Skill Improvement for ADHD Brains with a TL;DR List

 Earlier today, I wrote a comment in response to a post on reddit about how to improve when you have ADHD. As someone who has ADHD and is pretty okay at a number of skills, I thought I would put that comment here too, since that's what a blog is for.

 Enjoy!

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I have ADHD-PI, and here is a bunch of actionable advice I've used with myself for improving at skills. Since we all have ADHD here and are likely to type much more than we're willing to read, here's a tl;dr:

TL;DR BULLET POINT LIST

• Cultivate relaxed, sincere interest
• Don't over-read
• Don't over-train
• Don't keep playing when in a bad headspace
• Get exercise

I'm not amazing at the game, but I do have other competitive things I'm good at. Generally I try to cultivate a "relaxed, sincere interest" in things I want to get better at. If I try to force my brain to focus on the game, then I end up beating myself up about not doing things correctly. That teaches my brain that playing the game causes suffering, thus making it harder to focus. If I relax and let my brain think about the things I love about the game, that means my brain is more likely to stay engaged.

Honestly, having too much knowledge about the game that you're not ready to apply can be a hindrance to improvement. If you have too many things you're trying to do, you won't improve at any of them. Maybe try to focus on improving one thing at a time, and try reading about the game less. I've also often found that a lot of what people say online is either not applicable to my play-style, or I'm not ready to hear it yet. If I don't have the skill to pull off something that someone says online, the solution isn't to try harder. The solution is to ignore it until it seems more natural to me. I have often found that advice has made no sense to me, but after playing and improving for a few months, it will suddenly make sense and be the easiest thing in the world to execute.

(As an example - I used to not understand why people loved Ridley's nair so much. I would try to use it, but then it would get stuffed by disjoints. So I stopped trying to use it for a while. Eventually my spacing and match-up understanding improved enough that using nair seemed natural. So I, too, started to love the nair.)

The brain is an associative learning device - that is to say, if you are spending a lot of time playing sub-optimally, the brain will learn to continue playing sub-optimally. If you notice yourself on autopilot, go do something else so your brain doesn't train itself harder to play on autopilot.

Brains require actual physical chemicals in order to improve at skills, and they only produce those chemicals at a certain rate. If you try to improve at a skill when your brain doesn't have any more of the chemicals needed for learning, you won't be able to improve. So don't overdo it, and if you're already tired then don't play very much.

Exercise also improves the rate at which the brain produces these brain chemicals, so doing some sort of exercise can help. Half an hour of cardio per day has been shown to improve the ability of ADHD brains to focus. As well, strength training increases the rate at which the brain produces dopamine, which is one of the brain chemicals needed to learn. Especially if you're starting out, you don't have to do much - just a nice walk is good. 

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Again, I hope that y'all had a good time reading this thing. I hope that at the very least the bullet-point list helps some of you.

Have a good day!

Smash Bros, rather than Fencing, and Hard Reads

 It has been a long time since I made a blog post! Let's make one today.

Since the pandemic started, I have been doing basically zero fencing. A little bit of stray fencing work here and there, but no consistent practice and nothing really useful for improving my fencing. But what I have been doing is playing Smash Bros Ultimate.

Smash Bros is a series of fighting games unlike any other. It is highly air-focused and mobile, and has mechanisms in place to put penalties on too much defense and too much offense both. There are a ridiculous number of characters. I play one named Ridley.

Ridley is a giant space-demon-bird. He is a large character, but not heavy - in real terms, that means it's easy to hit them with attacks and relatively easy to kill them at low health. He is a little bit slow, but he has a decent amount of range on his abilities. He is a high-risk-high-reward character.

The reason I say all of this is to talk about a thing called a "hard read".

A hard read is when you do something based on what you think your opponent is going to do, but hasn't done yet. This comes up in fighting games a lot. Characters in fighting games move much faster than people do in real life, and in fighting games people usually have many fewer choices of action at any given time, versus in real life.

Playing Ridley requires a lot of hard reads, but he has the tools to restrict most characters' choice-space in order to let them make those guesses. As well, played correctly you can minimize the cost of failed reads in order to open up your opponent to different guessing games.

Hard reads exist in fencing, too. The place I would say the concept exists most is in Destreza-esque fighting.

When fencing Destreza, one spends a lot of time with their arm fully-extended. This is good, in that it allows you to gain better opposition and have a strong defensive posture. But it makes life more difficult for attacking. Most attacks from a Destreza-esque posture require an opponent to be at a very specific distance - doubly so in a non-C&T SCA context.

This is because we have fewer joints to un-bend for the action of making an attack. When extending into an attack, we need to make sure that it is going to contact in the "line" of the assault. For a thrust, this is forward along the direction of the blade. For a cut, this depends on the particular sword. Regardless, the elbow and shoulder, working together, can radically reposition the attack at any point.

For Destreza, this is not as much the case. For a thrust in LVD, an opponent stepping slightly in one direction or another can completely mess up an attack. Where an Italian might be able to launch an attack that could hit at anywhere along a few feet of length, a Diestro has maybe a foot of length which can really strike at most, if not even more like a point.

This means that a Diestro has to predict exactly where their opponent will be. This is difficult, since in SCA rapier we generally aren't allowed to physically interpose objects to restrict our opponent's movement. So, we need to guess.

In order to not just lose all the time, this means we need to minimize the cost of a failed guess - that is to say, our defense must be impeccable. In general, when planning an assault in Destreza, I try to make sure that my opponent won't be able to attack me when I attack, regardless of if they are moving backwards or forwards. The right-angle position and extended arm help with this, because they cover so very much space, but they are not perfect by any means.

Bored of writing now, time to be done.

Perfect Practice and Fencing

This post is a comment I made in response to a question someone had on Facebook about "perfect practice" and how to get feedback about if an action is correct. This was my comment, after thinking about it for a day or so.

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tl;dr: I engage in minimax, and constantly work to improve the accuracy of my model of positions and of possible moves. "Correctness" of a drilled action can only be defined in those terms. "Perfect practice" is the improvement of one's theory and execution of that theory.

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I'm vaguely sorry about this, but I wrote a bit of a novel.

Most of my work in rapier has gone into my ability to classify positions, my opponent's possible options from a given position, and the optimal move for a given position. This lets me figure out if a position is good or bad, aside from the Boolean of "they hit me", "I hit them", or neither.

There are an infinite number of positions that two fencers can be in, with respect to each other, in rapier. Many of the differences between them don't matter. So what I try to do is find the boundary conditions among the set of positions which actually matter.

In terms of fighting - this gets boiled down to half-conscious rules and mnemonics. "If their sword is near the center-line, their tip's position means more than if it's way off-line", that sort of thing.

So, I have developed that list of positions. It is imperfect, which is fine. From that list, I develop the list of actions that a fencer can take, and the list of positions that it can result in, with special focus on positions that I recognize as leading to their victory. And my victory, too, but theirs is more important.

