Logan's Blog

When I say range, I mean the distance between you and your opponent. As every good Scola fighter knows there are four meaningful ranges. You are either out of range, in critical range, in lethal range, or finally as . Natalia likes to put it you are “in close and personal”. When you are out of range neither you nor your opponent can hit the other person without extensive footwork (read more than one advance, skipping, vaulting, leaping). At critical range you can reach out and touch your opponent with a long lounge. At lethal range you can touch your opponent with a simple extension. And finally, when you are at close range you and your opponent can slice and dice at will.

The range you are at has a huge impact on what is going on in your fighting. Normally, we like to fight at critical range. That way we are really fighting (not out of range) but we have a little bit of time to react when they attack. However, you can gain the advantage over your opponent by changing the range to suit your needs. Ideally you do this without your opponents knowledge. That way you can either be far away (not really engaged) and safe while they still think they can hit you with a lounge, or you can be in lethal range and just touch them with an extension. The tricky part is changing the range without them knowing. If you are fighting a charger, and want to be a little farther away to be safer, he is not going to be fooled by you retreating. He will just advance. Likewise if you want to sneak into lethal range for a lightning fast, where the hell did that come from, attack a simple advance will not work they will just back up.

A good way to mask the fact that you are changing the range is to circle while you do so. Now your opponent can’t identify a movement strait forward or backward. Rather he must deal with a spiral, which is much harder to read. Try to keep your range change subtle. Change it a little bit at a time. Your opponent will read large steps, so make the change small. Sometimes it will help to move your sword forward and backward while doing this as many fencers foolishly look at your sword as a point of reference. You need to just play with it to find out what works.

In contrast, we never want anyone to do this to us! You could wear yourself out thinking you are fighting at critical range when in fact you are to far away to lounge. Or you could get zapped. So, don’t be fooled. watch your opponents body. Gage the distance to them. Don’t be fooled by them extending the sword to make you feel like they are closer than they are.

Wow, been a long time since I updated this thing. Lets recap the last single session before XMas which was dealing with chargers via pivot.

Beating a charger via pivot actually falls into the larger category of skills, which is reading your opponent. It is important to try and read your opponent, what are their objectives, what are they going to do when I attack them, when will they attack me. In particular it is important to be able to distinguish between when they are attacking right now, and when they are in fact just feinting as a preparation for a real attack to come.

There are two good indicators that someone is attacking. In order to attack they must extend their sword. Also, given that you are maintaining the proper range and have not let them sneak up on you already (see later in this post), they will have to move their body towards you. Someone who has been classically trained will first extend the sword and second the body (a classic 1-2 lounge). However, you will see all variations on this. Some people will do both at the same time, other will lounge then extend, who knows. Assuming that they are going to attack in a classic lounge you can get the first indication of their attack by reading the shoulder. When they extend the sword their shoulder (on their sword arm) will rise up a bit. You can watch for this by placing the center of your gaze (which is like a good fencer unfocused and wide seeing) on their upper body and shoulder area. Then when their shoulder rises up you know that they are at least beginning to extend. Maybe at this point you wish to initiate a preemptive attack on their now extending hand. Maybe you want to prepare to parry.

The advantage of watching the shoulder is that it is the first possible tell that they are moving. However, the problem with the shoulder is that it only indicates an extension. The extension may be a feint, or other non threatening motion. This is why I prefer to watch the hips. When someone moves their body (like to lounge or slope step or advance) the first indication that they are doing so is in their hips. Depending on how squared up they are to you (with their hips facing you) their hips will either rotate, or move strait forward. It is impossible to lie with your hips (sexual innuendo aside). When the hips move forward, the rest of the person must do so also. So, assuming you are maintaining proper range, it will be impossible for your opponent to hit you without first moving forward either by advancing or lounging, or some combination there of.

