Logan's Blog

This week we cut formal drills a bit short so we could work on circle of death. So, the topic we covered was “Standing there and not taking it like a bitch.” By which I mean blocking. We had two people face us at 45 degrees. They throw 5 shots at us each. We block them. The idea being to not only block them, but to try and bind them both together into one block by blocking one person into the other. So, if the person on our left attacks us, we parry 6 which sweeps through the path of the person on our right. Similarly, if the person on our right attacks we parry 4, blocking off the person on the left at the same time. If either of them goes low we parry 8, which is a big sweeping parry anyway.

This is very important for several reasons. One, it forces us to learn to block. Sometimes it seems easy to be a runner. To always retreat when attacked. The problem with this is that eventually someone will run us into a corner or a wall and then they will pound us. Also if we are to fight two on one we have to take the fight to them. Not only do we need to block them both out, but then kill one of them. This is almost impossible if all we do is give ground and run away.

This week the topic was simple, off-hands. I don’t have a lot to say in writing about this topic, so if you have any questions I guess you will just have to ask me. We covered dagger (or short scabbard), buckler, and long scabbard. This left cloak and case uncovered, but I don’t find them very useful anyway.

Practice holding your dagger away from your body. This gives two advantages. One, it provides a larger blocking “shadow”. Two, it gives more time to block. Since work is force over time, more time and the same force equates to more work done on your opponents blade. More work done means more deflection, thus a stronger block. The dagger can be used offensively as well. I recommend steering more to the thrust as the short dagger cuts are not well read. Also be careful with tripplet #2 blades, or other stiff dagger blades, as they tend to be very stiff. Take care not to damage your opponent.

Bucklers also should be held out away from your body for increased shadow. Practice punching at the incoming attack to knock it off line and open things up for a possible close. If you are not sure what to use in your off hand, take out a buckler and use it as passive defense.

Long scabbards don’t offer much protection for the hand. So, you will have to keep them moving to avoid loosing it. They are great for power parrying since they are both stiff and heavy. Try gripping it with about a third of its length below your hand.

For single fighting I will always choose a dagger over the other off hands. It offers lightning fast blocking and close range offensive capabilities. For melee, the buckler is more versatile, particularly the large war bucklers. Typically in melee the dagger is to short to get much done. Long scabbard is great against schlager because it offers such strong blocks. However the lack of hand protection, and its weight and relative slowness make it a distinct third in my book.

This week covered the advanced range drill, two shot combinations, and three shot combinations.

The advanced range drill begins (like the regular range drill) with you and your partner facing each other at critical range. At critical range two people of the same reach should be able to just lunge and hit one another. For those of you who are shorter you should practice your opponent’s critical range where they can just reach you (but make sure to close like a mongoose from there, don’t hang out there). In most cases this is the distance where the tips of your swords cross by an inch or so. Next, one of you takes the lead and begins moving forward and backward with advance and retreat. The person without the lead adjusts to maintain the critical range. So far, exactly like the regular range drill. Now, to make it advanced, hold your swords pointed to the side at your waist, wherever is comphy for you. This removes the sword as a distance cue and makes you judge distance by looking at your opponent (like you are supposed to any way). Periodically check the distance with the swords. To make it really advanced have the leader throw in other footwork like skips, circling, or sidestepping. In this case the person with the lead should work on their footwork of course, but in addition they should work on sneaking up on their partner, which is most easily done with an inward spiral. Of you can work on sneaking away from your partner with an outward spiral. The other person simply tries to maintain the range. Practice with both people leading, and with both hands.

Two shot combinations are the bread and butter of fencing. If I stand there and attack my opponent, with single attacks, without preparation, even the most new of newbs will block every one of them. There are actually many preparations (beats, Froissement, circling in, blade pushing, feints), however, today we focus on the feint. A two shot combination is one feint and one shot. The feint opens your opponent’s defense, preparing them for the second shot which hits. To practice this, begin by making a slow extension to your first, fake, target. When your partner blocks, disengage and lunge at your real target. Of course feints fall under the topic of lying, which I posted about earlier. In practice you will have to work at making your feint believable and credible. To make them believable, try changing the speed of the attack. Start slowly and then rapidly finish the extension. Or simply try extending at targets you can reach, like the hand. Also it helps to extend at basic zones that we practice in the parry drill. Finally to bring about credibility you will have to attack with a one shot once in a while just to keep your opponent on their toes. If all you do is two shots your opponent will start to ignore the first shot.

