Random post-Pennsic thinks, mentor/dependent edition

The first of a few different post-Pennsic posts! With thinks!

So I'm a particularly interesting case for people in terms of being a mentor in the Peer/Dependent sense - I have a kind of neat Venn diagram when it comes to areas of study.

So I'm a Master of Defense. I sword good. I happen to sword in some Very Period Ways - both because they're interesting to me, if we're a society that studies and recreates history then we should fight in a period fashion, and because (shockingly!) they *work*.

I'm a Master of the Laurel. I specifically study, recreate, and teach period combat and combat-related cultural miscellanea. This isn't focused on winning fights, but on knowing a system inside and out, the context for it, and being able to understand it as well as the cultural context surrounding it.

There's a good amount of crossover here. It's not 100% for sure, but it's there.

I could absolutely be approached by someone who wants to become my Provost (ie, dependent of a Master of Defense) and just Get Good At Swords. Sure, they'd absolutely have a very historical focus to the combat (see above, we're a historical studies group and also it works), but I wouldn't expect them to crack a book themselves. Rather, I'd be instructing them in a system because that's the best way (IMNSHO) towards the goal of Get Good At Swords.

I could also be approached by someone who wants to Get Good At Arts and Science and be an Apprentice. I could help with deep dives and an understanding of historical combat systems, the culture around them, and all of that - independent of "apply this system on the list field." I could also help with research in general, documenting your work, directions of study, heraldic-related studies, and a number of other non-combat things, I imagine.

I suspect that anyone who rolled up on me and asked to see if I'd be a mentor-human in the SCA though, would be sitting in the middle of the Venn diagram. I'm niche, and that's okay. But here's the thing that I'm kicking around in my brain - relationship symbols.

So in the East, provosts typically get a blue livery collar. Apprentices get a green belt. Now, on a couple levels it would amuse me to give a dependent a green collar or a blue belt as a token and sign of the relationship - I'm very much a proponent of "the relationship is defined by the two people in it, and they can use whatever symbols they like." On the other hand, I also think that a large part of wearing something like a provost collar, an apprentice belt, a cadet scarf, a squire belt, or whatever else is that it's a visible sign to people that you are dedicating yourself to that particular art. (Or "track" if that works better for you. Whichever.) It's an indication that they have a peer to whom they are responsible, and who is responsible for them. It's a sign to peers in that discipline that this person is trying to become ready to be a peer themselves. In the social landscape that is the SCA, that kind of identifiability can be really important.

So yeah. I could just do a collar and belt for someone and call it a day - though trying to make a green sword belt would be a fun project. But I dunno, there's a part of me which is just feeling like that's Too Much and a single thing would be preferable, despite the social flagging which is helpful.

Or maybe I'm just overthinking things now. That's certainly a thing that happens, especially after Pennsic.

Lord Baltimore's Challenge

 Once again, it's been a hot minute since I posted here. Good times, good times.

So yeah, I know that I've still got some yelling about Silver and more Fabris and Marozzo and knives and stuff sitting in my drafts folder, languishing and incomplete, but I'm going to instead write about some thoughts, takeaways, and ideas that I have from attending Lord Baltimore's Challenge this past weekend. I have a bunch of them, and they're varied, so buckle up.

The first day had three tournaments - sidesword, single rapier, and rapier/dagger. This was my first time playing in a judged tournament format, and it was interesting. We were encouraged to self-call hits if we felt something and the judges missed it, which did happen occasionally. The rules for the tournaments, assuming I'm remembering them correctly, went something like:

• Sidesword
  These rules were intended to represent a lethal duel.
• Each pairing was three passes, stopped when a single blow was struck. Points got totaled up over the course of the pool.
• Cut or thrust to the head or torso: 3 points
• Cut or thrust anywhere else: 1 point
• Opponent steps entirely out of the ring: 3 points
• If there is a simultaneous 3 point wound, neither fighter was awarded points for that pass. The pass was not refought. Consider parrying.
• If there is a 3 point wound struck at the same time as a 1 point wound, the fighter who struck the lethal blow receives 3 points and the other fighter gets nothing.
• When the first blow is struck, the other fighter can return an afterblow, but it has to be thrown immediately and they have a single tempo worth of action to use. (In practice, this wasn't all too different than "if you're already in motion..." in the SCA, but some exceptions happened.)
• After each pass, the ring director has the discretion to award a "technical point" to a fighter who displayed good skill with their blow. These only counted to break ties.
  
  
• Single Rapier
  Similar to the sidesword contest, these were intended to replicate a lethal fight. Rules were identical to sidesword with the following exceptions:
• Cut to the head was 3 points. Thrust to the head or torso was 3 points.
• Cut or thrust anywhere else was 1 point.

The last tournament was set up differently:

• Rapier and dagger
  This was more SCA rapier style, but with Very HEMA scoring. The rules were intended to replicate a contest or display of skill, rather than a lethal engagement.
• Thrust only! Head or torso was 3 points, anywhere else was 1 point. Leaving the ring was worth 3 points for your opponent.
• In the case of simultaneous blows, both scored.
• Bouts lasted 90 seconds or until a fighter reached 15 points. 
• When a blow landed, time stopped and the fighters reset.
• Technical points worked as before.

