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.

Marozzo's Second Presa Revisited and Translation Funtimes

So a couple days ago I did a look at Marozzo's second presa. It was fine, it's a short little thing, and a fun play. Good times!

Then my friend Kate (whose blog is here, and has made some fantastic things and also has done some translation work!) was chatting with me about it and said that the take on it that she had was less of a shove, and more of a lifting motion from the legs. I could see that, but didn't have that as my takeaway. She mentioned having grabbed her copy of Swanger's translation of Marozzo, and that's when it clicked.

I hadn't used my copy of that translation. I'd gone over Wilson's translation at Wiktenauer, because I'd read through Swanger's before, thought myself broadly familiar enough with the play, and I didn't have the book at hand. This was where things got funky for me. Kate said that she had looked up Wilson's version, and said that it was pretty different. 

The key part of the play as translated by Wilson reads, "In the throw you will grasp the right thigh with your right hand while thrusting your head under his right arm and you will turn your shoulders and in this manner you will take him away and throw him to the ground." I read that as turning into your opponent with your right shoulder, which was more of a shove to me. 

Swanger translates that as, "...grab his right thigh with your right hand, shooting your head under his right arm as you grab his thigh, and straighten your back. This way you'll pick him off his feet and throw him to the ground..." Further he footnotes, 'straighten your back' with "Literally, "turn your shoulders rearwards"." This completely changed how the end of the play goes for me. Would lifting your opponent's leg and shoving them with your shoulder work? Yeah, I think so. On the other hand, would a lift with your legs as you straighten your shoulders out work better? Absolutely. As soon as your opponent's feet lose contact with the ground, their options shrink by a lot. They don't necessarily go down to zero, but they get pretty close to it.

So what did I learn from this?

1) Take the time to go find my preferred translation. (Even if it was out in the car and I would have had to brave the cold and snow.) Swanger is absolutely my translation of choice because of those footnotes, the extensive introduction, and the clarity of work that he has. (Which isn't to say that the text isn't unclear at times - but it's generally going to be Marozzo's fault when it is.)

2) Swapping translations mid-effort, even between discrete chunks like the blog posts let me do, can lead to some weirdnesses.

3) Talking to other people about their takes on a play and why they are what they are is going to be enlightening. (This is something I knew, but it sure got reinforced here.)

So! Next time, I'm for sure going to be working from my book.

Intermission: The Warrant for the London Masters of Defense

It's been a while since my last update, and I've still got my notes on the next set of Fabris' rules to go through. As we all know though, things are kind of a mess right now and it can be really hard to accomplish anything.

So just to keep posting anything, here's the text of the Warrant that Henry VIII signed on July 20, 1540 to form the London Masters of Defense, because it's interesting!

Ric. Beste, Humph. Bassett, Rob. Polmorth, John Legge, Peter Beste, Philip Williams, Ric. Lord, John Vincent, Nic. de la Hay, masters of the “Science of Defence,” and Will. Hunt, John Frye, Hen. Whytehed, Gilbert Bekett, Edw. Pynner, Thos. Tourner, Jeffrey Gryffyn, Thos. Hudson, Thos. Tynosey, Hen. Thyklyppes, and John ap Ryce, provosts of the same science. Commission to enquire and search, in all parts of England, Wales, and Ireland, for persons being scholars of the said science of defence (many of whom, regardless of their oaths made to their masters on first entering to learn the said science, upon the cross of a sword in remembrance of the Cross whereon Our Lord suffered, have for their own lucre of their “unsaciable covetous minds,” without sufficient licence, resorted to all parts of England, keeping open schools and taking great sums of money for their labours, and yet have insufficiently instructed their scholars, to the great slander of the masters and provosts of the science and of the good and laudable orders and rules of the same), and to take any scholar so misusing himself before the nearest justice of the peace to be bound in sufficient sureties not to repeat his offences against his said oath and the said orders and rules, or in case of refusal to be committed to gaol. Westm., 20 July 32 Hen. VIII. Del. Westm. 20 July.—S.B. (In English.)

(Text from: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol15/pp445-481)

It's really interesting to see that it isn't about going out and teaching, but about going out and dragging off teachers who are misrepresenting themselves or not teaching sufficiently well and punish them for it.

Huh!

Okay, we're going to try to get the first post up for the Fourth Rule for the sword alone by the end of the coming weekend.

(Be safe, everyone. Okay?)

Teaching a Basic Introductory Class for the First Time: Some Thoughts

A couple people I've talked to have expressed some trepidation in terms of teaching a class. I think that generally people are pretty good with teaching one or two people for a vague amount of time, but as soon as it turns into an indeterminate amount of people for a one hour time slot, things get super weird.

I get it. It's weird and intimidating and full of wargh. So rather than drop duplicate thoughts at individuals, I'm going to Write A Blog Post About It!

First up, this is intended to really apply to a specific type of class - an introductory or low-experience class for a primarily physical thing. (Like, say, "Your First Look At Capo Ferro" or whatever.) That isn't to say that someone couldn't find some really useful things for teaching, I don't know, a basic embroidery class here, but I'm just putting that out there so you know where I'm coming from in some ways.

Second, a lot of this is going to sound pretty basic. If you don't need to do everything here, awesome! Good! On the other hand, I've found that these are usually good ways to get organized for a class, keep yourself on topic in on time, and also to make standing up in front of strangers and saying things to be a bit easier.

Here we go!

Before we do anything else, remember to be reasonable about what you're going to accomplish in an hour long class. Let's be super honest here, nobody that you teach is going to Achieve Mastery in that time. On the other hand, you'll probably be able to introduce a number of concepts, give them a leg up on diving into a manual, teach them some drills to work on later, and maybe give a more experienced student a different way of looking at an idea. If you're going to accomplish these things though, you need to keep yourself (and therefore the class) on track and avoid accidentally diving down any rabbit holes, spending too much time on any one thing, getting out of order, or running ahead of yourself. How do you do this?

Outline Your Class

Outlines. Outline your class. This isn't a class handout, it's solely for you - so it doesn't need any more detail than what you require to remind you what's going on.

Now you could be thinking that you know the material back to front and don't need an outline. And yeah, you probably do! But knowing it and even being able to teach it one on one isn't the same as teaching a sizable class where you need to monitor multiple students and give each of them slices of your attention.

So, seriously. Take a few minutes and outline your class.

