Obstacles to Teaching in SCA Rapier

Teaching sucks.

From elementary school through high school, most people are taught to be receptacles for wisdom from on high. This is an effective approach for mathematical and scientific concepts. In the maths and the sciences, there are Correct and Incorrect answers. Such luxuries, these things are.

I sat on this post for a while after writing it, because I am not a super-experienced teacher and in this post I disagree with many things that we do in the Society. However, it is only through being wrong over and over again that I will eventually come to correct beliefs. So fuck it, let's proceed with this post.

*****

Our Art is a difficult one. There are multiple, incompatible influences competing for attention. For a beginner, it is Far Too Much to process. There is no "one way" to fence, and this makes life extremely difficult. No wonder the Black Tigers have found so much success in our Art - they provide a direct path to improve, and then provide an empirical-ish path for advancement beyond amateur level.

For the rest of us, there is not really a direct path for advancement. There are, however, several recurring shapes of education. I recount them here, from "best" to "worst".

• Direct Dependent
• This is what happens when a teacher takes a cadet. They gain a single source of truth, which is super useful. This can be anti-useful when a teacher's experiences significantly differ from the student's in subtle ways, such as having and being unaware of differences in physical limitations.
• Study Group
• A group of people, with no real hierarchy to themselves, gather and talk swords. Sometimes there are people who are more experienced or louder, and minor hierarchy forms, but in general everybody learns from each other at least to some degree. This is only useful in smaller groups, so everybody can work with each other and learn from each other. This breaks down if someone is both loud and disagrees with most other people in the group.
• Class
• One teacher, many students. Generally, the teacher and students both assume that the teacher is saying things which are capital-t True. If this assumption breaks down, the class bogs down in "but what if..." discussions. The education must be structured in a way that makes sense. Inevitably, this means that some things will be left out, or at least left until the future. This has many of the same problems as Direct Dependent relationships, except on a larger scale.
• Self-Directed Learning
• This is the default learning strategy, and happens to be my favorite. In order to gain anything at all from it, the individual must have a strong sense of meta-knowledge. That is to say, they must have strategies to determine if the things they learn are actually true. Every theory must be obsessively tested. This strategy has the greatest likelihood of leading into folly and incorrectness.
• Drive-By Teaching
• This is what happens after someone asks, "did you notice anything in that set of passes?", and then their opponent answers that they did. This is the lowest form of teaching, with the worst signal-to-noise ratio. It is also the most common form of teaching for new fencers, in our organization.

All of these methods of teaching have advantages and disadvantages. In particular, only study groups and self-directed learning encourage people to establish meta-knowledge. At the same time, classes, study groups, and direct dependent relationships allow a consistent thread of teaching. This is super useful. 

Using the Black Tigers as an example again, they do a number of effective things to imbue people with knowledge quickly.

1. They set people up with a mentor, who will watch video of the student and give advice. (Direct Dependent)
2. At larger events, they meet up and work together. (Study Group)
3. The bigger-name Tigers teach at larger events. (Classes)
4. They have a ranking system, which rewards better tournament-performance. (A specific meta-knowledge strategy.)
5. They apparently have manuals for teaching about how to fight. (Theoretical basis for techniques, individual techniques)

I disagree with many parts of how the Tigers, as a loose organization, do things. But they are way, way better than the currently-existing nothing, for going from a novice to an effective fencer.

Part of the reason I've been thinking about them has been another, looser collection of "fencing school" I've come into contact with recently. The way of fighting used by the Super Ansteorran Murder Brothers. This has many of the same elements of the Black Tigers, even down to having a similar, blade-low and dagger-forward stance. As far as I can tell, they don't really have a meta-knowledge strategy or any teaching materials other than word-of-mouth and video, but the rest is relatively similar.

It's interesting. It's a vast departure from where I originally intended this post to go, but it's interesting and bears keeping-in-mind for future analysis.

*****

The thing I wanted to write about, here, was why drive-by teaching is so terrible.

For learning, there are three kinds of knowledge.

1. Knowledge of what to do (techniques)
2. Knowledge of underlying theories (theories)
3. Knowledge of how to discern if the above things are correct (meta-knowledge)

Generally, the first and second types of knowledge can be learned from other people. But the third kind of knowledge is even more of a foundation than the first two types, and tends to be something that people don't even know to learn. It's not truly necessary to learn it in order to fence well, but if you don't have it then you can't perform your own research and generate your own knowledge of the first and second types.

As well, it makes it harder for you to confirm the correctness of your own learning.

Drive-by teaching tends to only teach knowledge of the first type, and perhaps the second type. Knowledge of the third type is hard to nurture, but it's what allows fencers to improve themselves. However, if all of the people giving drive-by teaching know it for the same style, then they can give consistent feedback between teachers, and it can become useful again.

So, it would behoove us to have a specific style that everybody knows and can give feedback about. Then, when a student gains a certain, hard-to-define degree of competence, teachers can state that they will now give their own personal advice, rather than what Capoferro would want for them to give.

*****

My takeaways from writing this are as follows:

• We need a consistent teaching program, so that multiple teachers can give congruent feedback.
• I, as a teacher, want to focus on teaching students how to learn, going forward.
• Some day, I want to found a fencing school within the SCA. It sounds like a fun idea.

Anyhow. Feel free to comment how I'm Wrong and Bad below. 

