Principles of Attacking and Excruciatingly-in-Depth Tempo

Sorcha's home with recently-removed wisdom teeth, I'm stressed about the election, and I wasn't able to go to fencing practice yesterday. So what do I do? I write up a blog post.

Today's blog post is about attacking. An ideal attack has two properties:

• Presents a legitimate threat to your opponent.
• Creates a strong defense against your opponent.

Those are both very squishy definitions, though. What do we mean by "legitimate threat"? What do we mean by "strong defense"? How do we prioritize these things? All very difficult questions to answer. I would propose the following modifications to those definitions, to make them more grounded and specific:

• Presents a legitimate threat to your opponent.
• Will stab your opponent if they don't act within one tempo.
• Creates a strong defense against your opponent.
• Creates a defense such that attacking you is a parryable action.

I concentrate on "one tempo" as the minimum measurement of action and reaction. This, as I have detailed before, is because human reaction speed is about 200 milliseconds at best. This minimum measurement of time gives us boundaries to what can and cannot be done. If one person is fencing at 1/4 speed and the other person is fencing at full-speed, there are all kinds of things that the full-speed person can do safely. However, when both people are fencing at full speed, this forces us to recognize that there is only so fast that each player in this game can act and react, due to the speed of electrical impulses in nerves.

Offensive Principles

So, let's tackle these definitions individually. Again, here's the first:

• Will stab your opponent if they don't act within one tempo.

That is simple enough. Leaning thrusts are one-tempo actions. But we can extrapolate that out a bit. If our opponent is badly positioned, it isn't a stretch to imagine that they wouldn't be able to bring their blade to bear in time. Let's, in a completely arbitrary and anecdotally-supported way, call that a 1.5-tempi action. So, the above statement expands into the following:

• Either
• You have a clear leaning-thrust you can perform, without being immediately blocked.
• You can continue blocking your opponent's sword into a disadvantageous position while you lunge.
• You can push your opponent's sword into a disadvantageous position while you lunge.

This still leaves a bit of vagueness - what is a "disadvantageous position", for example? To me, tt's a position where they can't get their sword to a place where they can defend themselves from your attack in 1.5 tempi. This is different for different attacks - for example, attacking the arm is much faster than attacking the flank, which is a bit faster than attacking the face.

Defensive Principles and Excruciatingly-in-Depth Tempo

So, with that vagueness as out-of-the-way as we're going to get it, let's continue on:

• Creates a defense such that attacking you is a parryable action.

I'm having some trouble sorting out my sources (this one being the closest I can find to what I wanted), but the processing time for an action relying on visual stimuli is as follows:

• Eye sees the image, transmits it to brain (20-40 milliseconds)
• Brain processes the image, decides on an action (50-80 milliseconds)
• Nerves convey impulse to arm, arm moves (80 milliseconds)
• This last one was pulled from my memory. Not sure if it's correct. If you find actually-correct numbers, please let me know.

This yields about 200 milliseconds plus some amount of actual movement time for a full reaction, as above. But what this means is that by the time your brain has finished processing what has happened, your opponent has moved from that point, whether they are continuing their current action or starting a new action. Looking above, the time it takes to process data is about 100 milliseconds - half a tempo.

So, this means that all of our defensive actions must assume that our opponent has half a tempo more of action than they have performed yet. This means that all of our parries and protective actions must be, to a certain degree, proactive.

It takes a certain amount of time for a blade to accelerate from nothing to moving. I would wager it is about 100 milliseconds. (I don't have real data on this bit, so I could easily be wrong here.) 

Having your opponent's blade blocked to a place where they cannot thrust straight-in means that they cannot be that half-tempo through your blade, because it's there and blocking them. However, this means that you must assume that they are already a half-tempo through performing the disengage they need to hit you in your openings.

Henceforth, I will be measuring things in terms of tempo. 1T is one tempo, which is 200 milliseconds. 0.5T is half a tempo, which is 100ms.

Let's pretend, for the moment, that you have them blocked onto your inside line. Their only options are to attack from the high inside line and low inside line, from how your stance is structured. The options you must consider collapse into the following, if you wish to defend against all attacks:

1. Opponent attacks into the high inside line
• 0T: They cannot thrust because your sword is in the way.
• 0.5T: Your sword moves and they happen to have already chosen that moment to thrust. Their thrust proceeds.
• 1T: Their thrust is moving, your sword is moving.
• 1.5T: Their thrust strikes home.
• 2T: If you attempted to parry as soon as you saw them move, your parry would complete here.
2. Opponent attacks into the low inside line.
• 0T: They begin thrusting.
• 0.5T: Your sword begins to move. They are still thrusting.
• 1T: Their thrust strikes home.
• 1.5T: If you were not attacking and you attempted to parry as soon as your brain understood that they were moving at 0.5T, your parry would complete here.