When you do your first outline, it might be pretty detailed. That's fine! Outline everything. Things like "Introduce myself" and "Who was Giganti" are all things that can absolutely end up in there, as well as the bits and bobs under those headers. (You'd be surprised how easy it is to forget to introduce yourself at the beginning of a class.) For instance, my first Fabris outline had a section that looked something like this:

• Four Italian Guards
• (Quickly show in order from drawing the sword to explain 1, 2, 3, 4 ordering.)
• Remember to use off-hand elbow to aid in body structure!
• Terza
• Default guard
• Technically outside
• Quarta
• Inside
• Rotate from wrist
• Shoulder involvement
• Seconda
• Outside
• Rotate from shoulder, not wrist
• Prime
• Outside
• Shoulder rotation and support
• Hand shifting
• Bastard guards

That's a lot! When I was first starting to work on preparing a class though, it was what I really needed to organize my thoughts. After the first couple practices, both solo and with a test audience (I'll get to those in a bit!) I pared it down a little:

• Four Italian Guards
• Off hand elbow; sword arm wrist vs shoulder
• Terza
• Quarta
• Seconda
• Prime
• Bastard guards

After I taught my first couple of real classes and got my routine down, my outline shifted to:

• Four Italian Guards

Seriously. Outlining your class will be the biggest thing to let you organize your thoughts, make sure you're going to cover things in order and not skip anything, and keep you on track. It's a really big deal. Once you've done that though, we need to work on applying it. To do that, we need to...

Practice Teaching Your Class

Everything gets better with practice, right? Here's where we accomplish a lot of things at once - we'll test run the material for time, we'll get comfortable with talking about it all out loud, and eventually we'll get comfortable with people staring at us while we teach.

The first thing you'll want to do is set a timer to 50 minutes. I know, you've got an hour for the class! Doesn't matter. Take 50 minutes. You want to leave time for questions at the end of the class, questions during the class, and time spent while your students stand up with their swords and work through things that you're teaching them. Ten minutes for that is - at least for me - a pretty reasonable toss at the dart board to begin with.

Now stand by yourself in a room and start teaching. 

Yeah, by yourself. Not in front of a mirror or anything, and not with people around. Just stand up and start working through the class out loud. You're going for two big things here - you're checking for time, and you're working on just getting comfortable talking like you're a teacher and covering the material at a nice easy pace.

If you're anything like a lot of people I know, you might notice that you're really speeding through and talking pretty quickly. Pay attention to this, and just relax and stay casual. You may also notice as you do this a couple times that you'll develop turns of phrase that you use to explain concepts out loud. Saying all these things out loud really is different than just going through it all inside your head - you want to really tie the physical parts of standing naturally, speaking clearly, and covering the material together.

(As an aside, this is something that you can do through your whole career - I find myself talking through teaching small snippets and concepts to get my head around them while I'm driving, or walking around doing chores by myself. Just the act of speaking out loud helps solidify how I'm going to explain them to a class.)

Do this a couple of times. Pay attention to the timer, but don't get too stressed about it. You're mostly doing that to make sure you don't run over or under by a huge amount - a minute or two in either direction isn't all that big a deal. It's easy to go over and try to pack too much material into an introductory class though, so be prepared to find a better, earlier, ending point. Don't be afraid to reorganize and trim down your outline and come back to this! You should find that it'll get easier to work through everything verbally after a couple practices. That's when it's time to find a couple friends.

This is when you teach the whole class to some friends. Usually four is a good number if you can get that many - it'll let you pair up people if that's helpful for practicing things, but it's also just large enough to force you to move between students and not just focus on a single pair.

Remember to teach them like you don't know them, and this time set the timer to the full 60 minutes. Talk to your friends afterwards, and talk about how well you communicated, time spent on various concepts, and other broad issues like that. There'll probably be a bunch of nitpicky things to fix too, but this isn't about those - we just want to get you to the point where you can make it through your class.

Go And Do It!

You've done your prep! Outline in hand, clock or timer somewhere (there's never one in a teaching area when you want one), you've talked to yourself a whole lot about what you're teaching, and you're pretty confident talking in front of some friends. Go out and do the thing!

A Few Last Tips

Remember, when you have a sizable class, keep moving through everyone there. Give bits of your attention to everyone - this means that even more than because of the time limitations, you're not looking to get everyone to perfect. You won't even get them to 90%. 70% is probably okay, and if you're touching on some complicated things, maybe not even that much. This is fine. You're not there to drill them to perfect, you're there to give them tools to do that on their own.

I like to make sure people know how to get in touch with me afterwards if they have followup questions. This also means that I personally don't usually use handouts; this is partly because in the middle of an event like Pennsic, that's just one less thing I need to stress out about remembering, but also because I tend to think of the manual that I'm teaching from as the handout. Most every major rapier manual is extremely easy to purchase, and generally at very reasonable prices. Even the days of the long out of print Chivalry Bookshelf edition of Fabris are behind us now! Print on demand press has been very good to us.

You can always treat the ideas I've tossed out here as a loop to refine your material. Go tweak your handout, test the material, and do it all over again.

Go audit classes from people who you think are good teachers. Don't take the class - you'll probably get distracted by the actual class material - but watch them and take notes on teaching techniques they're using. Most people will be happy to talk to you afterwards about that aspect of their class!

Finally, I'm sure you've heard horror stories about That Terrible Student who just keeps asking off-topic questions, or pulls things like "well okay but I wouldn't respond like the play says, I'd do this instead..." In all honesty, I think I've had all of one person like that in all the classes I've taught, and they were pretty mild about it. Just be firm, push off-topic questions to the end of the class, and remind people that this is the response you're drilling and that they owe it to their partner to be a good partner themselves. That's usually all it takes.

That's it! That's my not remotely patented method for prepping classes when you haven't taught much yet.

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.)

Catching Up, and also, Random Musings on Prowess and A&S

It's been a while since I've posted here. Some of it is being down an arm for a while - which means typing anything meaningful was hard - and some of it was straight-up depression sapping my will to do anything useful, or focus, or whatever. It's a mess.

But I'm doing somewhat better, so I'm dusting off a draft entry and making it into something useful here! While I'm doing that, let's touch on other stuff that I'm poking at:

• Like I mentioned in a previous entry, I'm poking at some post-period sources which show some serious Fabris influence, mostly to see if they mention anything relevant to his Book Two. I managed to grab a copy of Pascha's "Proper Description of Thrust-Fencing with the Single Rapier," put out by Fallen Rook Publishing. (In the US, it's available from Purpleheart Armory.) Also known by its shelf number of Mscr. Dresd. C. 13, this text has a section which is explicitly the author's take on "The proceeding with resolution" in the style of Fabris! It doesn't seem to have any of the theory, simply the practical flowchart information - overall, that's in keeping with the very straightforward style of this manual - but it's still very interesting to contrast with Fabris.
• Related to the above, I'm hoping to have something reasonable in progress by this weekend to discuss with folks at St. Elegius. If not, I won't beat myself up over it but I'll still try and kick ideas for a paper and display around with people.
• I get to judge a Martial A&S challenge at St. Elegius, and I'm excited about that!
• Before my surgery, I started doing a lot more work with cloak because it was a lot easier on my arm than a dagger was - and wow, it rapidly became one of my most favorite forms. I can't wait to use that as a rehab form and spend more time on it. It's helpful that Fabris' cloak system is extremely simple and straightforward.