These were fought in round robin pools, and the top eight scoring fighters across all the pools advanced to a single elimination bracket. (They did top 16 last LBC but in the interest of time, it had to be reduced.) Through arcane math, points were normalized for the pools which had 5 fighters vs the ones who had 4. I wasn't particularly stressed about this though. (Which is a theme I'll come back to.) Also, ring directors applied the technical points somewhat differently - some tossed them around like candy, for any blow which was thrown in tempo and was clean. Notably, Guy Windsor was very strict with his use of them, handing them out only for what he felt were excellent displays of technical skill.

I helped judge the sidesword tournament; I didn't have the time to get together the higher armor required for it, and honestly I wasn't sure if my shoulder could have handled it. After being there, I suspect it could have, but it would have been extremely tired for the rapier and dagger tournament, which would have been upsetting. Judging was certainly fun, although stressful, and absolutely forced me to spin up the long disused fight recall skills.

Fighting in single rapier was enjoyable as all get out. Definitely a different setup than the SCA in a lot of ways, and pretty cut heavy, but it was still a good time. I didn't perform as well as I would have liked, but I'm simply not as used to dealing with cuts (which I will have to remedy), and next time I'd really consider going down to a 39" rapier blade with a little more heft to it. I did walk out of Guy's pool with three (3!) technical points though, which served as an excellent counter to my brain being a bit down on my fencing. I was disappointed that I didn't do better, but I wasn't really angry with myself. I just have some concrete things to work on, is all. If you know me at all well, this will strike you as a shockingly well-adjusted response. It sure surprised me!

Rapier and dagger went similarly. I thought I performed quite well, though of course I have some things I need to work on there as well. Things to improve, but I wasn't stressed or angry about them. The vagaries of points kept me out of the top 8, but that's fine. I was wiped the hell out anyway, so getting to run back to the hotel a little sooner than normal and grabbing a shower was worth it.

Let's pause here during my recounting of the day's events and poke at a couple things. It was really weird to not be actively annoyed at my perception of my fencing. I think there are a few different reasons why, but the big ones had a lot to do with the atmosphere: I was just there to fence my best fencing - I wanted to bring my Fabris game and do it as well as I could, and if I did it well enough I should therefore do well in the tournament and that's good! That was it, though. Nobody was sitting around judging me. There wasn't pressure to Fight As Well As A Master Of Defense Should. I didn't need to put on a show or maintain a level of skill or anything. There were zero expectations on me that I felt like I had to fulfill in terms of how well I fought. I imagine that it would have been quite similar, if not more striking, for people who don't have these fencing awards - nobody's watching and judging and opining on whether you're Good Enough or anything like that. You could just go and do your best, whatever it was in that moment, and that's all. This was so goddamn refreshing, y'all. 

Seriously like... is this what a mentally healthy examination of a day's fencing is? Weird.

Let's talk about another thing that came up during the tournament: stepping entirely out of the ring was equivalent to a fatal blow struck against you. I loved this. I loved this so much. You actually needed to pay attention to where you were. You couldn't just retreat endlessly. No recentering. Not even a hold and restart. You either stopped and parried, moved sideways, or you lost. I want to do this so badly. Sure, I mean, if I'm doing a By The Book kind of thing, I can pull up (for instance) a stage size from my blog posts about it and set up a list to those dimensions and say if you put a foot out you've fallen off and lose. That's a really specific setting, though - the type of person to enjoy a By The Book tournament would probably be tickled by that kind of historic note. But most fencers in most other tournaments? Maybe not so much. But I want to do it anyway. 

The rings were 8 meters in diameter, which was plenty of room for us. They were using these foam interlocking pieces sold by Purpleheart Armory, though they aren't currently listed on their site. When they were, they were something like $535, which is a bit prohibitive to casually pick up. (This sounded like a lot to me, then I did the math about how long that circumference would be.) They were really cool though - not remotely a tripping hazard, but enough to give you feedback if you stepped on it, and enough that you can see them while you fight. Much better than ropes as a boundary if you're using this kind of rule. Other concerns for doing this in a tournament would be that lists must be of a uniform size and shape. I prefer circles for this because, honestly, no corners to get stuck in. So I'll be idly poking around for ideas for making this kind of list work. Lilias suggested cable covers, which might be a good place to start, if I can find some which aren't expensive and also can take a curve. We'll see.

Moving on! Sunday had classes - which is one of the two biggest reasons for me to go to these kinds of things! 

I ended up starting with Kaja Sadowski's classes on Godinho's two sword material, which was tons of fun to play with, great to learn about, and honestly a chill movement warmup for the morning. To summarize: Godinho's two sword material is all about crowd control and surviving. Not beating everyone there, but living until help comes or you get away. It's really cool and playing around with it in that context is great.

I followed these up with Guy Windsor's classes on Controlling The Story, which was about both mindset things and also maintaining blade control, as well as his class on diagnosing and figuring out fixes for fencing problems. These were excellent, and I'm looking forward to applying the lessons learned here in building drills and fixing the problems I noted the day before.

The other big reason I go to these things? The people. Getting to hang out and socialize and chat about nerdy sword things with other nerdy sword people is a joy. I was lucky enough to be able to spend time with David Biggs, and he generously let us examine and (carefully) take out some of the Actual For Reals Very Sharp antiques that he had. I've noticed it before, but I was struck by it again - these blades vanish if they're pointed at you correctly. Remy got some pictures of us with them (all the photo credit is his, and thank you for letting me use them), and as weird as it is to see it in this form, let me tell you, it's bonkers scary to experience it.