Once I have the list of positions and possible moves, I can observe and decide what the correct action is in a given situation. This context defines whether an action is "right" or "wrong". This is why, when drilling at home, I generally visualize an opponent with a sword, because their position dictates whether my move was "correct".

Every time I lose, it's because I misjudged what position my opponent was in, or misjudged the valid moves from that position. Or I physically failed to do the right thing, which also fits in the category of "misjudged the valid moves" because if I can't get my body to do a thing, it's not a valid move.

This is why my concept of "a tempo" being the minimum amount of time it takes for someone to perceive their opponent and begin to execute a response is so important. Without it, the game can't be formalized in this fashion.

In fencing, as with any real-time game, we are acting with outdated information. We act, and we act, but the fact that the brain takes about 120ms to intake information and another 80ms to output a response to our limbs means that we are always acting with information that is at least a little outdated.

But this allows us to formally isolate moves into atomic units. That allows us to separate out positions. From there, we are able to anticipate our opponent's possible movements from a given position, based on their possible moves.

Keep in mind that our information about what we are doing is always a little more up-to-date than our information about what our opponent is doing. We know our current position, but we only know our opponent's previous position because we haven't perceived their current position yet.

This is further complicated, because even the brain isn't one unit - frequently my body will do correct things without "me" telling it to, and I'll have to suss out whether what I did in a situation was correct or not. And if it wasn't, I have to suss out why I did it, in order to figure out how to communicate to my hind-brain that a different action is better.

I could go even deeper, but I'll spare everyone the essay.

This whole structure is what allows me to dictate if a move was "right" or "wrong". If I don't understand everything here and have full positioning context, then "right" or "wrong" is meaningless. Sure, there are some things that are universally good or bad - rolling one's ankle is just a bad way to take a step. But beyond very a very simple set of things, we need all of this to determine if a movement was "correct".

...I think I should probably copy/paste this into my blog as a post.

Seven Layers of Tactical Decision-Making

Pennsic was good, but I don't want to talk about that.

I went to practice yesterday, and it was frustrating. I couldn't figure out why things weren't working right, until I was leaving practice talking to Rowan, and I realized that I had completely forgotten to implement a coherent strategy all practice. Like, at all.

Some background - in the way I think of fencing, there are several levels to the game. They are interconnected, and the boundaries between them can be fuzzy sometimes, but they go something like this, from bottom to top:

• A physical movement.
• This is something like "extend your arm" or "step left while turning your shoulder behind you", or even could be "perform a lunge" or "execute a giarata". At this level of consideration, your concern should be primarily internal. Are you doing the thing correctly? Could you do it more efficiently? Is it happening in the way you envisioned it?
• This is where most solo-drills live.
• A technique.
• This is the point at which we consider that we have an opponent. A technique is different from a movement in that the way you perform it changes based on the positioning of yourself and your opponent. Here, we're not considering edge-cases or weirdness. We're considering performing the technique, and it going correctly.
• This is where most pair-drills aspire to be.
• A specific implementation of a technique. (I will call this an operation, henceforth)
• This is where messy stuff comes in. There are idealized versions of techniques, but there are a lot of squishy places where the technique "goes wrong", or your opponent does something unexpected. This can be anything from "oh shit, my opponent disengaged at the exact same time I did my thing" to "my opponent isn't letting me get them firmly within the bounds of the technique, so I need to figure out how to modify or adapt the technique to make it work given what they are letting me have".
• This is what we consider when our opponent is staying too far away, or not giving you as strong opposition as you want, or they are pushing on your sword way harder than you expect them to. Doing this part well in a bout tests the boundaries of your knowledge of techniques. Will this work here, or will it fail here?
• This is where I personally get stuck on period manuals. "Oh, but what if they have a weapon that's longer or shorter? How does that change things? What if they do this obscure thing? And that other one?" It's somewhat exhausting, really, and I really wish more period masters covered possible variations more thoroughly.
• This is also covered in pair-drilling, but it's hard to actually get people to focus on it when they're concerned with "doing the drill right". Frequently people think that the problem is with them, rather than trying to vivisect the technique to figure out what makes it tick.
• This is closer to what I consider an "exercise" rather than a "drill".
• The possible results of an operation. I guess you could call this "an exchange"?
• This is where one considers the places your opponent could be after you do your technique. "After you do your technique" is a vast over-simplification, though. Humans have a constant loop of perception and action going in their heads. As well, different types of perception happen faster than other types - you can react to a sound faster than to a sight, and faster still to a touch. This is neurochemical truth, and unavoidable.
• Back to the point here - there is a small gap between what you perceive and the actual state of the world. There is another small gap between the decision to perform an action, and your muscles implementing that action. This layer of the tactical process is all about considering what you can perceive during your operation, and what that could mean in tactical terms.
• I call the aggregate time of those two gaps "a tempo". Many people disagree with me, including period masters. I call it such because it is the smallest amount of time that you can be sure that your opponent will not react to your action. They might predict what you are going to do, and they might even predict when you're going to do it, but they won't REACT to the action because it is physically impossible.
• An example is in order here. I am so, so sorry.
• If you are attempting to find your opponent's blade by making contact with it on the high inside line and your blade doesn't touch it when you expect it to, what could they be doing?
• They could have yielded around, moving their hilt away from the line but keeping their tip on-line.
• They could have performed a disengage or a disengage-attack.
• They could be performing a half-disengage or low-line attack.
• Or, they could have pulled their blade back entirely, either by pulling far backwards or by performing a moulinet.
• (Or they could perform some bastard combination of the above.)
• The job we have here is to figure out, given the small amount of information we have (DID NOT FEEL SWORDS TOUCH) what we should do in order to infallibly not get stabbed. The swords-not-touching is the very first information we receive that Something Is Not Going According To Our Initial Operation. In some cases, the correct thing to do might be to wait until we see what they are doing with our eyes, instead of acting prematurely.
• I'm disregarding the idea that someone might disengage earlier because I'm currently assuming that we're acting
• In this particular case, I feel relatively comfortable (with my tip-heavy blade) doing a mid-blade rotation from my wrist to place my tip low and my hilt to the left, creating a descending cut. That rotation lets me avoid acting directly counter to the original gaining motion, which would be slow. That descending cut will catch everything except for the fourth option there, and the fourth option will take enough time to complete that I can perceive that it is happening soon enough to counter it.
• This leads to the next blossoming perception loop, in which we perceive if our opponent has been caught by our cut. And, if not, why not and what can we do about it?
• This is where tactics get interesting. As you can see from the above example, the tree of possibilities blossoms too quickly to map out exhaustively. Especially for beginners, this is where having a coherent style Matters A Lot. Most period masters are relatively congruent and cover most situations pretty fully. Even if they don't cover a specific situation, there's probably something in their manual that is relevant and can be adapted to fill the gaps. They usually aren't exhaustive in enumerating possible results, however.
• Thibault's manual covers this really, really well. In excruciating detail, really, which is why it's So Damn Long. He's one of few period masters who does this, as far as I know. Fabris does a bit as well, but not nearly as exhaustively. Meyer, Capoferro, and other period masters sort of cover this, but not at the level of exhaustiveness that would be useful.
• Drills tend not to be designed cover this. The Capoferro Hierarchy Drill covers this somewhat, which is why it is such a good drill.
• This is the first layer that you can lie at. When a more experienced fencer does a half-lunge at a range that they can't stab a newer fencer at, they're lying here. They are telling the newer fencer that they will get stabbed, and the newer fencer, hapless as they are, believes it and jumps, giving the more experienced fencer the opportunity to stab them.
• Perception of these lies is what I believe to be the hallmark of a no-longer-beginner fencer. A lack of reaction to these lies is essential to fencing correctly, and is one of the most pernicious mistakes that even skilled fencers make. This isn't to say you shouldn't move at all - something that is a lie can also be a way to reposition for a different technique. And that can lead into jockeying for position. However, a twitch "HEY I'M THROWING A LUNGE" from out of measure is different, and responding to that is evidence of a deficiency in someone's fencing.
• I tend to call things that cover this "exercises" rather than drills. I think this is what most people use slow-fencing for. I tend to want to do them at-speed, because it's easy to accidentally react faster than possible when you're operating at 1/4 speed. Though, a case could be made for slow-fencing in that if your opponent predicts what you're doing and when you will do it, they could move that fast.
• A set of tactics, or the techniques you plan to engage in and the operations they can flow into.
• This is what I view as the highest useful level - a game-plan of what can be done. A good game-plan assumes that your opponent will do the thing that is the worst-for-you possible smart move that is based on them reacting to you or you reacting to them. Here, we are not yet thinking about predicting our opponent's action.
• This is what I forgot to have in mind yesterday.
• A basic Italian set of tactics would be something like this:
• Get in a backwards-leaning guard just out of both you and your opponent's lunge measure.
• If they manage to step forward and lunge or pass at this stage, execute a single-tempo or duo-tempi parry/riposte.
• Take a small step forward with your front foot and find their sword to the inside or outside, whichever occupies more space
• If they disengage, find their blade to the other side. Your hilt should be low enough that they can't strike to your body under your sword.
• Complete the small step with your back foot, leaning forward and progressing your find to a gain.
• If they disengage here, you can probably just lunge and stab them.
• Lunge and stab them through the eye.
• If they do an oh-shit emergency parry at this stage, they probably have to come off-line enough that their sword isn't a threat any more. Execute a tiny disengage around their hilt and stab them in the chest.
• That set of tactics is very basic, and doesn't address everything! It says nothing about if your opponent uses their off-hand or an off-hand implement, nor does it say things about if your opponent does weird things to gain your blade from below. It's a basic framework, and as time passes more things get hung from it. Maybe it has a deep strategic deficit which means the person using it will always lose if someone does a very particular sequence of actions. Who knows! Diagnosing these problems and searching through them is what I fucking live for, in this sport.
• Being a cold and ruthless killer means living at level and trying not to go to a higher level of tactics. This is the level at which things work well and consistently. Above here, we get to strange games of anticipation and then knowing your opponent. If you allow yourself to get sucked into those, it allows you to be lied to. If your opponent can firmly convince you that something is going to happen, then they do something else, then you will lose to them. It's a game of "who can lie better", and I think it's best not to play because there will always be a better liar.
• This is a very Spanish sentiment. The Spanish abhor lies and feints. I happen to agree with them philosophically, though I don't necessarily agree with their system.
• On the other side of things, Giganti and Capoferro wax rhapsodic about how the pinnacle of fencing is deceit. Many people agree with them, and do quite well with it. I will not say they're wrong, but it feels like a shallow end to the game. I'd rather work on perfecting my strategy, since that is universal.
• Fabris is the only person who really covers this in any depth, as far as I know. This is essentially all of what Fabris's Book Two is. He lists six game-plans with single rapier, and then four game-plans with sword and dagger. He then flow-charts out what you should do based on your opponent's reactions. I wish he had explicitly stated where these tactics don't work, and when to abandon them for other things. He says it in the positive sense, but I wish he said it in the negative sense more often. I understand that hubris is period, but still. 
•  Tactical Deceit
• This is the level at which you create and break expectations in people. It's very useful, and relies on finding quick rock-paper-scissors exchanges. Generally, this is implemented on the offense - I execute attack A, letting you execute defense A. Then I do it again. The third time I start off looking like I'm doing attack A, but then switch to attack B, which defeats defense A.
• Some basic patterns here include:
• A-A-B
• A-B-D
• In general, "do one thing until you don't do it"
• In general, "do a progression then skip a step in that progression"
• This can be done defensively, I guess? But it's much weirder, and relies on your opponent being more on-the-ball and taking your bait. This is something that Maija Soderholm talks about in her book, "The Liar, the Cheat, and the Thief", but I have not worked with that book enough to comment on whether the thing she speaks of is different from what I try to do.
• The way I try to do this is the German way - making the final technique a "masterstroke" that counterattacks the "expected" technique, but also defends against all other direct, single-tempo attacks. It's not the easiest to set up, but it allows us to implement this level while still staying true to the principles of the previous level. Even doing that though, this level should still be subsidiary to Tactics.
• You work on this by fighting a bunch of pickups, over and over again, forever. Soderholm's book has many drills to work on it, but I have not even attempted these drills.
• Personal Knowledge
• This is the level of "Oh, Remy is really good at in-fighting, so I should do this particular thing." Or "Lupold likes to snipe, so it'd be good if I bum-rush him." It's all about knowing who you are fighting.
• This is a level I do not like to rely on. It relies on using what you know of people to stab them. However, they might know that you know these things, so they might be expecting you to do a thing. But if you know that they know that you know, then you can do a different thing. But if they know that you know thaewnlkweanglakewnflkseanf newlafEWANFIAWNFLAENDFLKFNADFKLNFKLANDSF
• As stated, I don't like it because it can spiral infinitely. Now, if you can execute tactically sound operations which don't leave openings and Just Happen to strike at places you know your opponent is weak, you can do that. In fact, I encourage it. It should be subsidiary to Tactics, however.
• This all boils down to understanding what parts of The Game Of Fencing you understand better than your opponent. If you know this ahead of time, it might give you an edge. Might. In reality, I think it's best to just fight your fight and diagnose things from the flow of the fight, rather than from outside knowledge.
• Of course, if you are attempting to create winning Pennsic Champions pairings, this skill is super important. This skill is what lets you look at a fight and figure out who is more or less likely to win.
• Personal knowledge of yourself is important, though - it's good to know what parts of the game of fencing you are more or less strong at. In a tournament, it lets you attempt to lead bouts away from those areas. For example, if I'm not strong at in-fighting, I can stay at a distance. In training, it lets you decide what to beat your head against until you understand it better. This means improving every level below this one in that area of the game.
• In training, if you rely on this too much, then you and your opponent might, over the years, descend into a shallow sub-game of the overall game of fencing, in which you both attempt to hammer at a particular part of the game of fencing. This is why R&D is important - R&D is what happens when you try to break out of your known "best" fight and branch out, to try to find other techniques that are effective or useful in your overall game.