Also, I've had some older thoughts kicking around that I kind of want to think-out-loud with up here. At Pennsic (remember Pennsic?) I had a really thought-provoking side conversation with Ibrahim, after the really great Martial Arts and Sciences panel that Doroga put together for us all.

In short, it was "how much does prowess enter into the equation for determining skill at an aspect of historical martial study?" Though it was a short discussion, as we both had things we needed to run off to (in the way of Pennsic) we touched on a number of rabbitholes and I wanted to take some time this morning and kick them around here for thought, in a mostly rambling stream of consciousness post.

So broadly speaking, I think this problem comes about when we consider that - at least in the East, I think - that "martial A&S study" falls into two buckets: that which we can (mostly) do under the existing rapier rule set, and that which we cannot. The latter portion doesn't really impact this discussion; while I've looked at things like sickle combat and the like, we can't do it so we don't really look at "how well someone does it in combat" as part of their evaluation. Okay, so let's just focus on people who study period combat which they can use as part of their rapier (or C&T, whichever) combat.

Before I cannonball into this rabbithole, I want to preface with this: any statements about "what the A&S community is looking for" are coming from my experiences and viewpoint - which could be wrong, or missing some key information. So there's that!

Alright, so. If we're looking at someone who studies a historic master, and dives super deep into them, and learns and teaches and does all the stuff that we want to see out of someone learning a period skill... what do we want to see out of their practical application of that art? (Which is to say, "do we care if they win with it?") This is a weird question to look at, because I can absolutely make arguments on either side of it, or present scenarios where it does or doesn't matter as much.

Part of this discussion is the fact that pure research of skills and knowledge is absolutely a thing. For instance, if someone is studying period shipbuilding, I certainly don't expect them to go out and build a ship as part of their research; that's patently unreasonable. On the other hand, if someone is researching something that they could do, there seems to be an expectation that they go do it to some degree or another - so the hangup becomes "if their depth of knowledge is remarkable, they understand it, they can discuss it, they can teach it, but they lack the practical application of the knowledge, is that enough?"

I'd like to say that, ideally, yes. If someone has read and researched and thought and presented and taught, that should be enough. (My usual analogy here is something like "how many great boxing coaches are also titlewinners? Maybe not a lot, but they still know what they're about.") But on the other hand (there are a lot of other hands in this thought process) I want to be able to really test someone's understanding of how combat should work, and perhaps the best way for that is to actually work through those plays with them on the field. Perhaps that need not be fully combatively - in other words, it need not be an antagonistic and competitive field - but I would still like to work through the plays with someone, and that means that they should be able to perform the actions cleanly and well. To me, that says a lot about their understanding of, appreciation for, and mastery of a concept, technique, and Master.

On yet another hand, I think that how someone approaches it can impact things. Is it purely a line of research for them, or is it a martial art? Certainly, the A&S community has people who do solely research and they're appreciated for it. Also, I think that in many ways, in competitions, martial research is presented as research and not a performance or as a martial art per se. So there's also that.

I'm not sure I have a solid answer for this yet. I know that I really love to see these techniques performed to the fullest extent that we're able - and in some cases that's on the field in armor, and in others that's slowly and carefully in a collaborative setting. Ideally, I think that when performed combatively, practice and understanding of period technique leads to martial prowess - and seeing that played out is also pretty great.

So, yeah. No real answers, but just kicking thoughts around.

Dual Entry - Brain vs Body and Secondary Fabris Sources

First up, Brain vs Body!

I've been noticing that for the past handful of practices, I've been really down on myself about my single rapier fencing.

Granted, I might have been feeling down in general. My tennis elbow is flaring (yes, again) and that's always going to be a drain. Also, lack of sleep and other stuff going on. Still though, this feels different - I'm being very hypercritical of what I'm doing, how messy it all seems, and how I'm just not able to execute the plays that I want.

Some of it, I think, is because I'm trying to execute something despite what my opponent is giving me. This is absolutely something that comes up in practice for a lot of us, especially when we've been reading or drilling certain actions. We want to try and use what we've been focusing on, but our opponent isn't often so accommodating - either they're not giving us the setup we need for the action we want to use, or as we often see in the SCA, there's a lack of commitment to their action for us to capitalize on. Or, well, both.

More than that though, I think that I'm running into a developmental hurdle which I don't see too many people talking about, but I do see people hitting and getting very frustrated by - your brain is internalizing an action as a concept before it's able to really make your body do it as you understand it. Basically, you can see what you should be doing, but you just can't seem to make it work.

Of course, if you have a tendency toward being hypercritical of yourself (hi!) this ends up being one of the worst mental places you can get into, despite it being part of normal skill development.

It might not always be the case for what's happening, but especially if you've really been focusing on training and expanding your skill set, it's worth considering as a cause.

Second up, Secondary Sources!

So one of the pieces of feedback I got at Kingdom A&S Champs was that I should be using more (any, really) secondary sources for Fabris. Problem is, I just don't know of anyone who's specifically writing on Fabris. (Capo Fero I could do easily enough, but Fabris? Not so much.) Depending on what I wanted to focus on, I could possibly reference some training videos but they'd be behind a paywall. (Though I did for a moment think that this would really just up the accuracy of any of my papers in terms of making them feel like real academic publishing, right?)

Aaaanyhow, I ended up tripping over a pair of manuals which I might end up mining for insights as secondary sources; just not modern ones. First is New Discourse on the Art of Fencing, translated by Reinier van Noort - originally titled Newer Discurs der Rittermeßigen und Weitberümbten Kunst des Fechtens, by Joachim Köppe. Köppe's manual was published in 1619 in Magdeberg, Germany - after meeting Salvatore Fabris in Paris in 1608 or 1609, where he says that Fabris gave Köppe himself a copy of Fabris' own treatise! Certainly, Köppe's manual is absolutely in the style of Fabris, though he takes pains to point out that he did not plagiarize Fabris' own book, pointing out that while he gained many insights from Fabris there is material in his own book that a reader would not find in Fabris'. Of special interest is Köppe's chapter on "resolution," which I hope will provide his interpretations of principles presented in Fabris' Book Two - proceeding towards your opponent with resolution.

