Modern Fencing: Yes or No?

It seems like there's a never-ending debate on whether or not modern Olympic fencing has any use to the SCA fencer. After all, fencing's fencing, right? And with the resurgence in Olympic, it's becoming easier and easier to find local fencing clubs to join, but is it a good idea for someone who wants the best rapier game they can get?

For the record, my start in fencing was in Olympic, some twenty years ago. I fenced mainly foil and epee, but did some sabre as well, so I am familiar with the sport. Olympic is a wonderful place to learn basic parrys and attacks as well as work on your tip control and speed, but it does have three major flaws: footwork, right of way and touches.

Olympic footwork is basically sound, except for the fact that it is designed for a 14-meter by 2-meter (roughly 46'x6') strip. Because of the narrow width, the only movement options for Olympic fencers are front/back and up/down. That's good, as far as it goes, but SCA fencing is usually done in the round and that extra dimension of side to side makes a real difference. When someone is advancing in Olympic, your only choices are to stand your ground or retreat, but in the SCA, you can side-step in just about any direction.

Another flaw in Olympic (as far as the SCA is concerned) is the idea of right of way. Basically, right of way is the idea that whoever attacks first, wins - no matter who lands their attack first. Now, don't get me wrong, right of way is a good idea, but in a style that scores body parts differently like the SCA, there are times when it is worth sacrificing an arm or a leg to get the head or torso.

The third major flaw in Olymic fencing is what constitutes a touch. Any touch that results in sufficient bend (or that will set off the scoring buzzers) is a good touch. Sounds pretty good, right? The touches might be heavier than we use, but the idea's sound. Well, sort of. You see, in Olympic, it doesn't matter how the touch lands -tip, flat or press - as long as there's sufficient bend. In a form that treats blades as having edges, you do suddenly have to worry about how the blade landed, not just how hard.

Of course, Olympic isn't all bad. Some years back, a visiting fencer from the Outlands commented on how incredible Artemisian fencers were at single-sword. The reason we were (are) so good at single-sword is that most fencers are tought a modified version of Olympic as their first style, complete with parrys, attacks, lunges and drills. Those drills, especially make their way into our psyches until we can't get rid of them. I know I've killed more than one person with a textbook lunge. And, as limited as Olympic is, it is a good way to keep your parry reflexes sharp and cut down on your double-kills.

So should an SCA fencer do Olympic? Not if they're just starting out. The differences in style are too great and they'll find their fencing suffers both on the strip and in the round. After they've gained a good feel for fencing and can separate the two styles, then yes, they can gain from the experience. With one caviat: stay away from sabre. Sabre offers no benefits to the SCA fencer and can lead to the bad habit of hacking.

Plateaus

It happens to all of us: we keep getting better and better until all of a sudden, we just can't get any better. This doesn't mean we don't have anything more to learn, just that we've learned as much as we can by what we're doing. We've plateaued. And the sad fact is that this isn't something that happens once, but over and over again.

Usually, the first plateau happens fairly early in your career: you've learned the basics and have started doing pretty well for yourself locally, but then Bam! Your death becomes a common, oft-repeated part of fighter's practice and you begin feeling like the shire pin-cushion. The cause of this first plateau is that your fellow local fencers have learned all your tricks, all your patterns, and can counter them without even thinking about it.

For this first plateau, the solution is to travel. Go to other group's fighter's practices. Do pick-up fights when you go to events. And if you see someone do something really effective, ask them about it. This will expand your knowledge base and teach you new tricks that maybe didn't work for the other local fighters, haven't made their way to your local group, or maybe have been forgotten by your other local fighters.

This will get you going again and you'll start doing better and better at tourneys, maybe winning a few but definitely making a good showing for yourself. You're right on the edge of greatness, then Bam! Another plateau. You're still doing well, but you just can't get your head around those Gold Scarves. So, what do you do now?

You start teaching. You help out at fighter's practice with the brand new fencers, showing them the basics of footwork, parries and attacks. This slows you down and forces you to think about what you're doing and how. And it also starts to teach you how to watch other fighters and take apart their style. And after a while, you begin to make progress against those Gold Scarves who'd been your bane for the past few months.