Practice Report with Preliminary New-New-New Destreza

Practice was good yesterday. I didn't have as much endurance as I usually have, for a couple of reasons. I think I messed up my knee somehow recently. Also, I didn't sleep on Wednesday, and work has entered a minor burnout loop. (There are deadlines, so I work longer, and then over-promise based on how much work I think I will get done, and then under-deliver, so work becomes more stressful, so it's harder to concentrate on work, so try to compensate by working longer...)

Anyhow.

Practice. Right.

Practice was good yesterday. I hadn't been to practice in a while, but my new perspective on Destreza is already paying dividends. The new way I've been doing Destreza has been to only allow one place for my opponents to disengage to, and to always immediately push my opponent's sword to the cone of parallax, as per the earlier posts on parallax.

Reposting this picture. Cone/planes of parallax are on the right, and it grows wider as you get closer.

In my new Destreza-ish paradigm, there are a few specific actions which need explaining before I can say anything else. Assuming this all continues working, I'll probably make a more detailed post about them in the future, but here's what I have been doing. These are all sword actions, not footwork actions.

• Spiral inwards
• This is when I perform a circling motion with my sword, leading with the tip. The point of the motion is to "pull" my opponent's sword toward a direction, making their weak naturally slide onto my strong by the way my blade is angled.
• Generally, you slide from a stronger part of their blade to a weaker part of their blade as you do this, to make sure you touch a weak enough part of their blade to move them.
• Spiral outwards
• This is when I perform a circling motion with my sword, leading with the hilt. This "expels" or "pushes" my opponent's sword outwards. This leads to their weak naturally sliding toward my weak.
• Generally, you slide from a stronger part of their blade to a weaker part of their blade as you do this, to make sure you touch a weak enough part of their blade to move them.
• Push
• This is when I use my fully-extended-straight arm to push on their weak with the middle of my blade. Sometimes I angle in behind their sword a bit, in order to make my opposition stronger. As Fabris says, blade-angle is what matters most in opposition.
• Angled weak over/under strong ("Weak atajo")
• This is when I extend my arm along the plane of parallax, with my hand angled such that my blade points inwards toward their body. The implied point of contact with my blade is very close to the hilt here, so that the point of contact is along the plane of parallax.
• Line in Cross / Narrowing ("Strong atajo")
• This is when I perform a firm, wide parry. My arm should be extended along the plane of parallax, as should my blade. My blade should be angled such that I have as much width in the plane of parallax as possible.

So, given those building blocks, I did a couple of different things.

A spiral inwards transitioning to a spiral outwards with a strong atajo as we moved to the plane of parallax worked pretty well. It seems like that particular set of movements is super hard to escape with bladework, because of how strongly it limits where your opponent can move. It was hard to transition into an attack, but I think that's just something I need to drill with a partner. I probably just need to abandon the atajo earlier and go for a stab. I don't like how dependent on my off-hand I am for attacking from this position, though.

A push transitioning into a strong atajo on the opposite plane ended up being basically the same as the previous paragraph. Both of these actions were harder to attack when my atajo ended up on the left side, rather than when they were on the right side. I tried throwing cuts from those positions, too, but I don't think that the geometry is appropriate for being able to throw a quick cut. I also think that this action might be equivalent to the previous action, but for the moment they are separate in my brain.

Going directly into a strong atajo and then transitioning into the corresponding weak atajo on the opposite plane worked super well, and didn't have the problems with attacking that the previous two actions had. It was harder to get the positioning correct to safely go directly into the strong atajo, though. As well, I can't just attach this onto the above two actions because my body kept ending up too close to their body to transition into a weak atajo, when I did this.

All of the things worked okay, aside from the problems with attacking mentioned above. All of these problems would have been solved with a dagger, but I didn't have a dagger. Oh well.

*****

After that, I fought some with my traditional ideal setup of 45-inch sword and dagger. The work I've been doing with my 37-inch sword is really starting to show in my 45-inch game. My opposition is far, far better than it was before. I also have a more specific definition of find-gain-attack, which helped for performing safe thrusts. 

Basically, the "find" is a push to the inner cone of parallax while gaining the appropriate amount of penetration, and "gain" is a movement to have as much width as possible while continuing to push their sword to the outer cone of parallax. Then the thrust is a thrust, taking advantage of the time and distance covered during the previous two steps to trade width for stabbings.

As an aside - I have had a problem with the non-specificity of "find" and "gain" for a long time. This new definition is pretty spiffy, and seems accurate according to all of the definitions of "find" and "gain" that I've seen.

By the end of the night, my knee was hurting a bit, so I tried doing a more upright Italian stance. That wasn't the best idea in the world - I ended the night with a knot in my glutes, which was a weird feeling.

*****

So, in closing, this is the stuff I need to work on:

• Work on safely abandoning my strong atajos earlier to attack.
• Wear my right knee brace when fencing.
• Start thinking about why my point control isn't as good as it could be.
• Teaching, which will have blog post soon.

Have a good day!

Hundredth Published Post

Oh hey cool. This is the hundredth published post on the modern incarnation of my blog. I've been sword-blogging, off and on again, for nearly three years. My three-year blogiversary will be the 24th of February.

YAY!

Photograph copyright 2016 by Meredith Bailin Hull, who is awesome.

This is a photo from my OGR ceremony at Pennsic. One of the most joyful moments of my life, if I'm being perfectly honest.

I thought I'd take some time here and now to talk about a retrospective of my blog, because it is a useful exercise to look back at What Has Gone Before. And while meta is murder, one or two posts out of a hundred in service of The Art isn't that bad.

This blog started on a whim. I decided that I was frustrated that I didn't understand how to fence Destreza, so I wrote a flippant post on a tumblr I made in order to antagonize people who fence Destreza into defending their Art and addressing my concerns. It didn't really work, but it meant that I created a tumblr.

