Practice Report

Standard disclaimer: This stuff is experimental. I will likely say things which sound right, but are not, because I'm trying to figure out how to make them work and why they do or do not work.

Trying to understand and implement New Spanishish Thing continues to vex me.

I had some dumbbells set up such that I could perform opposition on them. It worked great! I was able to slide down the blade to perform versions of the various Spanish generals on my practice dummy. It taught me a lot about how blades interact. However, when I got to practice, the thing didn't work super well.

I'm reaching directly toward my opponent's hilt with my hilt, using a straight arm. Then, reaching toward the part of their sword that is as far away from their quillons as my tip is. So, if I'm using a 37" sword, I'm reaching 37" down their blade. With a 45" sword, I'm reaching toward a point past their tip.

After that, I'm just moving forward and, when I reach the medio of proporcion (the point at which, at full extension, their tip would be just past my quillons), then I am performing an action. These actions which I am making up terms just now for are:

1. Scoop their sword over their body as per previous work with New Spanishish Thing
1. "attack by engagement"
2. Slide up the line inside of their sword relative to their shoulder and detach to stab, defending with the middle of my blade
1. "attack by detachment"
3. Slide up the line their sword could occupy, placing my blade to block as many of their possible lines in and then detaching to cut their arm and/or body, when my hilt gets near theirs.
1. "attack by barring"
4. Push their sword off the center and stab them, as per actual real Destreza.
1. "attack by crossing"

1 and 2 should work if their arm is not pointing toward your leading shoulder but their sword is, 2 and 3 should work if both their arm and their sword are not pointing toward your shoulder, and 1 and 4 are kind of the same thing and thus should work if their arm is pointing toward your shoulder. There's some squishy room, and which you should do depends on body positioning, but that is the gist of what I was trying yesterday.

Performing all of these actions should happen as I enter the medio. The positioning I have specified means that my opponent is limited to going to one side or trying to extend their arm and push through their blade. After that, all of their actions will be in the time of the body and the foot, which should be slow enough that I can react to them given that I know what to anticipate.

I had a hard time getting appropriate angulation. The last iteration of New Spanishish thing worked super well, but

• I was working it from way out of measure, which allowed me to choose a way weaker part of their blade to act on.
• The "wrapping" motion I did allowed me to grab blades that were farther off-line than what I'm trying right now.
• The "wrapping" motion also meant that my opponent frequently didn't expect the push, which allowed me to act without direct opposition for a tempo.

I think that for action 1, I need to integrate a wrap as I enter the medio.

My angulation was wrong, too. Frequently my opponent would either change blade position after entering measure, or wouldn't allow me to extract myself to the measure needed to calculate the blade position I wanted. As such, I wasn't strong as I needed to be. It's also possible that active pushes against my sword would mean that I need a yet stronger position, in order to do the thing appropriately.

Perhaps I should just go with the Romagnan 45º or 30º angle for taking an atajo, for performing these actions. A 45º atajo would ensure that my opponent could not gain strength on my sword by bending their wrist, and pointing my arm straight at their hilt means I almost always have the inside line. This gets complex when my opponent's sword is way offline, but complexity can be worked out later.

I should do some math to see if my intuition about pointing at the 37" mark with a 37" sword is completely off-base or not. Like, actual modern geometry to see how that ends up working out. I can already tell that if I get in that position against someone in an Italian stance, that sort of leaves me open to a straight-in thrust. But again, I shouldn't be allowing them in their thrust range without acting on their sword.

I did like how the new positioning meant that I could go anywhere with my sword, and wasn't limited to the four directions I was working on previously. 

Lastly, it really felt like this was all more effective with my 37" sword than with my 45" sword. I'm not sure if it's just because I've been drilling more at home with my 37", or if it's actually just a better set of principles with a shorter sword. Maybe I need to begin the actions as I enter my opponent's medio? Or whoever's medio is farthest away? Ugh. Viedma says I should act at my medio, but the Spanish also favor shorter swords, so his book might be more suited to the fighter with the shorter sword.

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I've also been working on the principle that the thing in my left hand should defend against the thing in my opponent's right hand. I'm not sure how good an idea that is in practice against people fighting sword and dagger. Against case fighters who I don't outrange, I think it's a good idea, and perhaps the only effective idea. The entire point of New Spanishish Thing is to figure out a more universal set of principles so that I can apply them to (for example) case fighters. Against case, I can't do my textbook "apply two items to one item in order to win" actions. So I need different and better ones.

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I fought my standard game a little bit? It worked decently. I actually felt better in my Giganti stance than I did in my Fabris-60-knockoff stance, which is unusual because I was fighting against a very blade-forward stance and usually I consider Fabris-knockoff to rock-paper-scissors against blade-forward stances pretty hard. It makes sense though, because my Giganti-esque stance was able to take advantage of the New Spanishish Things I have been studying.

I also think that I have discovered that my yield-under disengage is actually not good unless my opponent is very far off-line. This makes sense - it's basically a giarata, and that's when a giarata is used in Giganti. But it's disappointing, since that means I need to find better things to do when I am blocked out on the outside line, but not super hard. Maybe just reverting to my old false-edge-beat-through would be a good idea.

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That was a practice. As a summary:

• Keep trying this variation of New Spanishish Thing, but think through the problem of angle of atajo.
• Keep working the problem of dagger-versus-sword. Maybe read Viedma more?
• Do the good things in My Stances. I'm getting lazy and letting things slip.

That's all for now.

Quick Notes on Daggers

Common wisdom holds that historical dagger blades were perhaps 8 to 12 inches in length. This is not the only historical length. Viedma has the following to say about daggers (page 53r):

The dagger has to be long, at least half a vara, which is of notable advantage. The posture has to be over the arm, close to the chest, in a form that the sword doesn’t lose its straightness, nor the body its profile.

Earlier in the book, he also mentions (page 23v):

The body has to remain in profile, brought close to the master’s sword, in such conformity, that although he may have a dagger of three quarters in the left hand, he doesn’t reach to wound.

This leaves off the units, but it seems a reasonable assumption to me that the units would be the same in both instances.

One vara is about equivalent to 33 inches. Math says that this means that Viedma suggests a dagger of at least ~16.5 inches, and isn't surprised by the idea of a dagger of ~24.5 inches.

