Class Outline for "Inequalities of Reach 101"

Hey guys. I'm Don Lupold Hass. You're currently attending "Inequalities of Reach 101", a class in which I attempt to address one of the biggest non-trainable differences between fencers in this sport - reach.

Why should you listen to me? I'm a fencer who has put a lot of time and effort into this subject. I have fenced using reach for a long time, so I have had a lot of time to characterize the ways that one can use reach to win bouts. At the same time, I have a number of friends who are effective shorter-blade fencers, who know how to turn my reach against me. Lastly, I am just short enough that I can't just out-reach everybody.

Some background. I've done well for a long time with my 45" rapier. Using reach comes naturally to me, not just because of my stature but because of the tactics that long reach implies. Over time, though, I grew to worry that I only was winning because I could snipe my opponents. And indeed, I performed terribly against those who out-reached me. I came to realize that there were flaws in my understanding of rapier, so I needed to take up a shorter sword in order to understand things better. Over time, my journey has led me through the Spanish and Italian arts, in order to gain a better understanding of the short-versus-long inequality, and swordplay as a whole.

This class, we will cover several topics.

• Why is reach effective?
• How does reach win?
• How can reach stab you?
• How must you stab reach?
• What advantages does reach have?
• How do you minimize them?
• Specific techniques.

Class outline:

•  Why is reach effective?
• Less "cognitive effort"
• Frequently no need for defense.
• Less pressure to have "good technique".
• What tactics does reach use?
• "Threat Zones"
• Keep shorter person in their "threat zone" as long as possible.
• Drifting backwards slowly.
• Demonstrate how cuts from reach are really not that great.
• Timing
• A full lunge will be parried.
• Demonstration.
• Need to either distract or attack using a demi-lunge. 
• Feints from out of measure
• Allows for less "plausible" feints.
• Feint goes "tink", makes people twitch faster than they see.
• Discussion of tempo and reaction times.
• How can reach stab you?
• Better question: How do you parry reach, and how does reach overcome those parries.
• The Three Principles
• Disengage
• Over the tip / under the tip
• Pull out
• Yield around
• In order to parry, your parries need to strongly defend against all of these.
• Counters
• Disengage = Width
• Note that "width" only counts if your opponent can't blow right through your sword.
• Pull out  = Penetration
• Yield around = Width, but with a focus on rear-width.
• Demonstrate how a Duello-style find-gain-attack uses these principles.
•  How must you stab reach?
• Good defense.
• Good offense.
• Get through Danger Zone.
• How can you minimize reach's advantages?
• Getting low, going for the gut.
• Demonstrate how getting low steals reach away and gives it to you. 
• Profiling
• Vertical - Fabris
• Horizontal -  Destreza
• Straight approach
• Viable if they give you their sword.
• Angled approach
• Viable if they do not give you their sword.
• Use your own body's advantages
• If you don't have reach, you are probably smaller.
• This means voids are good.
• Put sword on "one side" of your body.
• Left / Right - Destreza
• Up / Left / Right - Fabris. 
• Blade actions that take a long time to escape
• Transports.
• Get blade contact.
• Threaten the hand while not giving good opposition.
•  Specific techniques.
• Fabris stance.
• Fabris rule 1 flowchart.
• Refusing body behind hilt / blade
• Extended arm giving penetration, allowing focus on width. 
• Demonstrate again how getting low steals reach from your opponent.
• Destreza stance.
• Thibault plate 29 (?), circle 10.
• Body positioning giving an angle that "hides" you behind your sword.
• Covering the "danger zone" before they can react, then circling.
• Note how this prevents forcing a 50/50 disengage.
• Transports
• Standard Giganti stance.
• Demonstrate transport below, above.
• Cover w/ quillon, reinforce with dagger.
• Demonstrate transport left / right
• Demonstrate that transports can actually happen anywhere
• Single / duo-tempi parry-riposte
• Favored by lighter blades / more back-weighted blades. 
• Capo Ferro hierarchy.
•  Zing-cuts
• Favored by heavier blades / more front-weighted blades.
• Show how this forces particular, predictable motion
• Show how you can use this motion to force further blade actions.
• Sentiment
• Oh god sentiment.
• Long discussion on tempo and sentiment
• Show how pressure makes blades "sticky"
• Show how this allows you to predict where your opponent can go.
• Closing
• Fabris stance is great and versatile, but hard to do.
• Destreza stance is good and easy to stand in, but removes off-hand items from the bout.
• Reach is effective and faster. (Dark side???) But not stronger.