Finally, we covered three shot combinations. If two shots are the bread and butter, three shots are the gravy. Principally, I try to use two shots. Two shots are quicker, and work great for your average opponent. With three shots you run the risk of your opponent ignoring you and just hitting you in the face at your second feint. However, when fighting a skilled opponent, with tight defense, it is often necessary to move to a three shot combo. Sometimes, one feint is just not enough to break up their defense. When you try a three shot combination it helps to work backwards. Say you want to hit the front leg in eight. The logical place for their sword to be right before you do that is high in six, so eight will be your third shot, and six will be your second. Lets start with a shot to four then. So, our last shot is to eight, our second is to six, and our fist is to four. Great! By the time you throw two good feints at four and six, your opponent’s defense should be broken up leaving them helpless and waiting to get hit in the leg.

Things to think about:

• Proper range is very important. If your opponent sneaks up on you, and you don’t notice. You are hosed. They will hit you with an extension and you will think they have the speed of the gods. You won’t know what hit you. By controlling the range you control the most important aspect of the fight.
• You must learn to judge the range to your opponent accurately based on their body. Try looking at their center of mass, or across the shoulders. Do not attempt to judge the range by the sword! The sword lies in so many ways it is impossible to list them.
• An advanced fighter should work on anticipating where their opponent is going by watching for tells. Often times you will find that someone shifts their weight one way or the other before they advance or retreat. Once you see that you can cut them off at the pass, and get where they are going first, negating whatever advantage they were trying for.
• Feints are probably the best (and certainly the most used around here) form of preparation. You need to work on developing feints that are believable and credible.
• A common mistake is when trying to develop believable feints is to lunge on the feint, and then try and disengage to hit the real target. While a lunge is very believable it is a terrible thing to do on a feint. This will leave you closer to your opponent, and that much easier to hit when they don’t buy your feint. Further, it is difficult to disengage when you are so committed.
• Three shots are hard to think about at first. But they are well worth in when fighting an opponent who is willing to believe your feints and has good defense. You will find that against such an opponent two shots won’t be enough to open them up most of the time.
• Some opponents aren’t willing to believe feints until they are very credible. That is you may have to throw out many one shots before you try your slick two shot combination.
• Similarly, two shot combos build credibility for you to move to three shots. Wont they be surprised when after the third two shot combo that they bock, a third shot comes out of no where and hits them right when they were thinking about their counter attack.

This week we started by covering redouble (which I forgot to cover on advanced footwork day two weeks ago). A redouble is useful when we have lounged and came up short of our opponent who is still vulnerable. So, without recovering from our lunge we do a step across (bring our back foot forward to, or slightly past, our front foot), and the go strait into another lunge. If you still come up short, and your opponent still hasn’t closed that line, you can redouble ad nauseum. Arcadia comes to mind on this one. If you watch her she uses the redouble quite a bit.

Next we did a little bit of the strength training I promised. We did a lot of footwork with our arms extended. We did several lounges, which we held for 10 seconds or more. This is good stuff. I recommend doing this sort of drill at home with your sand scabbard.

Also we worked on performing footwork at combat speed. This is something that some of you are having a lot of trouble with. I think this is demonstrative of not knowing the footwork very well. It is no good to only be able to do everything slow. Slow is good for getting it right, and you should only do something (advance, lunge, pivot, whatever) as fast as you can do it correctly, however at some point you have to learn to pick up the pace a little bit. The best pivot in the world is no good if the charger hits you before you pivot. To remedy this WORK ON YOUR FOOTWORK AT HOME, in a normal, slow, muscle memory building way. Do hundreds and hundreds of lunges, advances, pivots, etc. As you feel more confident try to do them faster, but if you find you can’t do it fast and correct settle for correct.

So much for the line drills. The topic of seminar training this week was melee. We covered in conversation rules of engagement and death from behind (DFB). We typically play with one of two major sets of rules of engagement. The first set being 120 without DFB (120 no DFB). In this set we may engage our opponent anywhere in the front 120 degrees of their vision. If we are standing on the center of a clock facing 12, this means that our opponents may engage us of they are standing in front of us between 10 and 2.