(EDIT FROM FUTURE-LUPOLD: In-period, the vara was different in different places until a declaration by King Felipe II in 1512 - well before Viedma's text was written. It's still possible, however, that Viedma was referring to a different measurement of vara. The smallest measurement of a vara that I can find is the vara of Teruel, which is 0.768 meters, and the largest measurement I can find is 0.912 meters. This means that the minimum range for a dagger would be from ~15 inches to ~22.5 inches, and the maximum range for a dagger would be from ~18 inches to ~27 inches.)

Viedma doesn't specify that this should be the length of the blade, rather than the overall weapon, but given that we have several historical examples of length being specified from the cross of the quillons in the Spanish tradition, it seems reasonable.

What of the shape of the dagger? We have historical examples of Spanish main gauches, of the correct length. However, if we look at Viedma's rather sparse art, we see the following in his section on fighting with a dagger against a sword, on page 58r:

If we are to believe this image, a Spanish dagger ought to basically look like a smaller sword, with quillons, a knucklebow, and a ricasso. This is different from the main gauche shown earlier, and indeed it seems as though Viedma advises that one use a dagger in about the same way as one uses a sword. In terms of modelling this, I could see a smallsword hilt working well for this purpose.

I am unsure if it is intentional, but the dagger shown in the art also has no distal taper, as opposed to the sword which has some degree of it. This would change the properties of the dagger and allow for more blade presence. Similarly, the sword is drawn with relatively little distal taper, which is an interesting thing to note.

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Other notes include the fact that Viedma implicitly mentions tempo on page 53r (emphasis mine):

It doesn’t have to serve more than at its time and blow, placed on the chest; only for some particular blows will it have to be placed at the part that the adversary’s sword has to leave, so that the blow is so brief that it almost can’t be known by the opponent, as our authors say.

This is an interesting note, given my semi-heretical definition of tempo as "the amount of time in which you can move before your opponent can react".

I really need to give this book a more thorough reading, now that I have some slight degree of understanding of Destreza. I've read the first half relatively thoroughly, but only performed a relatively detailed skim of the second half.

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After-the-fact edit: It's worth noting that Viedma's treatise is from 1639, which makes it somewhat post-SCA-period. However, it's only about 10 years more post-period than Pappenheimer hilts, which are ubiquitous.

Lochleven Practice

This past Sunday was Lochleven practice, which was fun. We did a bunch of melee, and I brought longsword to most of it. I also wore lacrosse gloves after my hand got smacked for a fourth time, and that might be a good thing to do in melee in general.

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In our line-rolling drill, I learned that I need to get in people's personal space after I stab them more often. This would allow for faster rolls. The issue there is that by the time I need to make the choice to move on, I don't necessarily know if my opponent is taking the shot yet. And indeed, I don't know if I've hit yet, since I need to be stepping in as I finish throwing my shot. So, the answer there is probably to learn to better distinguish thrusts which are going to land before I throw them.

Alternately, I can ignore that, and just understand that my slower, less-efficient line-rolling has the advantage that I confirm that my opponent is taking the shot before I move on. In theory, the line should be able to "ripple" when it starts to roll, and if I take too long then the next person in line can pick up the roll.

I shall state once again - I'm not *that* good at melee. I'm good at measure, and I'm good at using that to create opportunities to turn melee into fencing, rather than melee. When it works, I can sometimes do excellent things. When it doesn't, I am sad.

To be better at melee, I need to learn to use my long blades for in-fighting. Maybe I should work on that next practice.

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Longsword was great. My work with Left Plow guard in rapier crossed over decently well. My go-to shot ended up being a preparation in Left Plow on the outside line, baiting an outside-line ward and leading to a disengage under their sword and then harpoon to the stomach. That shot was great because I could throw the start of it relatively quickly, then gently poke in at my opponent's belly when I got to the point where they couldn't stop it even if they tried.

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I tried fighting with the New Spanish Opposition Thing using and against case. I couldn't get it to work against a very active case game, in which my opponent's arms never stopped moving. I think that the combination of him being very far off-line with him moving around a lot meant that I couldn't do what I wanted. In retrospect, perhaps I should have just tried to pry him open - that is to say, place my blade in a position that blocks off his straight line, and widens as I get closer until I can throw a shot.

This might be the general solution for someone with a very active blade. If their blade is active, they will put it in bad places, and my job is to not allow them to return to good places.

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In closing, there is one thing I would like to see. So, there are a number of melee strategy classes I have taken. And then there are melee tactics classes. I would like to see a class on personal melee techniques that people use, since I have no idea what people other than me do.

This would be things like "rush in and bar blades outwards" and things like that. The appropriate way and situations to perform actions in. Because while it is possible to default to fencing techniques, I think it's not the optimal solution.

Previous Entry Postmortem

This post isn't really written for other people. It's written for myself. If you gain something out of it, great! If not, oh well. Assuming this doesn't all collapse under the weight of trying to fence well, I'll probably write a part two for the previous entry and correct the incorrect parts of it. Part two would probably be about "barriers" and second-intention actions.

So, I tried a new thing yesterday! It was pretty great. Problems with it include:

• It is vulnerable to a disengage above, below, or around.
• Maybe the correct way to do the thing is to carry their sword past the center lines, and then form a barrier with my sword?
• So, as an example, perform Action 1, then place my hand in a firm diagonal, my hand in Rada's position 6, my blade in Rada's position 4.
• Stepping through helps, but when my opponent is moving that is hard. 
• People were not generally willing to let me get into the range that would allow me to single-tempo thrust in.
• Maybe advance defensively and wait for them to screw up?
• Maybe chain appropriate actions together, forming the aforementioned barrier in between?
• Maybe perform the one action, then learn common second actions to perform afterwards?
• For example, after action 4 on a left-handed person, disengage from high to low and thrust to the flank, either warding with dagger or returning the sword to a defensive posture quickly thereafter?
• Actions 3 and 6 were almost impossible to perform on Italians because I could not get my tip under their hilt.
• This meant that in hilt-low-tip-high positions, I was forced to use actions 4 and 5.
• However, the Step 2 positioning for Actions 3 and 6, and 3 in particular, was relatively easy to turn into Step 4 or an exaggerated Action 1, completely skipping performing Step 3 in the Process.
• So maybe if I can get my sword "behind" theirs, I can rotate through into the final position of the Action numbered plus two or minus two, depending on whether the action is even or odd.
• Odd actions minus two into taking the blade, plus two into attacking by detachment.
• Even actions plus two into taking the blade, minus two into attacking by detachment.
• I'm not 100% sure about staying fingernails-in the entire time. Action 4 felt much more solid when I switched to fingernails-up. I need to try Actions 5, 3, and 6 in various hand-positions more, to see what feels most solid.