The second book is Of the Single Rapier, also a translation by Reinier van Noort. This is a translation of Grondige Beschryvinge van de Edele ende Ridderlijcke Scherm- ofte Wapen-Konste, by Johannes Georgius Bruchius, published in 1671 in Leiden, in the Netherlands. Interestingly, after Köppe took many pains to point out that he did not plagiarize Fabris' work, it seems as though Köppe was himself plagiarized by Bruchius, among others. That said, there is material in Bruchius' work which is original, and I hope to be able to mine this book for some thoughts as well.

Mid-November Update Time!

Right, so, it's been a couple months and I figure I should ramble for a bit about what I've been up to.

Mostly, I was trying to go from "outline" to "actual real paper" for a paper on (shock!) Fabris. I entered it in the competition at St. Elegius last weekend. It was scored in the "okayish" range - I have a very scientific and technical scale here - and I did get some feedback. I'm planning on reviewing the feedback, thinking about it, and using some of it to revise the paper for A&S Champs in February.

That was a lot harder than it really needed to be - my focus has been pretty shot lately, so buckling down to write was hard. Still, I got it done and edited and submitted, and I'm pretty proud of that. I lost in the research paper category of competition to Elena, but her research kicks so much ass and we were both super excited for the potential to lose to the other.

I also competed in Christoffel's Martial A&S challenge at St. Elegius, using some of Fiore's dagger plays to illustrate the structure of the manual. (And to get a chance to show off some plays that are flagrantly illegal for use in SCA rapier, which is always fun.) Jean-Michel won that with his sweet Lichtenaur play, though Christoffel was really excited to grab me later and tell me about how close it was, which was very nice of him to do.

Other than that, I'm primarily working on trying to Get Good at Fabris' single rapier. I think the biggest issues I keep running into are maintaining good opposition, more dynamic body movement, seizing the tempo, and breathing.

Yeah, breathing. Anastasia keeps pointing out to me after every couple of passes we fight that I need to remember to breathe. I don't think I do this when I'm doing Tournament Fights, just when I'm thinking too hard when I'm practicing. Still, it's worth fixing and isn't too hard to work on. I figure that I'll go back to working on guard transitions during my evening drill time, and remember to breathe during them.

Outside of that, I keep spending time with cloak! Besides needing a longer and heavier cloak (and given the weather lately, that would be nice to have for not-fencing reasons!) it's really all about getting used to the movement of the arm and trusting the drape of the material to protect me like it should. It's a ton of fun though, and I really appreciate why Fabris loves it so much. (Besides the fact that they were ubiquitous and never outlawed, unlike daggers in some places.)

I'll probably pop back up on this after Rapier Champions, unless I have more thinks before then. Which I might, never know!

Thoughts From A Class - Formulating Second Order Principles

Last weekend, I embarked on an utterly ridiculous trip to an event - I flew out to Chicago on Friday to attend the Middle Kingdom Academy of Rapier on Saturday, and returned home (late) Saturday night. I did this primarily because Sir LOGOS had said that he could be convinced to do a three hour class on Fabris, so there we were.

I took a bunch of notes which I'm about done transcribing from my notebook to the computer, at which point I'll edit, revise, and reorganize them into a format which will be more useful to anyone other than myself. They may find their way here, or into class handouts (with credit, natch!) because certainly one of the broadest things I learned from the class was how to better organize and structure a class on Fabris, which is excellent.

However, I wanted to spend some time here kicking around some thoughts that I had around a couple key (for me) points in the class. The specific points aren't deeply important - rather, they're examples of a broader concept in terms of really growing to learn and internalize a period combat system. (Also any combat system, really, but some of my thoughts are pretty specific to working from manuals.)

I think that for a lot of people, when they're working from a manual and want to really internalize and utilize a specific master's fight, there's a lot of "do what the plates show" and "look like the plates" happening, while at the same time you're trying to understand and embody the theory of combat that's described. That all makes sense, and is kind of a first-level understanding. It helps that generally the plates reinforce and demonstrate the theory, so if you work through those plays you can see the theory in action. At that point, you can probably start to extrapolate - What Would Fabris Do Here territory.

What really struck me though, was when points were made that weren't explicitly described in the text - but were no less true for that. They were small things, usually. Placement of the feet, movement of the offside shoulder, and the outsize impact they can have on a fight. They're not described, but they're still there. Second order principles.

It was cool, because if you were really doing everything correctly - I mean really, truly, 100% correctly - you'd be doing all those little things, right? But when you're learning and extrapolating from manuals, it's really interesting to see those realizations happen. To suddenly just get, "oh, wait, I'm turning my hip a little when I do this, and that means..." and there's a sudden wow moment, and usually the conscious realization of one tiny thing just has this massive impact.

So that's just a thing I'm kicking around, and how that can really help measure the real understanding we can have about the fighting arts described in these manuals.

Journals, Letters, and Travelogues - Primary Source O'Clock, a post-Pennsic Post

This is the first of a series of post-Pennsic blog posts. Yay! This is mostly me working through an inspiration that Pennsic gave me, as well as collecting a bunch of resources that folks gave me elsewhere on the internet. So, onward!

One of the things I've been inspired to start doing is journaling as Donovan. I've seen this done before by a few people; notably Master Luke Knowlton's journals, but as recently as this Pennsic by Master Adam Comyn of the Middle Kingdom.

As a point of difference, Luke's journals are written as if by a purely historical Luke Knowlton - in and around historic real world events. (And they are amazing.) Adam's writings are written in a historical style, but by the SCA persona of Adam, Baron Comyn.

I'm planning on beginning this as an exercise in thinking more like Donovan would have or should have, and so to begin I'm going to be taking Adam's track on this - writing journals, letters, and so on as Donovan the persona, as opposed to Donovan in history. This basically means that I'll be referencing SCA occurrences, but tweaking them to get them to work better as though they were actually happening in a more period context. I mean, let's be clear - I don't have the masterful grasp of the time period and events as Master Luke does, so I don't want that to be a barrier to getting this project rolling - I can always start writing Donovan's Journals from the Low Countries later on! Beginning steps are just fine, and I think I'll still learn a good deal from this. Also, it's a good penmanship exercise, though I won't always be using a pen with a nib, just for practical reasons.

