New Distance, Old Tricks

This post is going to seem very very similar to my previous Touch, Small Angle, Large Angle, Renegotiate entry. It's a refinement of previous understanding, which is pretty cool and worked decently well in its first trial at practice.

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On the right, we see the Fabris stance that everybody has done at least once.

Fabris and "true" Destreza both have a blade-extended stance. In particular, the canonical "I'm doing Destreza" upright, arm-extended stance is difficult to start using. It is worth noting that there are many ways to do Destreza - the stance people recognize is not the only stance which exists.

Destreza, as per Thibault. Yes, I know, it's different, but it's close enough for our purposes.

In order to understand why this is difficult, let's imagine two people moving toward each other, as if on a conveyor belt. Both are in the straight-backed and straight-legged "Destreza stance".

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In the first range, they are completely out of measure. No contact can be made with the blades.

In the second range, tips can touch. Small advantages can be negotiated here, but nothing major. The main thing that one can do with a tip is bait people into attempting opposition on it, since that tip isn't going to be exerting any strong opposition.

In the third range, the far-middle of blades can make contact. The part between 1/4 and 1/2 of the way down the blade. Stronger opposition can happen here. One or the other person might feel the urge to pull their sword back, in order to get contact with a weaker part of their opponent's sword.

In the fourth range, you can place your quillons on your opponent's weak. If you can establish this type of blade dominance, it is extremely advantageous. The movement to get around quillons is very large, especially if you have your opponent locked between your strong and your quillons.

In the fifth range, you can extend to stab your opponent, but it requires all of your reach to do so. An alternate thing you can do here is push your arm out to the side, up, or down, if you have established that quillon-based blade dominance. This places their sword farther away from your body, making you safer.

You can come back to this small-font text later. It is a brief aside to explain some things which will be relevant later.

Pushing their sword out to the side also does some subtle things. First, if you can break the straight line from your opponent's shoulder to you, that decreases their range by definition. They might be able to point at you again, but it requires them to bend parts of their arm, meaning that they don't have a long, straight line any more.

Pushing their sword out to the side also places you more strongly "behind" your sword with respect to their sword. This makes you far, far safer. This is very, very good. It's the principle behind getting "past someone's tip". If you're past their tip, they have to take two tempi to stab you - one to pull their arm back, and another to re-extend. If you're both past their tip and have your sword in the way, that's just bonus.

In the sixth range, you can stab your opponent with your sword even with your arm at a weird angle.

In the seventh range, your opponent is past your tip even if you're at a weird angle. If you have daggers, you have probably already stabbed each other. Maybe you can cut your opponent with your sword here?

In the eighth range, you are hugging your opponent. Good game everyone.

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The arm-extended Destreza stance is difficult because of what happens in the second and third ranges. In those ranges, your opponent can and is required to act on your sword. In an Italian stance or a German stance, you still might be denying blade contact at those ranges. But especially in the case of an Italian versus a Diestro, the third range presents problems. There, you are basically giving your weak to your opponent.

Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You can play disengage-games with them, you can keep your tip around their hilt to confound their ability to take your blade, and all kinds of good stuff like that. But in this case, you are generally reacting to them gaining an advantageous position. I could see an argument that circling helps to overcome this, but I am not prepared to address that argument at this time.

What I tend to hope for is to bait my opponent into gaining my blade, and then perform a disengage or top-quillon parry as I transition into the fourth range. That allows me to go from a slight disadvantage into a large advantage, into stabbing the other guy.

However, there are a lot of things that my opponent can do to take away my advantage, if they initiate that transition into the fourth range. If they use their off-hand, they can just take away your sword, in a similar way to how placing your quillons on their sword would take their sword away. That is bad.

I could try to bring my off-hand into the mix, but if my sword is already extended, I don't gain much by doing that. In theory, I should already be taking away their sword with my hilt, because safety matters more than stabbing the other guy.

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So to sum up - I feel like, for my game, having my arm extended is a disadvantage in the second and third ranges, but an advantage in the fourth range.

Forward arm extension becomes a risky proposition in the fifth range because a fully-extended arm can lead to a double-kill if you don't absolutely own your opponent's tip. And even if you do, it's not unlikely that an extension will lead to your opponent being able to take your tip with their hilt. This becomes a wrestling-game, and nobody likes that except the Germans.

In the sixth range a fully-extended arm means your tip is past your opponent, unless your arm is extended in a particular direction other than forward.