 So, that's the full breakdown of "What is Tactics", from my perspective. Hopefully it's useful to someone other than me. Hell, hopefully breaking it down like this is useful to me. The short version of the list is:

• Movements are smaller than,
• Techniques are smaller than,
• Operations are smaller than,
• Exchanges are smaller than,
• Tactics, which should be your focus above all,
• But if you can use Deceit you might as well,
• And if you can use Personal Knowledge then why not.

 I feel like I could do better. Like, making that into a poem? Seems like effort.

Bored of writing now, so I'm done.

More Destreza Bullshit

I had a rough practice, so I blog. Preface - this is all my interpretations of things. So when I reference historical masters, I am not necessarily saying what they actually said, I'm saying my interpretation, and what I've inferred from the actual words that are in the manuals.

In this post, I also use the word "parry" to mean "atajo", because fuck it they're the same thing. Atajos are frequently more proactive, but a proactive parry is still a parry.

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I have previously talked about the ways that one can defeat a parry. In short they are:

1. Disengage: get around your opponent's blade by moving your tip (primarily).
1. I also would consider an attack through the weak of your opponent's blade to be a category of disengage. After all - you're moving your sword around theirs until you get past the point where they can usefully parry, and then you attack without concern for the fact that their blade is there. Sounds like a disengage to me.
2. Slipping out: pull your sword backwards until your tip escapes their parry, then push it back in.
3. Yielding around: push your sword forward around their parry, creating an angle with your wrist.

 If you have questions, this is covered more in this post about penetration, width, and parallax.

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Thibault's dialect of Destreza is extremely focused. He has a lot of edge-cases he defines, but his defensive principles can be largely enumerated as two rules.

1. ALWAYS keep your hand on the diameter line, between your sword-shoulder and your opponent's sword-shoulder.
2. To defend yourself, bend at the wrist while lowering or raising your hand using your shoulder, to push their sword down and to the left or to the right.

This ends up being surprisingly effective, if you try it. This is because it counters all three ways of defeating a parry.

1. It counters disengages by being very "wide", from bending at the wrist.
1. It also counters attacks through opposition, by pulling your tip away from your opponent and thus forcing them to engage your sword with a weaker part of their sword.
2. It counters slipping out by your hand (and thus your sword) being as far forward as possible, increasing the time it will take them to pull their tip backwards out of your parry.
3. It counters yielding around if your tip is pushing them far enough away from your center-of-mass (tip to the left or right, hand low) that they cannot yield around without taking a step.

This is great. A few things to note - the distance downwards of your hand and the distance left or right of your tip should depend on how close you are to your opponent and their reach. In Destreza terms - it should depend on where you are in your opponent's circle.

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So that's where I was for a few months. Over time, I realized that Thibault's method of defense is a more correct version of the Line in Cross. That is to say, if you take their sword with the false edge of your sword, you can do something very similar in a standard Italian or Destreza grip, and it works stunningly.

Never take your hand off that center diameter, though, because doing so will necessarily decrease the reach of your Line in Cross and also make it harder for you to switch from a left LiC to a right LiC, due to how inertia works in a sword. This means that your parry will be worse against two of the three ways to defeat a parry

Over time, I rolled that around in my head and mushed it in with my previous work on parallax - in particular, the parts about the "cone of parallax".

As a refresher - the "cone of parallax" is the cone which defines how widely you have to parry in order to defeat your opponent's widest possible yield-around. The original thought experiment was based on specifically imagining your opponent striking your leading shoulder, in order to make the shape as simple as possible.

This led to me thinking very hard about what the "shape" of the ideal Line in Cross would be. In order to understand this, there are a few things that we need to consider.

• Yielding-around means that to parry someone, you need to parry wider, the farther forward your parry is.
• The human body is not a point. In a Spanish stance, the human body is profiled, with the shoulder near but not at the top. This means that the shape of possible yield-arounds is deformed from a cone, allowing for slightly more area upwards and much more area downwards.
• Intuitively - your body extends farther below your shoulder than it does above your shoulder.
• Removing your hand from the diameter line reduces how far forward your hand is extended. As well, the diameter line defines the farthest downwards that an opponent can yield around without dropping their shoulder. 
• To simplify things, we can consider a shape that is "good enough". That is to say, it covers the farthest yield, but might over-cover some places.
• But in order to not over-cover too much, the shape should be smaller, the farther out we are.

 So, demonstrating with Arts and Crafts what this shape looks like...

As demonstrated above - the closer you are to your opponent, the wider the cone must be, up to a point. Thus, from the point of view to the far right, that's about the shape you need to block their sword out of, in order to be safe from all forms of attack. This shape gets wider as you get closer, and smaller as you get farther. It's an abstraction of a minimum - that is to say, if you push their sword out even more, you will remain safe.

Here are the cones in which someone who is far away (left) can attack you (right). The shorter rectangles with dots on them represent the opponent's arm, the longer ones represent their sword:

 And here is the resulting shape that you need to push them out of, using Line in Cross or Narrowing. This is about the cross-section of the shape at arm's length, or halfway down your opponent's sword. If your blade is not perfectly perpendicular to them, you will need to use a somewhat altered shape, which grows a bit the farther forward the relevant part of your sword is.

You can see in the next few images that as the opponent gets closer, the kite or diamond shape grows.

This is about how far out you need to push their sword, at maximum, to be safe at close measure. Again, it grows the farther forward your sword is, with this diamond assuming that your blade is perpendicular to them. Note how the center of the diamond is their leading shoulder. If they were in a more square stance, the center of the diamond would still be the shoulder holding their sword.

I also sort of slipped in there the top edges of the shape, for executing Narrowing,since the way to derive those edges is the same. Note how the bottom edges of the diamond are taller, meaning that Line in Cross covers more space than Narrowing does.

In general, for Line in Cross, we should have our hands at or near the bottom of the diamond, and your tip should be at or past the left or right corner of the diamond. Otherwise, we cannot create the firm parry that Line in Cross should be. This implies and necessitates that Line in Cross should be a false-edge-leading parry.

For Narrowing, the reverse should be true. Hand goes to the top corner. This is much more awkward than Line in Cross.

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Thinking about this, I had a realization. There should be other parries, too, which follow the principles herein.  It should be possible to place your hand at the left or right corner of the diamond, while placing your tip at the bottom or top corner of the diamond. And that's when I realized something that I should have realized years ago.