Master Adam has four rules that he uses, and I think they're pretty good:

1. Try to write about the day on that day.
1. If nothing else, this will let me keep things straight in my head.
2. No editing once words are on the page.
1. I'm going to be physically writing! I may cross out a thing and re-phrase it, but the crossed out section should still be legible. (If nothing else, this is some real opportunity for comedy.)
3. Allusion and allegory are always allowed.
1. Basically, I can always reference other bigger stories, but they may not be what they sound like.
4. Be the persona, more or less.
1. Donovan in this sense is a historic character, and I'll be trying to sort out some attitudes he may have had through this, as well as better fleshing out his actual historical persona. Also, it's about trying to write as though he would have circa 1600, and that means removing modern references and making it work.
2. This also means that I get to start playing with ideas as to how my more amusing associations and such in the SCA may or may not actually make historic sense in some ways, though for these writings I'll still be writing as a resident of my local Shire with these neighboring Baronies, in my Eastern Kingdom.

To help with this, I asked on Facebook if anyone had suggestions as to journals and letters that I could read, so as to get a better idea of the writing styles of the time, as well as daily life and the like. And oh man, did people deliver! Here's what I was given (and at least one of these is winging its way to me even now):

England, or England in the Low Countries

• Samuel Pepys' Diary
• "An Elizabethan in 1582, The Diary of Richard Maddox, Fellow of All Souls"
• "The Actions of the Low Countries", by Sir Roger Williams, ed. D.W. Davies.
• Monro, His Expedition with the Worthy Scots Regiment Called Mac-Keys
• Correspondence of Sir Henry Unton
• Thomas Conigsby's journal (The English side of the Seige de Rouen!)

France

• Agrippa D'Aubigné "Sa Vie à ses Enfants" (Available in English!)
• Blaise Monluc's "Commentaires," trans. by Charles Cotton
• Essays of Michel de Montaigne (Also available at Project Gutenberg.)
• Relation du Siege de Rouen by Guillaume Valdory (Mirrored in Conigsby's journal, above!)
• Memoirs of Robert, Segnieur de Florange
• Memoirs of Chevalier de Bayard 

Spain, or Spain in the New World, also Spain in Southeast Asia

• Catalina de Erauso, the "Lieutenant Nun" (Apologies for the dated title of this edition.)
• The Memoirs and Memorials of Jacques de Coutre: Security, Trade and Society in 16th- and 17th-century Southeast Asia

Italy

• Venice, Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo  (Translated excerpts; if you read Italian you can get the whole thing.)

More Travelogues

• Coryat, Thomas. Coryat's Crudities. 1611
• Volume One
• Volume Two
• Moryson, Fynes. An Itinerary: Containing His Ten Years Travel Through the Twelve Dominions of Germany, Bohemia, Switzerland, Netherland, Denmark, Poland, Italy, Turkey, France, England, Scotland and Ireland. 1617. 
• Volume One
• Volume Two
• Volume Three
• Volume Four

Other

• The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople, 1554-1562

Early Exploration of New England

• Gabriel Archer and John Brereton writing about Gosnold's 1602 expedition. 
• Pring 1603
• Waymouth, and others 
• David Quinn has edited some excellent books on the subject.

Thanks to Jehan, Luke, Niccolo, Elias, Aildreda, LOGOS, Rufinia, Aubri, Christian, and Tacit for supplying all these recommendations! I'll keep editing this post with links to where they can be found as I dig them up.

Practice Report: They can't all be winners.

So practice Monday night felt overall kind of crap. That said, I'm going to ramble on about it for a bit because, well, gotta talk about the bad ones, too.

Mostly, my head was just not in a good place. It had been a weird day, I was late, I forgot some armor and had to improvise. So not a super great start, y'know?

My Fabris single game is giving me a whole lot of trouble. I think I keep engaging from too close, which generally means that my debole is sitting right in my opponent's forte. This is, as you might expect, sub-optimal. From there, I can't really cavazione, try to control their blade, or do much of anything. I wasn't paying attention, so it happened, and then I was just cranky at myself so it kept happening, and there we go.

I think I can fix it - I'm going to spend some time reading key parts of Fabris' manual, and work on engaging from farther out and being willing to commit hard to close distance. I'll also try a couple more non-extended guards just to try and counter with an angle as well, because I think that might let me find their blade more readily. I'll end up sorting these out with both practice and drills, I'm sure. It's just irritating.

I've been working on cloak in Fabris' system lately, and while it's too early to say that I've had success with it, I'm very hopeful. It's also very educational as to seeing how more of his core principles show up with a different off-hand item. His section on cloak is short, but very to the point and understandable. I feel more than a little clumsy, and I think I need to make a wider and somewhat longer cloak (which would be nice to wear when it's cool, so there's also that!) but it's a really interesting process. My fights with it Monday went well-ish, but I get that this is absolutely a work in progress.

Finally, it was interesting to see how much more mobile I was fighting rapier and dagger, as compared to single, cloak, or buckler. I'm sure that with all of these I was too busy concentrating on many other things, and let's face it - with some of them I was fighting Will Deth and if I'm already uncomfortable with what I'm doing, diving in on him doesn't seem great, and moving around a bit doesn't let me focus as much on the big heavy cloak. Still, it's something to make note of and work on.

On the other hand, I've got the entirety of Fabris' rapier and dagger guards in my head in the form of a kata, which is an amazing amount of fun as well as being helpful. Now I just need to perfect them, and then really dial in my understanding of how he wants them to be used. (Also breathing, but isn't that always the way with kata?) I think I'll always be able to turn to that to at least give me something to focus on if practice is going off the rails for me, too. I'll try to have an entry about this up in the near future, as soon as I formulate more thoughts on it.

In other much better news, it's warm out so I can jog again, and I got my lucet in the mail so I can learn a skill that I can do in places like Court where I need to keep my hands busy and where I don't want to fall into reading a rapier manual and miss something. Sweet!

Thoughts on structuring solo practice time and kata. (Also, a quick practice report.)

You know, I keep meaning to update here, but I haven't had the time to focus for much. Weirdly, a new kid eats tons of that attention! But I have some space now, so let's get this entry done.

Last week's first practice - first since the times of sleep deprivation began - was shockingly good. Will Deth messed me up something awful, but that's just how it goes. (Also, I'm working my Fabris dagger game harder there, and not counter-drafting with stick or case, so that's just going to happen until I can figure it out.) My later bouts with Kenric and Lupold were tons of fun, and each had a couple moments of actually doing Fabris for real. The real trick will be replicating it, of course, but it's good to see things that I'm practicing start showing up in bouts. (As a note to me, I still need to work on preferring single tempo actions over dui tempi actions - I think it's just a drill and trust myself thing, but goddamn were they working ridiculously well when they happened.)

Later last week, drills and teaching were good. (Though it's better when I get in more drill time too, boo.)