So, why not keep my arm un-extended when in the second and third range, then extend in the fourth?

 There are a couple of ways we could do this. We can point our swords away from our opponent and cut in, which is a tactic I have used for years. But that creates a large cut that my opponent can parry, and then we're playing disengage-games again, and that's no fun. There's a different way!

The plate on the left

Look at that beautiful, beautiful plate. That guard looks so awkward. But it is exactly what we need.

What I propose is to only have our arms extended when it would be advantageous to us. So, we walk forward in a standard approach. We keep our hand back in that Plate 15 guard as we enter through ranges one, two, and three.

As we step forward smoothly into the fourth range, we shoot our arm out, pointing directly at our opponent.

Once again, the plate on the right is the relevant one.

This blocks off the only place that they could put their tip which would be relevant to grabbing their tip with our quillons, which is the end-game we want here. Because safety is key. As a secondary concern, we make sure to keep our tip at liberty and deny blade contact with disengages.

We move forward into the fifth range, and rotate our arm from the shoulder, pushing their sword outwards.

Either plate is relevant here, depending on which direction we're pushing their sword.

If they are refusing blade contact, we push toward their tip anyway to give ourselves a bigger "shield" from our hilt and quillons. We keep our tip pointing toward them, because we want to eventually stab them. We also want to lean in a direction away from their blade, to void as a just-in-case measure and to make sure that we are even safer.

We continue walking forward, having ideally caught and neutralized their sword with our hilt and quillons, riding up their sword.

Coming up an opponent's sword to stab them. This assumes you pushed them down.

At this point they should be thoroughly stabbed, unless they aborted to sudden backwards movement. If that is the case, then extending your arm forward again might be a priority? But only if you're safe. A lunge might also be useful here, because you need to catch them at this point.

That's the whole of the game-plan. It's pretty great, and seems to work decently well.

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A metaphor might be useful here.

The image which has been in my head for this is that you walk forward.

When you get close enough that they could touch your hilt with their tip, you jam your hilt forward.

Then you walk forward, prying their guard open with your hilt.

When you get close enough, you ride their blade up toward their body with your hilt, until your tip stabs them.

So, you "pry them open", in a way.

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So this is actually somewhat similar to some of the more obscure Spanish things I've heard about. For example - that against Italians, a Diestro should keep bent at the wrist until in a good position. Knowing not-really-enough about the issue, it seems like this would deny blade contact in a similar way. Then, as you transition from the second and third range into the fourth range, you can extend your arm and do the things you need to do in order to pry them open and stab them.

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Capo Ferro advises something relevant, actually. He advises that you remain leaned backwards, until you are close enough, at which point you lean forward. To me, this transition in leaning allows you to move from the third range to the fourth range without moving your feet at all. As you perform this lean, you can extend your arm and put your quillons on their tip. This then lets you ride it in with a lunge and stab them in the left eye, as per Giganti.

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This post was inspired in part by reading this article, which compared various methods of "walking fencing". This got me thinking about how when I do Destreza, I use my hilt quite a bit and how Fabris must be similar, given that he sometimes gets called a practitioner of Destreza. Thinking back, I remembered Plate 15, and how many of his stabbing-the-other-dude plates show a strong lock with the hilt, and the arm pushed far away from one's own body.

(Images are from http://www.faegtekunstensvenner.net/SalvatoreFabris/Index.htm, Wiktenauer, or the obvious link)

Thursday Practice Report

First bit - some notes on practice. It was probably the best practice I have had in a long time, in terms of developing my game, so I need to note things down.

• Remembering to lean back until I am in measure and I have opposition and I lean forward, as per Capo Ferro, makes a HUGE difference.
• Placing my tip "under" someone's hilt is fantastic. It means that, by twitching, I can force them to commit one way or another and then cavazione to the other side. Note that "under" just means "on the other side of their hilt from their body", in order to force them to make the afore-mentioned choice.
• Envelopment is pretty great. I finally feel like I understand how to deal with opponents in a low-center guard.
• People are learning to deal with the hard up-parry with my dagger - that makes me happy.
• From Fabris 60, a yielding-around outside line shot accompanied by a dagger-parry to trap their sword is pretty cool.
• I need to work on point control - there were many times where I just straight-up missed my target, or I got the quillon-lock on their sword that I wanted but couldn't bring my point home due to my opponent's body voids.
• Sweet mercy I fought a lot. Ow, ow, ow.