Using a loose interpretation of Viedma's work, that's how he describes the other two primary generals - Weak Under Strong and Weak Over Strong. I had been tripped up by those wily Italians due to how Viedma describes it. He describes Weak Under Strong as a position in which the weak of your sword is under their hilt.

This makes a lot of sense, if you are fighting a Spaniard in the LVD stance. However, an Italian might have their hand very low, which means that if your tip is under their tip, it's very likely that you can't execute a useful parry at all.

However, a Spaniard keeps their hilt in line with their shoulder with respect to your shoulder, most of the time. This means that "under their hilt" and "under their shoulder" would mean the same thing.

This means that we can interpret Weak Under Strong and Weak Over Strong to be centered not on their hilt, but on their shoulder. Which would make Weak Over Strong and Weak Under Strong the other parries that seemed like they should exist, according to the principles outlined above and the shape of the diamond.

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As a fun side note - this also explains how Thibault's parry against high, close blade positions works. He suggests that you execute Weak Over Strong for those positions, if we take my definition to be correct. We can also start classifying Spanish-ish fencing according to the positions that they prefer.

In order of preference...

1. Viedma
1.  Line in Cross
2. Weak Under Strong
3. Would prefer you to not use anything else, but...
4. Narrowing
5. Weak Over Strong
2. Thibault
1. Line in Cross
2. ...
3. Weak Over Strong, if you really need to and you're in close
4. Nothing else
5. Fuck off
6. Ok, there is some stuff we could classify as Narrowing in attacks

Thibault does have some additional things, too - he uses his quillons to push people outside of the bottom and sides of the diamond quite a bit. For that reason, I think that Thibault might be a superior style, and is an evolution beyond Viedma's LVD. He also prefers a longer blade, which probably helps to make Line in Cross the only thing you need.

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The above also makes several things work better, including making the Low General and High General work at all. I still need to experiment and work with this, but it seems like a useful thing which I can do.

For those who don't remember - the Low General is a transition from Line in Cross to Weak Under Strong. The High General is a transition from Narrowing to Weak Over Strong. Usually with a step or two in the direction of the opponent's blade.

Current additional topics for investigation include:

• Places to act on your opponent's blade.
• Do you want them in the center of each line segment of the diamond in order to act on them?
• What about the Krumphau specified by Thibault against Italians? It pushes them outside of the diamond, true, but how and why does it work?
• How do I act against an opponent who will not let me break their wrist somehow? e.g., Default Low Black Tiger Guard.
• What about opponents who try to refuse their tip by placing their dagger at the ready? For example, Ansteorran Whatever Style.
• Should there be a "Rising General" and "Falling General" as well, for transitioning from, for example, Weak Under Strong to Narrowing?
• What about people who fight SUPERMAN CASE? (Both arms extend and they fly forward)
• Opposition them with a stronger part of my blade to FORCE them into a position I want, as per Thibault against low guards?
•  Ways to act against people who are in a Spanish stance.
• Why doesn't the Thibault "LUNGE INTO THEIR FACE" work with my LVD? Is it a tell? Is it the different distance?
• What are the differences between LVD and Thibault that are due to blade length? Grip / quillon placement? Overall approach?
•  How do I strengthen my execution of the High General?

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There's one more thing I wanted to cover. Reach discrepancies.

In Viedma's ideal Destreza, you almost exclusively use Line in Cross, transitioning into Weak Under Strong after or as part of the attack, as per the Low General. He argues that students don't actually need Narrowing, Weak Over Strong, or the High General, and that the High General should only be studied after a student becomes a master.

In this ideal game plan, you approach with Line in Cross. If your opponent gets out of you subjecting them, you transition to Weak Under Strong. I think that Viedma believes that you should Just Not Screw up, and your opponent should never be able to escape your parry. This leads me to believe that, in practice, people probably just exited the circle by taking a straight leftward or rightward step if their opponent escaped their subjection.

However.

We live in the real world. Especially Italian styles are crafted to be able to take advantage of reach, positioning and backward movement to escape the Line in Cross. As a shorter-reach fighter, you will have maybe one clear shot, when you get into position. As well, your opponent will try their damnedest to put you into positions that make you uncomfortable.

This means that, as a shorter-reach fighter, the expected payoff of making an attack that you are slightly less comfortable with is greater than the utility of exiting measure if you don't have perfect positioning.

Intuitively: Every time you try for positioning, you're giving your longer-reach opponent a chance to make an attack roll. It's a very low chance to hit - maybe one in 20. But the more times you do that, the more chances they have, and eventually you will screw up. This means that you need to be as good as possible, to make as many positions as you can into positions which are good for you. To optimize for victory, you need to reduce the number of times you try to maneuver for positioning.

This is why long-reach fighters get away with Stupid Bullshit Stances. Because Stupid Bullshit can create uncertainty, and that creates hesitation. And in a fight with a reach discrepancy, hesitation means another chance for them to take the shot.

This is also why so many "legendary figures" have long reach. Because we are animals, and if someone has a reputation for being a good fighter, that creates hesitation. Hesitation creates opportunities for the person with reach, which creates a cycle which feeds into itself.

This is also a reason it sucks so much to have shorter reach. Because if you are a high-ranked fencer, it can feel like you have something to lose when you lose to a Young Whippersnapper. That creates hesitation. And as I have asserted already, hesitation creates opportunities for the fighter with more reach, which leads to a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle.

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Anyhow. That was a super long post, and I hope y'all enjoyed reading it.

Vancouver International Swordplay Symposium

Vancouver was great!

First up - here's a video of the exhibition match between the Italian Rapier teacher and the Thibault Rapier teacher.

I took several classes. In no particular order:

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Italian Rapier was fun. I didn't learn much new stuff from it, but I gained some meta-knowledge. I now know the proper way to run a class like that.

I think that having two instructors, with one playing the assist-and-fill-in-blanks role, is the ideal way to teach. Also, if there is a drill, explicitly tell people to line up on either side, call out when people should switch partners, and call out when people should rotate.

Make sure that every single bit is called out and practiced. Separate out the footwork from the blade-and-arm work, and perhaps even the body-work, and have people drill each part. Assuming that you break things down into small enough parts, it should actually be pretty possible to figure out exactly how long it will take to cover things.

I did gain a bit of technique-insight. For example, if your opponent is taller than you, you will tend to rotate more toward prima than you otherwise might. But again, most of what I learned was stuff I already knew.

I skipped out on the second day, because I wanted to wander Vancouver. I regret it slightly, but not that much.

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German versus Italian Rapier was interesting. The class compared two actions, in the Italian sidesword school, and the German rappier tradition. The two are very similar.

The action for the German school was a transition from Right Ochs through Longpoint, into Left Ochs, with a step, and then the strikes that could come from there. It was interesting to see how Left Ochs is basically "fifth" guard, if we consider the logical rotation of first into second, into third, into fourth, and then into fifth. It also only really works if you are completely profiled, and your elbow is bent a bit.