The second major set of rules of engagement is 180 with DFB (180 DFB). In this set our opponents may engage us if they are standing “in front of us” between 3 and 9. Attacking our opponents from all the way at 180 (standing at 3 or 9), presents some difficulty. The sides of our body are not well protected naturally. To the side the headshot that normally just pushes our mask back turns into a sharp blow to the temple. The chest shot turns into floating ribs or kidneys. The leg turns into pushing their kneecap out of alignment from the side. Even an arm shot can go wrong when they suddenly lunge and we hit the chest (floating ribs, kidneys) by accident. So, I recommend not taking shots from 180. I have tried, and every time I tried it turned out bad. If you find yourself at 180 either move back into 120 and engage them from the front with the respect that they deserve, or move around to the back and do DFB.

This brings up the topic of how to do DFB correctly. Simply follow the following simple step-by-step instructions.

1. Point your sword tip at the sky. We do this because as we approach our opponent from the rear we don’t want them to suddenly back up and put their kidneys into our sword.

2. Note which hand our opponent is holding their sword in. This is typically the right hand, but not always. Approach on the off hand side (most often the left). We do this because it is farther away from their dangerous furniture should they spin around suddenly.

3. While still being cautious and keeping your offhand guard up, lower your sword (which to this point was pointed at the sky) over their shoulder so that a foot or so extends out into their vision.

4. Say clearly and distinctly “You are Dead From Behind”

There are as many wrong ways to do DFB as there are grains of sand on the beach. However a few worth mentioning are:

1. You may not stab your opponent in the back!

2. You may not perform more than one DFB at a time. If you have two swords for instance you can only use one. To freeken bad.

3. You may not fairy tap. That is you must perform DFB slowly. Each time taking at least as long as it takes to say clearly “You are Dead From Behind”

Actual drills that we practiced were centered on working as a team. The first is called marquee lights. Marquee lights focuses on the concept of interlocking zones of fire. That is that when you are standing on a melee line, your goal is not to stab the person in front of you, but rather the people standing next to that person. Our partners are similarly divided, which creates the interlocking zones of fire. To practice this we form two lines facing each other. The drill begins with one person extending to attack the person in front of them (like a bad non interlocking fighter). The person attacked parries. Then, the people to either side of the person attacked counter attack to the attackers arm. The drill continues with the next person in line next to the first attacker attacking the person in front of them. It is this rippling attack that gives this drill its name.

The second drill we did is a variation on marquee lights. It is trying to teach us to block for our partners. Personally I am terrible at this. However, it is a valid and necessary part of melee tactics. When I attack it leaves me vulnerable (see above drill). To counter this vulnerability my partners need to cover for me. This drill begins the same as the last with someone attacking the person in front of them. This time they need to expose themselves a little by lounging. Again the person attacked must parry (lest they be stabbed). The difference this time is that the defender’s partners attack at the body of our attacker. Oh no! Our attacker is doomed! He can’t block because he is attacking! He is lunging into a range where his opponents can reach him! But wait, his partners (the people standing next to the attacker) can save him by blocking for him. So they do. The drill continues with the next person in line attacking etc.

Things to think about:

• We need to work on our footwork at home. We can do this by performing many repetitions of the footwork slowly and correctly.
• Melee is complicated.
• When fighting a melee we want to focus our attacks on cross shots. That is not on the person directly in front of us. A cross shot is much more difficult to see than one coming strait at us.
• When our line is attacked it creates an opportunity for us to get a better (because it is less committed) counter attack on the attackers arm from the cross shot.
• We need to help protect our teammates. This is especially true when they are vulnerable because they are attacking, but it is really true all the time.
• When playing a scenario with DFB we need to watch out for people sneaking up on us. A commander should typically assign a rear guard to watch the rear while the rest fight the front.
• Attacking from the 180, although often legal, is dangerous and should be done very carefully if at all. This is because of the soft targets exposed on the sides of our bodies.
• Actually doing a DFB is also dangerous, both to us and our opponents, and should be done very carefully. Keep in mind that they may move around rapidly at any time. If our opponent is jumping around like a cat on crack we should just not do DFB as we would risk collision with them, which could result in all kids of badness.