Here I am in my "I have been on a plane and traveling and am tired" Fabris stance. Spot where the blade is. For bonus points, tell me if you can guess the size of it and how far it is from you.

Remy's here in a more upright Capo Ferro stance. There isn't much more of the blade to see in here, either.

Finally, here I am with Guy Windsor, as we show each other how scary it is and why using swords properly was a thing people did.

The third picture really illustrates a lot to me - if anyone ever thinks, "Why do I need to find my opponent's sword? I can just take a bazillion other positions that work well," I think they're missing a really important historical point - actual rapiers are scary, they're sharp, and it's really hard to see them clearly. Our simulators have tips which stand out, and wider blade geometry which makes a difference too. If someone was pointing something like this at you, trying to put your sword right in the way and doing your best to close that line is what hopefully keeps you from panicking and dying.

Anyway! This was an absolutely amazing time, I had tons of fun, I got to see people I haven't seen in literally years and catch up with them and also be giant sword nerds with them and I cannot wait to see if this happens again next year. If it does, I will absolutely be there.

Pennsic 48 Recap Post!

So Pennsic 48 happened! It had a number of things I wanted and needed, a few things I sure didn't want or need, and some pretty surprisingly good moments.

I did land grab. I didn't really want to do it, but I did it because I for sure did want a camp this year. It was an Experience, and one that I don't reeeeeeally need to do again. I could be convinced - pretty easily, honestly - to show up earlier during Peace Week, but I just don't need to be there without the full collection of My People, especially when my brain decides to be terrible.

Either way though, we had a camp! It happened! Many thanks to Llewellyn for making the trip down with me and being a Very Able Companion for the whole experience - it would have turned the corner into Ridiculously Bad without him. Also, I think that having some new people do the land grab thing highlighted things in the process (and things in the trailer!) which could be improved just because new folks doing the thing tends to make those things show up. So that was actually a pretty good upshot from it all.

My fencing wasn't as all encompassing as it usually is; my tennis elbow was bad enough that I fought in the heroic champs and then decided to marshal all the war point battles just to be sure that I could save it for the By the Book tournament, which is always a highlight. (I was hoping to be able to manage the Ansteorran tournament as well, but no such luck.) I always love the By the Book - there are always so many exemplars of period styles in there, and the sword-nerding as we all stand around and watch is top-notch. This year, I ended up winning both the tournament itself as well as best in style (Fabris, natch) with LOGOS coming in second in both of those. I was extremely stoked, I can tell you what. Absolutely worth taking the battles off to manage that! Getting in some pickups with LOGOS as well was super great; getting my once-yearly Fabris tuneup is always, always worth it.

I missed being out on the field with my friends and contributing to the rapier army, but if I'm not going to fight there's basically no reason not to marshal! That said, I found myself legitimately enjoying the marshaling. Being able to get a number of different vantage points was pretty neat, and being able to do something about it when someone - on either side - was skirting the rules? That was pretty neat.

I pulled a bunch of marshal in charge shifts on the field. A bunch during the first week - being able to just sit and relax and watch the world go by was a lot of what I needed. Being able to sit and watch a torrential thunderstorm come in while I was standing by myself was honestly also amazing. Generally though, I figured that if I was going to be sitting around up there anyway and there was an open shift, I'd just do something useful and hang out at the desk. (As an aside, the small marshal's tent off to the side of the main rapier tent? Amazing and I love it.)

I managed to not attend any classes - some that I wanted to attend were on top of things I couldn't miss, and other ones were just at odd times or I was feeling off so I just kept hanging out behind a desk. I did end up teaching a Fabris class though, which was pretty great!

Finally, the people. There are people who I only ever manage to see at Pennsic, which makes me want to go to far-away places and see them more. I met a couple excellent people from Drachenwald, and there's always Lochac to consider, too. Friends who are closer are still also fantastic to get to hang out with for days on end, and there were a lot of lazy afternoon and late night conversations which meant a lot to me.

So overall, a pretty okay Pennsic. Like usual, I'm coming out with a to-do list of good and helpful things to do - the first of which (aside from unpacking and doing laundry) is this very blog post so I'm going to hit publish now and get working on more good things! (Like using this blog more often.)

What We've Been Up To

So in the last couple months, what have I been up to?

I've been doing PT for my arm. It's not fun, but it's getting better. Fencing isn't the Way It Used To Be, but it's a ton closer to it than it was just before the surgery, so I really can't be too unhappy. Of course, I feel like I've backslid a lot, so I'm trying to shore things up. Gotta do more drills, focus on body mechanics and positioning, and then move into blade mechanics and moving smoothly from the balls of my feet.

Similar to before the surgery, I'm getting a lot more cloak work in then I ever did before, which is pretty grand. I don't feel like I can rely on it yet, but getting to work through plays with it and compare it to similar dagger plays from Fabris is proving really interesting.

Let's see. The East has a grappling experiment now! It's slow to take off - this time of year means we're all inside, and most floors are less forgiving to fall on than grass, and mats can be hard to come by. There'll be a small class/show and tell thing at Birka though, and Anastasia and I are planning to do a practice tour if we can to get more people up and running. I've really been enjoying the compare and contrast of different plays that this can open up though, as well as letting me get to really work with Fiore's knife defenses in a more freeform environment. Good stuff, and it shows me where some pretty giant holes are in my understanding - both practical and research - which is always nice to be updated on.