A year later, I started writing in it more, because I had many fencing thoughts and generally people didn't want to discuss fencing with me as much as I wanted to discuss random fencing theory. This became doubly true as I gradually realized that the work I truly enjoyed was entirely ignoring the established work of modern HEMA interpretations, in favor of creating my own. The joy in the work became the feedback loop of making a theory, testing it, and either refining it or scrapping it based on my results.

Indeed, I have created interpretations which "fly in the face of reason". This is part of the fun of the self-directed learning that our largely unstructured environment allows. Additionally, this self-directed interpretation makes life that much more exciting when I run across an instance of parallel construction of techniques in a historical manual, or in the teachings of another person.

There are downsides to my approach. There's a lot of back-tracking and deleting things which are just bad from my game. But I think it's worth it.

*****

Anyhow, for my 100th post, I wanted to grab a representative set of posts so that I could link them to people relatively quickly, and give people an overview of my blog. My blog currently only gets linked by my G+ account, and I'm thinking of linking it on Facebook, so having this as the first post people see would be useful.

• The Tumblr Days
• Bargain-Basement Destreza, part 1!
• Here it is. The post that started it all. In those days I had a far more flippant style. I had intended this blog to be overblown criticisms of various fencing styles, but that ended relatively swiftly. I eventually moved to Blogger because tumblr's comment system is the worst.
• The Tempest
• This is a bit of an interesting, non-standard post. Here, I detail one of the many things I did outside of my fencing in order to improve my fencing. At the time, I was feeling a lot of Tournament Anxiety. I chose to face a more intense form of public performance, so fencing in front of people would feel comparatively easy.
• Principles of Motion
• One of my first theory-posts. Here, I classify various mistakes that people make when fencing. I don't really use about the principles I outline here directly any more, but this post has historical importance to me. Also, the title is a nerdy reference to a role-playing game.

• Practice Reports
• Monday Practice
• This post contains an example of the all-important plus-minus-plus method for making oneself feel better about a terrible practice. I suggest you read it and make use of the plus-minus-plus method in your own fencing, and life in general. It sounds really dumb, and feels super awkward to do, but I swear it works.
• How to Fight Like a Lupold
• A bit of a weird practice report. This post outlines the full flowchart of how I used to fight, a few years ago. It uses terminology that rose fully-formed from my brain, to describe techniques which work well from a pragmatic viewpoint. There are a few fatal flaws with this style, but it's still a fun way to fight without having to think.

• Historical(-ish) Work
• Lupold's Simplified Bargain-Basement Destreza
• While I have come to believe that this is an incorrect interpretation of how to fight in a Spanish way, it's still a useful and interesting compendium of a complete style, detailed in the way I like to write. The reason I believe it is incorrect is because it doesn't work against the ideas raised in the below post, Penetration, Width, and Parallax.
• Fabris is Hard
• In the "Flying in the Face of Reason" category of things, I decided that guards are boring and skipped Fabris Book 1 after reading through it about 1/4 of the way. Onwards to Fabris Book 2! Here, I break down Fabris's Principles for Proceeding with Resolution into a set of simple mnemonics. This isn't detailed by any means,  but it's a useful reference-post.
• Fabris Principle 1
• This is an excruciatingly detailed breakdown of Fabris's Principle 1 for Proceeding with Resolution with Single Sword. It's intended to be used as a reference, so that you can take it in and drill portions of the Principle with a partner or practice dummy, eventually leading into drilling the entire thing based on your opponent's reactions.
• Quick Notes on Daggers
• I got salty about people on the internet saying that SCA daggers were too long, and wanted to compose a central repository of information stating that that, in the Spanish tradition, daggers are very long. If ever I started doing Sword Arts & Sciences, I'd probably use this post as a basis for whatever paper I wrote.

• Principles of Fencing
• Triangular Thrusts OR Opposition in Motion
• This post. I love this post above all other posts. Some day, I will actually finish filling in the illustrations that go with it. This post details how one can strictly win in a subset of relative guard positions. It is as close as possible to Truth that I have found in fencing.
• Touch, Small Angle, Large Angle, Renegotiate
• This is a decent post. It is very succinct, and describes a way of thinking about defense and attack in a very general, readable sense. I'm also pretty sure I was polled on the OGR list around when this post happened, because traffic to my blog briefly increased around this time.
• Penetration, Width, and Parallax
• My current baby. Here, I break down the three ways to overcome defenses, and the way to defend against each. I use bro-math to determine exactly how far one needs to parry in various circumstances. All of this is in service of attempting to learn how to use a shorter weapon, so I can better teach people how to beat people who outreach them.

And that's my blog. I feel good about the writing I've done on it. It is good work. It has improved my fencing. Some day I want to compose a book out of the contents of this blog, when I grow a bit more sure of myself and my fencing. I realize that nobody will read it, but having a book would make me feel good about myself.

Good job, Lupold. Good blog.

Fabris's Fourth Rule on Proceeding With Resolution in Single Sword

My 100th post is approaching, and I want to get it over with so I don't think too hard about "oh noes, what do I do for post 100?".

Because of this, I offer to you this article on Fabris's Fourth Rule on Proceeding With Resolution in Single Sword. I wrote it last June, then didn't post it for some reason. Once again, for my summary of Fabris's Rules on Proceeding With Resolution, see this post.

