Relating Italian Tempo and Spanish Distance

This post has been sitting in my "Drafts" queue at ~90% completion for a few months. I was inspired to complete it after a post that Doroga made. I have been a bit hesitant to post it, because anything that references Real Numbers is fodder to be disproven by other people. So, take all of this with a grain of salt, and if your numbers end up different from mine, just relax.

*****

Today, we have a post about tempo, inspired in part by my conversations with Doroga in which we talked about how the Spanish don't really use an idea of tempo, as the Italians do. The Spanish tend to worry more about distance and the appropriate place to do things. Tempo and distance are both important, and both the Spanish and the Italians neglect each other's favorite concepts.

Assuming two identical opponents, it is perfectly acceptable to understand one but not the other. But in modern SCA rapier, we have wide variations in blade type, blade length, and size of humans. I would guess that variation in matchups is much more likely to happen in modern SCA rapier than it would historically, and even in other HEMA-related disciplines. It is to this end that I wish to bring the Italian concept of "tempo" and the Spanish concept of "distance" down to earth.

*****

On tempo, Capoferro has the following to say on part 50 of his text, in chapter 5 (Leoni's translation):

The narrowest measure requires instead an extra-quick tempo, since even the smallest motion I make with my sword and the shortest stillness of my opponent would be enough for me to reach my design while in this measure; this extra-short tempo is therefore called a half-tempo. The tempo required to strike from the less narrow measure that we would call narrow measure of firm foot is a whole tempo; lastly, the tempo required to strike from the wide measure (which requires [a lunge]) is a whole tempo and a half.

Both before and after this passage, Capoferro speaks as most Italians do about how tempo is the measure of stillness and motion, and how my opponent's stillness corresponds to my motion, and vice versa. All of the Italian masters I have read, when they talk about tempo, speak in those terms. Essentially, it sounds like you and your opponent are taking turns. Why would this be?

Capoferro Plate 11, From Wiktenauer

Humans have a limited reaction speed. ~180ms, or ~1/5 of a second. If you want to perform an action, and be sure it has succeeded, you have to do the thing, then wait for your perceptions to catch up to your movements. This is the way you must act, in order to successfully act, perceive what your opponent has done, and then respond to their action.

This makes sense for the Italians. All of their plates talk about performing an action, and then responding to your opponent's action.

Armed with this knowledge, I took to my swording-dummy and attempted to use Capoferro's definitions of tempo. I have found, from personal experience, that I can lash out my arm to strike an uncovered hand or forearm in about 1/10 of a second. Similarly, a thrust with a lean takes about 1/5 of a second, and a full lunge requires about 3/10 of a second.

This also explains why, against a trained and ready fencer, a full lunge from maximum measure is useless - they can begin their parry after 1/5 of a second, which is enough time for them to disrupt a lunging thrust.

*****

As for distance, the Spanish have a circle. It's supposedly magical and occult and all of that fun stuff. The particular circle I favor is Viedma's.

From the translation of Díaz de Viedma, Luis. Método de Enseñanza de Maestros [Method of Teaching of Masters]. 1639

Available here.

Viedma provides explicit measurement of the circle, but neglects to tell us exactly how long our sword should be for it. I tend to be more of the Thibault school of things, in which I think all things should be relative. So, Viedma provides us with two measurements - that the circle should be 24 feet around (or ~7.6 feet across, using geometry) and that from point C, you should be able to just stab them with your tip. (For reference, see the Blow of Perfect Attack to the Face, page 22r.) As such, we can calculate that from point C to your opponent should be ~64 to ~67 inches. This means that Viedma is assuming that your sword plus the distance from your spine to your arm will be about that. With my 37" rapier, I hit 68 inches, so that's a bit more than intended by him.

He additionally gives the distance of  a circular step from A to B as 3 feet. Geometry says it's more like 2.9 feet in a straight line, but close enough. That's about how far my foot goes in standard lunge without trying to force it to go farther. This means it probably takes about 1.5 tempi to go that far from neutral, and then another 1.5 tempi to recover after the long step.

*****

As an aside, I tend to prefer the Thibault philosophy of calculating according to the proportions of the fencer. If I wanted to change the size of the circle, I would take the measurement from spine to tip as the measurement. Then, I would see if the fencer in question could take the appropriate -length step from A to B in the 1.5 tempi of the lunge, possibly widening my stance so that I can cover more ground. If so, great! If not, maybe it's time to use a shorter sword for doing Viedma's thing.

As an aside - using the above method to calculate blade length *does* come up with a correct length, according to Thibault's techniques and ways of moving, which differ subtly from Viedma. For more on historical blade length, see my friend Doroga's post on the subject, and my previous post about daggers.