Speaking of research, I just wasn't able to pull together my paper for A&S Champs. The winter's been pretty bad for me, and sleep has been a terrible lie. I'm a little down about it, but I'll help out at the competition in other ways, and pull it together for later. It isn't like I'm going to stop researching and learning and teaching, anyway.

Oh also, VISS! It's a VISS year, and this year I'll be mainlining a Fabris-based intensive, which means I'll be mentally rolling around in a lot of material to really internalize, as well as things I can actually use as I'm assembling a Book Two work. So that's awesome! I always look forward to VISS, and I'm hoping that this year it'll really knock this funk off me but good.

Right, it's time for drills.

Still here!

Well, it's been another long break between updates. So what's been going on?

Not terribly much that's new, really. I'm still working on piecing together a research paper on Fabris; that's fleshing itself out slowly - mostly, I just need a couple good stretches of uninterrupted time in front of the computer with some manuals to pull references from to get cranking on it. I'm hoping to get it done in time for St. Elegius this year, and then probably enter it into K&Q Arts and Science champs in the winter. So that'll be cool if it comes together.

I'm definitely teaching an intro to Fabris at Pennsic, which is pretty terrifying. I don't think it'll have a handout, but I could change my mind on that.

Practice has had ups and downs; I've been feeling more immobile lately, heavy on my feet without much body motion. Also, getting into Just Fighting for Pennsic is running up against Working Specific Things in my head. Fortunately, I can practice the former on my own and fling myself into fights for the latter and it'll get shaken out readily enough.

I'm really looking forward to Pennsic, though. There should be a giant pile of good historic swordplay there for me to throw myself into, and I'm hoping to learn quite a bit.

Finally, it looks like Alfieri's La Scherma will be seeing a translation by Piermarco Terminiello in the near future, and I'm really excited to be able to get my hands on that!

That's it for now; hopefully I'll be able to get in a pre-Pennsic update with some real progress on my paper.

Ongoing Project Thing

This entry is mostly just a reminder to me to Keep Doing Good Art (and also Science), and also just throwing a couple questions out to the crowd.

I'm in the very early stages of a couple A&S papers/projects/things. I think they'll start as papers and be primarily based in that kind of format, but could well explode into including poster displays and whatnot, just because I can see that sort of thing coming from here.

I'm starting to outline what's basically an extrapolation of Fabris' principles - basically, "based on what he says about single, dagger, and cloak, how would Fabris have you fight with X, Y, or Z item" which I think will be interesting to me, if not too many other people. I'm a fan of taking an underlying system and applying it to see what falls out.

The other idea isn't even in the outline stage - I want to do a comparison of visual depictions of Fabris' plays and his stances. Specifically, I really want to look at the 1601 version of Fabris in the Copenhagen library, but I can't find any scans or photographs of it yet. I know that the folks at Wiktenauer were hoping to get high-res photographs of it up online, and I have an email in to them to see how that's going, but until then I think I'm stymied there.

Practical fencing is coming along. Mostly mindset, but I've got a new set of drills and things to focus on for the next few weeks, which will probably help me out a pretty good deal.

Also, I've committed to teach an Introduction to Fabris class at Pennsic, so I'm busy hyperventilating about that, too!

That's about it this week; hopefully I'll get that first outline set up to the point where I can kick around thoughts here.

Yup, this thing is totally still on!

It's been a bit of a break. Not as long as some that have happened here, so there's that!

Mostly, I've just been caught up in (good!) Real Life Stuff, and also feeling super drained by other (bad!) Real Life Stuff. But anyhow, let's move on. This is just going to be a short update with what I've been up to, and also just getting myself back into the habit of regular updates here.

Most of my writing time has been going into a paper for A&S Champions next month. Rather than writing about rapier, I'm focusing on some combat that we really can't safely do competitively in the SCA - sickles. I'm not sure I'm completely satisfied with the paper, but submission deadlines wait for no one, and I can always make revisions later on after the competition. Despite this, I'm really excited that in addition to all the other awesome stuff happening that day, that I can stand around and talk to people about what Mair felt the proper method was for us to kill each other with farming equipment!

Next month I'm lucky enough to be going out to VISS again; I'm looking forward to some fantastic classes, and being able to bring a bunch of new knowledge back to people to share.

Practice is still going strong! I both enjoy and am frustrated by the continuing practice to work on good period technique on its own, and then begin to integrate it combatively. Fortunately, "good period technique" is also just "good technique" so it all works out well. Lately, I've been having trouble with acting in the right tempo; too much thinking about what to do and paying attention to doing it exactly right as opposed to just doing it and letting it get more right over time. Fortunately, drilling this is a super helpful thing!

Speaking of, I've been doing more solo practice lately and I've got some thoughts kicking around on solo drilling, what it's good for, what it's bad for, and useful directions to take it in. I think that'll be my next entry, which should be up very soon.

That's that!

Back at St. Elegius and ahead to A&S Champions!

Wow, I never wrote anything on St. Elegius! Let's take a few minutes and fix that now.