Really awesome things with it include:

• These actions seem to not suck defensively, as long as I exaggerate them a bit and move my hilt over as part of Step 4.
• As an example, when performing Action 2, drop my hilt into Rada Position 7 and put my tip in Rada Position 9, to cover the blade better after transitioning them through.
• That's not quite right, but it's close enough for me to remember what I'm talking about.
• This is similar to the above thing about forming a "barrier".
• I was performing the Actions with my dagger by the end, and it worked decently well. It was essentially an Italian invitation, when I did that. My opponent would disengage, but my dagger is quick enough that I could catch them. I was ending in those defensive positions specified above.
• It was actually very similar to how I used my dagger in my sword-refused stance.
• Actions 5 and 8 are hard with a dagger, just because hands don't bend like that. Work on hand positioning.
• The Actions can be performed at any angle, but it's good to have the results of an Action pre-processed. 
• So, you can rotate the cross from the previous post at any angle, and it is still a valid set of actions. The results will just need to be re-processed.
• Eventually I should probably gain an intuitive understanding of this, so I can just act without thinking about the exact angle.
• Or should I? Because having pre-drilled moves is a good thing.
• This is the first time that I've actually felt like returning to the right angle in the center is an advantage. Especially against opponents who play blade opposition, it felt like returning my sword to the right angle helped me to avoid getting effectively opposed, and helped me to be able to perform the Actions as small movements.
• My Action needs to be much, much tighter in Step 2 if I'm starting at the center, rather than if I'm waiting in Step 2. This is if I want the Action to be a single-tempo action, which I always always always do.
• The first step against Italians seemed to almost always be Action 2 or 4, depending on where their tip was. Action 5 would happen rarely, if they drifted off-line as an invitation or attempted to gain opposition on the outside line.
• Against a lefty, the Actions were still 2 and 4, but he kept his blade far to my right, interestingly enough.
• I think the game here is to take actions to bring them closer and closer to the center, until I can take them out of the center under my control.
• Unless they just give me the positioning to take them out of the center under my control. In which case it would be rude not to.
• Elbow-bent positions are bad for me, because they can just launch the blade up a difficult-to-predict line.
• And unless they refuse their blade in a position that allows me to carry them to a location where they cannot hit me. That's also nice.
• I think that with thinking about positioning, I can get to the point where I can successfully perform the Actions and not get stabbed most of the time, so I can start working on taking advantage of the positioning I gain from the Actions.

Side-note - I tend to think about new things in terms of three "percentages" - how often I can perform them without dying, how often I can perform them and gain better positioning, and how often I can perform them and stab the other guy straight out.

Previously, my strategy has been to look for actions in which the first number is as low as possible, while the last number is as high as possible. I'm unsure how much I should value that second number, but that's apparently what I'll need to work on for this. That is also why I have been working with a shorter sword some - it means I can't optimize for that last number, and I am forced to learn how to take advantage of actions which have a high percentage on that second number.

But really, "success rate" in my book is that first number. If I can do a thing and not die, that's great! I can try something again.

So, that was a practice. Yaaay!

A New and Experimental Way to Understand Opposition

Today, we have a thinky post. I was inspired to write this post after some fights over the weekend, in which find-gain-attack wasn't working against me. I was able to counter-gain and attack my opponent due to my shoulders being higher, and I wanted to explore why this is the case.

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After-the-fact edit: I've already thought of some problems with this, but I'm going to wait for a while to update this post.

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What is Opposition? Well, it's the mechanism by which we interpose our sword in order to limit our opponent's options in order to not be hit.

This is usually performed by pushing our opponent's blade aside, and then extending our arm to place our blade literally on top of our opponent's blade. However, if your shoulders are lower than your opponent's shoulders, this becomes difficult. This is due to the following principle:

Ignore the fact that these spheres get terrible  past the part where they overlap.

I don't own a compass. The spheres should be centered on the fighters' shoulders.

I know they're circles. Imagine them as spheres because that's what they are in real life.

If your opponent's shoulders are higher than yours, then you are giving up range at full extension by attempting to put your blade on top of theirs. As well, consider the following:

In this position, the higher opponent can gain stronger opposition by moving forward. The lower opponent, however, can only gain opposition by raising their hand.

If the higher opponent wants to stab the lower one, all they need to do is move forward and stab at the lower one's face, pushing their sword aside by the weak.

If the lower wants to stab the higher, then they can't just push through. Pushing forward moves a weak part of their blade to a strong part of their opponent's blade. The only single-tempo action they have is a disengage and thrust to the belly. They can pull their hand back to gain better opposition, but that adds a tempo to their action.

Let's look at the first picture again.

If opposition is the way we stab our opponent without being hit, it makes sense that we would want to put our opponent's sword in a place that means we can hit them without them hitting us. If we look at the spheres depicted in this picture, we can see that the lower person can hit farther on a low line, and the higher person can hit farther on a high line.

So, it makes sense that if we are higher than our opponent, we want to bring their sword up, and push through their sword on a high line.

If we are lower than our opponent, we want to bring their sword down, and push through their sword on a low line.

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Shoulder positioning matters. If someone's shoulders are higher, then that means that the Duello-style find-gain-attack Just Works. You can remain more on-line than your lower opponent, since coming on-line to strike at your chest or face is automatically a disadvantage to them in terms of opposition, as illustrated above. I have had problems working on Duello-style find-gain-attack bladework because of this very set of principles.

I think this means that the lower opponent should favor Transports, in an Italian context. You sweep their sword down and are in position to stab them in the gut, as illustrated above. This doesn't mean a lower opponent can't find-gain-attack. This is manifestly false. It just requires the lower opponent to carry their opponent more off-line before attacking.