This transition had several sequences, depending on what your opponent did and where your sword made contact with theirs. The first was "threading behind" theirs with your false, and picking their blade up with your quillons. The second was a disengage to the other side, with a false-edge cut to the back of their blade and a true-edge cut to their head. It was interesting, and made me appreciate German Rapier more.

The Italian sequence was from a low-right Iron Gate through Longpoint, into a low-left Iron Gate. We didn't have much time by that point, but the argument there was that those sequences were essentially the same thing, except that the German sequence was optimized against cuts, and the Italian one was optimized against thrusts.

There was a fascinating digression about german footwork - apparently in Meyer's first draft, he has a long section on footwork. There is apparently a crescent moon shape in one of his plates which shows off all of the ways that you can step, but the finished version only has about a paragraph on footwork. So, at some point I'm going to go mining for that image, and for the original manuscript's section on footwork.

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I got SO MUCH out of the Thibault class. My prior experience with Destreza certainly helped with this. I liked the Italian class's pedagogy more, but the Thibault class had so much information for me to absorb. It was also a huge class, and I think that things were made much more difficult for the instructor because of it.

Things I got out of that class:

• Smaller steps are good, so you can abort the action appropriately if needed (?!?)
• I am not sure I believe this? Reaction times would dictate that it is hard to step appropriately and immediately.
• The instructor held his sword in a looser grip than I would have expected, from briefly reading the manual.
• Rotating from the hips/chest frees your arm to act in the opposite direction. So, when finding and gaining the blade, I should do it from my core and lower body, keeping my upper body still. That way, if they disengage, I can instantly move my shoulder and elbow to parry.
• Movements of conclusion are great, and essentially an arm bar on your opponent's sword.
• A stretch is just a joint lock performed nicely. Conversely, a joint lock is a stretch performed with vigor.
• If your opponent has more reach than you, do a cross step such that your back foot is in front, and then take the step that you would have taken if your front foot had been in front, in order to close distance.
• The "right angle" means that your arm is level with your shoulders. If you want to aim at a shorter opponent, tilt from the shoulders. There should be a straight line from your left shoulder, through your right shoulder, into your hand. If you want to aim at a taller opponent, tilt upwards.
• Keep your tip and hilt closer to the diameter (shortest line between you and your opponent) than your opponent's sword. Just a bit closer though, such that you have more strength, but they can't suddenly lunge for a low target.
• Against Italians or people with secondary offensive implements, pre-queue an atajo and then circle toward whatever side has less reach.
• Against lunges to the low line, toss that thigh back, punch downwards with your hilt to block their blade, and then stab them in the face.
• If your blade is longer than theirs, keep yours high so that they can't catch your weak, then drop down when you approach close enough that you can take their weak.
• To drop your tip in the Thibault grip, rotate your palm up. To raise it, rotate your palm down. This creates excellent structure for providing opposition and excellent positioning of quillons. Super strong. So very, very strong.
• There is apparently a second Thibault grip for cuts, that one should be able to transition into from the default quillons-flat, index-finger-under-the-flat-of-the-ricasso grip. It involves closing your hand more, but I haven't been able to pull it off. This grip-change, combined with the horizontal-quillon hand-posture, is the reason Thibault's swords do not have a knucklebow.
• If you have both strength and blade contact, you should step toward their sword. If you are without either or both of those, you should step away from their sword.
• Don't over-angulate your blade outwards, as this makes it hard to strike and hard to foil a disengage.
• Thibault does not do Weak Under Strong.
• It seemed like the instructor agreed with most of my definitions of Destreza things.
• Parallax is still important.

We discussed a couple of definitions.

First Instance is the location at which you can stab them with a step and a lean. Second Instance is where you can stab them with a lean. Third Instance is where you can stab them with barely any movement, by extending your arm. It wasn't explicitly stated, but thrusts come from first instance, cuts from second, and movements of conclusion from third.

Enlivening the foot is the process of pushing downwards with one foot to free the other to move freely. This is the primary way Thibault advises one to take steps.

Springing Steps are steps in which you take a conservative step, note that your opponent is moving backwards, and then drop into a demi-lunge. Your foot should tap the ground at the end of the conservative step. It essentially lets you move two steps' distance.

Power Slopes are a concept that the teacher used to express how opposition should work. Essentially, you should create a slope that, by its nature, forces your opponent's sword to slide down your blade and onto your hilt if they try to strike you.

Sentiment is the feeling of how strongly your opponent is committed to a bind. I will refer to this as "oppose strongly", "oppose mediumly", "present no opposition but don't move from the bind", and "disengage". Alternately, "strong sentiment", "medium sentiment", "no sentiment", and "disengage". My instincts say that you can increase strength without increasing sentiment by increasing the angulation of your sword, as per Fabris.

There was one primary sequence we worked through. It was something like this.

• Rotate to palm-down in order to raise your tip, enliven your back foot, and then rotate from your hips/legs/core (NOT ARMS) to apply an atajo, while stepping toward the direction that their sword is from your sword.
• If they oppose strongly,
• Raise your tip more to increase angluation and thus strength, dropping your hilt a bit as well, while stepping through with your back foot to put your left hand forward. Perform a movement of conclusion by grabbing their hilt/blade, pushing on their blade with your hilt, and essentially performing an arm bar on their sword.
• If you had enough strength to start with, you should be able to feel them pushing against you, and act accordingly.
• I want work on my ability to perform a thrust out of this
• If they oppose mediumly,
• Step toward their sword again, lowering your hilt and tip such that their blade is trapped between your quillon and blade. Stab them in the sword-side flank.
• If they present no opposition, but don't move from the bind
• They could either push suddenly or disengage. This is dangerous.
• Perform a cutting glide, aiming your cut for about 6 inches to the outside of their hilt, across their blade. Performed correctly, this will expel their blade, and make your blade "spring up", stabbing them in the face.
• There is some excitement to this technique. Remember that you want to rotate your sword such that your strike point is always touching their sword, as per my post on strike points.
• If they disengage
• Take a second step toward where their sword was, which is now a step away from their sword. Bend at the shoulder and elbow such that your arm stays at the same location in space, but moves backwards and toward their blade's new position relative to your body. Angle your wrist toward their blade, so you are covered. Proceed to attack from there.

There was also a segment on dealing with Italians, and dealing with sword-and-dagger. I have already covered the former. For the latter, you are to circle toward their dagger-side, trying to keep your weapon between their two weapons and angled as stated is proper against Italians. If they try to take your sword with their sword, proceed as if they had opposed you strongly, performing a thrust (?) and moving out in the direction of their dagger side. If they try to take your sword with their dagger, disengage to the outside around their dagger and stab them in the dagger-side flank.