While I had never competed in it before, the A&S competition at St. Elegius has long been a favorite of mine. Each competitor chooses what level they will compete at, ranging from Novice (<3 years in the SCA) or Novice (<3 years working at the art you're competing with) through the experienced and Laurel level. Competitors are judged by other entrants who are competing at that level, and experienced artisans and Laurels are on hand to help the folks who are judging. The fact that your fellow entrants are judging your entry really lends an air of camaraderie to the experience, and rather than keeping you in your chairs all day behind your entry you end up getting to talk to all the other entrants about each other's art and science, and it can really bring about a giant pile of people enthusiastically going on about their area of study to folks who may or may not know much about it at all. (As a bonus, it also introduces newer artisans to the idea that someday, they may well need to evaluate candidates for an A&S Order who Do An Art that you have no real experience in.)

Originally, I'd only intended in competing in the Art of Fencing side competition that our newest OGR (as of Court at the end of the event, and congratulations to him!) Don Christoffel had put together. There was a bit of organizational confusion at check-in about who was taking signups for that, so I was encouraged to enter the primary competition of the day while everything was sorted out. I wasn't expecting to do this, I didn't feel prepared, but I had an essay and my manuals with me because I'd decided to wildly overdo it for the Art of Fencing competition, so I let myself be peer-pressured into it. I decided to completely throw caution to the wind and compete at the Laurel level, filled out my entry forms, and found a table.

I was lucky enough to be able to save a seat next to me for Lorenzo, who I understand was also convinced to compete in the primary competition at the Experienced level. I forget who else was sitting around us, but at least we'd have our little Martial A&S Corner between the two of us, and worst case we'd just talk to each other about swords all day, right?

It turns out that there was only one other entry at the Laurel level - Galfridus was entering with from-scratch couscous, made in a period clay vessel for doing so. It was really, really great! (Both the presentation, the cooking vessel, and the food.) It was set up similar to a modern double boiler, with the stew steaming the couscous. I had no idea what couscous really was in a from-scratch sense, and I think that food as an A&S entry is always a favorite - being able to directly sample the entry is wonderful on a number of levels. Frankly, I loved Galfridus' entry.

Beyond Galfridus, I spoke with a couple other Laurels who were filling in as extra judges, and they seemed to enjoy what I had to say. Lots of questions and answers and swordchatting happened, and it was a really good time.

The Art of Fencing competition happened after the primary competition wrapped up; we had five entrants who walked the judges and an audience through a plate of their choice. There was a range of skill, choices, viewpoints, and interpretations, and discussion around the plates, and I think it was a really enjoyable and educational time for everyone. While the contestants were sequestered away for the judges to talk, we had some really solid discussions about how to work on the visibility and understanding of martial arts and sciences, and also what some of us had for ideas going forward to learn and try out. (Spoiler: I should make myself some poleaxes sometime. Also, longsword fun!)

In the end, I ended up winning the St. Elegius competition at the Laurel level (and I posted the paper I put together here - it lacks any of the discussion I had, but you can get that basically any time just by asking), and I came in second to Lorenzo in the Art of Fencing challenge - his discussion about the process behind his interpretation of the plate he chose was excellent.

Looking ahead to A&S Champions, I think I'm going to be poking at something that doesn't require as much immediate physical demonstration (though it can still have some if we decide to go outside) and also involve things that we can in no way do under our rapier rules. Which is to say, I think I'm going to crack open some Fiore. I'm pretty excited about this; I've loved a lot of his armizare, and don't get to really dive into it very often, so this should be a lot of fun.

For a slight topic switch, I've been enjoying the stage fighting videos by this Czech group. The longsword fight has been making the rounds recently, and it's got a lot of material in it that's clearly taken from actual manuals, and that's pretty great to see being used to help stage a really well done and entertaining fight scene!

I arted a thing!

While I need to put together a Real Blog Post about St. Elegius and some thoughts on martial A&S in the East (and how awesome it is!) I wanted to take five minutes and be super excited that I Arted A Thing!

So a couple weeks ago, Martin was going to fight for me (again!) in Crown Tourney and this time There Was Going To Be A Real Favor, Dammit. And one had been lingering half-done for ages, but let's be real here; nothing motivates like a deadline so this finally got made!

It's a badge on a belt flap! Yay!

I didn't use anything like Specific Period Materials - I used a piece of white fabric that was sitting around in the craft room, and Anastasia found the red felt for me. She also taught me the Two Whole Stitches that I used - a blanket stitch and a back stitch. Hems were shamelessly machine done.

I realize that this is ridiculously simple and all, but I'm super tickled that I Arted A Thing and did something ridiculously new to me, and I'm going to do the equivalent on this blog of hanging it on the refrigerator door.

And in a day or so, a St. Elegius Post!

Post-Pennsic Post and Bonus Practice Report

It's a little late, but here's a quick and messy What I Remember About Pennsic summary, followed by a Monday night practice report.

As with all Pennsic summaries this year, I have to open by saying: So, how about that weather? It sure was awful; the loss of the woods was sad, and the field closures were also sad, but when the heat index is (I was told) 106* or so, yeah, I can see just closing things to prevent idiots from hurting themselves. (Though the folks in the By The Book tournament all were hydrating and doing so well!) Still and all, I think we avoided a number of heat injuries with that decision, so props to Fraiser for making the difficult call and putting up with people being cranky. (Which I admit I was one of, but he was super reasonable and great.)