*****

Off-line steps are of particular interest to me recently, because I have been studying how to deal with more weapons when you have fewer weapons. Single, shorter rapier versus case of longer rapiers, for example. When you have fewer weapons than your opponent, there are precious few advantages to exploit against them - especially when you also have less reach than your opponent.

We can think of this fight in terms of shifting advantages. If we look at the initial approach into large measure (referring to my list of advantages for defense), this is the list of advantages that the shorter-single-bladed fighter can gain, before entering close measure:

• Obedience
• If your opponent has more range than you, there is a zone in which they are required to attack, in order to be able to attack before you get too close to thrust.
• "Out of Presence"
• This is why we're talking about Fabris's fourth rule - moving to the side forces your opponent to be out of your presence, if briefly.

There are several defensive advantages that they can only partially get, if their opponent is skilled. In particular:

• Tempo
• The longer-ranged opponent should wait until the correct opportunity to strike. Otherwise you are giving up a tempo.
• "Inside their Blade"
• A skilled case fighter should not be allowing you to gain opposition on both of their swords. One, perhaps, but not both.

The rest of the advantages, you by definition don't have, or you can only gain once you get close enough.

Conversely, your opponent has the following:

• Long distance
• Duh.
• Tempo
• They rely on you eventually committing your sword to a strong defense.
• Free implement
• If you only have one sword, they will have one sword free unless they allow you to get very good positioning.

In order to turn the tide, you need to neutralize as many of these advantages as possible, while maintaining your defensive advantages.

Neutralizing tempo is somewhat obvious but hard to execute effectively - don't commit your sword strongly to a defense. Adopt a counterguard, rather than pushing against their sword.

Forcing obedience is a bit trickier. This relies on your own sense of distance, and when your opponent can strike.

This leaves the final two contentious defenses - "Out of Presence" and Free Implement. Free Implement is outside of the scope of this post - it's hard to deal with someone's second sword, and relies on their specific stance.

*****

On first reading, I interpreted Fabris's fourth rule as follows:

• Keep your sword below your opponent's sword.
• Take an offline step, with a lean in the same direction.
• For example, step left and lean left.
• Check to see if your opponent followed your body with their tip.
• If they did
• Take their sword to the side opposite the direction of your step and step/lean in the direction opposite your original step.
• For example, take their sword to the inside and step to the right, while leaning to the right.
• This will place you in the same line as if you had stepped straight forward at the get-go.
• If they didn't
• Take their sword to the same side as the direction of your step, and step forward, maintaining your lean in the same original direction.
• For example, take their sword to the outside and step directly toward them, while maintaining your lean to the left.
• Stab them, having taken advantage of them being out of your presence.

That doesn't feel quite right though. There are about three tempi in there - one to take the first step, one to check on their direction, and one to take the second step. This gives your opponent far too much time to react.

If instead, we raise our tip during the offline step, this allows us to consider where they are during the step, rather than waiting to see afterwards.. This means we only have to burn two tempi, and makes for a much smoother action.

Frustrating Practice

Practice was frustrating yesterday.

I came into practice with such high hopes. I had developed a different way of doing Spanish, which worked okay, but not as well as I had hoped. This is part of why I like practice though - when I bring a new theory that I've drilled for a week or so, then I can test it against Real Life, and it will either succeed or fail.

The theory was based on last post. Essentially, I have been having trouble with Spanish because I was not considering parallax when fencing in a Spanish way. This meant that my opponents could step around my parries. So, I decided to consider parallax in a Spanish way.

A step back for a moment.

So, in Romagnan's Rada, as pictured below, there is the Left Defensive Plane (LDP) and the Right Defensive Plane (LDP). These form a slice of pie. According to Romagnan, you remain safe as long as you keep your opponent's weapon outside of the slice of pie formed by your left and right defensive planes.

For quite some time I tried to do this. However, when I attempted to attack, I still felt unsafe and as though I could easily be attacked, if I didn't out-range my opponent. So, I continued on, vaguely unsettled and feeling as though something was wrong.

[ROMAGNAN'S RADA ON THE LEFT, LUPOLD ON THE RIGHT.]

These are both a top-view of you on the bottom, and your opponent on the top.

And then, I had my thoughts about width, penetration, and parallax. In particular, parallax, because the problem I consistently had was people with more reach simply yielding around my weapon. So, I developed ideas about how to prevent this, which resulted in the thoughts from last post and the resulting spreadsheet.

So, I changed my understanding of the Left Defensive Plane and Right Defensive Plane, as pictured above on the right. The dotted line labeled "A" is the line connecting your shoulder to their shoulder. The angle labeled "B" is the Smallest Useful Angle of Parallax, listed on the "SmallestUseful" page on the spreadsheet. The angle labeled "C" is the Largest Useful Angle of Parallax, listed on the "LargestUseful" page of the spreadsheet.

Basically, as you get closer to your opponent, the Left Defensive Plane and Right Defensive Plane expand. So, that means that as you get closer to your opponent, your parry needs to be farther to the side. The appropriate angle begins at "B", and then ends at "C".

[TERRIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS OF TWO SMALLEST ANGLE PARRIES ON THE LEFT, AND ONE LARGEST ANGLE PARRY WITH ATTACK ON THE RIGHT]

These drawings are terrible, but I don't think I'd be able to do better if I redid them. I have a 26-inch arm.

So, on the left we have the smallest useful parry depicted. The Lupold with the white sword has a 45 inch sword, while the Lupold with the black sword has a 37 inch sword. Lupold37 is within Lupold45's measure, but because Lupold37's parry carries Lupold45's sword past the right defensive plane, outside of the angle of parallax, he is safe. The angle "B" is labeled, and according to the spreadsheet should be something like 20º.

