Flashcards and Flow

I know, I said I was going to talk about lessons and consistencies that we've seen so far in Book Two of Fabris. Well, time remains a terrible lie and instead I'm going to chat about some other things I've been kicking around in my head. Specifically, flow drills.

I've loved using flow drills when I'm practicing longsword or sidesword. They're dead simple: just flow your cuts together, moving from guard to guard smoothly. They almost automatically scale themselves, too. You can do them as slowly as you need to, you can pause and think about what to do next, you can do them standing still or while stepping through the actions. Ideally, you want to be able to move relatively quickly and smoothly through a variety of actions without pausing more than is necessary. They're helpful for working on a variety of things, and once you hit a certain level of "doing without thinking" they're just meditative to work through.

I've been trying to work out how to easily apply it to rapier fencing in a deliberate way. I don't want to be going from guard to guard with an attack in between, just because that lacks the feel of a flow to me. I could just go through all of Fabris' sword and dagger guards in sequence - I did that for my entry in the So You Think You Can Sword competition from a couple months back - and that's a fun as hell exercise but it only works that single sequence of transitions. It's as much a memorization exercise as it is a physical one, too.

I could just move through a handful of Fabris' guards - probably the sword and dagger ones - but I want to do something a bit more deliberate to start with. Also, I know that it's really easy to fall into habits or avoid more difficult or less obvious transitions, consciously or not.

I was thinking of what to do here, and I remembered a short sequence that Remy did with Alfieri's dagger guards. Besides being much more bite-size in length, I was struck by how he was able to easily loop them, going 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1. That struck me as being about the right number of guards to use; I could loop them like Remy's sequence, or I could potentially work all the combinations smoothly: 1-2-1-3-1-4-1-5-... and on and on.

Then it hit me. Flash cards. I could shuffle up all the guards and pick out however many I wanted, and be forced to work transitions between random guards in a random initial order.

So I've printed up all of Fabris' sword and dagger guards and have cut them out and I'll post later with thoughts as to how this works out as a training aid!

Practice Report

I was going to do this earlier, but I really wanted to get that sickle play up beforehand.

Monday night I was trying to work Fabris a bit more than usual. I had my usual amount of trying to make things more reflexive and feeling correct, but that's the usual now and is pretty okay. I need to try more extended guards; they feel insecure to me, and that's unfortunate. Also, I need to improve on my lunge-or-pass decisioning and balance. Finally, if I lunge I need to either get better about dagger placement or getting my elbow up for better profiling or both.

All of that is more or less ongoing though, and that's fine. On the other hand, there were a couple new things that were pointed out to me or that I realized! (This is good! I love having new things to work on that aren't, like, immediate Huge Problems.) Wil Deth noticed that while I was fencing one particular person using Fabris, that my rear foot would kick back a bit before I lunged. This was interesting - it doesn't come up when I drill from what I've noticed (and I didn't feel like I needed to pay special attention to it when I was doing my footwork last night) so I think it was a defensive flinch. Seems like I need to trust my defenses more, ensure that they're solid, and not lose that little bit of measure.

The other thing that I recognized when I was fighting Wil later (with Fabris and a stick, so that's still a thing that I think I'm making work!) was that I have a tendency to settle into my Fabris and become very immobile. I think this is really just due to the stance and the effort it takes, and the best thing for me to do is to be mindful of it when I fight, pay attention to when I'm stepping vs my measure, and also... to do more footwork drills at home. (Because we all knew where that was going.)

Still need to work on my voids, because I want to be able to do them really cleanly, but that's an ongoing process of training my body and remembering balance. (And also doing them from Fabris' stance as well as Capo Ferro's.) Also, I want to reread Fabris' guards and keep internalizing them to a greater degree.

So yeah! Very good practice. Stuff to pay attention to, but I felt like I've been making useful forward progress.

Drill time!

(Note: I edited this on 1/6/16 to clean up the description and add a dimension that I'd forgotten.)

Earlier this week at the Monday practice, Ken Mondschein showed a couple of us a really interesting drill. It stuck with me as really worth adding to my regular rotation for a few reasons: because it happened to focus on some foundations that I've been trying to work on anyway, it scales in scope, and you can potentially focus on a few different things if you want.

Essentially it's a decision drill, but after we see it in it's basic form (at least as I remember and/or perform it), we'll start to add breadth to it!

1. Fencer A and Fencer B start just outside of measure. Fencer A approaches and finds B's sword to the inside.
2. As A finds B's sword, B extends toward A to cue the action. As B extends, he also does one of three things:
1. Nothing - this cues a normal lunge in Fourth from A.
2. Steps out - this cues a passing step and a strike in Fourth from A.
3. Steps in - this cues a girata and a strike from A. (Blade position can vary based on a few elements here, but try to be consistent.)