This past Monday's practice was mostly a wash for a bunch of reasons, so I'm trying not to dwell too hard on that.

What I really came here for though, was to talk about structuring solo practice time. In particular, structuring solo practice time working from a manual, and how kata can be a generally useful tool for imposing that structure.

It's a truism that practice time spent in a structured way with specific aims will be more successful than time spent faffing around with a sword. Just going to "do some lunges" or whatever is certainly better than no time spend with a sword at all, but there's a huge difference between that and "perform 10 lunges from Terza into each of the four guards, paying particular attention to my balance."

I find solo practice to be particularly difficult to work with in a structured way. It's easy to slack off, it's hard to get feedback throughout the practice session, and you're quite simply limited in terms of what you're able to work on - no running through plays and working on specific actions in them!

So before I get into the thinky and rambling parts of the post, let's mention a few things that we can do to help get the most out of solo practice.

• Use a timer.
  This really helps keep your mind on task - there's no "am I done yet" happening here. Just keep doing what you're doing until the timer goes off. I like having a visible clock just for a quick "how long have I been doing this/do I have left" check, but that's not for everyone, and it's gotten in my own way before. 
• Decide on clearly defined actions.
  Like I mentioned above, don't just "go do lunges." Instead, "I'll work through standard lunges through all four guards for five minutes." 
• Metrics are awesome.
  Metrics are necessary for any kind of progress determination, but are especially necessary for solo practice. In paired work, your partner can readily test your actions and give you feedback on the progress you're making as you go. You don't have that immediate external feedback in solo work (though you can use a mirror or take video) so working with some kind of definable progress is pretty important.
• Focus on things that solo practice is good at.
  So like I said, it's hard to work through plays by yourself, but you can still do a ton of things. Body mechanics, conditioning, and repeatable actions that don't require an opponent are all great to focus on.

What I find interesting though, is that there are two things that can really help impose structure on solo practice - manuals and kata.

When it comes to using a manual to apply structure my solo practice, I can take it in one of a couple different directions, but they really come down to looking like the manual. If there are specific actions described that I can do by myself, I'll focus on them. Otherwise (and especially since I've been working from Fabris most often) you can't really go wrong trying to Look Like The Plates. This isn't a substitute for reading the accompanying text and making sure that you understand the plates for sure - and there's going to be some conditioning involved as well - but the more you can take on the postures depicted, the more you'll be able to work through the plays.

Kata, though? I love them. What's really great is that they're absolutely not solely part of Eastern martial arts! Bolognese swordplay has assaults, which are basically kata. Spanish montante manuals have rules, which can also be used as kata as well. They're intended to be used in solo work, and let you focus on any number of things, as you like - cutting mechanics, footwork, balance, flow, or considering what your opponent is doing to cause you to move like you are.

I'm still going through all of Fabris' rapier and dagger guards in order as though they were a kata, and it's doing so much to keep me focused when I'm working with a limited practice window on my own. As a bonus, they'll really be stuck in my head and I'll have a grasp on how to move in and out of them when I'm going back to the manual again and making sure I grasp how they're intended to be used.

In short, solo practice is great. Stay focused, have a structure, and work what's really workable in that format.

VISS 2017 Trip Report And Thoughts

So I made it out and back to this year's Vancouver International Swordplay Symposium. It was, in a word, amazing. Just like last time, I walked out with a whole lot more than I walked in with.

I've been to a couple different Western Martial Arts conferences, and so far, VISS takes the cake. It's well planned and organized, located conveniently (once you get to Vancouver, anyway!), welcoming and inclusive, and packed ridiculously full of teachers and students and knowledge that's just waiting right there for you to engage with it.

It's remarkable, and I love it. I can sum up my excitement about VISS by comparing it to this corgi:

http://frizzyburr.tumblr.com/post/151194818922/thebestoftumbling-corgi-on-a-carousel

Classes I took included two intensive tracks:

• The Italian Rapier intensive with David and Dori Coblentz from the Decatur School of Arms in Georgia
• The Thibault's Rapier intensive with Matthew Howden from the Academia Duellatoria in Oregon

I also took some one-off workshops, including:

• From Salle to Street, Grappling and From Salle to Street, Rapier with David R. Packer and Kaja Sadowski from the Valkyrie Western Martial Arts Assembly in Vancouver
• Dealing with Physical Asymmetries with David Coblentz and assisted by Devon Boorman from Acadamie Duello
• Tactical Asymmetries with Devon Boorman and David Coblentz

That's a lot of stuff, and I'm still sad that there were workshops I couldn't hit - a panel on Gender in Martial Arts, a workshop on barehand vs knife, body mechanics and movement training, and others. Frankly, if I have a single complaint about this conference, it's that I'm physically unable to take every single class that I'm really interested in.

(As a quick side note for the SCA people here, David Coblentz is David Twynham OD from Meridies, Matthew Howden is Gregorio Cristovalez de la Vega OL OWS from An Tir, and Devon Boorman is Prospere de Montsegur OWS from An Tir. There were also a few other SCA folks attending as students, which was great to see both from a cross-pollination stance as well as just making it easier to open conversations.)

Every single class that I attended had me taking copious notes, and picking up all sorts of ideas to bring home. Even in the cases where there weren't Grand Revelations, simply the way the material was structured and presented helped me make connections that I didn't have before and gave me ideas to chew on. More often than not though, there was a pile of brand new material to figure out, drill, and explore in one of the most collaborative working environments that I've been in.

While every single rapier class I took was excellent, the standout classes were the From Salle to Street workshops. (Or as I'm calling them in my wise-ass way, Adrenaline 101 and Adrenaline 102.) They left me with a lot of things that I learned about myself, a lot of areas to explore, and the tools with which to do that exploration. I'm very happy to talk about my experiences in those classes with folks, and discuss how I think they're very applicable to what we do in the SCA, both for tournament performance as well as general sound martial practice.

Shockingly, my time out there also gave me ideas for some other classes to put together. Among other things, I'm thinking that an overview of Disarms With Rapier could be fun as hell. (Spoiler: all the disarms that came up were great on any number of levels.)

I was ridiculously sad to have to leave this environment and fall back into real life, but I'm already looking forward to VISS 2019.

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!

Practice Report, and also Dealing With the Winter Dark

In the absence of digging through rapier manuals (because life has been a thing lately) here's a quick check-in for a practice report.

At the Thursday practice, we've been taking about half an hour each night with interested people to work in a study group format - nothing really deep, but just going through specific skill drills in a more structured way. Usually around three or so separate drills each week, with a good amount of repetition from week to week for retention. I'm not sure about anyone else's opinions, but I think it's going pretty well. Yay structured learning and also period rapier actions!