The middle illustration has the same situation, but better. The angle is still B, but instead Lupold37's arm and weapon are along the plane. This means that Lupold45 must disengage completely around Lupold37's sword, rather than being able to simply move elsewhere and yield around it. In the left Illustration, Lupold45 could easily move his tip toward Lupold37's hand and perform a yielding thrust, getting around Lupold37's defenses and stabbing him. But in the illustration to the right, he must get around Lupold37's parry. It would be best if Lupold37 had some sort of angulation to his blade that would increase his blade's effective defensive width, but I didn't illustrate that, so tough luck.

In the middle illustration, the angle is still the smallest useful angle, which is about 20º.

The right illustration is an illustration of how Lupold37 could attack while maintaining the right defensive plane. In it, Lupold37 has closed and is performing a thrust. The angle has widened to C, which ends up being about 35º. So, Lupold37 has moved his body around his hand such that Lupold45 still cannot stab him, by exiting the angle which Lupold45 could theoretically yield around to. At the same time, Lupold37 is stabbing Lupold45, by being close enough to stab him.

Thinking about it, I believe that my calculations for the Largest Useful Parry are wrong, but they should over-estimate, rather than under-estimate.

But in any case, this is the new principle of Destreza that I'm using. And it didn't fail, exactly. It had two circumstances in which it didn't perform according to expectations.

• One short-blade fencer would persistently move forward, attempting to yield around my blade. So I would push downwards and outwards as he moved forward, and we'd end up in a scrum with our hands on each other's blades. This, while entertaining, was not clean.
• A fencer using a longer blade would place his hilt in a place that wouldn't let me perform a Weak Under Strong thrust against him. This meant that my only offensive possibility was Line in Cross, or to abandon the Low General, and made me sad. Because ideological purity is a Thing, and Viedma says you only need the Low General.

So, frustration. I think that I need to integrate the High General, and I need to figure out better ways to lead with Weak Under Strong.

Sigh. Good game, everyone.

Penetration, Width, and Parallax

In all fencing traditions, there exists the idea that you need to keep your opponent's blade away from your body. Giganti refers to keeping your opponent's blade "out of your presence". Rada talks about keeping your opponent's blade "outside of your defensive planes". They then talk about ways to push swords around, but nobody talks terribly much about how the things you do keep you from being stabbed.

In this post, I intend to exhaustively define three terms with regard to defensive bladework. These three terms are penetration, width, and parallax. These are working terms, largely because I can't think of better words for the concepts I want to express. These are three concepts which represent trade-offs you can make - you can trade each for the others.

These are really stupid, simple, and obvious concepts that I haven't seen explicitly enumerated elsewhere. If someone else has explained these, please point me to that resource, by all means. But having an explicit enumeration of these rules is useful, because it lets me draw conclusions.

*****

tl;dr Summary

• penetration - How deeply your blade penetrates toward your opponent.
• width - How much space your blade usefully occupies.
• parallax - How far over to one side or the other your blade is.

*****

Slightly Longer Summary

penetration - How close to your opponent your blade is. You gain more penetration as you approach closer to your opponent. In terms of stance, the most penetration you can have is when you are arm-extended, with your sword straight at your opponent, possibly with a forward-lean in there.

width - How much space your blade occupies with regard to the part of your body your opponent wants to stab. The most width that your sword can occupy is when you are holding it in your fist, pointed straight up or straight down. If pointed straight up, you can cover your stomach with your hilt, chest with the strong part of your blade, and face with the weak part of your blade.

parallax - How far out your blade is angled, with respect to your body and your opponent's shoulder. If you don't have very much parallax, your opponent will be able to yield around your parry very easily. In general, people with less reach need to use more parallax than people with more reach. Parallax allows you to defend yourself, even if your opponent uses footwork to circle around your blade.

*****

Penetration

[DRAWING OF TWO GUYS POINTING AT EACH OTHER, TIPS AND MIDS OVERLAPPING]

When you are fighting someone with a sword, you will approach them. As you approach them, you will eventually raise your sword to match theirs, whether you do this soon or late in the process. Eventually, if you are lucky, you will stab them.

Of the three concepts we speak of today, penetration is the easiest. It bears note in terms of defense, because there is a certain distance past which parries don't matter. If you are standing 15 feet from each other, there is no reason to even attempt to parry. Similarly, if you are touching belly-to-belly with someone, there is no reason to parry there either.

Penetration also dictates what parts of the sword will be effective for parrying, to a certain degree. As you approach, there will be a larger area on both your and your opponent's swords that could theoretically reach each other, with the respective leverage-based advantages and disadvantages.

Penetration becomes complex when we involve stances which hold the sword off-line. Even if we don't directly overlap a sword, a stance in which we could touch our opponent's sword, if we both extended our arms, can be considered to have some degree of penetration.

*****

Width

When you are fencing someone, there is a specific silhouette that can be injured. In the Spanish tradition, they consider it to be a "left defensive plane" and a "right defensive plane". Personally, I consider it to be an ellipse, because this is more compatible with both Spanish and Italian traditions.

[DRAWING OF A DUDE WITH AN ELLIPSE AND THE RIGHT AND LEFT PLANES LABELLED]

This ellipse is the area that you need to defend from penetration. This is a simplification, but it is a useful simplification that allows us to make assumptions about the absolute most we need to do to defend ourselves.

As I said above, width is the amount of useful space which blocks our opponent's sword. In order to have any width at all, we must have some degree of penetration. That is to say, we need to be able to touch where our opponent's sword could be, if we want to be able to stop or delay its ability to go places.