That's it! To start off the drill, I really like doing each one of those three possible options three times each, and then one of each in sequence, and then starting to mix it up. It'll help get things settled into your head before you just dive in.

Pretty simple in theory, but I've found that when you're paying that much attention to doing the correct action in response to the cue, all sorts of mistakes will just start showing up. Overthinking does that; it'll work itself out. Things to keep in mind include:

1. Take your action in the tempo of the cue. Don't wait for B to Completely Apply All The Pressure, or to take a full step before you move. As they apply pressure and start to step, you should be reacting.
2. Good blade position is important.
3. Don't over commit on that last step with the finding; you'll need to react out of it, so keep it small.
4. When you're first doing this drill, you'll make mistakes. Concentrate on the things you do right - if you do an incorrect action in opposition and yet survive? Great! Just do the correct one next time.
5. Slowing down to start is a good idea. Just do it in the right time, and it'll work out. If you do this, slow down the cue as well; it'll make it easier to keep things consistent.

To add breadth, you'll want to start by working the outside line just as you do the inside. You can switch it up on the approach, and just find on that line instead.

From there, you want to expand to Fencer B cuing with a cavazione, and have A respond in that tempo with a contra-cavazione, strike, and footwork as normal. Then work the other line with a contra-cavazione.

Finally, Fencer B can cue with pressure on A's blade, and A responds in that tempo with a cavazione, with all the footwork as normal.

Then mix them all up, and go to town! You can focus on moving in tempo to start, and also good opposition, clean steps, balance, different girata or voids, stepping into the blade instead of away, working from different stances or guards, whatever you like. It's a framework to work inside. You can keep it limited to work on things, or expand it to a full 3 measures, 3 actions, 2 lines drill. 18 options! All at once!

I think that the explanation is pretty straightforward, but if you catch me at an event, I can run through it (or any other drill I've gone over) in person pretty readily.

Random practice thoughts

Practice was... eh? Fine, I think?

Things I need to keep working on:

• Footwork. (Yeah, seriously.) When I do passes, I step farther than I want. I want shorter, more controlled passes. Same with girata.
• Lunging in proper order. When I get rushed, I think I keep screwing this up.
• Opposition - I keep running into problems on the outside, and I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's easier for me to find the blade when it's higher on the inside than the outside? That seems like it could be right. Also, in general.
• Fabris. Voids. Mezzo-tempo actions.
• After all that, just fighting my fight.

I have a mad thought of trying to get people on board with doing a month of All Drills, No Bouting at practices. I mean, I can do that kinda, but it'd be inefficient in the extreme. Rather than asking around and halfassing it, I want to do full practices of just straight, focused drilling. With pre-planned drills and time and stuff.

I think it'd be amazing.

KWAR Rundown! (Also a note on when we'll see Fabris back in print.)

So this past weekend, I and a few other Easterners rolled out to Chicago to go to the Known World Academy of Rapier (also a costuming symposium, but let's be clear on our priorities here).

It was, in a word, fantastic. Also, Anastasia ended up blogging about her experience over on her site, which I note up front because there may end up being a lot of repetition and "she already said it" happening here, at least until we get into our respective details and unpacking about what was taken away that was super useful for each of us.

This post isn't so much an overall trip report (summary: it was great) or a really deep look at stuff that I learned and need to deconstruct and work through (I think that will happen with some more topic-specific posts in the next couple of days) but just a series of notes on what classes I took and things I did, what I definitely picked up from them, and cues for me to expand on later.

Friday night had some freebouting (which spellcheck is trying to change to freebooting, which seems reasonable) with Devon from Academie Duello. There was some shuffling around looking for space - the first room was Too Small. The pool area was Too Humid. The outside was dark but otherwise great, so we rolled with that. Despite the lack of light impacting my fencing somewhat negatively - I lost a lot of my depth perception - the reliance on tactile input from my blade did highlight a lot of the things I need to work on! Basically:

• I was still leaning away from the blade in my attacks in opposition in Second. I have solo and paired drills which will help this, but this comes up again later.
• Find my opponent's blade from my elbow, not from my wrist. (Or to put it differently, with the arm and not the hand.) Otherwise my forearm opens right up something awful.
• Don't commit to bad positions! Devon felt that this was because of poor order in my attacks - gotta go with hand then body then feet; I can use hand and body times to realize that my position is bad and bail out with relatively low commitment.