So, the ideal attack would defend against the low line attack primarily, while still creating enough of an obstruction on the high line that your opponent must perform at least 0.5T of disengage.

We can collapse our definition of what a well-defended attack is further:

• If your opponent attacks you through a place that your stance currently defends and will after you attack, their attack will fail, then your attack is well-defended.
• If your opponent attacks you through a place that your stance currently does not defend but will after you attack, it will take them at least 1T to strike you, then your attack is well-defended.
• If your opponent attacks you through a place that your stance currently defends but will not after you attack, it will take them at least 1.5T to strike you, then your attack is well-defended.
• If your opponent attacks you through a place that your stance currently does not defend and will not after you attack, it will take them at least 2T to strike you, then your attack is well-defended.

There are two more items on that chart than in the above timing chart. The very first item should be obvious - if you attack in a way that defends you, then you should remain defended. The last item is a bit more complex - the math-esque thinking there is as follows:

• Location that your stance does not defend and will not after you attack.
• 0T: They begin thrusting.
• 0.5T: Your sword begins moving. You realize that they are thrusting. 
• 1T: Their thrust lands. The signal from your brain to your arm that it should halt its attack and defend you reaches your arm.
• 1.5T: Your arm succeeds at stopping your attack and begins to defend.
• 2T: Your parry finishes enough that, had it been 1T faster, you would not be stabbed.

As such, these four principles should be enough to cover all cases, when thinking of swords in terms of lines and openings.

In theory, any system that adheres to these principles will be a Good and Correct system. The rest of this post goes in-depth about how I, personally, implement these principles in my own fencing. Some amount of this is conjecture, because I have not fenced enough recently.

A Brief Digression

The reason I collapse this into high/low is because the Spanish tradition has four lines:

• High Inside
• Low Inside
• High Outside
• Low Outside

According to the Spanish tradition (per Romagnan's Rada manual), you keep people's swords to either the left or right of you - also called the "left defensive plane" and "right defensive plane". These are strongly defensive positions. The quickest openings that you can be attacked on are openings in which your opponent switches from high to low - as such, you only have to consider the transition from high line to low line when defending yourself, so long as your stance remains Right and Proper.

As such, when attacking, switching from the high line to the low line is the ideal action. This is expressed in Viedma's "High General" and "Low General". The "Low General" is a switch from a strong, high-line parry (Line in Cross) to a weak, low-line parry (Weak Under Strong). Similarly, the "High General" is a switch from a strong, low-line parry (Narrowing) to a weak, high-line parry (Weak Over Strong). In my own fencing, I generalize that to a principle that switching from high-line to low-line is inherently the safest way to attack.

So, the Spanish tradition (as I understand it) is structured to create one "defended" line in exchange for creating exactly one "open" line, when in-stance. The "open lines" of Italian traditions are a bit more abstract - there's "inside" and "outside", but aside from techniques that clearly make use of high and low lines, the Italian masters don't really consider things like that. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Capoferro and Giganti don't really consider the low line at all, preferring to keep the idea of "opening" more abstract and "here's a set of examples, now go to town". While there is certainly clear value in this, it doesn't jibe with the way I personally work.

Conclusion

In summary, we have the following principles:

• Presents a legitimate threat to your opponent.
• Will stab your opponent if they don't act within one tempo.
• You have a clear 1T attack such as leaning-thrust you can perform, without being immediately blocked.
• You can continue blocking your opponent's sword into a disadvantageous position while you perform a 1.5T attack such as a lunge.
• You can push your opponent's sword into a disadvantageous position while you perform a 1.5T attack such as a lunge.
• Creates a strong defense against your opponent.
• Creates a defense such that attacking you is a parryable action, meaning that your attack is well-defended. The circumstances which produce well-defended attacks are as follows:
• If your opponent attacks you through a place that your stance currently defends and will after you attack, their attack will fail.
• If your opponent attacks you through a place that your stance currently does not defend but will after you attack, it will take them at least 1T to strike you.
• If your opponent attacks you through a place that your stance currently defends but will not after you attack, it will take them at least 1.5T to strike you.
• If your opponent attacks you through a place that your stance currently does not defend and will not after you attack, it will take them at least 2T to strike you.

If we fight in a way that abides by these principles, attacking will not present an opening. So, doing these things allows us to be As Safe As Possible™. A future, less exciting blog post will cover stances and how to remain safe in-stance. I might have already blogged about this, but my ideas on the subject have most likely changed since last I wrote on it, so it bears repeating. Next post will most likely be an in-detail look at how I implement these principles in my personal mix of Italian and Spanish fencing.

(Edited for comprehension on 2018-03-26)