[ABSTRACT ELLIPSE DRAWING SHOWING VARIOUS STANCES WITH LINES FOR THE WIDTH OF THEIR SWORD AND/OR DAGGER]

The ellipse that is our body can change in shape, depending on how we posture ourselves. A Spanish stance has a narrow, profiled ellipse. Fabris, with his forward-leaning stances, has a very low, short ellipse. In both of these cases, the shape of the ellipse dictates where we need to place the width of our defense, in order to block out attacks.

Of particular note - width can only be considered to be the useful space occupied by the sword. The very tip of your sword, when opposed by the middle of your opponent's sword, cannot be considered useful. This creates some odd cases, where the positioning of your opponent's sword dictates the true width of your defense. If your opponent moves their hand to a place where you cannot place a stronger part of your blade on their blade, they have decreased the size of your effective width.

Width directly opposes penetration. If you are reaching as far forward as possible, you have minimized your width but maximized your penetration. Similarly, if you have your blade perpendicular to the ground, you have minimized your penetration but maximized your width.

*****

Parallax

This third concept is the weirdest one.

If you are defending yourself, you have to choose how far over your sword moves to parry. If your reach is more than your opponent's reach, you might not have to parry at all due to having more penetration. If your reach exactly matches your opponent's reach, you don't have to parry very much. But the more your opponent's reach is greater than your reach, the more parallax you need to have.

The actual definition of the word, parallax, is the thing that happens when you are moving along. Things which are closer to you tend to move more than things which are farther from you. So, as you move, the thing which is closer to you might move from one side to the other of an object which is farther from you.

By Booyabazooka - Parallax Example.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1335592

This can be used when one is taking a step to the side. If your opponent remains still, stepping to the side will move the position of their sword relative to you, such than an opening is created.

[DRAWING DEPICTING THE TOP PERSON CIRCLING OR YIELDING AROUND TO GET AROUND THEIR OPPONENT'S BLADE]

Similarly, if you have more reach than your opponent, you can move your hand, such that their sword is no longer defending against your sword. You don't need to be concerned due to how far away you are, but you still can touch them due to the fact that you can trade reach for angulation.

The amount that you can angle around your opponent safely is determined by the difference in reach between you and your opponent. Assuming that you are both sword-shoulder forward, this produces a triangle something like this.

The left is a drawing of the minimum angle of parallax.

The middle is a drawing of a cone of parallax.

The right is a drawing of what happens when you start considering the width of the body.

If you perform geometry, then we can find the maximum angle that your sword can approach them at. So, if they block your sword out of that angle, they are guaranteed to be safe. This is what I call the angle of parallax. This is how far out they must block you to be safe from assault.

Assuming a 26-inch arm, the angle of parallax for a fighter with a 37-inch rapier versus a 45-inch rapier is 20 degrees. This creates a cone, which shows how far up, down, left, or right you need to push your opponent's blade in order to be safe from it.

As a side-note, this is more complex in reality. The above assumes a point trying to thrust to a point. Since we are not shoulders trying to stab shoulders, and we have additional body parts, the geometry is a bit more complex. As it stands, fence like a Spaniard or Giganti and keep their blade to your left or right and you'll be fine.

How interesting that the SCA uses almost strictly shorter rapiers than those in the Wallace collection!

[source]

Given that the shortest rapiers tend to be about 35 inches, and point-of-shoulder to quillons-of-blade tends to be about 36% of someone's height, you would need to be more than eight feet tall to have an arm longer than 36 inches. As such, this means that the angle of parallax will never be greater than 45 degrees, assuming we're not fighting with ridiculously short things that almost can't be called swords any more.

Lastly, if you can get to a place where your hilt pushes their sword onto your cone of parallax, while simultaneously angling your tip in, you can stab them safely. yay!

I have created a spreadsheet for calculating the width of the minimum and maximum cone of parallax, given your arm and blade length.

The minimum angle of parallax is what I have depicted above - the minimum amount that an opponent with more reach than you will be able to angle around your blade, at the point where you can reach them.

The maximum angle of parallax is how much they will be able to angle around your blade when your blade is stabbing them - you can use this to determine how far you have to move around your blade to make sure you are defended as you stab your opponent.

Again, this doesn't take into account the width of your body, or the depth of your body.

*****

Bring It On Home

What does that get us?

As it turns out, in order to be a useful parry, we must have penetration in order to block their blade, width to determine how defended we are, and parallax in order to make sure they don't just angle around our blade.

• Penetration is used to work against them just pulling their sword back and moving around our sword.
• Width is used to work against traditional disengages.
• Parallax is used to work against yielding around.

This means that the useful width of our blade is also the part of our blade which is on or past the cone of parallax. If your blade isn't either touching or past that cone, it is not useful. Your opponent can and will yield around your sword. But at the same time, we don't really need to be concerned about any of this until our opponent can actually stab us with their sword.

Anyhow, that's all for the moment. Cheers

Practice Report, and a Discussion of Tempo, Stance, and Distance

Practice was a good, solid, fun time. One fencer who moved up north showed up again, which was really nice. He's good people.

After practice I did a plus-minus-plus exercise with Sorcha in the car on the way home. My points were:

• Plus: Successfully implemented a strategy that I have trouble against, and gained ideas from how other people dealt with it.
• Minus: I lost a bunch against a particular opponent who usually uses buckler, but couldn't tell quite why I lost. The minus is not the losing, the minus is the couldn't-figure-out-why.
• Plus: I had a realization about how I think a particular very-skilled fighter uses tempo and distance and successfully implemented it later in practice. I will explain it here.