After filling out links and grabbing appropriate images, I will post about the new thing I was doing. It's pretty cool, and I'm excited to share it.

More Practice Notes

Just so that I don't forget...

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

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

Practice Thing

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

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

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

Triangular Thrusts OR Opposition in Motion

INTRODUCTION

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

BEGIN EDIT AS OF 2017-01-05

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

END EDIT AS OF 2017-01-05

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

The way people usually learn is as follows:

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

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

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

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

1. Geometry
2. Timing
3. Opposition

Again, they are described in excruciating detail below.

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

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GEOMETRY
Lines are Important

Fencing is about lines.

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

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

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

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TIME
Movement and Tempo

Fencing is also about time.

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

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

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

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EXPLANATION, PART I:

Physical Limitations

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

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

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

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

But What If...!

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


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

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

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

This realization has been key to my progress.

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

Weirdness in Timing!

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

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

Further Weirdness in Timing!

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

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EXPLANATION, PART II:

Triangular Thrusts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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STRENGTH
Strength of the Blade

Fencing is about strength.

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

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

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

[DRAWING LABELLING WINNER / LOSER]

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

But Some People Are Really Strong!

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

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

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

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

Blades Don't Work Like That!

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

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

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

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EXPLANATION, PART III:

Pushing Through Their Blade

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

[DRAWING OF THRUSTING THROUGH SOMEONE'S TIP]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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EXPLANATION, PART IV:

This Is The Point Of This Post

Seriously, If You Read Nothing Else, Read This

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to use this method:

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

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

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CLOSING

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

*****

COMPLICATIONS

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THE INSIDE LINE
Fencing Line This Time, Not Geometric Line

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

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

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

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

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

Other ways to use or not use these principles include:

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

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

Good bye, good night, and good fencing!

Monday Practice

Practice yesterday was okay I guess? I felt good about my pickups against people, but I felt like I didn't fight super well in the tournament. I fought without my glasses on, since they tend to fog up quickly in my new mask. That isn't a workable long-term solution. Depending on lighting conditions, it is just a little bit harder to see and react to people's weapons. I need contact lenses, I need anti-fog glasses, or I need to rip out the padding from my new mask and do something with leather strapping to make it breathe.

If I'm going to fight in the tournament, I need to not half-ass it. I need to focus and bring intent to the tournament, or else I'll be unsatisfied with my fencing. I had several factors working against me in this regard - I am still figuring out my new mask, I am working with a new blade, I got a bruise on my most important knuckle before the tournament, and I spent some time teaching beforehand. Teaching always makes me kind of derpy for the next set of passes, and this time those passes happened to be the weekly practice tournament.

Just to be very clear - everybody else was fighting super-well. I just felt like I was not fighting well, despite not actually doing terribly in the tournament thing.

Looking at it in that way, I guess I'm not surprised that I was unhappy with how I fought in the practice tournament. I think I needed to not do the tournament this week, and instead find someone to get pickups with. I also did something unfortunate to my ankle during the practice tournament, but fortunately I am seeing the foot-and-ankle doctor tomorrow about a long-term issue.

*****

In order to help me stop feeling unhappy about practice, I am going to force myself to do a Plus-Minus-Plus exercise. This is an exercise in which I state one thing I did well, one area for improvement, and then another thing I did well. The positivity sandwich is super important - having something positive at the beginning means that I'm not going to just rant and rail about what I was unsatisfied about. Having something positive at the end leaves me with an at-least-slightly good feeling. Also, narrowing it down to just three important things reduces scope to the point that I can do actual meaningful work.

So, without further ado...

• Thing I Did Well
• I felt pretty good about my usage of the new blade. There were some hand-shots and opposition shots, especially during my pickups, that were really good. I couldn't have pulled them off with my case blade.
• Area for Improvement
• I didn't recognize that my headspace was off for the tournament. I offered to teach a thing, and then I didn't do anything to get rid of the bunch of little things that were in the back of my head bothering me.
• More succinctly: I need to better recognize when I'm going on tilt, so I can take a step back to re-approach the tournament and change the things which are frustrating me.
• Other Thing I Did Well
• I feel like my three primary stances really clicked yesterday. Like, I didn't always win with them, but I felt super comfortable moving from one stance to another. 
• Even so, I need to keep in mind that I shouldn't get complacent - those stances are probably up for another review pretty soon.
• After-the-fact edit to remind myself of a thing:
• I also finally got a technique to work semi-consistently which has been theoretical for a while.
• In my heretical wrist-bent Giganti inside guard, apply opposition. Then, in the tempo of an action, circle your tip around their guard while rolling from fourth to first, raising your hand and moving it slightly right while extending. Lean forward and to the left, such that your body is protected by your hilt. After your hilt is in place, finish the disengage around their wrist/forearm. The target is as close on their chest to their right arm as possible.
• At one point I did this and then just straight-up didn't recover because I haven't thought about how to recover after it is parried, so I just sat there going *click*.