And things are going great until the same thing happens again. This is when many fencers will begin doing research, either on period techniques or other martial arts, trying to find that certain something missing from their style. They'll start focusing on the why of fencing moves and begin adapting other arts to their needs.

And again, as you get deeper into your research, your skill will begin improving until you're the equal of all but the very best Gold Scarves, but then you hit another plateau. And it's time to change things up again. It's time to start "hunting Dons." You should be taking every chance you can get to fight with the White Scarves, both in tourneys and in practices. Ask them questions. Ask for their advice. Pump them for as much knowledge as you can: after all, many of them have forgotten more about fencing than most of us know.

And just like before, you'll start improving again. And, like before, you'll hit that plateau again. And this time it's back to teaching - but not focusing on the beginners. This time you're focusing on the intermediate or advanced fighters, teaching them your tricks and helping them through their plateaus.

But even after you get past this plateau (and hopefully earned your White Scarf), you're still not done. Every so often, you'll hit another plateau. And the fix for that plateau will always be to learn more or to teach.

As for myself, I've taught beginners, I've traveled, I've done research, and I'm definitely at a plateau. I guess that means I should start hunting Dons.

Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks

I went over to Bronzehelm for Schola this last weekend and was pleased to find a good chunk of time set aside for fighter's practice. It was wonderful to have a chance to play around with new people and it gave me a great opportunity to try out what I've been learning with my saber. I was even a good boy and warned them that I was trying out news stuff and apologized in advance for any oopses I might make.

And I apologized each time I made an oops.

And I apologized afterwards for all of the oopses.

You see, they style I'm studying with my saber is almost all sweeping tip cuts. And when they work, they work great, but when I'm off, it's a lot of hacks and hard slaps. And let me tell you, my control with the style is nowhere near ready for prime-time. And no, I didn't use they style during the serious fencing. After all, if I can't control it in practice, there's no way I can control it when the adrenaline is flowing.

The good part (for me, at least) was that after watching for a while, Don Adam took me aside and worked with me one-on-one to try and figure out a way to help take the force out of my attacks. And he came up with a couple of ideas that look very promising. The first is no more two-handing for a while: it just adds too much power to my swings. The second idea was to strike with the flat of the blade initially and then turn it edge-on for the draw. This not only spreads out the force over a broader area, but also uses the flexibility of the blade to absorb the force of the blow. And it worked great in practice, even with my current control level. I definitely still need to work on it, so it'll be a while until I can bring it out in a tournament, but at least I have a direction to go.

Did I mention it was a great event?

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.

What I meant to say was...

At Whipping Winds this past weekend, I taught a short class on Marshalling for Rapier where I covered field marshalling and weapon inspections before doing an open Q and A period. And whether because of the crud I was suffering from or just my natural absent-mindedness, there were a few things I forgot or I feel like expanding on.

The first omission (and probably the biggest) was on the subject of injuries. If you are the marshal in charge of an event or a practice and there is an injury requiring outside medical assistance (ambulance, EMTs, etc.), you need to contact both the Kingdom Rapier Marshal and the Earl Marshal (currently Don Azir and Duke Allan) as soon as possible with all of the details of the incident. In this case, as soon as possible means within twenty-four hours, but if you can send something up as soon as the EMTs have left the scene, that is better (make a trip into town if you need to). For some reason they get grumpy if they hear about stuff from Corporate before they hear about it from their guys in the field. Go figure.

The next thing I want to go into is rules vs. rumors. As many of you know, canes have been on the experimental list for quite some time. At the event, a couple of people brought them and I did the standard hold 'em up and ask if anyone had any problem facing them. One gentle, got rather upset, insisting that Don Azir had just approved them and was writing them into the rules. This was even corroborated by a marshal-at-large who was there. The gentle with the can was even more upset when I told him that I didn't care and that until I saw the written regs, I was treating it as a rumor. Here's the thing. It's not that I thought he was lying, even without the corroboration of the other marshal. The problem was that I have heard nothing from higher-ups about the subject, and I have seen no regulations about canes, so rather than trying to enforce rules I have never seen as to construction standards and such, I enforced the rules that I knew to be good. In my opinion, it is always better to enforce outdated rules that you know than to try and enforce new rules that you have never seen before. The flip side, of course, is that to have a responsibility to keep as up-to-date on the rules as possible.