Saturday had the Fabris 101 class with Phaedra to start, which was really great. She works with Tom Leoni every week, so there was the occasional "He's pretty sure it works like this, but let's be real, this or this is an option if you can't do it like that because Fabris is hard," which I think a lot of people appreciated. Having someone confirm how I was standing and moving based on my reading of the manual and my practice of it was really vindicating. (Guys guys I have a clue!)

• I got a lot of touchup on Fabris wanting you to lunge and strike very very close to the opponent's sword, so pretty much straight into their armpit. I was doing that thing that I do where a lot of my shots were going just past the arm on the outside when I was lunging into Second or Fourth with opposition, and then I noticed that Phaedra was consistently weaving her blade over the opponent's blade on one side and back around their quillon on the other. Working that precisely instantly fixed my problem! I don't think I'll be able to rely on doing that exact action in combat, but that sort of blade mechanic independent of the existence of a quillon should be something I can definitely work on duplicating reliably.
• Oh hey seriously, it's okay to Train Deep and Fight Higher. Just get some bend in and more will happen over time and with a strengthened core and quads. Like, I knew this, but it's nice to hear someone say it to me.
• When you're lunging in Second, tuck your head by your bicep and look just under your sword. Magically, this means that you cannot be leaning away from your sword! HEY LOOK AT THAT!
• Invitations are magical. I have thoughts on the overall topic which will be their own shortish blog post, but they're great. Fabris has six (seriously) dagger lines - High and Low inside, middle, and outside, and there's an invitation for all of them (though he doubles up on the middle lines). They are great and I'm going to be really working them a lot.
• Do footwork drills with Fabris and check your weight distribution. Also, similar to Anastasia, I pass so often in that stance that my regular advances and retreats need a lot of work.

After I went to an Order meeting, I got into Devon's teaching/learning class a bit late. After getting caught up, I mostly watched and took notes.

• It's interesting to see how two people implement the same pedagogy very differently. One does so in a way that immediately clicks for me, and the other does so in a way that instantly sets my teeth on edge. This is worth remembering for a lot of reasons.
• Drills have three key parts - a stimulus (or a cue), a response, and consequences (for each partner).
• Remember goals! Your first goal is Not To Be Struck, so even if you don't do a drill perfectly, you can still achieve partial credit.
• Dividing into teacher/student roles for each side of the drill is a good mental thing.
• Also, each side can be working on and learning something. For instance, in a generic opposition drill, the student is learning How Good Opposition Works and Feels. The teacher, in the course of providing Consequences, is learning how Good and Bad opposition feel, and this has obvious practical applications.
• Start basic with drills, then add depth (add stepping in and gaining as opposed to just starting there) and refinement (smaller disengages).
• Use positive statements to correct. "Bring your sword higher" vs "Don't keep your sword so low."
• You can always isolate a single action in an exercise, focus on that for a bit, and then go back to the exercise.
• Have clear statements about drill structure and stick with them! I tend to tangent a lot, and I need to be better about noting those ideas to get to when we are done with the current drill.
• Set timers! It's much easier to stay focused and not start chatting or whatever when there's a timer going for "we will do this drill for 5 straight minutes." When the timer goes off, there's permission to chat, grab a drink, whatever, but when you're working before the timer goes off, it's Work Time. The timer makes it easier to not fall out of that. (Using a timer for the run/walk sessions of my c25k program, this makes total sense. Without it, it's easier to fall out of a run into a walk. With it, it's easier to stay focused on running until it goes ding.)
• Cognitive load is a thing. Manage how much a student needs to learn at once. If they keep doing a thing they shouldn't, they may be hitting their load. Remove that aspect of the exercise (like removing footwork and have them stay still) and continue.
• Choices! In a 3-option drill, go through it like so:
• Do option 1 three times. Then option 2 three times. Then option 3 three times.
• Do option 1, then 2, then 3.
• Then allow the choices.
• Do more slow fencing. Also the stickysword drill.