This week was pretty basic. The topic of the day was, dramatic pause, Blocking! Ah blocking, nothing else keeps you in the fight like using your sword to move your opponent’s sword away from striking your body. Although there are other ways to avoid your opponent’s attack, (off hand, footwork, sci-powers) blocking remains an important aspect of any fight.

Topics covered include sticky blocks, elbow blocks, punch blocks, and rapid blocks against 2 opponents. The idea behind a sticky block is to hold your sword on your opponent’s and control where they go with your block. We practiced this by blocking an attack and taking a step forward while holding the block. Miraculously our opponent’s sword was wedged out of the way leaving the path forward safe. This is bead and butter for shorter fighters (Juliana pay attention!) but also good for the rest of us.

An elbow block is one of a group I like to call Oh Shit Blocks. It is not an ideal situation, however it will save you when you are in an oh shit moment. When you are out of position, in a lunge, with your sword out in an attack, and your opponent attacks you under your extended arm, is the best time for an elbow block. The idea is that by lunging you have negated your other options for blocking. You can’t parry because you are extended. You can’t move your feet because you just lunged. So settle for good enough and just bring your elbow, forearm, and or furniture down on your opponent’s sword and push it out of the way. I personally use this one all the time when my three shot combination doesn’t work out. My opponent cleverly negates my last attack and begins a counter attack. Having been fooled into thinking my shot was open I have committed to the line I am on. I am not able to parry or move off the line. My opponent has been clever enough to attack me in six so I can’t block with my off hand. The only option for staying alive is the elbow block.

Another Oh Shit Block that we covered was the punch block. These are ideal for when we are in a middle guard, and our opponent has attacked us around our waist line (right where we are holding our sword). The position of this attack makes it nearly impossible to parry normally. Often in this case I resort to a pivot, skip, retreat, or slope step (footwork). But, baring footwork, a punch block is all you can do. To perform a punch block simply strike at your opponents sword the last part of your forte. I like to hit it with the last couple of inches, and a bit of the bell. Also the pommel will work if you want. Just move your arm at the elbow downward and outward in a rapid beat like striking motion. After you have punched your opponent’s sword spring back online just like if you did a beat. Try to avoid dropping your weight or using the shoulder as this will slow your down and leave you unable to move. This takes some practice. Think about doing a snap punch with your furniture against your opponent’s sword.

Finally, we put people into the box. We had a line of two fencer approach together and fire out two shots each for a total of four shots which the person in the box had to block using only his/her sword. The person in the box is not allowed to back up, or parry with the off hand, just the sword. We did this at slow speed. Later after we cover off hand weapons we will try this again at higher speed and maybe with 3 people instead of two.

Last week we covered the most important topic in fencing… footwork. As Tristan is fond of saying “A fencer with average blade work and superior footwork will kick the c*@p out of a fencer with superior blade work and merely adequate footwork.”

We reviewed 3 different slope steps being used in place of the lunge, 2 different pivots (regular and step through), and the skip. We also used the slope step in a one step exercise with our partners. We learned the ever present counter cool move against the slope step, being the pivot. Finally we talked about schlager philosophy, which is chiefly centered on the fact that a schlager is awfully heavy so we have to treat it a little differently than an epee.

Things to think about:

• The schlager being heavy must act in a combination of shots, or a combination of shots and footwork to be successful. Simply throwing shot after shot will weary you out and won’t work on top of that.
• Lacking the blinding speed of the epee we may need to think about other ways to fool our opponent, eg slope step.
• We need to be stronger just to hold the stupid thing for 6 hours a day 3 days in a row at war. So we should start an exercise program which strengthens our forearm front and back, triceps, biceps, and possible other arm muscles. You can lift weights, do lots of drills with a heavy sword, or use a sand scabbard.
• The schlager will play differently than the epee. You will just have to go out and spar with it to get used to that.
• There are many different ways to build a schlager. You should experiment by borrowing other people’s equipment to find out what you like before you buy one yourself.
• You should really assemble your schlager in person at war for the best results. Schlager blades are highly variable and mail order is hit and miss at best.

Up next for this week, line drills featuring strength and endurance training. As usual bring your heavy schlager, long one if you have it, and be prepared to hold it out there for a long time. After that you will have to come and see.