I also was not patient enough against one very effective case fighter, but I suppose that practice is for trying shit out, rather than for fighting a conservative fight. So that's kind of a neutral.

Also, I need to not thug people as much. Usually, when I hit people hard, it's because I expect them to void backwards, so I throw the shot such that it will still touch them if they move backwards. Then, they move forwards. It usually gives me enough time to break with my hand, but especially if the shot is particularly whippy, it ends up being uncomfortable for my opponent. Against particular people who I fight at full-speed and at full extension, sets of fights tend to end when I land a shot that's too hard.

I'd like to figure out a better strategy for hitting people who are zigging backwards, without necessarily hitting them hard if they zag forwards. I'm not 100% sure how to do that, without giving up many opportunities to touch my opponent. Other people seem to manage to, but they might be giving up numerous opportunities. One idea is to throw more "structured", straight-on shots. Basically, throw better shots that are less disengage-y. That's not really my style, and would tend to favor a shorter blade. But it is a possibility. Those shots wouldn't whip hard, they would just have followthrough.

Against people who I out-range significantly, this tends not to be a problem, because I need to pull the shot earlier so that I'm not over-committed. This means I can throw at an angle that bends more easily.

Anyhow, on to tempo, distance, and stance.

*****

I had a realization about tempo! It's great. I think it's something I've sort-of understood in the past, but before I had a blog. I'll explain the principles first, then the specifics of how I implement the principles near the end of this section.

Theory

Basically, whenever someone "settles" into their stance, there's a tempo in which you can act. If you begin acting in that fourth-of-a-second as they are finishing settling their weight between their feet, you can generally catch people off-guard. This is how I have lost my hand in fights many, many times. I settled my weight without thinking about it, and gave my opponent a tempo.

The bit I didn't realize was that there's a counter-tempo available. So, if you take a half-step inside of lunge measure and begin to settle, there are two basic possibilities available. If your opponent isn't aware of the above principle of tempo, they will wait until you're settled and then begin fighting. If they are aware of that above principle, they will attempt to jump you in that fourth-of-a-second before you finish settling into your stance.

If you're aware of the second step in that process, you can abort your settling-into-position at that time, and then perform an action which will catch your opponent unawares. I only realized that this was a possibility after it was done to me time and time again. I noted my opponent settling into stance well within our respective lunge ranges, but that he was still acting before I thought to act. Then it clicked that this was what he was doing, and I was able to execute the same against him.

Though, it did result in a few nasty train wrecks, because once or twice I tried to just clear his sword and lunge. And we both did that, and were better at attacking than at defending. OH WELL.

Application

So, in terms of implementation - when I settle into stance, there's a very specific "rising" and then "falling into place" step. During the "rising" step, I place my feet in the correct location. Then, during the "falling into place" step, I allocate my weight appropriately for whatever stance I'm doing. usually 70%-back, 30%-forward, because I like my Giganti stance.

(Note that by "rising" step and "falling" step, I mean "step" as in "part of the process", rather than "step" as in "taking a step forwards".)

This is how most people get into a stance. It's a vaguely universal way that human beings move. Some people place their back foot, allocate all their weight to it, and then place their front foot and shift some of their weight to their front foot, but that's the same thing - at that point the "falling into place" step occurs after they set down their front foot, while they're shifting their weight from their back to their front.

It takes about a second for all of this to occur. So, using my bro-science definition of "tempo" as "about a fifth of a second", there are about two tempi during the "rising" step, and two tempi during the "falling" step. Yes, I realize that if we're being super-strict, that leaves a fifth of a second un-allocated, but this is bro-science, and not exact. And not completely accurate, but the way my definition of "tempo" has changed is not a discussion I want to have here.

Basically, there are about two tempi during the "falling" step - you want to act such that your lunge will end about as they finish settling. So, in the second available tempo during the "falling" step.

Obviously, this is only applicable if you have convinced your opponent to settle into stance while inside of your lunge range. There are many ways to do this.

• You can deceive your opponent as to your true lunge range in a variety of ways, which is a whole discussion in and of itself. The easiest way is to gather your back foot to your front foot ahead of time, which extends your lunge.
• You can select a location to set up in your list area which doesn't *allow* them to be out of your lunge range.
• You can select a lunge-target which is closer than their body, such as their hand or a cut into their blade to unsettle them.
• You can take a tiny single-tempo step forward during the "rising" step in the process of your opponent settling into guard. This is probably the best, most universally-applicable choice.

So, this is all great. This will allow you to take advantage of tempo in exciting ways. As well, if your opponent recognizes that they are inside of your measure during any step in the process of settling into guard, it will force them to move back and begin the process of settling into guard all over again.

It's great. I love it.

But all of that is just the basic level. There's more yet!

Next Level, Bro!

If you are aware of the "rising" and "falling" parts of settling into stance, you can take advantage of this yourself. Indeed, you can take advantage of your opponent's knowledge of tempo and turn "getting into stance too close in measure" into an advantage, rather than a disadvantage.

If you are aware that your opponent could act before you settle into stance, you can abort that "settling into stance" right before the second half of the "falling" step, to perform an action. This allows you to settle into your stance just a bit closer than is normally preferred - inside of your opponent's extended lunge measure. If you do this, and then abort your "settling into stance" action, you don't even need deceive your opponent into being too close! You can take an action that seems like a bad choice, but make it a good choice by playing with your opponent's expectations of timing.