The way this ties into chargers and pivots is that you can’t pivot against a uncommitted attack. Or rather, you can but it is a bad idea. If you pivot before your charger buddy is committed (read moving forward, rotating his hips), then he will be able to adjust his charge to track your pivot. He will then peg you right in the chest (yes! victory for brute strength!). Congratulations you are on your way to a big bruise, or worse. So, the solution is simple, don’t do that. Wait until you see their hips begin to move. Now that charger is committed to a strait line attack right through the space you are standing. PIVOT! Now you are not in that space. If you have time throw in a power eight parry on top of all that and you will be standing safely to the side as they blast through like a freight train. If you really have time, pivot, parry, and leave your sword pointed at them. You need to be careful while doing this however, because they could hurt them selfs by slamming into your point, which is now fixed in their path. So, be ready, keep your elbow bent, have a loose grip, be ready to drop the sword when the force gets to be to much. Not only does this work, but it looks super cool. Like a dexterous matador deftly evading and stabbing the poor brute strength bull.

I just read “The Liars’ Dance” in Crown’s book. Wow, that chapter struck me as so fundamentally true that I think I will base my next training period on it. I had to come in here and write about it to help myself internalize it.

Crown begins by reminding us that if when you attack, your opponent is “centered” (ready for the attack) you have no chance of hitting him. Therefore you must first uncenter him. The best way to do so is to lie to him, feint. Actually as I think about it now there are other ways to lie besides the feint. You could lead your opponent to believe that you are vulnerable with an invite, for now I am going to think about the feint.

It is not sufficient to lie. According to Crown you have to have two things in order to lie efectivly. You have to have “credibility and believability“. Credibility is the likelihood that your lie is in fact truth. As Crown correctly points out, someone who lies all the time will not be believed. In order to establish credibility it is necessary to tell the truth most of the time. This is where I am failing. I always feint for the first 1-2 attacks. My first attack is never meaningfully accept as a pick for an extended peripheral (primary hand or leg).

In retrospect I have faced opponents who at the time I perceived as unresponsive to my feints. I would attack them with a two or three shot combination and about shot two they gacked me in the face. In the past, I thought that they were just not interested in my attack. That they were so focused on their attack that they neglected to notice mine. In some cases that may have a glimmer of truth, however, I see now that the fact is they were not threatened by my attack. They did not believe my lie. They did not believe my lie because I lacked credibility. I had not first established the menace of my attack.

So, I learned to deal with that sort of opponent by letting them attack (playing the rock). That is what they wanted to do, so let them, then beat them on the counter attack (let them run screaming onto a line that I just closed because they didn’t bother to lie to me before they attacked). This tactic only works for so long. After you have done it for a couple of times your opponent begins to catch on (Hey every time I commit to my uberattack (TM) I get gacked in the face). This makes them more cautious, more random in what they might do, more dangerous. I was stuck with this sort of fighter. Now I see that I should try to establish credibility. This sort of opponent wants to believe that the uberattack is the way to win. So, I should feed them a couple of committed attacks. Let them think that I to believe in the uberattack, and then what have we here on the fourth attack Logan didn’t commit to the body but instead changed lines and delivered a perfect touch to the mask.

Also, I see that my fighting with other types of fencers has suffered because of my poor credibility. In general I need to work on delivering more committed single attacks to help establish the idea that you had better parry that first attack or it will certainly hit you!

The second part of the lie is believability. Believability is making your lie look as much like the truth as possible. In the case of a feint it is making your feint attack look so much like a real attack that your opponent parries. I understand this. I got over it a couple years ago. At the time I was in the habit of just sticking my sword out and moving it around expecting my opponent to believe I was attacking them. On some people that worked, however it was not enough. Many opponents saw that I was not threatening them, that my feint sometimes even didn’t point at their body, and that it did not move with intent. I was just sticking my arm out. I see a lot of scola fencers stuck in the same place. Since then I have learned to point my feints at threatening targets, to move the feint fast (giving the impression that I intend to continue on that line and that they must parry now or be to slow), to move the hips, shoulder, or feet (try making a small, 1 inch lunge) a bit or even to suggest a committed attack. I may come back to this later but for now I am going to say that my believability is much better than my credibility.

I think that believability has impact on my defense. I need to work on being more skeptical of other peoples attacks. I need to weight longer to defend. I need to force my opponent to make such a believable attack that in fact it becomes a real, committed attack. I will endeavor to not let people lie to me. To force them to tell the truth. To quote Crown directly by forcing my opponent to tell the truth I “become the locus of control of my opponent’s behavior”. That has a good ring to it.