*****

So, with that vast bushel of assumptions, we do a number of things. We can see that in the process of stepping, you should be able to perform ~3 single-tempo "actions" with your sword as you move around the circle, from point to point. A step you don't complete contains 1.5 single-tempo "actions", all of which can be defined in terms of Italian "taking the blade", "disengage", "thrust", and so on.

Similarly, one could take different types of steps according to tempo. An Italian non-lunge step takes about one tempo out, and one tempo to recover. Fabris and Capoferro both reference taking even smaller steps as well, though Fabris thinks that this is a poor choice. But, considering that type of stepping, we can decide what we wish to do with our blades, and then calculate what we can commit to with our feet at the same time.

If I were more motivated, one could develop this into a board game, in which people decide what they are doing, then reveal what they did with their previous action, then decide what they are doing with their next action. This would represent the sliding window of reaction-time, in which you are never reacting to exactly what your opponent is doing at this exact moment - you're only reacting to what they did one tempo ago.

If I were even more motivated, I would develop this into a computer game, in which a computer maps out the best option from each location as defined by these equivalencies and the available actions.

*****

This is, obviously, not the whole story. You can physically move your hand more with a lighter weapon, which means you can perform more blade actions. As well, the body mechanics of different humans will change things - smaller humans can get smaller angles, whereas bigger humans can reach longer angles. But this is the way of the Lupold - over-analyze data from a historical source, and then see if the over-analysis yields any useful conclusions.

Thus far, these equivalencies seem to hold up acceptably. I've been working Fabris, so they are not fresh in my mind, but I might return to them for a bit, to see how things go. There is a post on blade actions mid-step, which would include a brief section on Fabris's forward-movement and sideways-movement with intent. Perhaps I will even write it one day.

Additionally, "tempo" is a term which is not used for a consistent measurement in period sources. Fabris refers to "long tempo" and "short tempo", and I believe the Spanish talk about tempo as not a discrete thing, but as a progressive thing.

*****

As a summary of this post, with some additional bits that seem correct filled in for good measure:

• A lunge or lunging step is equivalent to 1.5 tempi.
• Recovering from a lunge, forward or backwards, is about equivalent to 1.5 tempi.
• A regular step is equivalent to 1 tempo, and covers half of the space of a lunge
• Similarly, recovering to neutral occupies an additional tempo.
• A tiny step can be taken, occupying .5 tempo in movement and .5 tempo in recovery.
• Longer steps are possible, trading further commitment for further distance, to a point.
• A "blade action" tends to take 1 tempo.
• It takes 1 tempo to react, which means you are always reacting to what your opponent did 1 tempo ago.
• This means that any fully offensive action that takes more than 1 tempo can be defended against.
• Unless you do a tricky thing, like attack when your opponent is distracted or perform a disengage.

*****

Have a good day, and fence well.

Central Region Practice Thing

Yaaay practice!

Assorted notes:

• Fighting against refused-sword shield-fighters is hard. Fabris says to attempt sword opposition on their sword if their sword is refused, but this is hard. I didn't really use my rock-paper-scissors stance dance thingy, so bad on me.
• Stance Dance was working great today. Especially my dagger-forward-sword-back-body-low stance. That was great.
• I forget that melee is fun, sometimes. And it sure is fun. Somehow, in the time I haven't been doing melee, either my self-estimation has gone down or I have gotten better at it. Because I was more effective than I expected to be.
• I think that the stance-dance might not work super well against a short blade? It's weird.
• Maybe I need to figure out how to use my stances without direct blade engagement and only with virtual engagement.
• I should try in-fighting more! "The person who is willing to go lower, wins at in-fighting." An interesting insight.
• I need to work on my single-sword game. Perhaps also with my off-hand game. I don't like using my off-hand, on principle, but it's part of the game.

Pre-Practice Burble

This post is intended as a semi-physical reminder of what I plan to work on today.

Over the past week, I have been drilling disengages which keep my tip pointed in the presence of my opponent. I think that they are a valuable tool, which requires some consideration about when to and when not to use them. At the moment, my flowchart is as follows:

• Place my hilt on the line segment connecting the part of my presence closest to their hilt, to their hilt.
• Lean away from their blade, to hide behind my blade.
• If they disengage, step to place my body on the opposite side of my blade, while not really moving it.
• If they move to find my blade with theirs without moving their hilt, perform a diesngage and lean, possibly not really moving my hilt.
• If they move to find my blade with theirs and move their hilt, step forward dropping my body and raising my hilt. The transition is from seconda to prima, or from terza-quarta to quarta. This should either stab them above or below their hilt, depending on how high their hilt is.
• Pass through at this point, because if I don't stab them then we will end up wrestling.
• There's the possibility that a large disengage will be necessary first, so the transitions would be switched in that case.
• If they move to find my blade while moving their hilt forward, yield around their blade and step away from their blade, essentially letting their tip pass between my sword and myself, trusting momentum (and my dagger) to keep them from touching me.
• In general, circle around to the opening that they give me.