Note that I'm saying "higher" and "lower". This is because you can raise or lower your shoulders in subtle ways over the course of a bout. The two people in the first picture should be about the same height, if they were standing up straight. The one on the left just has a far, far wider stance.

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This is all well and good, but it's not enough. It's a set of squishy, imprecise if-then-else statements. This is terrible. Swordsmanship should be universal! If there's this idea of "carrying up" and "carrying down", how do we do it?

Fortunately, we have the Spanish. The Spanish have their own set of sweeps and carries, which I have worked with for some time. However, I could never get the thrust after the atajo to work quite right. The brewing of some half-remembered ideas about "straightening the arm" and "spiraling the blade in" eventually led to some exciting geometry.

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This is intended ot be a drawing of someone pointing at you in a destreza stance.

The thing that looks like an apple is a sword.

Foreshortening is hard. Drawing is hard.

If you imagine an opponent standing head-on, facing you, the farthest they can reach is the line extending from their shoulder to your shoulder. If they are head-on to you, this is close to a point. If their arm is fully extended, then you can imagine them divided into quarters. Their shoulder lies at the center. The lower-right quadrant contains their belly, while the upper-right quadrant contains their head.

I'm going to show you a symbol now. It won't make sense until I explain it. That's okay though.

Each line represents part of a blade transition that can be done. So, there are two in the upper-right quadrant. One is represented by first going up, and then going right. The next is represented by going right, and then going up. At the end of each of these, we cut through our opponent's blade and push them to one of the adjacent quadrants.

So, the first one I mentioned moves your blade up, then right, then pushes your opponent's sword down into the bottom-right quadrant.

The second one goes right, then up, then pushes your opponent's sword from the upper-right quadrant into the upper-left quadrant.

Each of these movements is begun with the tip. There are four steps in each. I assume that you are in an arm-extended late-period Destreza stance, although I will later show that this is not necessary. The steps are:

1. Move your tip outwards along the central cross.
1. In the first example, this means to move it up.
2. You are only moving at the wrist here.
2. Move your tip outwards along the end of the cross. At the same time, move your hilt to the position that your tip used to occupy.
1. In the first example, this means to move your tip right and your hilt up.
2. The tip movement is again accomplished with your wrist. The hilt movement is accomplished with your shoulder. Or elbow, if you really want?
3. Move your sword in a direction opposite the two directions you have moved. Straighten your arm fully at this step, such that your sword points out along the dot in that quadrant of the cross.
1. This is the step at which you first make blade contact. According to the first example, you should be pushing your opponent's sword downwards.
2. You will be adjusting slightly right and down with your shoulder. Your wrist will be straightening back out, which will carry your tip leftwards somewhat.
3. I'm not sure if you should be straightening your wrist completely - I think it might be just a pivot opposite to the second direction. This is to make your sword "flat" relative to the direction your hand is moving, to make it harder for your opponent to use your momentum to slide from your strong to your weak.
4. Keep pushing your opponent's sword opposite the first movement you made, carrying your and their sword into the appropriate quadrant.
1. This means that you have pushed them downwards, in the first example.
2. The downward push is accomplished with your shoulder at this point. You probably shouldn't need to bend at the elbow or wrist at this point? But maybe you will. Who knows.

This is the shape of the first action:

Here is an excruciatingly thorough and somewhat exaggerated illustration of the action, from the side and the top:

The side view of the third step has a weird sword because I was unsure 

if it should be parallel to the ground, or straight in line with my arm. This is one of those things I will

attempt to work on tonight.

Step 4 Top View also has an art error. The arm should be *more* toward the center than Step 3 Top View, rather than less.

There is a diagonal aspect to the last action, but it's primarily downwards. This diagonal aspect is omitted in the below listing of the actions.

The tl;dr of this is that you move your sword around your opponent's sword and then cut through their sword in the direction opposite of where they currently are.

Real talk: In practice, the first and second actions can be combined, or even used as a stance to rest in. The third and fourth actions are basically the same action, except that you want to have your arm straight near the beginning of your movement.

The eight actions and their result in a righty-versus-righty fight are:

1. Up, right, down. Probably stabs the gut.
2. Right, up, left. Probably misses over their right shoulder.
3. Right, down, left. Probably misses under their right arm.
4. Down, right, up. Probably stabs the face.
5. Down, left, up. Probably misses above and outside of their right arm.
6. Left, down, right. Probably stabs their right flank or belly.
7. Left, up, right. Probably stabs their face. Maybe their right cheek?
8. Up, left, down. Probably misses, sort of looped over their right arm.

In general, you want to use the action corresponding to the location of their blade. If their blade is super-low and only a little to your right, you probably want to use Action 4 - down, right, up.

If the correct action isn't clear, you can make it more clear by walking left or right, or dropping your shoulders to reposition the relative location of the cross on their shoulder.

If your opponent has their arm and blade very far off-line, this will not help you too much? You can approach and then counter-thrust if they thrust as you enter measure, or you can do something different to bar them and keep them off-line, then thrust as you get close.

If your opponent has more reach then you, then you will have to push them farther off-line to succeed, so they can't yield around your opposition and stab you.

If your opponent's shoulders are higher than yours, you should favor the actions which involve downward movements. Similarly, if your opponent stands lower, you should favor actions which involve upward movements.

My intuition says that after you initiate the movement, you should step in the opposite direction you would expect to, in order to get past their hilt more easily. So for Action 1, you would circle left until you complete Step 2, at which point you would take one step to the right in order to finish the action.

I have also been less than transparent with you about the definition of "in a quadrant". "In a quadrant" just means that the part of your opponent's blade that you expect to touch in Step 3 of your action is in that quadrant. Their full sword could span up to three quadrants, but only the location of the part you plan to touch matters. This gets complex if your opponent is not in a late-period Spanish stance, but you should be able to hide behind your hilt such that their riposte is a duo-tempi action, regardless of where you push them or how they started.

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Let's break this down even more.

Fencing is a game of reactions. You want to get your opponent into a position in which you can stab them before they react. Since steps 3 and 4 can (and, in execution, should) be done as a single-tempo action, that means that our Win Position is after completing step 3. So, if you can get your hand angled right with respect to your opponent's blade, you can take a single step and blast them in the face or gut.