All right everybody. That's it for me today. Keep fencing, keep drilling, and something else.

Interim Post

I'm currently working on a semi-exhaustive categorization of techniques and strategies, and the techniques and strategies which are effective against them. I intend it to serve as a personal reference chart - "Oh man, that person is using super long range sniping shots. How do I deal with them? Well, chart says I should use counter-guards and zone-blocking, so let's try that." It is proving more of an ordeal than originally anticipated, so new posts are happening until I either shelve that other post, or I finish it.

*****

Yule was a good event. Lots of hanging out, lots of swording. Court was long, but that was fine. Lots of hanging out and talking with good people, although I wish I had started to get ready for court earlier.

In the early-ish, I helped to marshal the Bergental Baronial Rapier Championship. I was pretty impressed with the depth of competition there!

Then there was a bear pit tournament. It was good. After a rocky start, I got into a good groove. I got third place, which is pretty good. It felt good to just be able to do some Bear Pit and get into a groove.

I tried to integrate a bunch of new things and old things into my tournament game, but none of it seemed to be working super well. As such, I ended up relying on Distance and Timing Games to win fights. I would fight some holding my sword normally, then switch back to holding my pommel and tap my opponent at the absolute edge of my measure. It's amazing what gaining five inches suddenly can do to other people.

My hand decided that it really wanted to hold my sword in a Thibault-ish grip. It actually worked really well for the fights where I chose to do it. The particular variant of the grip that I was using meant that I had a very long grip on my sword, which let me use leverage from my wrist far more effectively than usual. People would find my blade pretty well, but then I would be able to push through them anyway. It was pretty great.

I then fought a bunch of good pickups. Yaaaaay.

*****

Basically all of my gear has started falling apart at once. My mask has been in questionable condition for a while, my gorget has had to be re-riveted, and my blade broke. For questionable reasons, I've chosen to replace my mask and my blade, rather than my gorget first.

New blade arrived from Darkwood! Yay! Due to some combination of "my blade broke sooner than it should have", "I have bought many things from Darkwood", and "they would like to look at my blade to see what happened with it", they were kindly willing to discount a new blade for me. I wanted to be able to fight my preferred melee form, so I took them up on the offer. I would say that this means you should buy things from them, but if you fight rapier in the SCA you probably have already given them  quite a bit of cash.

Compared to my current blade, it is about 1/4" longer both in the tang and in the blade length. I have cut down the threaded portion such that it fits my rigs - it was originally about 1/4" too long to fit. It is also a bit of a noodle, which I am fine with and was indeed the same as the sword I used before it broke.

It is 14.5 ounces, which is one ounce lighter than my current blade at 15.5 oz, and 0.5 ounces lighter than my old 45" blade. For reference, it is much much lighter than my ~21 oz longsword blade. It also doesn't really *feel* lighter in the tip, which means that most of the reduced weight is probably in the forte. That is fine with me.

When flex-testing, the new blade bends about 3", whereas my current blade bends just shy of 2". For reference, my longsword blade bends somewhere between 1" and 1.5".

From a purely subjective assessment, this blade is pure joy. It feels exactly like my old blade did, and I had thought I would never get my old blade back. It has all the same quirks I expect, and I am so happy about that. My case blade can return to being my case blade, and I can go back to using my whippy fishing-blade.

*****

I hadn't realized how much of what I do is made better by having a whippier blade. I do a lot of disengages which reverse direction toward the flat of my blade. This loads up some bend in the blade, which I then discharge by extending my blade and cutting into my opponent's blade. Lots of my cutting and angled opposition is made better by having a blade that can bend with the opposition, when using the flat.

More to the point - my favorite thing, the hilt-first disengage, is made better by having a bendy blade. The sudden movement creates some force on the tip, which bends the blade downwards and allows me to do subtle disengages around people's hilts. Perhaps this is part of why I have been almost entirely unsuccessful in teaching this technique to other people.