That is to say, by acting instead of finishing settling into stance, either:

• Your opponent is waiting to fight until you finish settling into stance, in which case you stab them.
• Your opponent is planning to attack during the last bit of time as you "fall into stance", in which case you both attack at the same time.
• Hope you covered your openings, bro!

This is great. This is wonderful. It lets you play with tempo in a way that will feel like you're cheating time. You can even do this when you are performing advancing steps, by aborting the step at the last minute to turn it into a lunge.

But that's not all!

The Levels Don't Stop Coming, Bro!

So, let's consider the above actions.

• Attack in your the tempo of your opponent settling into stance.
• Attack out of the tempo of you settling into stance.

Both of these are actions in the tempo of "settling into" stance, whether yours or your opponents. As I said above, there are two tempi in the "falling" step - what if you aborted getting-into-stance during the first of these "falling" tempi?

This would allow you to attack before your opponent, even if they understand tempo well enough to attack both into and out of settling into stance. Things do get a bit weird here. If you are attacking into your opponent settling into stance, they usually are still looking "outside" of their body, rather than "inside". There are two things which make attacking into someone settling their weight effective.

• Settling your weight requires you to concentrate on a sensation, rather than something visual, so for a brief moment you are not paying full attention to what you're seeing.
• Settling your weight means you can't move immediately.

So, if you attack during the first part of the "settling into" step, your opponent will be in a better position to defend themselves. But, if your opponent is playing tempo games, such as trying to settle into stance within your measure in order to deceive you, it is an effective strategy.

Attacking out of the first part of yourself setting into a stance has similar disadvantages. Normally, watching the first half of someone "settling into" stance creates the expectation that the second half of "settling into" stance will happen. If you abort the first part, which would have set that expectation, then your opponent doesn't have an expectation of what is going to happen. This means you don't gain the advantages of attacking out of the latter half of settling into stance, and you might as well have just let yourself settle completely into a good, structured stance.

I Lied. That's All the Levels.

So, we have generated for ourselves a modified rock-paper-scissors. Let's flowchart it.

I decided to go backwards, from the last tempo to the first tempo, because if I did it in order that would imply that you can make choices based on what your opponent is doing here. The timing here is such that you can't react fast enough based on what your opponent is doing. You can make the choice of when to act, but your opponent's choice of when to act is entirely separate, due to how fast this set of things happens. This is what I mean by tempo - it takes a full tempo for you to process and react to what your opponent is doing, and while that's happening your opponent is already processing and reacting to what you just did. BROSCIENCE.

As yet another aside, this is why I disagree with people who put too much weight in slow-fencing. There are legitimately things which work at full-speed, which don't work at slower speeds due to human reaction time. Which I generally equate to tempo, which isn't exactly correct, but it's correct enough for my purposes.

• If you're settling into stance...
• And you decide to finish settling into stance...
• And your opponent lets you finish...
• You end neutral, match continues.
• And your opponent attacks in the second tempo of your settling...
• Your opponent has an advantage to their attack, probably stabbing your hand or something.
• And your opponent attacks in the first tempo of your settling...
• You can probably defend yourself just fine, meaning your opponent is at a disadvantage.
• And you decide to attack out of the second tempo of your settling...
• And your opponent was going to let you finish...
• You have an advantage to your attack, and probably stab their hand.
• And your opponent attacks in the second tempo of your settling...
• A double-kill is likely, unless someone successfully parries. Good game everyone. Feel shame.
• And your opponent attacks in the first tempo of your settling...
• Your opponent has an advantage by attacking before you.
• And you decide to preemptively attack out of the first tempo of your settling...
• And your opponent was going to let you finish...
• Your opponent has the advantage, because this gave them enough time to see your attack and respond.
• And your opponent was going to attack in the second tempo of your settling...
• You have the advantage, because you're attacking before them, but close enough to when they're attacking that they can't abort.
• And your opponent was going to attack in the first tempo of your settling...
• Something something, double-kill, shame.
• If they're settling into stance...
• And they decide to finish settling into stance...
• And you let them finish...
• Neutral
• And you attack them in the second tempo of their settling...
• Advantage to you.
• And you attack them in the first tempo of their settling...
• Advantage to them.
• And they decide to act out of the second tempo of their settling...
• And you were going to let them finish...
• Advantage to them.
• And you attack them at the same time...
• Double-kill is likely.
• And you act in the first tempo of their settling...
• Advantage to you.
• And they decide to act out of the first tempo of their settling...
• And you were going to let them finish...
• Advantage to you.
• And you were going to attack them in the second tempo...
• Advantage to them.
• And you attacked at the same time...
• Double-kill is likely.

I feel like this would have made a better set of graphs than bulleted list. Oh well.

So, in all of the above "double-kill is likely" bits, that doesn't mean not to do it - it means to only do it if you feel super safe. This usually means you have their sword covered with your dagger or some such. As with all things, "advantage" doesn't necessarily mean "win" - it means "advantage".

There are some parts of the above list that I'm somewhat unsure of. I'll work on mapping those out more thoroughly over time.

So, it's a weighted rock-paper-scissors. The "meta-game" tends to allow people to finish because double-kills are bad, which means that acting in the second tempo is the best action in most circumstances. But since double-kills are bad, that means the true best action is to just get out of damn measure and have both people settle into their stance.

I'm super frustrated, because this seemed like something that was going to be a cool thing, but it really just ends up being a frustratingly dead-ended rock-paper-scissors in which two draw conditions lend themselves to double-kills. Sigh.

Anyhow. That's all for now.