As a note, this is the idea of tempo as according to the Italian. If I remember my research from a few years ago correctly, the Spanish tended to prefer to think of time as more fluid, and not divisible into discrete moments. I disagree with the Spanish in this regard. I have apparently never written a blog post about this, and I should fix this posthaste.

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Most Italian stances are "pre-loaded" in a position in your lower-left, upper-left, or lower-right, depending on which Italian master we are talking about. So, the appropriate single-tempo responses would be pre-loaded Actions 6, 7, and 4, correspondingly. Approach as though you have already completed Step 2, and then stab them in the gut, face, or face.

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As a note, Spanish masters tend to deeply dislike "violent" or upwards movement. This means that Actions 4 and 5 are probably a no-go according to them. I plan to use them, however, and see how it goes. Maybe I will come to agree, maybe not.

Happy fencing!

Another Practice Report, Containing a New Bulleted Flowchart!

Practice Monday was good.

I continued working on my Left Plow guard. It seems to fulfill a similar niche to the Silver-ish guard I was using, but it's safer. I think I have an effective flowchart for using that stance, which is nice.

• Get in Left Plow Guard
• That is to say, a guard in which your hand is in quarta and your blade is low and to the left, pointing at something between their face and their gut.
• Your sword is on the Inside line (your sword is to the right of theirs)
• Your dagger position should be based on their sword position. If their tip points toward your left, you want your dagger to be married to your sword hilt and vertical. If their tip points to the middle or your right, you should raise your hand and have your dagger tip pointing somewhat diagonally up-and-right.
• Face-Thrust: If you are on the inside, and your blade covers theirs enough, and your tip is pointing at their face or chest, lunge! Possibly with a slight amount of rightward movement, rather than a perfectly straight lunge.
• For this lunge, your dagger should be married to your sword hilt. Your sword-hand should remain somewhat to the left, because your sword is your defense. Your dagger should be pointing to the up-left, to prevent them from wrapping their tip around your hilt and stabbing you. Body coverage should be provided by your sword.
• I could be wrong on this. Instinctively I want to pull my dagger away from my hilt, to leave a two-foot gap between them. This would prevent my opponent from yielding around my sword for a head shot. More study is necessary. I actually think this one is the correct one, but I'm leaving the other one there for posterity.
• Dagger-Sweep-Thrust: If you are on the inside and your blade does not cover theirs enough, you can probably perform a lunge with your dagger sweeping their sword out of the way, driving them back.
• If you are on the inside and your blade does not cover theirs enough, you can also disengage to the outside and begin fighting like you are on the outside.
• Your sword is on the Outside line (your sword is to the left of theirs)
• Your dagger position should almost universally be mostly horizontal, pointing to the right. Your dagger-hand should float above your sword-hand, to catch any sudden thrusts. If you catch a sudden thrust and your timing is good, you can perform the Yielding-Around-Thrust.
• Push-With-Tip: If you are on the outside line, begin pushing their sword to your right with your false edge. This might require you to rotate your tip such that your tip is pointing more upwards, in order to gain better opposition.
• Flip-To-Strong: If they let you push them really, really far across their body, rotate from seconda to quarta, switching from using your false and a middle part of your blade to pushing them with the true edge and a strong part of your blade.
• If you do this, your dagger should be extended, your two hands together, and your dagger should be pointing downwards, to prevent a disengage-counterthrust from below.
• Your opponent's most common choice is to disengage. If they disengage, this will place your sword on the inside line. Ideally, this will mean you can perform the Face-Thrust described above. In this particular flow, this is what will happen most often. If your opponent lets you get away with a Flip-To-Strong, that's great. They usually won't.
• There is a blade position that is bad for both the inside and outside line. If your opponent adopts that blade position, you need to use the Dagger-Sweep-Thrust described above, or the Yielding-Dagger-Sweep described below.
• Yielding-Dagger-Sweep: If you are on the outside line, and your opponent has your sword pushed pretty far to the outside, you can perform a yielding-around thrust. In this case, scissor their sword between the false edge of your sword and your dagger. Ideally this will place them on your hilt and your dagger-blade, with your tip in their chest or face.
• You need to raise your hands and duck your head, so they can't roll through to counter-thrust you in prima after you scissor their sword.
• Yielding-Around-Thrust: If your opponent has their hilt high, or their sword pushing you very very far to the outside, you can perform my favorite action. Extend your hand just enough that they think they need to parry. This feint carries no real intent. Then, perform a mid-blade disengage below their hilt, duck behind your sword, and thrust them in the belly.
• Here, your dagger should sweep forward and a little left, to catch their tip if they try to counter-thrust. Your lunge or step should carry you forward and slightly to the right, and you should duck your head behind your implements.

So, that's a brand-new flowchart. I imagine that it will continue working well for a while, until people learn to adjust to it. Until then, I won't know if this is an actually-good set of actions, or if it's just a set of actions that is good because people don't expect and understand it. Ah well.

*****

And now for the part of this practice report that makes me sad - having to work on my calibration.

I also continued to work on my calibration. It really seems like the times when I stab people harder than I want to are those times when I am almost there, and I try to slow down my sword but inadvertently rotate my hand against the curve of my blade. This means my sword doesn't bend when it impacts my opponent. I'm not saying that it would be better for me to continue forward - it's still possible that my blade won't bend if I do that.

I think that my recent calibration issues are born in part from a thing I used to do. I used to perform a lot of thrusts that sort of "cut in" along my flat. They would land in the ambiguous zone of my tip - that is to say, they would land between 30 and 45 degrees from a straight shot. Usually I would then push forward after they landed, to cause a large amount of blade-bend, and then pull out. Because of how the shot was landing, it would bend well even if my opponent was jumping onto my sword.

Two things then happened. First, I ran into a spate of non-local opponents who didn't want to take that shot or similar shots. The fact that it didn't land straight-on meant that they didn't understand that yes, that shot did land appropriately, if we were using sharps then you would have new ventilation in your chest. Second, my favored, super-flexible blade broke. And while my new blade is pretty flexible, it's nowhere near as floppy as my old one.