Thanks for coming to my class everybody. I hope to fight you soon!

Edit: This is two classes' worth of material, I'm pretty sure. First class would be theory, second class would be techniques.

Thibault on Italians and Sentiment - the "Short" Version

So I got a copy of the new Greer translation of Thibault's manuscript. It is fantastic, and a joy to read through. I'm going to put down my thoughts and interpretations here, so I can later prove them wrong or flawed in some fashion. I haven't said it in a while, but my standard "I MIGHT BE COMPLETELY OFF BASE HERE, FORM YOUR OWN OPINIONS ABOUT THE WORK PLEASE" disclaimer applies doubly here. These are my own interpretations, and I make no guarantees about their correctness.

I am engaging in my standard method for learning a new thing - I read through to assimilate the basics and a basic idea of the more complex concepts, and then I take it onto the field to see where problems arise. After that, I read parts of the book more thoroughly in order to gain a more in-context understanding than I would have had if I had attempted to understand before trying things out.

*****

My revised Thibault game worked surprisingly well at practice on Monday. There is a new form of taking the blade which Thibault advocates for, when my opponents adopt a more Giganti-ish, hand-held-low posture. Essentially, it involves starting with your sword below theirs, stepping around their sword to the right, and wrapping yours behind theirs. I found myself actually actively pushing their sword downwards, so that it was parallel with the ground. This blocks off their means of ingress by placing their sword outside of your presence, while at the same time blocking the possibility of a disengage because of the circular motion of your tip. Your blade ends up higher than you might expect, but it blocks things off pretty well.

This is followed by a brief pause to make sure they aren't doing anything clever, a giarata step to cover ground, and then a right-foot lunging thrust to cover a truly ridiculous amount of ground. This solves a problem I've previously had when practicing the Spanish arts, in that Italians can move backwards faster than I can move forwards in a circle.

If they attempt a yielding-around thrust (which Thibault calls a "curved thrust"), then your response should be to abort the giarata-step and thrust, catching their sword with your inside quillon.

So, to go over it in a simpler way, with pictures. In all of these, Alexander (the person fighting in Thibault's tradition) is on the right, while Zachary (in this case a Giganti-esque fighter. More to the point, he is a stand-in for anybody who fights from a position which keeps their blade back somewhat, blade low, and tip higher than the hilt). I'm saying that this isn't a perfect Giganti or Capoferro, but it can be generalized to deal with them. Or many other non-Fabris Italians.

The front set of figures is the first position. Alexander drops his sword low, while taking a collecting step forward. In my brief experience, this collecting step hasn't been truly necessary, but I can see how it would help in the next bit.

The set of figures behind them shows the transition. Alexander takes a wide step, mostly to the right, while wrapping his sword around Zachary's, tip-first. Note that, in relation to the circle on the floor, Alexander has moved very far to the right.

At this point, Alexander pauses for a moment. This is (in my brain) to allow Alexander to confirm that yes, he has the positioning he wants. His opponent has allowed him to step and position his sword in the way he wants. It's a one-tempo pause, to use demi-Italian terminology, to allow the perceptions to catch up to the world.

The right plate here is essentially the same as the back plate above. Alexander has what an Italian would call "opposition" over his opponent's blade.

The left plate, cut off by the page boundary here, shows the giarata-step I've been talking about. Alexander maintains opposition over his opponent's sword and rotates his body away from his opponent, stepping backwards with his left foot. This combined hip-leg motion is a preparation for a very, very long step in a moment.

Not pictured here is what to do if your opponent attacks at this point. Essentially, the advice given is to abort the step, planting your left foot, then perform a demi-lunge and thrust with your right foot, being sure to collect their sword with your inside quillon, either upwards or downwards.
 