We also spent a good chunk of time talking about drinking and fighting. The rules say that if you're impaired, you can't fight. Of course, they don't define impaired which leaves the decision up to the marshal in charge. So I told them my basic rules: if I can smell it, you can't fight and if you walk up with a beer in your hand, you're done (yes, I've had it happen). But probably the best way to handle it is for fencers to marshal themselves. If you have a drink, just don't fight. Likewise, if your cold medication leaves you fuzzy or your on prescription pain meds - or even if you just feel "off", don't fight. Remember, this isn't like deciding you don't need to wear a cup where you'll be the one hurt, this is an instance where your stupidity will hurt someone else.

The last thing I want to talk about is the authority and responsibility of the Marshal in Charge (BTW, who was the MIC for rapier at Whipping Winds, and where was he or she on Saturday?). The Marshal in Charge is ultimately responsible for everything that happens in his list field or on his melee field. Everything that happens is his fault. That is why the Marshal in Charge is the ultimate authority for his field. Whatever they say is law. The Marshal in Charge can tell the Society marshal what to do, and they must listen. Now this doesn't mean that being a MIC gives you the right to be a petty tyrant, even if it does give you the ability. Remember that every decision you make can be held up for review after the fact. Now both out kingdom Rapier Marshal and Earl Marshal are very supportive of their troops in the field and will probably stand behind your actions, whatever they are, but if that action was really stupid, you may find yourself with your warrant and authorization pulled.

My Mom's Not Going to Like This

You see, my mother's a died-in-the-wool feminist, achieving more in her mumble-mumble years of living the belief that there is nothing a man can do that a women can't (when she did hit the glass ceiling, it was because of religion, not gender) than most people can imagine. So you'd think that the odds of my being a chauvenist would be pretty slim, right?

And you're right, mostly. The thing is, I recognize the fact that - in general - there are some things an average male is better at than an average female. The big example is physical strength. Your average male is stronger than your average female. But along those same lines, your average female has better balance and a higher tolerance for pain (yes, it's true) than your average male. One isn't better than the other, they just have different strengths.

So, why does this matter in fencing? The physical differences don't, really. The psychological differences do. At least to me they do. Okay, before you jump up on your soapbox and start haranguing me for being a sexist pig, let me explain. You see, women don't, in general, find going out and blowing stuff up a relaxing way to spend an afternoon. For them, agression is something that has to be cultivated, whereas it comes so naturally to men that, if anything, it has to be reigned in. And when you consider that half of fencing is proper use of agression, you can see where this becomes an issue.

In my experience, you can bring out the agressiveness in even the most timid male fencer by two simple steps. The first one is to go at him hard and heavy for about five minute (not quite club him like a seal, but along those lines). This gets him to understand instinctually that you're not really going to hurt him. The second step is to have him do the same to you. If you do it right after step 1, he'll be frustrated enough that he will come at you hard and heavy. This will not only make him understand that he's not going to hurt you, but it'll also flip a switch in his cave-man brain, and he'll know that it's okay to attack. Yes, sometimes it'll take a few tries, but if it takes over a half-hour to get him to attack instead of just defend, I'd be surprised.

This doesn't work with women. At least not in my experience. And neither does having them picture their brother/sister/mom/whatever, at least not anywhere close to consistently. The truth is, I have no idea how to bring out the agressiveness in women fencers. Let me tell you, I had fun trying to explain that to the mother of one of our local fencers. She was asking if I could help her daughter become a more agressive fencer and I told her no. When she asked why not, I tried to explain how women and men think differently. Needless to say, she didn't take to that too well. But when I asked her if she understood how men thought, she admitted that no, she didn't. I told her that the easiest way for her daughter to learn how to be agressive would be for her to talk to someone who wasn't suffering from testosterone poisoning (i.e. another woman).