Finally, Devon was kind enough to spend an hour on Saturday night working with me, Malocchio, and Anastasia on opposition. I wasn't able to take tons of notes at the time (because, y'know, focused instructor attention) but my major takeaways are:

• Finding is downward suppression. Transitioning through gaining becomes sideways coincidentally, as you turn fully into Second or Fourth.
• The key to taking over is being able to get your edge to their flat.
• Also, the thing to do when counter-finding is try to aim for their opposite eye. That encourages the right movement.
• Keep your mind on getting the tip of your sword to the target. The motion of the attack is to bring your hilt to where your blades initially crossed. Do not think of pushing a blade sideways. That is bad. Think of the action in these terms, and everything else just happens.
• If my opponent is shorter, my target can totally be higher on their body. That's fine.
• The response to pressure upon finding is a forward motion. Not sideways. Forward to target. The sideways action is coincidental and not a force vs force thing.
• Don't go too far to the side with a Second or Fourth. Just go barely far enough, otherwise you're very vulnerable to a cavazione or a mezzo-cavazione. Again, the sideways motion just coincidentally happens.
• On the other hand, if you actively choose to make a very wide Second or Fourth, consider lunging into their sword when you do, and striking from a very wide angle.
• This is part of a concept about hiding behind your forte. You need to have you, your forte, and their blade all in a line to do this. If you take a very wide opposition and don't step into it, you're not behind your forte anymore and things break.
• If you're passing while in opposition, be sure to keep your leading shoulder in front! It's very easy to rotate your torso to bring your off-side shoulder forward when you pass forward, and that breaks the skeletal structure which you need for good opposition. This is really done just by not rotating your torso, and by keeping your rear foot pointed to the side as you pass with it, and your front foot pointing straight ahead as it remains stationary.

Sunday there was the MoD Salon and I did some teaching. There was also good Lobby Chat, in which I discovered why Devon and I disagreed on one of Fabris' plates, which was really interesting. (Translation choice on Tom's part!) This meant that now I'm looking for a couple Italian-English dictionaries (and have been offered a couple already) so that rabbit hole might be a thing.

That's that! It was a fantastic and educational time. A++ would KWAR again.

As for seeing Fabris back in print? This is a thing people might care about.

Voids and drilling and all that good stuff!

First, some quick notes mostly for my own accountability: Doing the usual sets of drills but using Fabris' postures is going well. I tend to do the receiving side in a more upright stance to give my back a break (and for some variety) but hopefully over time I can shift more to Fabris full time. It certainly lets me pay attention to keeping the posture through the whole action, which is key.

Also, voids. There was a lot of void talk last night, and I figured that I'd throw my rambling thoughts here.

(Fabris likes voids. He even says that it's preferable to just void your opponent's attacks, especially with single rapier. So that's good, too.)

Anyhow, I tend to think of voids as slipping the sword in one of a couple directions - to the inside or outside. (Yes, underneath is also an option but it's a bit advanced. See Plate 40, on the left. It's absolutely doable, but starting easy is a thing. You can also legitimately pull back your lead foot, suck in your abdomen, and fairy godmother over the top, but I just don't care for that.) Breaking it down, you have two feet. Each can move to either side. (With gradations, for sure. You can step a full 90* perpendicular off the line of attack, or only 45* off, or whichever.) So you can sort out if you want to step to the outside with your left foot or right foot, or inside with the left foot or right foot. Mess around! Try things!

Things to keep in mind include:

• How you angle your foot and your knee. Consider Plate 18, on the right. Note how the lead leg is turned so that the foot is no longer pointed at the opponent. This is really important given the lean in the torso, because it lets the fencer really sink into that leg to drop further off line without making the knee bend unnaturally. That last bit is super important. If you're doing a void and all you need to do is lunge a bit offline such that the majority of the force is forward? Cool, lunge offline and you're good. Stepping off the way Fabris illustrates here? You need to make sure your knee can take the weight as it is designed to do.
• You should still have some forward movement, even if it's mostly a full body twist. The safest place for you to be is to the side of the blade, true, but also past your opponent's point. 
• If you can void in such a way that you can continue out of it in a productive manner, awesome.
• If you can do it with minimal torso lean, good. Center of gravity is your friend. What helped me with this is remembering that rather than leaning, I can get comparable results by rotating my torso along the line of my spine. 
• Along the lines of that last point, remember that the hand is faster than the body which is faster than the feet - and that you're really trying to get your body out of the way. Rotate your shoulders along the line of your spine, and that rotation will feed the movement of your feet. It'll flow down from there, and your squishy organs will be out of the way faster.
• Minimal (or total lack of) blade contact with voids is awesome. You tend to not have the body structure to support strong opposition, and a mezzo-cavazione is usually faster anyway.

You can mess around with void ideas and drill solid ones with just a blade pointed at your chest. Start with your hand just by the point (under, to the side, whichever) and perform your void. Repeat as needed.

There! Practical applications of theory. Good stuff.

Cruddy Practices and Events and Getting Past Them

Pretty sure we've all had off events. Practice or event, pickups or tournament. I've been mulling them over lately, and I figured I'd toss out what's occurred to me, and people can chime in with what's worked for them, and we can all get some good ideas to try and turn cruddy times into productive improvement.