I also re-read a part of Fabris giving advice to taller and shorter people - basically, he says short people should gain their opponent's blade, then take a passing step and pass through, in order to deny them the advantage of their reach.

Additionally, he says that someone with more reach should fire center-line shots without worrying about parrying, while using distance to defend oneself. It's nice to have an after-the-fact justification for things I do.

Practice?

Practice last night was sedate, but good.

I managed to retain my extended arm much more. Additionally, I started using a different guard on the inside line that seems to work well.

I used the list from my previous post as a guide both as advantages to maintain, and as advantages to deny my opponent. I've noticed that sometimes it is possible to perform a disengage without my tip leaving the presence of my opponent, and I'm trying to do that more.

I also performed a pretty sweet bit of opposition where I pushed against my opponent's blade, and then as they went in I let my sword go weak, stepped to the side, and yielded around. If my point control had been better, it totally would have been awesome. As it stands, it was just okay.

Takeaways:

• Keep on keeping on with Defensive Advantages.
• Work on disengages that keep in-presence.
• Find options for when such a disengage isn't an option?

That's all I've got for the moment. At some point I should talk more about my own personal experiences heart rate, anxiety, and competition, but that day is not today.

Advantages for Defense

I've been thinking about why things do and do not feel safe, and why sometimes I'll say something like the following:

"I should be dead."

And then, someone will respond with:

"Yes."

Or perhaps even:

"No, not really." 

Which is the interesting bit.

Assuming that my opponents aren't completely off-base, I think that this means I am not taking everything into account. This idea, combined with Edward's Four Advantages for Melee, led me to think about what advantages can be established in fencing.

*****

Let's be clear about what I mean about "advantage". An advantage is a relationship between the positioning of the two fencers, whereby it is easier for one to stab the other. I will likely ruminate on each of these advantages further, after writing them down and trying to invoke them tonight. I have performed this exercise before, and will likely go back and look at what I wrote previously to see how it compares to this list.

My guesstimate is that it takes about two advantages more than your opponent has in order to get a clean kill. These advantages are all defensive - the basic idea being that if you have two (Maybe two? Unsure. That's so specific. But I guess I'll run with it.) more defenses than your opponent has, you can defend yourself better than they can, and it is time to stab.

The advantages I can think of are:

• Long Distance
• You have longer reach than I do by 6" or more, thus I am in your "zone of threat" but you are not in mine. This requires more than 6" of range difference to really work.
• "Out of Presence"
• This means that my tip is not pointed directly at any part of your body. The Spanish care about this quite a bit, in terms of the Left Defensive Plane and Right Defensive Plane. Fabris believes that you should duck, so they go out of your presence above your head.
• "Inside their Blade"
• This means that you are between their blade and the arc by which their arm would return to the centered, farthest-out-extended position.
• "Doubly inside their blade"
• This means that not only are you inside of their blade, but you also are inside of the arc created by rotating their arm along the plane of their arm. This is the arc created by rotating in a circle at the elbow, rather than the extend/retract from the elbow used to thrust.
• Generally this is only possible from the outside line.
• Tempo
• Your opponent is performing an action with their blade which they will not be able to stop before you trade this advantage for another one. Or stab them.
• Obedience
• This is the same as tempo, but you are provoking the action.
• Ripping
• You have cut into the false edge of their blade from inside of their blade such that you are at a 90º angle with it, then you return online and stab them. This is similar to obedience, except that it is a very particular instance of it.
• Short Distance
• You have at least 6" less of reach than I do, and you are inside my tip such that I am in your "zone of threat" but you are not in mine.
• Free implement
• You have an implement free to act, such as a dagger to parry on reaction. Implements tend to have an area that they can parry and an area that they can't parry.

Additional things which are not advantages include:

• Having opposition on their blade
• This lets you apply strength to create advantages, but is not an advantage in and of itself.
• Having blade contact
• Again, this lets you push them out of your presence or rip their blade, but is not an advantage.
• Having an Extended Arm As Per the Spanish
• Again, it isn't an advantage until you use the strength of the extension to push their blade out of your presence.

So, that sure is a list. I will be interested to see how using these things plays out.

