torstai 23. tammikuuta 2014

Loose play vs practice bouts

For all of us interested in fencing comes a time when “freeplay” or loose play, is introduced to practice. But unfortunately for some of us there never comes a time when we get to do practice bouts. The importance of practice bouts is unfortunately often underestimated in HEMA, and most people don’t even understand how they differ from standard loose play. While practice bouts are not something you need to introduce to your training very early, they become a very handy training tool for more experienced students.

Practice bouts are essentially judged bouts ( you can use any ruleset you want ) where you count points. One fencer wins and the other fencer loses. Loose play is free-fencing without counting points. Let’s move on to analyze their positive and negative sides compared to each other, and look what they bring into your training.

Loose play:
+ a chance to introduce newly learned fencing actions to your repertoire
+ learning how to approach and solve frequent situations differently
- fencers don’t care if they are hit. Or if they hit the other guy. ( since you don’t lose points for failing a parry, you are not as eager in parrying. Same applies for offense)
- not caring about being hit results in lower speed and lower concentration

Practice bouts:
+ finding out your own strong points and weaknesses (“favorite strikes”)
+ higher level of concentration, higher speed of fencing actions
+ caring about being hit and hitting the other guy ( Imagine how much more you would care if the swords were sharp and you’d loose your head for a failed parry. Thus learning to care about not being hit is extremely important )
+ confidence boost for actions you are able to pull of successfully
+ higher level of stress, emotion and motivation
- fencers are not eager to apply actions that they are not 100% comfortable with. this may lead into a very limited repertoire. And limited repertoire means that it is easier for your opponent to figure out counter actions to your own actions.
- limited repertoire also means you are extremely predictable
- higher level of intensity means higher level of risk of injury for both participants
- needs more resources as you need a competent judging team. This also results in your getting less fencing time ( though I have to say that learning to judge is a valuable learning experience for a fencer, since it requires lots of similar skills as fencing does, like ability to perceive what is happening in a fencing bout )

Both of these training methods are obviously important for our development as fencers. Overusing either method  leads into some negative side effects. Doing both actively leads to optimal results.

maanantai 20. tammikuuta 2014

Characteristics of fencing as an activity & how to train

Regardless of what type of swordfighting you practice, it is quite a unique activity compared to other martial arts / sports / combat sports out there.  Compared to physical activities like acrobatics, running, swimming, dancing and other closed motor skill sports/activities, the difference is massive. Yet it never ceases to amaze me how many people train longsword as if it was a closed motor skill (closed motor skills are performed with very little attention paid to the environment / surroundings, because either the environment is the same each time, or the little changes in it doesn’t affect the performance in a meaningful way). People practice paired set choreographies for hours and hours and when their first free fencing time comes everything they’ve learned flies out of the window. Wonder why?

Longsword fencing is an open motor skill. You have to take into account all the external stimuli. Small changes in your opponent means you need to perform different actions. Some of the same actions work differently, or doesn’t work at all, depending on physical qualities of your opponent (you cannot strike a zwerchaw to the head the same way against an opponent who is 190cm tall, and one who is 150cm tall). And you won’t know what your opponent is going to do. You might know all the answers to all the different fencing situations, but you will not know what questions he is going to ask. Fencing technique does not exist in a vacuum, what and how your opponent does something affects how you perform your given actions.

Understanding the difference between open & closed motor skills is critical, because obviously the way you train has to correspond with what kind of motor skill you are practicing.

This means that if you want your students to learn fencing as an open motor skill, your drills need to have stimuli for what the students need to react to. This can start out as a simple strike executed to a previously announced stimulus (for example, “when your partner lifts his sword to vomtag, strike a zwerchaw). A simple reaction to a simple stimulus. Practicing like this is very important, since it practices all 3 phases of a sensory motor skill. Preparatory, latent & executive. And while this kind of practice might seem similar to practicing fencing like a closed motor skill (no stimuli), it is not.

The next level of difficulty is choice reaction to your partners previously announced actions. For example  “If I attack with a right oberhaw, respond with zornhaw ort. If I strike your leg, do an uberlauffen & if I strike with a bent arm, do a krumphaw to the hands”. You can start out with a few (2-3) big & clear actions, and as your abilities improve, make them smaller and faster. Or include more options. Choice reaction practice builds critical skills for fencing, like better perception of fencing, speed of reaction, concentration etc etc.

After you have spent time practicing longsword as described above for some time, and have acquired a large repertoire & a high level of successful executions of your fencing actions, you can practice both simple & choice reaction as an unannounced action. Note that this kind of practice does not really suit the regular “class” practice, unless you are dealing with very experienced students. Usually practicing unannounced actions like this works much better as a private lesson, where one of you clearly takes a coaches role, and at the beginning of the exercise explains that the lesson will involve no talking, the coach will only present situations for the student to deal with. This kind of practice in my opinion is extremely valuable as it requires the student to have high level of perception, reaction and concentration (How many times while fencing is your opponent going to yell “oberhaw!” and attack ;)?)

At this point of my post I think I should mention that if you are dealing with beginners, or generally practicing a new strike / defensive action, it is completely fine to practice it like a closed motor skill to get familiar with how the strike works and how you’re supposed to move your body. However there are 3 things to keep in mind. 1st: Avoid rhythmic practice. This will lead to a low level of concentration. 2nd: You don’t really have to repeat this kind of practice for long. The step up to a simple reaction practice is not big. People are generally able to handle things quicker than you would expect. 3rd: wear appropriate protective equipment. Especially later on when you want your students to go faster / as fast as they can.

I’ll end this post with a few remarks on speed and intention. Swordfighting by nature is fast, in all of meanings of the word. To be successful in it you need fast movements, fast reactions, quick speed of perception & awareness.  While practicing simple & choice reaction drills, speed of reaction is more important than speed of action. A fencer with good speed of reaction & perception, but only average speed of action, will generally perform much better than a fencer with great speed of action, but only average to low speed of reaction. It does not matter how fast your parry or strike is, if you react late to the given stimulus.

Now when I say that you don’t need to go fast while doing these drills, you should always try to hit your partner.  And for this you need to wear adequate protection. Not wearing enough gear is a sign of stupidity. Otherwise you risk injury for you or your partner. Another result of lacking equipment is that your actions will become completely unrealistic if you cannot hit your partner. What good are 1000 repetitions of a zornhaw ort if your partner pulled all his oberhaws short because he was afraid to hit you? Essentially this means you have never actually performed a zornhaw ort, because the conditions needed to perform the action never happened.

Practicing (in a useful way) with minimal equipment in my opinion is an advanced skill for experienced practitioners.