I haven't been focusing on much in particular up until now - just doing the actions and concepts that I've been drilling, but doing them better. Which is fine, and it's been going fairly well. I've started to focus more on striking in one of the four tempi of opportunity though, and that's an interesting exercise, and has some really helpful drills to build awareness of them. Additionally, I've decided that I need to expand my single game again; I've been working a lot of attacks in opposition, but working things that aren't from a bind would be, y'know, helpful. I'm not sure how to work those actions in a structured way, but I think that after the new year I'll have been able to come up with something.

Speaking of the new year, I've been noticing that the last couple of weeks that for myself and some other folks, it's been rough starting up at practice. I've been sluggish, both physically and mentally, and my warmup bouts have been kind of trash - and it's hard not to let that start to put a damper on your practice, if you start off feeling like you're in a slump.

The Solstice has past us, and the days are getting longer, but January and February tend to be ridiculously cold up here - and that combined with the still very short days and early sunsets have been doing a number on me some evenings. What's been working for me - and what might help other folks who're experiencing similar things - has been a couple things which, let's face it, I should have been doing anyway. First, take more time to warm up - both literally and conceptually. Get into your practice space and take a couple extra minutes so you're not starting while you're still cold. After that, take a little more time for some warmups and mobility exercises. You don't need to stretch (I still think that serious stretching is best done at the end of practice) but just loosening up the joints and getting the blood flowing a bit before picking up a sword has helped me get out of that environmental funk by a lot.

The other thing that's helped is not just jumping into serious free bouting. I try to start off with some basic drills - not things I'm trying to learn from scratch, but just things to keep the edge on, or ongoing work type things. If I can't do drills, I'll do some slow work, or super casual warmup fights. Again, mostly just to get the body moving and engaging the brain with swords in an easier activity that is explicitly not going to hit any "my performance is trash" buttons right at the start of the night.

This afternoon is a Special Boxing Day Practice, running for five hours, so I'm looking forward to some extended fencing and teaching and learning, and probably a lot of hanging out and chatting, which will be a nice thing at this point in the holidays.

And hey, if I don't post again beforehand, everyone have a great new year!

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!

Yet More Practice Report

The Lochleven Spring Practice was this weekend, which meant Sunday had a lot of time being outside, watching melee practices, and getting in some good singles practice for me.

I approached it more as a functional practice than a purely manual practice, and it worked out pretty well. I felt a little off during the day, but that's probably just because I wasn't super focused for a number of reasons.

I noticed that being able to flow smoothly between a more upright Italian stance and down into a Fabris guard was working pretty well for me. While I'm still not as explosive as I'd like (especially from a lower stance), being able to shift between them really opened up my options (as well as being super period, so go me!) and when I was using a dagger, it let me deny my sword to people who were either being very proactive with a dagger or other offhand in terms of molesting my blade, or just letting me close off differently. In particular, I think it was helpful against the good Doctor Deth, who has a particularly vicious gliding beat with virtually no telegraph.

Working case into my Italian game went fairly well. While it'll never be a major form for me, it was working well as a counter-pick to Deth's case. I've been using an off-hand cane for a while there, which let me close off enough area that it let me work more safely, but being able to actually threaten more with my off-hand changed things up much more.

(It also led to some interesting thoughts about how various case fighters use case, and how I'd much rather just use dagger out of stubborn principle. Sometimes - I think the majority of the time, really - I can, and it works out well. Deth though, hits enough problem areas for me that counter-picking a weapon form gives me much more leeway.)

I need to work more on keeping the tip of my sword free. More disengage/yielding drills, including working on disengaging over the dagger. I need to be much, much more responsive there. I should also fight more single rapier, just to really dial in on these things as well as forcing much more opposition practice. These should also help against beats - either disengaging them or yielding and collecting them.

Explosive footwork and aggressive responses are things that have been problems for me for too long, and I need to dial those in. (Also, once again, making passing steps more instinctive.) There's going to be some focus on that with drilling for the coming Mondays, which will be super good. Likewise working those offline steps and more body voids (and general body English in general - Edward and Malocchio both are good examples of that for me) which is also a reminder for me to stretch more. Some of that I can work on in my own backyard, which is convenient.

Finally, gonna have to pull out the sidesword and start in on basic cutting patterns. I'm happy to use my rapier in C&T, but broadening my game into a solid Bolognese footing (and eventually Italian longsword, which reminds me, go get one) will be fantastic fun.

Quick Practice Report

I'm doing this mostly to keep myself thinking and accountable. So!

The big things I took away from last night were:

• Keep drilling opposition. Work up to opposed drilling regularly. Make sure I'm doing everything right. Details matter.
• Keep practicing open and closed dagger guards. Test them.
• Work both of the above together. Opposition while using a good closed guard. All at once.
• Mobility. Work on it. Both pure foot-based movement as well as just getting my body to be willing to move itself around. Body English.
• Lunging in good order. Also, diverting into passing on the lunge.
• Merging everything together. Cavazione while stepping in, leaning, forming a closed dagger guard. All at once, and all.

Which is basically just "practice fencing," I know, but still. Breaking it down like that is super helpful for me. Plus, I can at least do some of that solo.

Two sets of bouts really stood out to me, though!

Working with Malocchio brought a very different fight from our usual out; we were both working on very specific concepts from Devon's workshop, and it led to some really interesting exchanges. I wasn't contesting opposition to the degree that I usually do, instead moving to cavazione instead. He was committing a lot more and using a very different posture with the cane. It was all around really great.

I found myself unable to land any solid attacks on Kenric in opposition to my outside. Given that he's a lefty, and that my outside is his inside, this makes some sense to me. Still, the mechanics of my movement in from finding felt off, so I want to work on that next Monday. (Or possibly this Saturday, but probably Monday.)

Nothing huge, but worth putting down to keep me honest!

Functional Mnemonics!

If you follow any of the fencers who are semi-local to me on almost any social media, you'll probably have noticed that this past Sunday, we were lucky enough to have been able to catch Devon Boorman of Acadamie Duello in Vancouver out in the Boston area for nearly six hours worth of historical rapier teaching.

(Brief shout-out: in addition to the physical Acadamie, Devon also runs DuelloTV, which has a giant mess of instructional videos available. Setting up the basic membership is free, allows access to a number of the introductory videos, and only gets you one piece of email sent to you a week - letting you know which of the advanced videos are rotating into free access for the week. I cannot recommend this resource highly enough.)