So, I trained that shot out of my repertoire. I was landing straight shots for a while, but then after my floppy sword broke, I was still used to how it would bend. My new blade bends in different ways, so when normally I would expect my sword to continue to be bent with the curve for say, 1/4 of a second, my new blade bends with the curve for 1/6 of a second and then against the curve for 1/6 of a second. This means that sometimes when I expect my blade to bend, it doesn't. Or when I expect to tap someone on the face with my tip, I blast them in the face.

For someone using a longer sword, knowing when the blade is going to bend is super-important, since usually my opponent is the one moving forward. And I want to be sure that if my opponent is in a position where they could possibly move forward, my blade will bend if the tip hits them.

The different sinusoidal motion, the different shots, and with the fact that my calibration was already a little high, has meant that some of my shots land much harder than I want them to. My current sword also reversed its C-curve at Gulf Wars, and I wonder if that has something to do with it as well. I reversed the blade in its hilt, so that the curve would go in the correct direction, but I wonder if the blade is bending less readily now.

The current answer is more at-home drilling of shots with my practice dummy, paying special attention to whether my sword bends after the shot lands. The other answer is to just not fence as intensely, which makes me sad. The thing that's going to cause that sinusoidal blade-wobble is movement not in-line with the true or false edge, which is a critical part of how I fence. Sigh.

Part of me wonders if using a less flexible blade would help - it would mean that my tip's location is more easily predictable, but if something happens, I couldn't rely on flex at all. But given that my blade's flex is being the reverse of reliable right now, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Maybe I should go back to landing shots at 45-degree angles and then pressing them in again.We'll see.

And just as a note - I'm not claiming that my recent issues with increased calibration aren't my fault. After the thing that happened at Mudthaw, I want to figure out how to make that never happen again. The length of this section of this post should serve as proof of the depth of my feelings on the subject.

*****

Practice was good otherwise. I'm starting to realize that there are several particular qualities that make people hard for me to fence. One is "does not go for offensive opposition".

I need to figure out how to consistently deal with a same-tempo counter-thrust in prima. That's how I double-killed out of the tournament, so I need to figure out better ways to not get stabbed by it. It's difficult, because the angle of the blade follows my dagger-arm up toward my face. Unless I'm windshield-wipering my dagger back and forth, I don't think there's a good way for me to parry that with my positioning. Maybe the answer is to understand where my opponents can throw that shot from? Who knows.

Practice Report

Practice was not great. I got in a lot of physical activity, which was good, but that's about all I can say about it.

I walked in, head full of the Meyer stuff I wrote about yesterday. When I tried to put it into practice, though, it failed consistently. I am unsure why - maybe there's something subtle about blade angles which I need to consider. I just couldn't lever people's tips across their body like I thought I would be able to. As well, even if I did, it was very hard for me to rotate from a false-edge push from the left into a true-edge thrust with opposition from the right. Maybe I need to, *sigh*, get someone to drill this with me, or at least present a variety of guards so that I can tell when it will work and when it will not work.

Additionally, nobody was willing to give me the inside line when I adopted the Left Plow guard. This was frustrating, because I wanted to practice the straight-in lunge from the Left Plow.

Eventually I decided to just ignore the stuff I had been thinking about, and fight my fight. Sometimes I over-commit to thoughts and ideas, and I need to reel myself in. So, I attempted to spend about 3/4 of my time just fighting my fight. It felt terrible.

*****

People have started keeping their blades in this low, ambiguous zone where my "your tip is in my upper-left" responses don't work, and my "your tip is in my lower-left" responses only kind of work. And it's not just one or two people - of my five sets of fights, four of them did this thing at least some of the time. I have a couple of responses for it, but it's annoying as hell. So I suppose that means it's time for me to work on my responses for it.

*****

My fights against $FENCER_NAME were horrible. I don't know if it was a lack of initiative or what. Eventually I got a little better, but I eventually I also jacked him in the face which was not great. My calibration needs work.

The situation in which I stabbed him, as I remember it, was as follows. He was in a position wherein I knew he was going to attempt a thrust to my right hip and dagger-parry low if I threw low. I knew this would mean he put his head forward quickly, but I was unsure how much he would. So. I threw the low feint, and attempted to catch his incoming point with a two-tempo parry-riposte to his face.

I missed the parry because he disengaged, but I landed the shot. The shot landed super-hard, even though I knew where it was going and attempted to place and then pull back with it. I'm not sure how I could have thrown that shot lighter, so perhaps the answer is just to not throw the shot if I expect that someone's face is going to be coming forward to attempt to get past my tip. This would be a frustrating conclusion, because I do love Giganti, and Giganti does love his face-shots.

I need to figure out what people do to not hit hard. Are they just more patient and willing to wait until their positioning doesn't require a quick shot?

*****

My fights against $OTHER_FENCER_NAME were just as bad. She brought buckler, which is the form I am worst against. I did not remember to attempt to blow through the buckler by tabling it or anything like that. The only shots I feel like I successfully landed were when I (finally) remembered a destreza-inspired way to deal with blades hanging out in that low ambiguous zone, and when I was able to throw high shots that angulated above the buckler. I didn't feel like I could probe at all, because this particular fencer has just enough measure to throw a shot as I'm throwing mine, and catch me with it.

I think the lesson here is that I need to work on low sweeping transports. That felt like the only game I really had, for many fights. It's annoying because low sweeping transports don't work from the stance I end up in when I want to use them.

*****

I've also not been able to compliment others' fighting. Usually when I fight someone, I put in effort to focus on one positive thing that they did, and mention it to them. The past few weeks I have been unable to do this thing.

*****

Thinking goals for next practice:

I need to work through how to go from my middle stance into a sweeping transport, when someone's blade is low but pointing toward me in what Meyer would call either a right Iron Gate or a right Plow. The sweeping transport has the added bonus of being a shot that can land lightly, because when I get it right, I usually have their blade trapped between my quillon and my blade, so I can just walk forward until I land it.

I also need to figure out how to land lighter shots. I throw a lot of whippy, angled snipe shots, and I think that those shots in particular land hard. Should I just stop throwing things like that out there? Should I start bringing a shorter sword so that I am forced to act within my opponent's measure? Do I need to just be less hungry to land the shot, when my opponent is going to be in a position that I could stab them? Do I need to fight in smaller lists, so there is less forwards-and-backwards movement? Who knows.