Weather aside, there was some great fencing to be had. Champions was blessedly early in the week, a trend which I'm very fond of. We had some delays build up over the course of the day, but I actually rather liked Sunday being All The Sword Champions Stuff all one after the other - belted, unbelted, rattan heroics, rapier melee, rapier heroics... the whole bundle of it all.

I got to fight in two of my usual favorite tournaments this Pennsic - the Ansteorran tournament and the By The Book tournament - which given my otherwise bonkers schedule was both lucky and necessary. The Ansteorran tournament was run well, with tasty tasty food and excellent fencers. I lost to Tora Taka (again - but I've laid blade on him before and I will again. Next year! Neeeeext yeeeeeear!) and another gentleman that I can't recall. I felt fine about most of my bouts, but the second loss just bothered me; I felt like I fell out of my head and I suffered because of it.

The By The Book tournament was amazing - I always love the crowd that turns up for it, and the sideline conversations are helpful, enlightening, and insightful. We ended up with pools of like styles, which meant that I got a few good Capo Ferro and Fabris bouts in before it was called on account of heat. I left feeling like I was in a pretty good place with my Fabris. Not fantastic, but pretty good.

(For non-fencing things: Seeing friends get well-deserved awards is always amazing. Sorcha and Lupold are now members of the Order of the Golden Rapier, which is fantastic. Dio and Doroga are both Silver Rapiers now, Eon has his AoA, and Meggie has an Augmentation of Arms. I was lucky enough to get to read Ruslan's Tyger of the East scroll in English, which was a blast. I also got Court done on Wednesday in under two hours, and had a number of very able assistants for that, without which I would have lost my mind.)

Of note, I was able to get in some bouts and conversation with Master Miguel from Ansteorra as well as Trey from the Chicago Sword Guild, and unsurprisingly I walked away from all of that with some thoughts on what I should work on; combined with practice this past Sunday and Monday, I'll have a pretty good list of things to pay attention to for a while.

On to practice thoughts!

Sunday practice was in the good Doctor's backyard. Did some slightly (but only slightly!) slowed down fencing with Meggie, which was great. Also worked on some more upright postures with Rowan, and Moar Fabris with Anastasia.

Monday had me feeling a little off, though. I don't really have a good sense for why; I've been stressed about some unrelated things lately, and maybe I just had too much in my brain. Either way though, I at least walked away with some confirmation of Fabris thoughts that I've had, so it was still very useful time spent!

Here's where I'm at, then. Besides all my usual stuff - footwork, smooth movement, balance, voids:

• I'm being very deliberate in my guard transitions. Fine for drills, bad for fighting. Speed them up.
• Stay more relaxed, and snap tight at the end. (I think of this as similar to how I was taught kata.)
• More mobility. Play with measure like I used to.
• Practice moving from a lunge to a pass.
• Stop relying on binds (or opposition with blade contact) so much. Go reread some of Fabris' plays; there are lots that rely on tempo and not contact.
• Remember that when I'm using an extended guard, action is going to start from further out.

And now I know!

Conditioning

Having just gotten back from Pennsic, I'm going to touch on a topic that was deeply meaningful for a number of the grossly hot and humid days spent fencing there: Conditioning. Seriously, it's a thing. It's important, and it pays dividends in terms of your fighting.

I'd wager that most of us are fencing for one or both of two reasons: we like being competitive and kickass at swords, or we like doing sweet recreations of period manuals. Both of these have solid reasons for conditioning behind them, in their own ways. Let's take them one at a time.

Competitive combat. What we do out there with swords is an athletic activity, to be sure. If you think of yourself as a competitive athlete, why not treat yourself like one? Anaerobic exercise for individual bouts. Aerobic exercise for long tournaments. (Cardio. Always more cardio.) Strength for being able to move your weapon around quickly, smoothly, forcefully, and well. Flexibility for moving your body around and avoiding injury. These are all really important, and just going to practice isn't really going to work them all.

Look at any Olympic fencer, and think about how much they drill and practice - and on top of that, they still find the time to keep working conditioning exercises. If just raw practice and drills were enough to get the body built up, they sure wouldn't be doing any other conditioning - they are ridiculously efficient with their time and effort, and if there was a better way, they'd be doing it. For something closer to home, take a look at the armored combat people who are the serious contenders for Crown and ask them how much they work out when they decide to go fight. I bet most hit the gym pretty regularly.

Practice is absolutely necessary, but it doesn't work the whole body particularly well at all. (Compare your off-hand to your primary hand. Yeah. That's a thing.) Yet you need that whole body to fence really effectively. At least work some cardio in. Stretch regularly - every day, if you can. Consider strengthening exercises. It won't feel like much as you go, but based on the fact that I was still able to fight at the end of the melees this year, despite the crushing heat? Yeah, I blame having spent some real time actually exercising regularly. (If nothing else, we're all getting older, and exercise helps hold off the impact of entropy just a little bit longer. I'll do a whole lot to squeeze out one more year of fencing in my life.)

Let's move to recreation of period manuals. I could talk about how it's still athletic, and it still takes effort, and that's all true. But you're here for the manuals, so let's go look at two of them - specifically Fabris and di Grassi.

Fabris notes of his particular postures, "In order to properly learn how to keep your body low in this manner, you will need a fair amount of practice and hard work." Of his extended guards in general, he notes that they "can be fatiguing" and of particular ones "keeping the arm in this position for a long time is tiring." These are all good arguments for spending time growing stronger and more flexible.