There wasn't much in the workshop that was completely, 100% brand new to me, but I always love getting a full review of the fundamentals from the ground on up. Fixes to technique at that level almost always have a ripple-through effect to the rest of my fight in ways that are kind of hard to quantify but are absolutely there. Even little things like adjusting my hand or foot can have a long-term impact in that every little bit of increased efficiency will reduce the wear and tear on my joints, meaning that I get to keep doing this thing for that much longer in my life. Which, in something that won't shock anyone, is really important to me.

The other reason that I will always happily work through fundamental workshops is because there will inevitably be some turn of phrase or tiny little technique that will have an impact on my fencing out of all proportion to the time spent on it. This entry today is one of those little snippets - a couple turns of phrase and ways of thinking or describing an action and how to think of it just all clicked together into a thought which led to writing this up.

While I'm hoping to do a couple shorter follow-up posts about rapier specific things that were really important that I picked up on, I really wanted to note a couple broader mental concepts that kind of hit my brain on Sunday. Specifically, something that I've noticed Devon doing in his instruction that I'm terming "functional mnemonics." Now, I have absolutely no formal education in either the practice of teaching or learning theory or anything like that, so it's quite probable that this concept has a name all on its own already, and is well known in the field, but it's new to me so I'm noting it because I think it's super important. In practice, I think that using functional mnemonics will impact two parts of fencing - cognitive load and good technique.

One of the things that was mentioned as an aside is that people don't truly multitask like many folks think. We can't parallel process - we really can only do one thing at a time - but we timeslice really well, and jump back and forth from thing to thing quickly. That's fine most of the time, but you really don't want to be timeslicing while fencing. You want to minimize the cognitive load that you need to carry - you absolutely want to minimize the number of things that your mind will need to jump between to track. The usual way this comes up in practice is when a student first picks up a dagger, and the instructor points out that they don't want to create a third line of attack between the sword and the dagger, because that's one more thing to track, and can dramatically increase the cognitive load that the fencer needs to deal with. Remove that line, and the number of cycles in the brain dedicated to jumping from line to line drops a lot, and you can focus on other things. Win!

So relating this to functional mnemonics came up in the workshop terms of foot/knee/leg positioning. Typically, newer fencers are taught to keep their lead foot pointed along the line of action, and to be sure that their knee is extending along that same line, bending over the foot and toe. While this is structurally sound and worth practicing, it's also a lot to keep track of. Foot position, leg angle, knee tracking - that's really a lot. On the other hand, if you think of it in terms of keeping your knees out as though you were doing a squat, not only do you end up with a more structurally sound stance overall, but if you're used to the feeling in the knee when you're in such a position, almost by definition your foot will have to point properly and your knee will track over it correctly. You don't need to keep track of the individual components like we typically instruct people, it just falls into place. Knees out, recognize the sensation, everything else just happens. Much less cognitive load, more free cycles in your brain to pay attention to things your opponent is doing!

This also relates to the second way that functional mnemonics comes up - thinking of an action differently (and generally more simply) leaning to performing proper technique. This came up in three separate instances, but they all clicked together really well.

• In using opposition, from the first finding of the blade all the way through the gain and the strike, students were encouraged to "keep your mind on your point" and not thinking of the action from the perspective of the hand at all. This really does end up preventing a lot of the problematic hiccups in the action.
• When striking from opposition, thinking of it as a forward motion, and don't worry about the deflection at all. If you're moving forward into a good Seconda or Quarta, the sideways motion necessary for deflecting your opponent happens coincidentally and well, and doesn't go too far.
• When recovering your arm after a lunge, thinking of it as tucking your elbow in, not withdrawing the arm, prevents the elbow-out chicken wing that happens sometimes.

None of these really have any changes in the actions themselves, but just thinking about performing the action using a particular mnemonic leads to performing it correctly solely because of the mindset or focus that the thought process leads to. Additionally, and related to the first point, thinking of the action in that way tends to summarize a lot of other little parts or makes it unnecessary to think about them actively, which also reduces the cognitive load you're undergoing as you're working on the actions.

I hadn't ever encountered this type of summary or thought process of teaching precise physical actions before, but now that I've been struck by it, I can see a lot of it cropping up here and there through Devon's instruction. It strikes me as supremely useful, both in terms of instruction and in terms of actual training and performance for myself, and I'm very likely going to be trying to work those into teaching when useful, and into my mental processes while I'm drilling and working on new techniques.

Finally, as I mentioned at the beginning, I have about zero formal training along these lines, so if anyone has any more information or thoughts about this - either in terms of instruction or performance - I'd love to hear them.

Yet Another Practice Report

Remember when this blog also had cool period rapier content? It'll come back, I promise. For now, my practice report for tonight.

We had an out of town MoD show up, and man, I've missed having someone just roll into a practice and kick me around hard from out of the blue! I lack lunch money now! It gelled a lot of things I've been thinking of lately, and let me solidify plans for myself.

• Movement continues to be a thing - it feels like stepping, body english, and explosiveness is being lost in Fabris. I know that all of these things are sure possible there (Logos is proof!) but it's way, way hard.
• It's harder when it feels like my body is fighting me! My wind was gone, and a lot of aches and actual pain were happening. My hand and elbow were up to their old tricks. Anastasia assures me that when you really start exercising there's a period of things getting worse before they get better. So I live there now, until I don't!
• I was biting way hard on feints. In retrospect, I felt like a lot of my attention that should have been on the fight was being eaten by the aches and pains and being in form, but that is what it is.
• Measure! Pay attention to it! This was something I was good at once. When people keep pressing in, I should do a thing about that!
• Multiple intentions! Ugh, come on! Also, change lines, idiot!

So yeah. Frustrating in terms of my body noping, but super useful in terms of really gelling a lot of things.

So I'm gonna keep working my Fabris - because I love Fabris - but also now that I can use my pel again, keep working more general combatives. (Or to put it differently but still accurately, remind myself that I have, and work on, a broader Italian rapier skill set.) The Fabris will continue to work its way heavily into my broader Italian repertoire, but I think upright work will help my back out and my mobility out. (Also, training deeper and fighting higher is stil really a thing.) Stand up, shake it out, and work those lunges and movement and everything. Work on transitioning from upright through the lean into Fabris and back out! Yeah.

Also, I should cut myself a little slack. Not much, just a bit.

Looking forward to the gym tomorrow morning, though. That'll help kick the rest of this. (I might try and re-juggle my schedule with the jogging to spread it a bit, that might help my fencing some.)

There's going to be a rapier workshop on Sunday though, and I'm deeply looking forward to that. It'll almost certainly help settle things, reinforce fundamentals, teach me new things, and just keep this ball rolling.

Next up, something from Fabris!