Besides, this might be old hat to a lot of people, but since I had to figure out how to deal with this more or less on my own, I figure that other folks might find it useful.

I think it's easier for me to do this when I'm coming away from pickups or practice bouts; I'm usually not nearly so dialed in as I am in a tournament with something on the line, so I feel like my brain has more cycles to pay attention to what I'm doing (or not doing, as the case may be). I'm probably the most self-critical fighter I know. In some ways, this means that I get to pay a lot of attention to a lot of little details about my fighting, and improve them. This is good! On the other hand, it means that I get really down on myself when things aren't working right. The bar I set for myself is, perhaps, unrealistically high. Oops.

Because of this, I think it's worth starting this discussion at the point where the fighting is going south, and it's starting to bother you. It's pretty easy for a feedback loop of frustration to start, and (as much as I'm terrible at doing this part) getting out of that is super important. Depending on the setting, I might take any number of actions to do this. Sometimes, I just call it a night a bit early. Other times, I'll armor down a bit and go do some teaching. I might even just go work on something simple that always needs attention, like footwork. In all of these cases, I'm making sure to just not do what I'm doing anymore. Give yourself a break, and eventually, some time to think.

The next part is the really hard part - if you're not fighting as well as you think you should be and you're getting frustrated, you have to figure out what specifically isn't working out for you. This can be more than one thing for sure, but be clear and concise. Examples might include:
- I'm not paying attention to distance.
- I'm off balance.
- My lunges aren't committed.
- My buckler isn't being active; it's just a stationary thing all the time.
- My disengages are huge.

These things don't need to be all encompassing, but you're looking for a number of the little issues which are adding to your frustration. I recommend nailing down some of these very quickly after you armor down, if you can. I find that when I'm getting deeply frustrated, the issues I come up with are either things that are ongoing issues that I'm already working on, or things that I know I shouldn't be having problems with but for some reason I'm just messing up. Write these down. If you have a teacher who's watching your fights, absolutely hit them up for their thoughts. Write those down, too.

Then - and this is the really important part - don't do anything until you've slept. No, seriously. Take that night's sleep and just let your brain work through what's been going on by itself on its own. This is super important. Your brain does a lot of work on things when it's not super active, and giving it time to do this is huge.

The next morning, take that list and come up with some drills for the next week. (You knew that drills would figure into this somehow, right?) They don't need to be expansive; you're looking to work on those specific things you wrote about. If the problems were things you've already been working on, you may already have drills that you're using for them. In that case, excellent! Make sure you fit them into your weekly rotation with a bit more prominence. If they're things that you just know you shouldn't be doing because you know better, then come up with something that you can do for five minutes in a drill session to remind your body and brain what's what.

Then go do them. Every day for a week.

Is five minutes a day for a week enough to train yourself a new skill? No, it really isn't. Is it enough to give yourself some progress on fixing a frustrating issue? Yeah, it really is. If it's still bothering you after a week, then you keep that drill in your rotation. If not, awesome, rotate it out and bring something else in.

So, yeah. That's what works for me. If there are better and more useful ways to deal with this type of thing, I'd love to hear them! (And I bet other people here will, too.)

Best Practices for Drilling (The first of a series of VISS takeaway posts!)

Having just gotten back from VISS (which was awesome), I think that the next couple of posts here will be pretty heavily inspired by some takeaways I had. Not everything came right out of a class or a specific discussion; rather, a lot of things just kind of coalesced over the course of the weekend, and I get to talk about them here.

Rather than get technique-specific (or even more weird and esoteric) out of the gate, I want to start in with my thoughts on Best Practices For Drilling!

What struck me over the time I spent at the conference was how wonderfully collaborative it was. While a number of individuals there can be absolutely competition-minded (I'm certainly one of them), the atmosphere at VISS was one of communal learning. One of the places where this came out most was in paired drilling.  There's a lot that we can learn from the WMA community, and the work they do in paired drills is right up there, and I'm gonna share what I learned here.

Out of the gate, there was an emphasis on referring to the people doing the drill as "partners." You didn't have an opponent in your drill, you had a partner. This is a small change, to be sure, but I really think that it carries some really massive connotations. You aren't working against the person doing a drill with you, you're working with them, together, and trying to help each other out. No matter who gets struck at the end of the drill, you're both working and learning, regardless of relative skill levels.

There were some other, really concrete things that I took away, that I need to keep in mind for my own personal practice and teaching:

Being a good drill partner means that it's contingent on you to perform your techniques accurately and well. If you are delivering an attack, it must be an honest attack - on target, and able to strike your partner if they don't do something about it. There's a tendency in partnered drills to really let this slide - you assume the parry that your partner is supposed to do, so you don't make it a real attack that would actually land. This obviously doesn't help your partner learn to perform the correct counters, but it also teaches you to launch bad attacks. Nothing good comes of this.

