Excessive Blows

Recently the problem of hitting with excessive force once again reared its ugly head. This, like day-glo Converse and decaffinated coffee is a problem that should never come up. Okay, I realize that there will always be the occasional train wreck, but short of that, there is no reason why hitting too hard should be a problem. As I see it, there are only two causes for hard hits: lack of training and blatant stupidity. And since we can't get rid of stupidity, we are forced to rely on training to minimize the problem. The training's even relatively easy: pracitce regularly, and when you practice, hit as light as possible, and take even the lightest hits.

Okay, hitting light can take some practice, but the basics are easy. To get a light hit requires three things: force, balance and range. Of these, force is the easiest to practice. Remember those tennis ball drills you hated so much? Well, if you can consistently hit a tennis ball on a string without causing it to swing more than six inches, you're hitting about right. Of course I realize hitting a tennis ball at speed is difficult, so try a kick ball, or even a piece of paper. Once you can do that at speed with a normal attack, move out a few inches at a time until your lunge barely moves the ball (or paper).

And balance is even easier to work on. In fact it's real easy. Don't lean. When you lean forward, you add your body's momentum to the attack which means - you guessed it - more force. And when you lean back, you take away both your mobility and your body's elasticity. In short, if you lean back to avoid a hit and it still lands, it's going to hit with more perceived force.

Which leads us to range. Hopefully, all those tennis ball drills will have taught you your range. So all you have to do now is only attack when your opponent is in range. If they're too far out, take a step forward. Likewise, if they're too close, take a step back (or if you really want to mess with their heads, take a step to the side).

Now, as with most fencing drills, it's best to start out slow and gradually build up to speed, but with practice it shouldn't be too hard to hit as light as you want. And believe it or not, your goal is to consistantly hit too light in practices. If your opponent at practice has to ask if you got anything, that's an ideal hit.

Why? Because there's this little thing called adrenaline that tends to kick in at tourneys and (especially) melees. And what adrenaline does is lessen your control. No matter how hard you try, you'll hit at least a little harder. That's why I say to train light: so that when you're in a furball and hitting twice as hard as normal, that just means your hitting like a grasshopper instead of a fly. Adrenaline also makes you less sensitive to hits you receive. So again, if your sensitivity is halved, your opponent won't have to leave marks for you to call it good.

That still leaves blatant stupidity to worry about, but if you train regularly, and train well, it lessens the chances of that as well.

One in Ten

My captain told me once that he spent 90% of his time dealing with 10% of his soldiers. He was talking about how it was the problem children in the unit who required all of his attention, which made him feel like he was neglecting the rest of the unit.

And that problem isn't unique to the military, just about every large group suffers from it. Even us fencers. If you look through the rule books for the SCA, just about every decision in there can be traced to a single person (not all the same one, but still...).

I was taken to task over my last post, because it sounded like I was blaming all of the white scarves for what happened at Uprising. That wasn't my intention, and if it was taken that way, I appologize.

But, likewise, I cannot say that all of the White Scarves (either in Artemisia or the Knowne World) are the paragons of Truth, Justice and the Artemisian Way that we would hope they would be. In fact, I would go as far as to say that each and every one of them has had at least one lapse in judgement at one time or other, that's just part of being human. Unfortunately, just like in any group, there are a small few for whom these lapses of judgement go from occasional to fairly often.

And, thanks to good old Murphy, the bigger the lapse the more public it tends to be. This leads to the group being judged too often by our occasional mistakes, instead of by the numerous good deeds that surround them.

That is why I brought up the occurence at Uprising. Everyone makes mistakes, yes. But in order to offset these mistakes to the surrounding public, we need to be seen as being able to recognize them and show that we can take care of them, and the more in-house we can do it, the better.

So, why did I bring it up in a public forum? Wouldn't directly confronting the individuals about their actions have been better? If I'd have had names, yes. But I didn't. So, instead, I used the incident as a chance to remind everyone of the impact of their words.

Wheter this was the best choice or not, I don't know, but it has obviously gotten people's attention.