Edit: "Zone of threat" is the idea that, in order to stab someone, their body needs to occupy a space that is neither too far away nor too close. I don't want to go into specifics here, because there are exciting exceptions.

Recent Fencing

I've been unhappy with my fencing recently. This almost certainly is because of two things.

1. I became Carolingian Baronial Marshal and we've had new people every three weeks or so, which has caused stress at my "working-on-stuff practice"
2. I became Pennsic Champs Coordinator, and have not been delegating except when truly necessary, because I want to see this whole process through for my first year.

As such, I need to do one of the following.

1. Accept that my (lowercase p) peers will pass me up.
2. Do more work on my fencing than I am used to.

Since I do hate the idea of other people passing me up, that leads to this post, which will be work. This work will take the form of posts focused on how the things that I did worked or did not work, rather than a retrospective of "oh hey, I fought these people, here's how that went".

*****

I have had several things which haven't been working as I want them to.

• I've been successfully adopting 45º angles against people, but they haven't been working out in my favor. Either they void and I lose my line against them, or they manage to place my weak on their strong.
• This has been exacerbated by people hanging out at long range, then waiting for me to act. My game is much stronger when I act first, but knowing that I will act first allows my opponent to dictate the distance by ceding the tempo.
• It almost feels like they are going for a tighter angle than I am. Perhaps I'm just not using good, well-defended angulation?
• My dagger-forward stances haven't felt good. 
• Maybe I need to widen the target angle to 90º?
• Maybe I should give in and get a sail guard.
• I haven't been extending my hilt toward their hilt when gaining the 45º angle.
• Last time I felt good about my fighting, I was doing this.
• This does mean I have fewer angles that feel well-defended.
• But I think that the ones that just feel well-defended without this principle are just bad.

So, the answer is to drill specific things which work on that. I think my focus will be on the last point, with a minor focus on the second point.

Also drilling at home.

So much drilling at home.

Practice Report

Quick practice report, go!

*****

First off, I fought a guest from Ansteorra. He's super good, and I'm also relatively sure he was fighting down to me, which is not unexpected but is frustrating. He managed to hit me with the same shot twice in a row after I had attempted to prepare for it, which made me sad. I settled down in measure, which I need to not do. He complimented my voids afterwards, which was nice.

***

Then I fought against the Doctor. He is learning to deal with my newest strategy, and I think we've arrived at the point in our respective meta-games that I need to just start trusting my fight and go from there, instead of Just Doing A Specific Thing Because Nothing Else Works. Basically, refusing cuts with my sword makes it so that his best move is to apply opposition to my blade. This brings things back to a game which I know how to play. This pleases me. I was not able to capitalize on it though, because my brain was stuck in that one strategy.

***

After that, I fought our local premier of the Masters of Defense. He didn't seem to be fighting it super-seriously, even though I was. He's learned exactly what situations lead to me controlling his sword in my middle-guard, which allows him to step backwards. I either need to move forwards more quickly as advised by Fabris, or I need to do something more deceitful. The only thing which worked at all was a deep thrust in 4 to his lower-right line on the inside of his sword. Which of course lands hard, because it's a deep and fast thrust to the gut.

I need something new here. Either to be more careful, or to have better guards, or something. Maybe practicing better stringere without blade contact? Who knows. This particular fighter uses complete counter-guards to great effect, more than anyone else who I fight. So instead of just letting me adopt a guard to counter his guard, he will switch guards. Then we play footsies for a while, and I lose patience, come in, and either I die or we double-kill.

I did some interesting blade-opposition and barring-out things here, but couldn't capitalize on them because we were too close. There were many times that I actually felt like a shorter blade would have been to my great advantage.

***

I then fought a fighter who pushes me hard and gives me trouble. He has lowered his sword's tip in his default guard, which means I can't get my good 45º angle on his sword with my dagger very easily. I managed to compensate for that by contorting my body very low, popping my hand outwards, and bending my wrist a little bit, to complete the 45º angle. This worked fantastically for me. I need to do more guards in which I contort my body low and have my dagger out forward.

I also fought him in an imitation of a particular class of fighter, with my blade refused and using my dagger for cross-parries. We pretended that I had a sail guard for this exercise. It was a frustrating exercise for all involved. My shirt ended up getting torn to all hell because of the shots I threw from a low outside line, and his counter of hitting my arm. I need to do this last thing more, because we do not have many of this class of fighter here, and they are hard to deal with. Also I think I need to have someone do this for me, if possible.

*****

After that, my shirt was torn up and had lost a button, and it was late, so I didn't get a chance to fight anybody else who I wanted to fight. Oh well!