Looking at di Grassi, though, is amazing. At the end of his manual, he has a section entitled, "On Training Alone In Order To Acquire Strength." He literally has a section telling the reader to go exercise. You can't get any better than that. One of the masters felt it was important enough to write down. So I guess if you're going to be working on recreating a manual, you should go work out. Giacomo di Grassi says so.

In all fairness, I get that most people aren't fencing as a lifestyle choice. It's a hobby, and people are going to make perfectly reasonable choices about how best to spend their time. However, I do think that if you're working hard on trying to get your fencing to the next level that spending some time to get the meat-car you live in tuned up to make it that much easier to properly perform the correct actions over and over again is very likely time well spent, and it'll end up showing in your fencing.

And that's what I wanted to get off my chest about conditioning. Next entry, we're back to Fabris!

Practice Report

Since I haven't had time to turn the draft Fabris post into a real post, I'm going to do another practice report while I can still remember what I did and talked about last night!

• Warmup fights with Anastasia went well. Decent energy, and I was rotating through guards pretty well.
• Fighting Lupold went less well; it felt like I was stuck in an "I'm working on stuff" rut but I wasn't really working on anything in particular? Lower energy, disengaging mentally, and I think it showed hard. Also, my offline steps and dynamic body movements were basically nonexistent, and I had zero transition from an upright stance into a lean. Ugh.
• Worked some with Meggie; I felt like this went really well for both of us. I kept trying to work on good disengages, cavaziones, or just turning over into a good crossing, but my debole just kept falling into her forte, and my crossing was nonexistent. Boo.
• I picked back up a lot when fighting Malocchio; it's hard to stay low energy there, and I was going off-book a lot there too, but generally in ways that had to happen? Still, I felt a lot better mentally after those.
• The night ended with some bouts against Wil Deth, and I got my clock cleaned. Fortunately, I got some great feedback after! He felt that while my steps might have been really clean, they were also very deliberate, big, and obvious. He's sure not wrong; gotta tighten that up a lot. Smaller, smoother steps. Also, I need to work on my passing steps more; they're fine in drills, but I never use them in practice.

Not sure what to do about general energy levels. Stay hydrated, eat a bit more before practice, and do some jumping jacks to wake the hell up between bouts? No idea, but I'll take what I can get there.

Most of my technical issues I'll be working on with drills. Remy and I were doing opposition work and the Capo Ferro hierarchy last week, and I think that'll help with the bladework issues. Going to focus more on my feet while I do solo drills, too. I'm thinking my usual set of precise lunges, steps, and passes should be followed by ones done at speed to get that moving in my head, and finish with slower ones to double-check technique. Also voids still, because I want more dynamic body movement, along with doing upright extension-lean-lunge both slowly and at speed, similar to footwork.

So a solid night of practice, and a good selection of items to work on for next week. Good deal!

The Economy of Tempo and Measure

It's time for more post-VISS rambling! Rather than talk about concrete technique type things, I'm in the mood to kick around some higher conceptual type things - specifically tempo, measure, the relationship between them, and what it means for the fighter.

I tend to work from the Italian framework of rapier theory. In general, this means that closer is better. If my opponent gives me a tempo to work with, I'm generally going to respond by closing. (Striking with my sword is closing of a sort, too. It's just a very final closing.) If I can't close safely, I want to set myself up to be able to do so. If I can ever avoid backing up, I will. (Ever notice how many actions in the Italian - and many other - manuals involve closing, and basically none involve giving ground? I heard some good theories about this from Tom Leoni - in short, if you're on a battlefield you don't want to back up because the ground is littered with tripping hazards and falling is death. In a duel, leaving the circle is losing. Not stepping into areas that you don't have eyes on can dramatically limit these issues.)

The problem with being close to my opponent - ideally close enough to strike with an extension or at most a "firm footed lunge" - is that any tempo I work inside gets shorter and shorter the closer I get. In terms of keeping myself alive, I don't like working inside a short tempo. I want more time to think, to react, and to respond to the attack. If I'm the one doing the attacking then a short tempo is awesome, but the first thing we need to be concerned about is defense, and only then do we consider offense, so there we go.

This leads to something which I've started to mentally refer to as the economy of tempo and measure. They seem to work on an inverse relationship; if you want more of one, you're giving up something from the other. There are some ways you can impact the exchange rate for specific actions, but you're still working against that relationship no matter what. We've all played with this, whether we really understood what was happening or not. Any time you lean or step back as you parry, you're selling off distance to increase the length of the tempo you're responding in. If you close with your attack, you're selling down that tempo to buy back some of that distance.

The more I mull this idea over, the more it gets increasingly clear just how much these two concepts encompass so much of the fight. This was pretty obvious to me before, but now it's become obvious in the way that the sun is kind of a thing that you notice in the sky.

Partly because of an increased mental emphasis on doing drills correctly, I'm looking at setting up exchanges to be what I want them to be. That's far from universally successful for me, but the point is that one of the keys to this is understanding how what you're doing will be impacted by the tempo and measure you're working within, and how it will impact them in turn. If I'm closing, I want to set things up so that whatever my opponent does will require a far longer tempo than what I plan on doing. Sure, realistically, there'll be people who just have insanely fast hand speed, and that's fine - but if you're able to play with the fundamentals really well, that doesn't matter because they just need to take such a huge tempo to strike you that even if they're speeding through the motion, you still have time to strike them safely.