On the same token, be sure to keep building up correct steps in the play that you're drilling. One thing that can really help this by working it out step by step from the beginning, and not jumping straight to the finished form. I don't mean doing the whole completed play slowly (though that's also good, and I'll touch on that later!) but rather building it up from the ground. For example, start with the most basic movement - generally, one fencer making an attack and striking the other. Do that. Do it well. Understand how the drill is starting. Then add the response to that. Do it a couple times. Then add the final counter to that defense. This way, you know that the whole drill is being based on solid techniques, and you have a better understanding of how all of them fit together, and why you might perform those actions in a real bout. This is a really good thing to do when you're just learning a drill, and is worth doing for multiple practice sessions in a row. Even when the drill is old hat, running through the buildup to self-check is a good call.

Related to this, you need to work on performing the technique correctly and accurately as prescribed by the drill. For some people there's a real desire to work outside the script, generally while saying, "Well, I can do this instead" or "I think this works better." Both of those might be true! You may prefer other techniques or you might feel like you get better results with them. That's fine, but it's also not what you're working on. Take the opportunity to work on a new thing for you, and remember that you're not helping your partner learn what they're setting out to learn if you're not giving them the correct techniques to work against.

Remember that even if you're the person being struck in the end, there's a lot that you're learning in the drill - don't just be a passive recipient of the final blow. The drill is still an opportunity to practice using the techniques that you're supposed to be using, but more than that, it's an opportunity to see how they work out. You get to see how a technique you're using looks and feels when it's countered; this is invaluable in a real fight, because you quickly learn when to bail to plan B, rather than press home a failed attempt at an attack. On the other hand, if your partner isn't sticking their end, you get to see how your technique feels when it works!

On that note, be sure to test your partner on occasion. You want to let them become familiar with the movements of the drill relatively unopposed, but you need to be sure to actually give them a good simulation of what they'll be up against. If they're supposed to find your blade as you attack, gain it, and strike you, and they perform a terrible gaining? Continue with your attack and hit them in the face! Don't do a counter to what your partner is doing, but just continue to perform your action if they can't stop you. Performing the correct technique poorly doesn't help anyone, but you need to be sure to have both of you troubleshoot why that happened. Don't leave your partner to figure it out on their own, but work together to fix it so that they can hit you like the drill calls for. Don't be a jerk about testing them - when there's a wide gap in skill levels this happens sometimes, and it can get really frustrating. Don't make it too easy, but keep pushing them to do it well, and you can work on your detail work and observation.

Drills are, in a lot of ways, performed in an "all things created equal" situation. You want to be sure that you're practicing them at the same speed as the slower partner. This ensures that it's the real technique being worked on, and not just throwing lots of speed all over the place. You can speed up the techniques as you get used to performing them properly. If they start to fall apart at all, slow it back down a bit. Work at the same speed all the time. Similarly, if there's a height or reach discrepancy, you can usually work around it without changing the core of the drill. One person may start a bit closer (for instance, if a drill calls for the attacker to start at misura larga, then they determine their misura larga) but the core sequence of the drill should be unaffected.

Finally, when drills offer the possibility of a choice, there's nothing wrong with deciding to limit the available options for a specific runthrough. It's amazing how much more complicated your decision tree becomes when you move from two choices to three, and that kind of added stress can distract from performing the techniques by a shocking amount. If in a drill one fencer can respond with, say, a push back, doing nothing, or a cavazione - and each of those requires its own response - it is absolutely fine to decide that for this set, that fencer can only choose between pushing back or a cavazione for the time being.

So that's that! The weekend was full of a lot of paired work, and over three days, all of this was my takeaway. I had the pleasure of working with a number of great partners of all kinds of skill levels, and being able to work with each other to help each other improve made such a difference in what I was able to take away from just one weekend of time.

Fabris, Plate 25

Things are kinda crummy right now for the rapier community for a bunch of reasons.

So I did some point control tonight and now we're gonna look at Plate 25! (It's on the right. It's also really cool.)

Prime! That weird guard that everyone says "what good is that really?" about. This! It is good for this! (And other things too, but this!)

Anyway. "This wound of first against a third would happen this way."

Fencers begin at misura larga, in Third, on the outside. Each is forcefully pushing their blade against the other. (This is one of those positions that none of us should ever want to be in, but here we are.)