*****

And because practice didn't feel great, a plus/minus/plus exercise:

• Thing I Did Well:
• My sense of measure was pretty on-the-ball, I think.
• Area for Improvement:
• I need to work on being more positive again. In a very real sense, noticing what other people are doing well allows me to better analyze bouts.
• Other Thing I Did Well
• I identified when a new thing wasn't working for me, stopped using it, and elected to use a different thing instead.

It was a practice, which is inherently better than no practice, but still not the best in the world.

Meditations on Meyer

I've not really been inspired to swordblog over the past month or two. It's time to just sit myself down in front of my blog and wordvomit into a text box.

I haven't really been doing super-deep thinking about sword-stuff recently. My most recent cycle of reworking my style ended some time before Gulf Wars, and I haven't kicked myself into refining myself for tourney season yet.

There's a particular stance that I find bothersome, so I've been working on ways to deal with it. This has led me to read more Meyer - in particular the Left Plow stance. Then I fought and was impressed by a younger fencer at Mudthaw, who does a lot of Meyer Dussack things in his swording. As such, I decided to actually review Meyer rather than just reading through the Left Plow devices.

• Left Plow
• A position in which your quillons are horizontal, your hand is in seconda, and your hilt is in front of your left hip. Your tip should point to their belly. Your hand should be somewhat extended, as if part of the way through a thrust.

Spoilers: Turns out, there are only two devices in the Rapier section of Meyer which start in Left Plow. I *think* I understand both of them, after reviewing Chapter 5 of the Longsword Book.

*****

Chapter 5 of the Longsword Book is a list of generally-applicable techniques which can be used in both longsword and rapier, despite having been written for longsword. There is a similar section in the Rapier Book, but it's not as thorough. There are a couple of quick translations which are necessary for using the Longsword Book bits with rapier. In particular, using the longsword involves quite a bit of "crossing the hands".

When you hold a longsword, your right hand goes up by the quillons, and your left hand goes down by the pommel. This means that if you hold your arms in front of you, the blade of the sword will point to the right. If you point the blade to the left, you will probably do it by crossing your arms over each other. This is what Meyer means by "crossing the hands". This is very evident from the plates in the Longsword Book.

For a rapier, most techniques can be translated to longsword by replacing "crossed hands" with "fingernails down" in the Spanish tradition, or having your hand in seconda in the Italian tradition. Most of the time crossing and uncrossing hands is a way to store and release energy. Your forearm does a similar store-and-release thing when you move from seconda to quarta. If you feel the bones in your forearm, you can feel them crossing and uncrossing as you go from fingernails down to fingernails up. This lets you perform actions with a rapier which are similar to what one can do with a longsword.

This entire explanation has been building to this next part - an explanation of "Running Off", which I will copy here from my copy of the Jeffrey L. Forgeng translation of Meyer (available here and worth every penny).

Running Off [Ablauffen]

This is, from whichever side you bind your opponent's sword, then reverse your hands as soon as it touches and let it run off with the short edge down, and meanwhile pull your hilt up in the air for a stroke; and do this on both sides.

To me, this says that you cut into your opponent's sword with your true edge, then flip your sword over and pull their foible forward with your false edge, while maintaining defense with your guard. This "opens up" your opponent's guard, and creates room for you to do terrible things.

In the thrusting game of rapier, it seems like it would be possible to do this without a true-edge cut. In particular, it seems like one could extend one's sword, then sword of use the false edge of your tip to push their sword to the side, and then take advantage of the opening. In order to take advantage, you could perform a true-edge cut or you could "reverse your hands" again and thrust in, with your true edge applied to a weaker part of your opponent's sword.

*****

Just for fun, here's an example of the vocabulary defined above. The bold is mine, to emphasize usage of the term running off. There's some vocabulary in here that I will define after-the-fact, so read it once, read the definitions, then read it again. Again, this is from 2.96v1 of Forgeng's translation of Meyer, which I highly recommend you acquire.

Three thrusts, running one after another, with which you can practice to develop quickness

Do them thus: Position yourself in the Plow on the left, and take heed as soon as he sends his weapon into the Irongate or into Straight Parrying before him, and from the left Plow thrust the first straight up outside close to his weapon at his face. He will turn this thrust away to his right, therefore in thrusting in, as soon as you perceive his turning away, let it run off by his right side as you thrust in, and run through back toward your left, so that your blade snaps around beside your left into the High Guard; and as your blade snaps around, at the same time step well out to his left with a double step to the side; and with this stepping out, thrust the second from the left Ox inside his weapon at his chest. He will want to parry this thrust toward his left; therefore when you see this, then turn the short edge inward against his blade, and with this turning inwards, let it run through under his blade toward your left, and snap around again beside your left into the Ox again; in this running through and snapping around of your blade, spring well out toward his right side. Next, thrust thirdly from the left Ox outside his right arm at his face.

 Vocabulary time.

• Plow on the left
• A position in which your quillons are horizontal, your hand is in seconda, and your hilt is in front of your left hip. Your tip should point to their belly. Your hand should be somewhat extended, as if part of the way through a thrust.
• Irongate
• A standard Italian guard in terza, leaning forward
• Straight Parrying
• A guard in which your arm is extended and your tip is ambiguously pointed at their face or somewhere above their head.
• High Guard (left)
• A guard in which your hilt is in front of your left shoulder. When thrusting, your tip points toward their face. When preparing for a cut, your tip points backwards, over your shoulder. It is ambiguous here which Meyer is referring to.
• There is also the Right High Guard, which means your sword is in front of your right shoulder. the Right High Guard for Thrusting is similar to an Italian Prima

So, the flow here seems to be:

• Stab at their face on the outside line.
• Pull at their sword to the right with your false edge.
• This is "Running Off"
• Pull your sword away, flipping through the high guard and ending up at Left Plow.
• Despite using the word "Running", I don't think this is "Running Off"?
• While doing the above, take a large step forward and to the right.
• Thrust at their chest on the inside line.
• Pull at their sword to the left with your false edge.
• I think this is "Running Off"?
• Rotate back into Left Plow, disengaging to the outside line.
• Despite using the word "Running", I don't think this is "Running Off".
• Step forward and to the right again.
• Go back to the beginning.