And of course, we have the result depicted here, the first complete set of people on the right. It looks like they have moved backwards on the circle, but it is important to note that the circle corresponding to the right set of figures is actually the one overlapping the one that Zachary is standing on. It's cut off by the page boundary. In this image, Zachary is completely off of the circle, and Alexander has approached the edge of the circle closest to Zachary.

The left set of figures shows what happens if Zachary executes a complete retreat - moving backwards as fast as possible. Essentially, Alexander and Zachary reset. They are in the same positions, except that they are both now to the left of the original circle that they started on. The circle corresponding to the left set of figures is the circle which Zachary is standing on, in the right set of figures.

To summarize:

• Start with your sword below theirs.
• Wind it above/behind theirs while stepping to the side.
• Stab? Stab. Maybe according to below principles of sentiment? We'll see.

*****

The next thing I've been working on is Sentiment. For those who don't know, "sentiment" is the way that Thibault measures the amount of pressure that your opponent is exerting against your blade. Thibault names nine degrees of sentiment, but two groups of three of them end up meaning the same thing. From weakest to strongest, they are "Dead", "Sentiment", "Alive", "Lively", "Livelier", "Liveliest", "Strong", "Stronger", and "Strongest".

A short version of what to do against each sentiment follows. These are works in progress, and an attempt to collapse a large number of use-cases into a set of principles or rules.

Against "Dead" sentiment, you attack immediately, detaching your sword from theirs, maintaining confidence that you will get past their tip if your distance is correct. This amount of pressure is when your opponent is not pressing against your blade, or isn't even touching your blade. This is will be the most difficult to implement in our game, because a lot of Thibault's defense against "Dead" sentiment comes from stabbing through your opponent, and thus placing your body beyond their tip. In our game, this would lead to double-kills due to late, sloppy bladework. Thibault does mention how to "arrest with courtesy", and thus not stab your opponent but instead put your tip directly in front of your opponent's face. The most likely adaptation for me here will be "arresting without courtesy" - that is to say, drawing my arm back such that my tip stabs them, but does not go through them.

Against "Sentiment" sentiment, you attack immediately, detaching your sword from theirs and stepping away from their sword. Here, the opponent is pressing a little, but not hard enough that their blade will "follow" or "stick" to yours if you move yours away from theirs quickly. This is almost the same as against "Dead" sentiment, but you step away from their blade a bit because their blade will move toward you. Just - not very much.

Against "Alive" sentiment, we begin to perform actual blade-on-blade opposition. This is the bit of sentiment which, as I understand it, involves their blade "sticking" to yours a bit. If you were to go for a straight-in thrust without defense, you would end up being stabbed above your sword, and that would be sad. So here, you continue circling toward their blade, collect it with your quillon, and stab them. Yay.

Against the "Livel(y)(ier)(iest)" sentiments, we bend our arm and thread our tip behind their blade. This allows their blade to slide down ours to our hilt, in a way similar to Fabris Rule For Single Rapier #1. The Lively set of sentiments are the point at which your opponent will be able to push your tip hard enough that you can't really accurately thrust. So we solve the issue by collecting them on our hilt and one of our quillons - Thibault advises the outside one, but that seems harder than using the inside one. This places their sword harmlessly between your sword and your body, in a way that seems kind of scary to do but is really cool.

Alternately, and especially if they increase to this level later in our motions, we can perform a half-circle cut, pulling our sword down and backwards to allow their momentum to carry them away, and then cutting above their sword to the front of their face. This maneuver would be preceded by using our hilt and quillons to transfer them from one side of our body to the other, then performing the cut almost entirely with the wrist.

Against the "Stron(g)(ger)(gest)" sentiments, we cannot simply rely on our hilt to control their blade. To deal with these, we, with our arm still extended, transfer their sword to the other side of us. We explicitly are directed to use our (inside?) quillon to help their sword along on its journey, for some reason. We then continue stepping past them, using our wrist to perform a full-circle cut that exits from below their sword to strike the back of their head. You should be sure to block their sword's path of ingress with your quillon during the early parts of this. In the later parts, you are behind them, so it no longer matters. The cut should be thrown, again, primarily from the wrist.