You should quickly turn their hand into First. While you are doing that and lifting your hand, you advance toward the opponent and hit them. (Straightforward, which is why I didn't really break this down into steps like I have previously.) I've found that it works well if you're rotating around with the wrist, and not a bigger arm motion. The strike can feel odd because it's not necessarily in line with the blade like a lunge, but it does work out.

Fabris points out that your opponent's sword should be underneath yours; you're basically yielding around it to keep your point free and kill them. He also points out that, again, being in the original position is bad, and you don't want to be there.

That's it! Really short, but super cool.

Fabris, Plate 24

It's been a couple days longer than I wanted, but here we are with Plate 24! Unsurprisingly, it's pretty similar to Plate 23, but only on the outside.

"This wound of Third against a Third..."

Fencers start at misura larga, on the outside, in Third. Fencer A will be the victor.

1. Fencer A "motions to find" Fencer B's sword.
2. Fencer B takes a step in to either:
1. Cavazione and strike in Fourth, or
2. Find A's sword and close to misura stretta
3. A drops the tip of his sword, intercepting B's debole in the cavazione. A lunges, striking B in Third, to the outside and underneath B's sword.

Fabris clarifies a point after this - specifically, if your opponent's blade is free and he tries to gain an advantage with it and doesn't step in, keep the distance while trying for an advantage yourself. The tempo of the foot is longer than the tempo of the hand. 

On the other hand, he notes that if you do find your opponent's blade, you can take the tempo of him freeing it to step in while turning your hand to find the sword on the other side. 

In short, before you close, find your opponent's sword. Otherwise, bad things.

Short and sweet! Next time, a really cool wound in First.

Fabris, Plate 23 (Also, a book is back in print yay!)

Sadly, the book that's back in print isn't Fabris. It is pretty great though, and you should get it. It's Jeffrey Forgeng's translation of Meyer's Art of Combat. It's not Italian, but it's totally on my list of books to spend some serious time on someday.

Onward, then!

Plate 23, "This wound of fourth against a third..."

This time, Fabris makes it clear that both fencers are in misura larga, and on the inside, both in Third. Fencer A will be the victor in this contest.

1. Fencer A moves to find the blade of B to the inside.
2. B lowers his point to strike A underneath the sword.
3. As A has only moved the point of his sword, he extends his point towards B's body, straightening the blade and turning into Fourth to place his debole against the B's blade, parrying and countering in a single tempo.

Fabris notes that B's mistake is to mistake A's original motion for one which would create a larger tempo. He should have lowered his point but not gone any farther before seeing what A would do. 

This is another straightforward exchange, and continues to demonstrate Fabris' desire to keep using your opponent's tempo. Additionally, I feel that if you perform the motion correctly, your point will always remain free - the only thing places against your opponent's blade is your guard. The downward angle of the blade might seem a little strange to some SCA fencers, but it can work really well if you don't point your blade too far down. You must keep your point inside the body profile of your opponent!

I promise, soon there'll be some more interesting exchanges, but they remain pretty brief, which is okay by me.

Fabris, Plate 22

It's barely Thanksgiving, so it's time for me to fire off a drill version of Plate 22!

This description really does benefit from a visual aid, found here. (Plate 22 is on the left.) Note that the blade of our fencer on the left is to the outside of his opponent's blade, but to the inside of his arm. This is important later.

Plate 22, "A third wounding another third."

To break down the actions that get us to the image:

Both fencers start in Third, on the inside. Distance isn't specified, but I'm thinking misura larga. To be clear, in this plate, Fencer A initiates the action and B responds, but A will still wound B.

1. Fencer A begins with a feint, straight in.
2. Fencer B moves to parry, dropping the hilt to catch A's sword. 
3. In the tempo of step 2, A performs a cavazione to the outside, thrusting his sword through the angle created by B parrying and dropping his guard.
4. B will be unable to push A's sword out because:
1. A's forte will be right up against B's blade, as in the picture, and
2. A's blade will be locked against B's arm. (Note that this could be a little problematic for the SCA, where if B is pushing hard enough outwards before A strikes him, A's blade could be locked into place, not having struck anything. It's an edge case, but technically possible.)

Examining this, and comparing it to Plate 21, we can see a lot of similarities. (Which makes sense, if we're seeing the fundamental actions of the system here.) Contrasting it to the second variation of Plate 21 (with the second response that he might use, returning to the outside and wounding in Third over the opponent's blade) , only assuming that 21's Fencer A strikes his opponent, shows us an almost identical ending.