This really feels to me like one of those Matrix moments. Once you've started to see the source code, you can't unsee it. This doesn't remotely mean that body mechanics, moving in good order, or any other fundamentals are unimportant, or even less important. Rather, it highlights the importance of training all of those things so that you can perform them so efficiently that you can shave down the tempo you need, or have a much more fine control over measure.

What I've been up to, and there's this event next week!

Most of what I've been up to lately is just cleaning up my fighting, making it work better, and reminding myself of broad concepts like "footwork" and "timing" and "taking control of the fight, come on, you know what you should be doing here aaaaaaagh."

...okay, that last may have more to it than just a broad concept, but still.

Anyway! This is mostly to let you know that if you haven't heard of it, you should totally come out to Voyages of Discovery next week! It's all A&S research presentations, all the time!

I am even now putting together a 5th grade book report poster in which you can see the guards and lunges of Capo Ferro and Fabris side by side through the wonder of photoshop! Marvel at how wacky and different they are!

So that's what I'm up to. And y'all come out to the event, it's gonna be great.

Hey, is this thing still on? Or, an update!

So hey, blogging about stuff I'm doing. That's a thing I should do more of. Then again, I haven't had a free weekend since my last update a month ago, so here we are.

In short, then:

• I put together the belt that was pictured in the last entry. Turned out too small for me, so I gave it to someone else and made another one. I've still got a long, long way to go even with super sketchy and not really real leatherworking skills, but belts are fun. I don't do anything really pro like slicking down edges, but whatever. 
• I used rivets for them, mostly because I think that if I tried to stitch all them by hand, I'd have lost my mind. Still, that's a goal.
• I need to make a white belt (Yes, as a gift. Shush.), so I'm resorting to the acrylic leather paint, because I don't want to buy a whole damn side of white leather.
• Fabris! I'm reading the manual, and I'm not really deep into the plates at all for purposes of actually fighting with it. I'm mostly trying to get the basic body mechanics down, and get used to moving while I'm in the postures. I'm tending to train lower than I fight, which is 100% okay in my book right now. 
• Capo Ferro! I mostly default to this when I'm just Fighting My Fight, which is also 100% okay in my book. I need to do a little more drilling with upright footwork, just to remind me that it's also a thing.
• In terms of fighting my fight, I need to remember to just relax and do that more, and trust that a lot of the deeply period stuff will filter in over time, because that's what drills are for. I just want to make sure that I still retain my general level of prowess, but also that I've integrated enough Fabris for the By The Book tourney next year at Pennsic.
• Finally, I'm going to be doing a poster display for Voyages of Discovery that should be contrasting the guard stances of Capo Ferro and Fabris, and the similarities and differences between them. I expect to be doing a lot of excited talking and demonstrating things, and I'm really looking forward to it.

That's where I'm at with Stuff What Tends To Show Up On This Blog!

Post-Pennsic Plans and Such

Pennsic happened! As is usual, I'm coming out of it with a lot more enthusiasm for Doing Stuff and Learning Things and Teaching It All.

So this entry is really more for me than for my readers (ha, like there's more than one of you) but here we go.

• Fencing is life. Keep doing that. Drills, fighting, more fitness and conditioning, the whole ball of wax.
• While I'm enjoying working on Capo Ferro, I really want to start trying to work on Fabris. It's super interesting, deeply cool, and visually distinctive. I have no idea where to start, but it's pretty exciting to me.
• Take so many notes from all my Destreza classes at DeKoven.
• Finalize my C&T gear. Some of it is in the mail, the rest I can assemble without much of a problem after that. Then I can work on some Manciolino and Fiore woo! 
• Hey, I should get a less wobbly blade for my longsword. Huh.
• Prepare for the Carolingian academic event's poster display. Aaaaaaaaaaah. I'm looking forward to it, but aaaaaa.
• Internalize some of Fiore's basic grappling and knife plays, so I can teach a class on them.
• Leatherworking! Make those belts for myself and others! Make a buff coat! So much riveting and sewing!
• Do more heraldry! Pretty straightforward.
• Basic camp life improvements and repairs. Gotta repair the clothesrack with heavier cross-braces, and maybe make a new bedframe.

That's that, really. It was a fantastic couple of weeks, and I'm gonna ride this enthusiasm train as long as I can.

Hey, is this thing still on?

So real life happened, and I fell off of updating this. My bad.

I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Going through Capo Ferro again; both Leoni's translation and Windsor's training manual based on it.

I also picked up a new translation of Giganti, by Aaron Miedema. I haven't gotten into it yet, but I really can't wait. Miedema seems to have a lot of issues with Leoni's translation and how he's interpreting the actions. I love Leoni, but questioning these sorts of things is how we improve our understanding, so I think I'm going to be doing a couple rereads along with Leoni's.

I think the Thursday night Carolingian practice is slowly starting to turn a lot of historically-minded people into a pack of Italian rapier folks, which makes me happy. (It's not everyone there by a long shot, but that's not the point.) There's a single Meyer holdout, but that's cool. He keeps us on our toes.

I'm idily putting together a class on Finding The Blade and Guards and Counter-Guards. I've got the material in my head, I just need an excuse to put some notes down on paper, and maybe a handout. I should find an event that has classes at it to teach.

That's about it! I'll try and get more stuff up here more regularly, and not slack off quite so much.