To summarize:

• First: Take them off the center line using your sword near their tip.
• Dead
• GO GO STAB
• Sentiment
• GO GO STAB with a small void
• Alive
• Good blade opposition yay! Stabby stabby!
• Lively / Livelier / Liveliest
• Collect them on your hilt, between your sword and your body, thrust to face.
• Help their sword to the other side of your body, step through, your sword exits below theirs and enters above, cutting to their face.
• Strong / Stronger / Strongest
• Help their sword to the other side of your body, step through, your sword exits below theirs and enters above, cutting to the back of their head.
• Thibault doesn't explicitly call this out, but I bet you could just step on a chord past the circle and stab them in the flank, as other Spaniards advocate.

 That's what I'm sure will be the first of many posts. Have fun, and good fencing!

Melee Practice and Melee Heresies

The regional I was able to attend this weekend was fun. I got in a decent amount of fighting, even after filming the melee Champs tryouts. I as also struck by a few new thoughts, from watching how things worked out and did not work out.

There are a couple of "common knowledge" things that people keep repeating, that I just don't think are true. As such, I am developing heretical beliefs about melee. I'm writing this down because there were some people with strong opinions about rapier melee from crossing over from heavy melee, and I am convinced that these opinions aren't correct or completely applicable to rapier.

*****

The "common knowledge" of a 2v1 is that, no matter who it is, the 2 should be able to stab the 1 quickly. And in a line fight, this is sort of true. If you can create a 2v1 on the end of a line, that's strictly good. However, in a skirmishing situation, I think that this is incorrect.

In a skirmishing situation, the 2 will probably eventually win the 2v1. However, there are a lot of tactics that the 1 can use to delay, especially if they are short-blade fighters.

• You can use sinusoidal motion to "dot the i"
• You can use timing and jukes to make people move incorrectly and lose distance
• You can threaten a diving attack past one of the outside edges of the 2

All of these things are somewhat guaranteed to work, if and only if you can threaten all of them. The last of them is why I think that rapier melee is different from heavy melee, and why I think that all of this that I'm saying is true. Because you can be "too close" for someone to get a good shot onto you, and we don't have spears.

The victory condition for the 2 in a 2v1 is to "cross the T", such that the 2 can attack the 1 at the same time. But the way most people do it involves a lot of communication, and communication takes time. Time means that the 1 can use one of the above tricks to mess up distance. And in order to attack, both of the 2 need to be in the correct place. So, if the 2 are waiting to get into the correct place before communicating their intent to attack, the 1 can indefinitely delay, by moving such that at least one of the 2 are out of position.

The solution, here, is probably for the 2 to learn how to anticipate the motion of the 1, and then attack immediately when they are going to be in position half a second from now. I'm not sure how this would work in real situations - I believe that it will just create opportunities for the 1 to juke harder. I don't believe this falls apart in top-level play, but I am open to the idea that in top-level play this is incorrect.

As such, if I'm correct, I think that "have 2 people jump 1 person" is a completely unworkable strategy. 2 people cannot force the kill to happen in the way that people keep saying they can, so long as the 1 gives ground.

All that said, forcing a 2v1 with the 1 as a skirmisher can be used to the 2's team's advantage. If the 1 is giving ground, whoever of the 2 is closer to the line-fight needs to peel off and hit the line from the side, as soon as the 1 is far enough back that they can only threaten the other of the 2.  That way, the 2 are trading the 2v1 for a 1v1, but gaining better positioning in the rest of their team.

In a situation with equivalent numbers, this means you're trading worse numbers right now for a better position later. I think this is a bad tactical choice, until the melee becomes large enough that a one-person difference in a large line doesn't matter. Which happens perhaps at the point of a 6-10-person line or so? At that point, the tactical advantage of positioning outweighs the tactical advantage of numbers that you're giving up.

*****

The next point that I have is that in terms of tactical advantage, 2v1 is less than 4v3, which is less than 3v2. This is because the delaying tactics of the smaller side require coordination of movement. Adding people makes this harder, even if they have practiced together.  The reason that 3v2 is better than 4v3, though, is because in a 3v2  you have 50% more people on the larger side, whereas in the 4v3 you only have 33% more people. This means you have less of an advantage, so the smaller side is more likely to be able to get a random kill and equalize numbers.