Things of note (which are, unsurprisingly, the same as in the previous plate) include the victor moving in the tempo of their opponent's movement. Mezzo tempo actions are huge for Fabris, and it makes sense that he starts us off with them. Also, we can see a total lack of blade contact until the forte is right up against the opponent's sword - if even that much. Related to that, we start in Third. If there's no reason to leave it, we can stay in Third, regardless of whether we're on the inside, outside, or whatever. There's no blade contact, no need to really oppose the opponent's blade, so no need to move into another guard. Straightforward. Finally, we're making an attack without first gaining the opponent's blade; this is usually a bad idea, but in this case we're reacting to a specific response that the feint flushed out, and taking that tempo away. Since our opponent can't do two things at once, we can strike them while they're parrying, so we should be safe. (I feel that it's still far better to gain the blade and go from there, though.)

Another way the action could happen is like this:

Both fencers are again in Third, on the inside.

1. Fencer A moves to find B's blade.
2. B performs a cavazione and steps in.
3. A takes that tempo and thrusts during the cavazione.

Fabris states that this illustrates that the motion of a cavazione is slower than staying in the middle and moving on a straight line. While normally this might not be the best idea, if the opponent isn't attacking, but merely disengaging around to the other side and stepping in, attacking does make a lot of sense according to Fabris.

Fabris, Plate 21

Man, real life happens and my blogging falls off. Again. What is with that? (Mental note: win lottery, do this full time.)

Anyhow, I'm really trying to spend more time figuring out Fabris. I'd like to get to the point where I can start to drop into his postures during a fight, but that's a lot of conditioning and practice. That said, his theories and practice can be applied without the postures (which he notes, saying “If you know how to carry your body forward [ie, leaning forward in his distinctive manner] properly and without awkwardness, you will be better served if you were to bend it. But if you think you cannot, you should rather remain straight, because if you force your posture you will never be as ready to move.” (Leoni, page 28.) That's not to say that I'm not going to keep practicing his postures, but rather to say that there's no reason I can't work on other parts of his system while I'm conditioning myself to said postures. In other words, I can keep drilling things standing upright and bending over. Therefore, let's start looking at Fabris' wounds! 

Fabris calls the plates in which he describes engagements and combat “wounds.” He describes them wonderfully and clearly, but I think that it will definitely benefit both myself and others to have them restated in plain English, in drill form. So I'm going to be doing this for the foreseeable future. If I'm very good, I'll even be doing them as drills at my local practices and in my basement. 

Onward, then!

Plate 21, “A firm footed attack of fourth against a third.” 

(As a note, Fabris includes some additional notes along with this plate, which while important to keep in mind, aren't necessary for to copy in full for a set of drill instructions. That said, go read them. They're important. So important that I end up touching upon them later.)

The distance isn't clearly stated, but I feel that the fencers should begin at misura larga.

(Edit: To clarify, in both of these variations, Fencer A is initiating the action. Fencer B is responding to this and wounding Fencer A.)

Variation 1:

Both fencers begin in Third, on the inside.

1. Fencer A feints in attack on the inside against B. A is expecting a parry.
2. B responds by taking the tempo, pushing his hilt against the point of A's blade while moving into Fourth, leaning forward, and lunging with the leading foot. 

While straightforward, it is important to note that this is done during the tempo of A's initial movement, giving him no time to respond to B closing the line, taking the blade, and attacking.

Variation 2:
Both fencers begin in Third, on the outside.

1. Fencer A performs a cavazione to the inside, extending the blade and leaning the body. (Note that Fabris does not state that the feet move yet!) As before, A is expecting a parry. Should B resort to a parry, A would immediately move to one of the following attacks:
1. Move from Third to Second and lower the body, wounding B in the tempo of the parry. (This could be an angulated Second, using a pass from the rear foot if necessary.)
2. Return to the outside line and wound in Third, over B's sword.
2. As before, B responds by taking the tempo, wounding A in Fourth.

The key to this drill working (beyond proper blade mechanics, including “pushing [your] hilt against the point of the opponent's blade”) is that B needs to respond during A's initial tempo, with a single tempo defense and attack of his own. While A is making their initial movement by definition they cannot be doing anything else, and as such that is the moment to strike - while they are moving inwards from misura larga. B immediately causes the measure of the engagement to become misura stretta, striking A because they have taken the tempo (or colloquially, seized the initiative). The fact that A has left B's sword free while they try to move in makes this, frankly, a terrible idea for A.

The other important thing this points out is that if you want a feint to be successful, you need to do one of two things - either wait for a movement from your opponent, or have placed him in obedience, so that you can better predict the response that you're trying to flush out.

This is a really straightforward drill, but it covers a lot of ground.