is a useful approximation that relies on several valid assumptions. It assumes that there is a minimum time before your opponent can react. It assumes that there are a couple of actions that can occur in that minimum time. Lastly, it assumes that we can determine the result of these actions ahead of time, so that we can learn to recognize situations in which we win. Eventually, one learns to recognize these situations without thinking, and then you're ready to do this in a tournament.

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COMPLICATIONS

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THE INSIDE LINE
Fencing Line This Time, Not Geometric Line

The inside line is messier than the outside line. I tend to simplify things by using a dagger to cover the line to their Strongest Target on my body.

The alternative is to find their blade on the inside, and then throw a Triangular Thrust toward a point over their sword-arm shoulder, not on their body. While doing this and after your blade makes contact with their hilt, roll your wrist to position your bladeblade past your original target and make your tip contact their body.

[BEFORE/DURING/AFTER DRAWING SHOWING STRONGEST LINE EXTENDING OVER SHOULDER, THEN SWORD GOING PAST THAT TO TOUCH OPPONENT.]

This is the only way I can think of to describe Duello-style opposition on the inside line within the paradigm here. This does make stabbing your opponent on the inside line a one-and-a-half or two tempo action. It should work properly, because your opponent can't really thrust to any targets on your body until after your blade touches their blade firmly, after which point they should be blocked from touching you or disengaging by your quillons.

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ASSORTED ADVICE
Because It's Not Lupold Without Long Bulleted Lists

Other ways to use or not use these principles include:

1. Imagine a Strongest Line which points somewhere other than their body. Use this to predict if a particular way of jockeying for position will work and move their sword.
2. Fight on the outside line, all the time.
1. The inside line is terrible, more complex, and more dangerous.
2. Perform arm-shots when on the inside line.
3. Use body positioning to remove Strongest Targets as options. One particular example of this is the girata, as described by Giganti. Another is the leaning-forward Fabris stance. Another is the profiled Spanish stance.
4. Don't try to use these principles when someone is using cuts. These principles are incomplete, and require further elaboration to include cuts.
5. The inside of the elbow is a valid target, and its position is relatively predictable when someone is performing a Triangular Thrust, whether they know that they are or not.
1. Their other option is to not attack, and if your opponent doesn't attack and you perform a thrust, you probably will be happier than they will be.
6. If someone has a dagger, that dagger is likely to be able to parry Strongest Targets on their left side, if the dagger is in their left hand. It might behoove you to aim for targets that are not the absolute Strongest Target. For the purposes of the above calculation, you still must assume that they are aiming at their Strongest Target.
1. I suggest aiming at their ribs next to their sword-arm.
7. When people are leaning forward in a Fabris stance, sometimes they place their blade parallel to their body. This makes it much harder to apply a strong part of your blade to a weak part of their blade, assuming they stay static.
8. If your opponent has a buckler and you try to use these principles unaltered, you will likely be sad.

I hope that this has been useful, or at least interesting. I plan to work on re-integrating this particular understanding of these principles into my game. I have been trying to thoroughly understand the physics underlying these principles, but that extra step into the abstract makes things too difficult to use effectively.

Good bye, good night, and good fencing!