If I had to put a point value on various positions, a 1v1 or any disadvantageous position is worth 0, a 2v1 is worth 1, a 4v3 is worth 1.5, and a 3v2 is worth 2. I'm unsure of the value of a 3v1 or 4v1 - my intuition places it somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5, though it's an interesting thought exercise. Obviously, all of this assumes optimal play and players who know how to survive a 1v2 in the correct way.

It would be interesting to assign a point value to all numbers-based configurations of people up to 10v10. Perhaps this is an exercise for later.

This means that in a 5v5 melee, the best tactic should be a 1-3-1 split. And if your opponents are clever, they will also perform a 1-3-1 split in order to nullify the possible advantages you can gain from it and turn the melee into a series of 1v1 fights. Depending on the value of a 3v1, a 2-1-2 split might be better? Or a counter to the 1-3-1 split? But that's a thing that requires more data.

The reason that a 1-3-1 split is so good is that any other type of split creates the potential for the opposing team to create more advantageous numbers configurations, getting that sweet, sweet 3v2 or 4v3 action. In return, you at-worst give up a 2v1, which, as we discussed, is not a bad thing.

*****

All of the discussion thus far has been about numbers. But next, I want to talk about positioning.

One of the other complaints from people I disagreed with was that people would run up to the line and stop. While I agree that people tend to run more than they need to in melee, I think that running up to the line and stopping on either edge is a good choice because it forces your opponent's line to take a convex shape. This creates more exposure to more possible cross-shots on their line, which is good for stabbing.

The option advocated for was that you should keep going around the edge of the line, if you're going to go up to the edge at all. I disagree strongly. I think that doing that, with equal numbers, opens your line up to a zipper, while running behind their line only gives you the possibility of some Death From Behind. A DFB can be foiled in a number of ways, but the most crippling is if someone from their side who isn't involved in the zipper peels off backwards to take you.

If the opposing team is smart, and mentions when something is starting in the backfield, this is almost guaranteed to happen.

*****

One more positioning thing.

All this time I've been talking about numbers in terms of 2v1 and so forth. This completely ignores local numbers advantages, intentionally. I do this because I think that local numbers-advantages from positioning are innately less powerful than "real" numbers advantages. So having a slight wrap around the edge of their line in a 4v4 is nice, but if you have to give them a few seconds of having a 4v3 in order to gain it, I don't think it's worth it. It might be if your team is made of very strong defensive fighters, but that's another thing I need more data about. Usually, people get stabbed too fast for the positioning advantage to be worth it.

*****

Lastly, risk threshold.

In any melee less than 10v10, with equal sides, I think that optimal play turns into a bunch of one-on-one fights. Anything else has the potential to give up a numbers advantage elsewhere, for only gaining a 2v1 in your team's favor. And this is bad.

That said, turning into a bunch of one-on-one fights is bad for you if your team is less 1v1 prowess-y than the opposing team. This means that you need to engage in suboptimal tactics, to try to even things out. You need to create an advantage and press it, even if the likelihood of the advantage panning out is less than 50%. Because if the chance your team will win the many-one-on-one-fights fight is (say) 30%, then anything that gains you an advantage which has a chance of success greater than 30% is a good plan.

You are the underdog, and you need to make your opponents uncomfortable. Do it however you can.

*****

That's all of my melee heresies, for the moment. I could say more about terrain, but terrain is something which is hard to control and handled in weird, squishy ways depending on who the marshal is.

Have a good day, and good melee! I'll be happy to discuss these, but I am not super likely to change my mind without some form of semi-anecdotal proof.

Vancouver International Swordplay Symposium

Vancouver was great!

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

I took several classes. In no particular order:

*****

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

Things I got out of that class:

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

We discussed a couple of definitions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Huh.

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

*****

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

*****

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

I hope this was useful.

Southern Region Rapier Practice Post

Just some quick thoughts.

I fought a bunch of people, but my 45-inch rapier felt awkward in my hand. I think I've been concentrating on my 37-inch rapier and destreza too much. I need to get back into the swing of 45-inch rapiering.

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!