There was also a Thibault versus Italians class, which was interesting. I have covered most of the items I got from that class in the first bullet-point section. I skipped out on Thibault Against The World, which makes me a bit sad, but oh well.

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Lastly, there were the Physical Asymmetries and Tactical Asymmetries classes. During the classes, I felt like I was getting a lot from them, but thinking back, a lot of the pieces of the class made me feel weird. The tl;dr version is that shorter people are required to bait taller people into making the first move using distance, then counter-punch or parry-riposte. Taller people are required to bait shorter people into biting on a parry early, then disengage or otherwise attack.

It resolved into a long rock-paper-scissors game.

1. Tall person and short person attack at the same time. Tall person wins.
2. Short person waits for tall person's attack and parry/ripostes. Short person wins.
3. Tall person feints, short person parries, tall person disengages and thrusts. Tall person wins.
4. Short person anticipates the feint, attacks through it to choke the disengage. Short person wins.
5. Short person anticipates the feint. Tall person throws a sincere attack. Tall person wins.

So, with T meaning "Tall" and S meaning "Short", with the winner marked in the individual cells:

	T full intent thrust	T feint/thrust
S full intent thrust	T	S
S parry/riposte	S	T

Note that S feint and T parry are not listed at all, because in that particular fight it doesn't make sense.

I disagreed with this conclusion somewhat. It simplifies things in a way, but I tend more toward the Destreza-esque opinion that there is a correct choice in all circumstances, or at least a choice that will make you not get stabbed. Envelops and suchlike fit in here.

For Tactical Asymmetries, we discussed two-by-two properties of fencers. The properties were:

Approaching or Receiving, which describes whether somebody prefers to move forward or to stay still and respond to their opponent's actions.

Attacker or Defender, which describes whether someone wants to perform feints to open up an opponent for attacks, or if they want to go in for defensive blade contact.

We had historical examples of some of these, of which Fabris was presented as the approaching attacker. The main thing I got out of this class was the idea of slow-working as a different style of fencer. I also had a long conversation with Sorcha about our types - I tend to be more of a Receiving Attacker, whereas she tends to be more of an Approaching Defender. This makes sense, given the fact that I have much more reach than her, with my chosen weapon. At the same time, she is much faster to defend herself.

Basically, it means that both of us are playing at "level two" of our respective games.

Huh.

Maybe I do agree with it a little bit more, then.

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I also attempted to apply all of this at practice, after cutting the knuckle-bow off of a spare hilt I had lying around. I'm not sure it actually made a difference, especially given that I do SCA fencing, and so there's a lot of focus on the thrust. I actually had more success doing Thibault better with a shorter weapon, rather than a longer one, because that allowed me to thrust at closer range. Also, having a dagger as an alternative to movements of conclusion was nice. I still want a 26-inch sail dagger for Destreza purposes, but the claws on my standard dagger were nice for grabbing onto swords as well.

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Aside from that it was beautiful, I had fun going there with all the people who were there, I sabered a bottle of champagne at the gala, and all the food was really tasty.

I hope this was useful.

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)

The Pokétron and the Overtron

I am pleased with myself. Before you continue - this post has very little if anything to do with fencing.

Last night, I re-implemented a tool for taking an arbitrary "team" and giving advice about the best choices to minimize the weaknesses of the team. This is because I have been playing a lot of Overwatch. One problem in Overwatch is that sometimes, the character you select is just bad against the other team's composition. However - it's hard to tell the difference between performing badly and being counter-picked. So, we solve the problem with technology.

Originally, the tool was created for fighting the Pokémons online. I naively scraped "weak against" data from Smogon University, and then used that data to create teams for whom there were no un-compensated-for weaknesses.

An example. So, I have added Swampert to my team. Swampert is weak to Celebi and Mamoswine. Celebi is weak to Skarmory and Venusaur, while Mamoswine is weak to Skarmory and Bronzong. We're going to pretend that there are no other weaknesses, for the moment.

So, the program would advise that I use Skarmory, since Skarmory counters both and doesn't add any new weaknesses. Yay!

If the options listed did add weaknesses, then I would check to see if they were weak to anyone currently on the team. If they were, that would be fine. If they weren't, then they would be a less-good option according to the program.

In reality, this relies on having a good, simple data-set. It's a very useful program for Pokémon, for instance, because the data-set is so large and there is a website sitting there with ready, scrapeable data. It's all simple sets though, and didn't take *that* long to implement.

The reason I've done this recently, is because Overwatch has a similar extended-rock-paper-scissors element to it. So, I've implemented the Overtron. What I do is I input my team, then it tells me what the best choices are, in ascending order of awesomeness.

There's some weirdness to the data. In the Pokétron, there are a few Pokémon who, according to Smogon University's dataset, are so dominating of the meta-game that they were almost always the best choice. Skarmory and Scizor were the two particular ones, with Skarmory frequently being between 400% better than the next-best option, and then the next several options being only about 20% different from each other.

It's hard to tell if this is because the data is generated by humans, or if Skarmory was actually that dominating of the meta-game.

Similarly, the data-set I'm using for Overwatch friggin' loves Reaper and Winston. Loves 'em. The brief testing I've undertaken has allowed me to see that yes, they are good options very much of the time. But it's still hilarious to me how this algorithm has such dominant "favorites". It's probably a sign that I either need to modify the algorithm, or I need to edit the data-set.

Part of me believes that this sort of set manipulation could be used to determine effective maneuvers. Because fencing does have a subtle sort of rock-paper-scissors to it, in various maneuvers. Sadly, the data-set is probably too squishy for me to ever create the Fencingtron.

King's and Queen's Rapier Champions, Part Two

The day-of.

There are a lot of directions I could go with this.

I could go into a general talk about how mental health and "tournament game" are inseparable. I could talk about all of the other experiences that led to that day. Instead, I'm just going to leave it alone and talk about the day itself, because quite frankly, that previous post was too emotionally exhausting for me to write anything more serious.

*****

The day-of, I got up early and had Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, as is traditional. I had two Vitamin Water Energy drinks, as well as a Diet Coke, a bottle of water, and some of my favored powdered coffee to drink. Basically, I've reached a point where all of the liquids I drink are caffeinated, for better or for worse.

Over the past few days, an idea had been brewing in my head. In school, I was a good test-taker. This doesn't mean that my anxiety is good or bad - it just means that there is a particular type of anxiety that makes me excel. So, I tried to tap into that feeling. I had several mantras throughout the day.