I'm sure there are people who don't agree with me, who do see this as and admission of sexism, but I like to think they are wrong. Rather, this is an admission of a personal limitation. Just as I can't take apart an opponent's style by watching them fence, I do not know enough about women to bring out the agressiveness necessary for fencing. The mechanics of fencing, I can teach to anyone, but the mindset is beyond my capabilities.

Was I right?

In one of the posts over on Artemisia Militaris, someone asked the question of whether the new youth stickers affected how us old farts fought them. Basically, she wanted to know if we were taking it easy on the young fighters because they are young. Pretty unanimously the answer was no, but.... Later, I approached the fencer who'd posed the question and admitted that I had treated my fight with her in the Non-Don tourney differently, but it wasn't because she was young. It was because she was looking to become a cadet.

Okay, here's what happened. Yes, I gave her the best fight I could - she even commented on not being used to me being "all flowey and stuff" - but she's young, quick and not without skill whereas I'm old, slow and left relying on my skill and we ended in a double kill. Almost simultaneously, we head-shot each other. Her shot landed a fraction of a second before mine, but well after I'd started my shot. Now, if I'd been treating this as a serious tourney, I would have taken it as a double-kill and the call would have been beyond question. But I was in it for the fun (I'd make a lousy cadet, so there was no point in drawing attention to myself). She was, too, but I knew that the added visibility would do her quest good. So I gave her the bout, claiming (rightfully) that her touch landed first.

When I talked to her about it later, she said she didn't really need the extra exposure - and she's probably right: she's a good enough fencer that she'll go far without too much help - but she didn't mind what I'd done. After all, she'd had fun.

But looking back, I do have to ask if it was the right thing to do. At the time, I was sure of it. And, in this instance, no harm was done. But I've realized that if she wasn't such a confident young woman, it could have left her wondering if she'd have done so well if I hadn't "given" her the win.

Was this another one of those things I can add to my ever-growing list of ways not to become a Don?

Giving Criticism

Okay, so this one bothered me.

When I got to Uprising, one of our young fencers came running up to me to show off his new prize - a buckler he'd made himself. I checked it over, and it was ugly, I think anyone who was there knows the one I mean. But like I said, I checked it out and pointed out a couple of flaws with it (it had some 1/4" holes in it) and told him the marshal might bounce it because of them and, yes, I'll admit I ribbed him some about it's appearance, but I also told him it was a very creative first try.

Now what I'd expected to happen was that he'd show it to the marshal and it'd get bounced for the holes (heaven knows I've had my equipment bounced for stupider things), but what happened was that the marshal ignored the holes (see The Society Rapier Handbook, Protective Gear:2.B.ii, I know it's meant for masks, but it can be interpreted to apply to other parts of your equipment), and let the young man take it on the field.

Where he was greeted by several rounds of "My God! That's ugly, how could you even think of bringing it on the field?" For some reason, he bowed out of the melees early. And refused to go to the Chivaly Circle. And refused to take part in any of the tournaments. When I tracked him down and asked him why, he said that he didn't need a bunch of white scarves telling him his buckler was ugly and he should be ashamed to bring it out on the field.

Thank you guys, you just killed rapier for a young man.

Vivat.

Okay, yes it was ugly. But I have to ask if anyone even looked at the fencer carrying it? He was 16, with purely store-bought equipment. I mean, even without the buckler, he just screamed "new fencer." Wouldn't it have been better to play Laurel and find at least one good thing about it ("I like that you painted it") before tearing him down? Or, even better yet, offer to, or suggest someone who could help him make a better one? I know I tried that, but by that time, he was so defensive from the repeated attacks that he refused to even think of giving up his buckler.

I hope that I'm wrong. I hope that he isn't getting ready to abandon us in favor of the armored fighters who praised his creativity, rather than criticize his appearance, but whatever the results may be with the young man, it makes me glad that I don't wear a scarf that would tie me to such wonderful people as our supposed paragons of fencing.