So, this seems like something well-suited to drilling in order to gain speed at stabbing someone. Neat! I need to try working through this device with a partner, because I don't *really* understand the flipping-around-to-High-Guard thing. As well, the thrust to the face seems super dangerous. Is it intended to be a feint? I am unsure.

*****

When I originally read this device, I misinterpreted it as the following, which I like better? I'll just call it "Inspired by Meyer" and go from there:

• Begin in Left Plow, on the outside line.
• Stab at their face on the outside line, not quite entering measure for a counter-thrust.
• Lean forward here - do not lunge yet.
• Pull their sword with your false edge moving their tip to their right.
• This is "Running Off"
• Rotate your sword into the Right High Guard for Thrusting, placing your true edge against their weak.
• Thrust at their chest.
• Lunge forward!
• You will either hit, or they will drop their tip and raise their hilt to try to parry. If they do the latter, continue.
• Circle your tip under their hilt and pull from with the false edge, so that you move their tip to your left.
• You might want to step backwards at this step, so they can't thrust when you place their sword on your inside line.
• Reset into Left Plow, on the outside line.

So, in that radical misinterpretation, the thrust to the face isn't intended to actually connect - it's just there to put a greater degree of strength on your opponent's sword.

There are several places in which it seems natural to use a dagger - in particular, a dagger allows that first thrust to have real intent behind it, since you can hide under your dagger by holding it above your head horizontally. In the second thrust, a dagger could be used with your sword by placing it next to your hilt pointing downwards, to attempt to foil disengage-thrust by a suicidal opponent.

That said, this gives me a way to be offensive from the outside line in Left Plow, which will increase the effectiveness of being on both the inside and outside lines in Left Plow. Given that Left Plow on the inside line has been something I've been enjoying quite a bit, this pleases me.

*****

That's all for now. If you disagree with my interpretation, feel free to comment. I'm not perfect, and last time I read through the rapier section of Meyer, I didn't read through it super-thoroughly due to how much less organized the Rapier section is than the Longsword section.

Happy fencing!

THERE WAS A FENCING PRACTICE

(The above is intended to be read in the voice of Willem Dafoe's character from Boondock Saints.)

First fencing practice in about a month. I felt pretty good. In pre-practice diagnostic drilling, I found that my point control is better than it was while I was practicing regularly, so that's pretty cool. Turns out, resting yourself can lead to better athletic performance in the short-term.

I was also super-tired. Spring has sprung, with a vengeance. I am allergic to something in the air, and it took a cocktail of azelastine, sudafed, afrin, and zyrtec to make me functional for fencing practice. Mostly the afrin, but I'm sure the rest helped.

In terms of the violences, things were good. I did very well with stabbing people, but I wasn't as good about keeping-myself-alive when unexpected things happened. I was pleasantly surprised on a number of counts, from people who apparently learned a lot from the Devon Boorman Fencing Seminar. Unsurprisingly, it seemed to be the newer fencers who benefited the most, but it was interesting to see everybody implementing new things in their game.

My walk-forward-and-stab-in-middle-stance game had some problems. In particular, people kept escaping from my hard upwards dagger-bind. I think I was trying to bind with dagger when their tip was too far in my upper-right quadrant, where I really need to do Sword Actions™, as previously discussed. (Did I really discuss that? I don't remember. Oh well.)

*****

One fencer bears particular note - he continues to be a very, very difficult fight. He fights in something similar to my middle stance, except that his dagger covers more of his body, his elbow is in a very wide position 6 according to Rada, his hand is in position 1 relative to his elbow, and his tip is in a wide position 2. This places his tip far enough back that I can't get good opposition without giving my tip to his dagger.

(Quick note: This positioning notation is from the Romagnan manual. This is for dictating where things are positioned. Imagine a cone - the line down the center is position 1, the line along the top of the cone is 2, the upper-right is 3, right is 4, down is 6, left is 8, and upper-left is 9. There are three widenesses to the cone, which aren't necessarily explicitly mentioned when describing a position - shallow, wider, and widest. In Romagnan's book, he usually just specifies hand and tip position, but when adapting this to specify Italian positioning, I have found it useful to specify elbow position.)

Up until now, the best I can figure out to do is adopt my Back/Silver stance and hope I can sweep with my dagger and then stab him. This has grown less and less effective over time, but it's still not a bad choice. It just seems like a choice that will gradually get worse and worse. My other choice is to try to snipe his dagger-hand and dagger-arm, since his stance leaves them a bit exposed, but committing to that requires me to leave myself more open than I tend to like.

However, I had an insight! Probably from seeing other people do it and subconsciously filing it away. But an insight nonetheless!

If I place my hand at a wide 7 relative to my shoulder, and my tip at a 2 relative to my hand, I can gain inside opposition and defend myself effectively, preventing the counter-shot that this particular fencer is very, very good at. I would need to develop a game-plan from that sword position, and it would probably result in a new stance, but it seems like a legitimate thing to do.

While thinking about it today, I realized that this positioning is very similar to Meyer's Left Plow guard. Success! So, this weekend's homework is going to be to read through Meyer and look at his devices from Left Plow, searching for ideas.

*****

One additional insight I had was about righty-versus-lefty positioning. When fighting righty-versus-righty, it is generally safest to pull the left shoulder back when thrusting on the inside line, and to lean the left shoulder forward when thrusting on the outside line. This is because it places your body on the other side of your strong, relative to their tip.

When fighting a lefty, I think that I should attempt always profiling my body when thrusting. So, when I thrust, I always pull my left shoulder back. This is because, when my sword is to the left of their sword, a left-handed person has a line over my sword and into my left shoulder. Right-handed people just don't have that line, because of positioning. That's a cop-out explanation, but it seems correct.

When my sword is to the right of their sword, then I want to void my left shoulder for obvious reasons.

This is something I have yet to extensively try, but I am excited to try it. It is also possible that the Left Plow position might be useful too, but I am unsure as yet.

*****

That's all for the moment - I'll see everybody around.