• "Like a test you know the answers to."
• As stated above, this is designed to invoke the feeling I have about standardized testing - that I'm good at it, and that even if I don't know the answers, I can usually use meta-information in the test to answer them. It is designed to bring about that anxious-but-ready feeling.
• "Just another fight."
• The implication here is that it isn't anything special, so I don't need to feel anything about it, positive or negative, because any feelings can lead to mistakes.
• "Nothing before, nothing after."
• Nothing which has happened before matters in the fight. Not my previous passes with the people I fight, not how I have been performing in the day. None of it. As well, nothing that happens after the fight matters. What will happen, will happen. All that matters is the fight itself.
• My own secret mantra.
• This is a sequence of nonsense words that I have used over the years to quell my own personal anxiety. As a matter of half-believed superstition, I do not tell them to other people because I believe that they have special significance.
• Random compulsions.
• If something floated across my mind, I would just do it. I decided to give in to all of the "I should adjust that dagger slightly so it feels right" or "my gloves need to be on my mask in a particular way" compulsions, to free the energy that I normally spend suppressing them. As well, to get my body used to responding instantly to whatever my heart wants me to do, whatever my reactions say I should do, because that's where fencing comes from.

My strategy for the day was to create openings and exploit them when they were big enough. It's a general enough strategy to not get caught in the muck of the fight. But it's also a specific enough strategy that I could always fall back on it. I'll write about more specifics on how I had been thinking about it, some day.

I decided that I was going to wear my most comfortable clothes for fighting. This means my doublet, my older shirt, leather gloves, and only my OGR pin. No scarf, since that had hurt my arm at Rose Tournament. No favors, because I would be fighting everybody whose favors I wear. No belt, no nothing distracting.

I fought some passes against Malocchio. He was on fire. I was... okay. Partway through, I realized that my socks were drooping, so I switched them out for a tighter, newer pair. He was my only warm-up.

After that, I decided to get into my head-space. We were divided up into pools. After my fight with Caoilfhionn, I had to run and get my hat. I was not relaxed, but I wasn't tense either. I was sipping drinks through the fights. Every fight, I made the same salute and got into the same stance. With only a few exceptions, I maintained my rhythm. After every fight, I would put down my sword and dagger, take off my mask, put my gloves on top of my mask, take down my hood, put on my hat, adjust it so nobody could make eye contact with me, take a sip of water, check my heart-rate on my Fitbit, and wait.

The rounds were arranged in a way which is ideal for me. My first fights were against more hesitant fighters - this is good because I tend to fight better after my first fight or two. At the start I tend to be antsy and hesitant. I won my first pass with hand-shots, because I didn't want to commit.

My fights were always at the top of the round. This was good, because it made them predictable. As well, fights were called rather than having to negotiate and engage socially with who I was going to fight.

A couple of people did a nice thing and tanked social encounters when people tried to talk to me. That was kind of them.

My heartburn started kicking in, starting a bit after my first fight. That was a good thing. That gave me a "dumb" thing to concentrate on - it hurt. My only thoughts at the time were something like, "This hurts. I'm cold. I'm a bit hungry. I'm a bit thirsty." Historically, I do well when I am a bit uncomfortable and a bit hungry. When I'm not a bit uncomfortable, my brain has room to have thoughts. Thoughts are anathema. I did allow myself to shiver with the stress, and rearrange objects based on random floating compulsions, though.

The Fitbit was useful - I found that generally my best fights ended with my heart rate around 100 bpm. Any more and it was a sign that the fight had gotten me too nervous. Any less was a sign that I was flagging and needed to be slightly more anxious.

So, I fought and I fought and I fought. My pool had several people who I historically have a hard time against. My first near-loss was one in which my opponent called that they were late. The same thing happened a second time later. Eventually I got a double-kill against Robert Earlson and a straight-up loss against Remy, who was also on fire that day. I was purposefully not paying attention to anyone else's fights. As such, I was mildly surprised that I progressed out of my pool. The whole thing lasted for about 2 hours of fighting and waiting.

*****

Afterwards, I immediately dropped my game-face and started talking. I put a little cheese and bread in my face, I threw away the two empty Vitamin Waters, and waited. Eventually, the Sweet 16 were announced. I ran off, hit the restroom, and grabbed my Diet Coke and made myself some instant coffee, which I sipped throughout the Sweet 16.

*****

In the Sweet 16, I knew I needed to redouble my headspace-game. So, I dove head-first into the set of mantras I had. Where previously they were just there in case I needed them, starting in the Sweet 16 I invoked them repeatedly.

I still didn't watch anyone else fighting. In some far-off place, I hoped not to have to fight Remy or Malocchio, since they had both proven to me that they were on fire.

And so things went, with me fighting my best fight and not thinking too hard about who I was fighting. Things happened, good and bad, in the course of those fights, but I remained mostly dead to the world. As time went on, I started making more mouth-noises. "Woo" and things like that. Inside me, but still isolated from me, there was a rising joy of fighting. Of the wonderful, beautiful violence that was happening.

The part of me that was making choices was still isolated, but in the same way I was allowing my compulsions to happen without any interference, I let my joy go straight from my heart to my mouth, without even considering interposing my brain.

Some people tried to get in my head or under my skin. I saw it for what it truly was - they respected me as an opponent and didn't want to lose. Perhaps they were even scared of me. Their words didn't mean what their words said - they meant what they were feeling inside. So, I invoked my inner Will Deth and let it slide off of my heart.

My heart rate and energy levels flagged a bit before fighting Caine. I kept pacing and put a bit of bounce into my step. I re-doubled and re-tripled into my mantras, and managed to stay in the game. That was the hardest part of the mental game - nothing that Caine said or did, but maintaining intensity into and through that fight. Again, I had neither opinions nor judgement about whether or not I would win, or whether winning or losing had any value. It was just another fight, just like any other.

I briefly looked at Malocchio and Remy fighting, when they finally fought. I had no opinions about who I wanted to win - they both would be ferocious opponents.

*****

As much as this post and the previous post have been all about being ridiculously honest and forthright, I can't say too much about fighting Remy and Malocchio yet. They were both gracious, extremely skilled opponents. My fights with them gave me a new respect for the both of them, and I already respected the hell out of them both. But aside from this one anecdote... not yet.

*****

In my last set of fights against Remy, we fought and we fought.

I won a truly long pass.

He won a pass.

He won another.

I grabbed my dagger.

I won the first.

I think we might have double-killed?

He won the second.

At that point, I think I fell over and took off my mask, from the tension. At that moment, I thought I had lost to him, and was prepared to hug him and walk off of the field. I had a good run, but I was happy for Remy and unsurprised. He was fighting so very, very well that day.

Everybody was still staring at me.

I thought back about the results thus far. No, I hadn't lost yet. We were 1-1 in the second set of fights.

Oh damn.

So, I put back on my mask and kept fighting.

*****

And then there was a post-revel. I was a bit of a butt - there are one or two things which seemed hilarious and unrelated-to-the-tournament to me at the time, but in retrospect probably seemed ungracious of me. I can and will endeavor to be better in the future.

*****

Thank you for indulging me by reading this post. If anything, I know that more people than ever will be gunning for my head. And I know that at least two of them can take me down if I flinch even a little bit. But I welcome this challenge.

I welcome it, with joy in my heart.