Pugilism at BWAHAHAHA, March-May 2012

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During March and April we were the grateful beneficiaries of several weeks’ pugilism instruction from Mr. R. He is now taking an extended leave from the group so that he can tend to other responsibilities. In his absence we are trying to drill the basic skills he taught us, getting as many reps as possible while preserving correct form. If we can keep that program running over the next couple of months we might have enough grounding in pugilism basics to be ready for further improvement when Mr. R comes back.

Much of our attention in the last couple of weeks has been focused on the shovel hook. All of the basic punches in pugilism are complicated and non-intuitive movements, but the shovel hook requires even more careful attention than the others because of its complexity. Delivered properly, it should be an upward blow into the opponent’s midsection, powered by the legs. Typically it is delivered while coming up out of a duck. The rope drill is used to give us a fixed object to duck under. The lead foot advances to the side of the adversary, the rear foot drags up behind it and plants, and the pugilist rises up out of a sort of crouch while driving the rear fist up into the target. The footwork can become confused unless all of the four possible permutations are sorted out and practiced separately (right vs. left lead X attacking to right or attacking to left). All four of those permutations are covered by the two different rope drills, but during the 15 May practice we teased them apart and worked them separately in an improvised pad drill as well.

Fiore, 11 April 2012

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Great workout – six total in attendance, including the return of lost brother William. We worked on some footwork tweaks, on the four crossings drill, and some basics involving two guys, each with daggers, trying to murder each other.

Footwork tweaks

Make a guard stance, either left or right forward. Draw the knee forward over the toe. Now do a pass. The goal is to eliminate the telegraphing of pushing the knee forward before passing — it is already forward, so when you pass you can spring forward with less telegraphing. Obviously, we also want to eliminate the capital crime of repositioning either foot prior to passing. Try working this concept in a group, circling to left or right, passing forward with a fendente from posta di donna on cue from one of the group members.

Four crossings drill

This is a subset of Mr. Windsor’s 13 crossings drill. This one looks at four commonplace mid-sword crosses.

We worked on this quite a bit, playing it as follows:

  • For the two largo variants, worker waits with left foot forward
  • For the two stretto variants, worker waits with right foot forward
  • For largo variants, feeder binds the sword with light pressure and then performs feed.
  • For stretto variants, feeder binds the sword with threatening pressure and then performs feeds

We then took the first largo variant, the step offline and fendente against the arms after the feeder leaves the bind. We looked at the situation where the feeder comes in, the swords cross and then the feeder immediately leaves the bind and tries to cut around the other side. Note that this is not a smart action on the part of the feeder, but nevertheless it is something that we see in free play contexts. We tried two variant responses. One that seemed obvious was to offline *left*, thus moving away from the incoming blade to cover and simultaneously counterattack. This proved to be inferior, however, to sticking with the play, which means off lining *right*, cutting to cover the strike, and then transitioning to stretto actions. Super-effective.

Dagger stuff

Somewhat loose drill of trying to interrupt a dagger attack in the measure of the opponent’s entry (catch and simultaneously counter or just counter).

Ended with free play rounds with dagger (Eric, James and William) and then longsword (Eric vs. James).

Fiore, 9 April 2012

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Eric was absent and so Neal and Kip did a cursory run-through of German Longsword 101, culminating in the “defending the wall” drill, which we did considerably less effectively than these people, who gave us the idea.

Fiore, 8 April 2012

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It seemed like a good way to address the high hands problem might be to study all of the ways to defeat an opponent who has gone into high hands mode. We drilled five of them, plus one bonus technique.

1. The canonical Fiorean nut kick.

Not all nut kicks are created equal. Note that the nut kicker in this photo has his body weight and energy forward; he’s not leaning back away from the opponent. That’s better form.

2. Up the middle with arm wrap + chicken wing

This works best when the high hands situation has developed up the middle (no bias to either side) as shown here.

Take the left hand off the pommel, reach between the opponent’s arms, wrap the right arm and chicken-wing it across the body.

what to do with the right arm and sword? In the pictures below, the roles are reversed. Blue has performed the chickenwing on Black. Here he uses his sword to control Black’s left arm

and here he draws his sword hand back for a thrust.

3. Open lane on the right; double arm wrap

Here the high hands clinch has ended up on Black’s left, giving him an open lane to his right.

He reaches in and executes a double arm wrap against Blue.

 

 

 4. Open lane on the right; hilt/pommel grab

Another option when the clinch is to the left is to reach over with the left hand and grab the opponent’s hilt or pommel, then apply torque with the strong of the blade to twist the opponent’s sword around.

5. Open lane on the left; pommel strike

When the clinch is biased to the right and a lane is available on the left, as is the case for Black here,

the pommel strike becomes an option. The most powerful version of this is a hooking strike through a horizontal plane,

but in a pinch Black could also lever his pommel up and deliver a “freight train” blow.

6. (Bonus) the symmetrical clinch

It commonly happens in free play and tournaments that the combatants end up in a symmetrical clinch with each using his left to control the other’s right.

Here Black’s arm happens to be above Blue’s. He reaches behind Blue to grab his own blade and pull it up into Blue’s spine.

In the case where Black’s arm is beneath Blue’s, he can still grab his own sword behind Blue’s back and then use it for grappling leverage

 

BWAHAHAHA, 27 Mar. and 3 Apr. 2012

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Four in attendance. The second consecutive week of basic pugilism training, courtesy of Mr. R. The focus, naturally enough, was on footwork and posture. It is a remarkable thing about WMA that all of the ones we practice at Lonin (Fiore, cutlass/saber, and pugilism) employ basically the same footwork: the lead foot (the “rudder foot” in pugilism parlance) pointed directly at the adversary, the other angled outward, with an open lane between them. A fully generalized WMA curriculum would probably begin with pugilism, since it is such a good way to learn the basics of movement, posture and position without the distracting presence of a weapon in the hands.

High hands

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Causes of high hands

  • Overreaching – attacking from too great a distance, thereby having to stretch the arms out more, resulting in hands at shoulder level
  • Attacker fails to nail stance / continues surging forward after pass – in the process of closing very fast you have residual momentum that carries you forward. This tends to drive the strongs together, raising them.
  • Leverage – the defender instinctively drives his sword up and forward to get his strong against the attacker’s blade—this turns into a feedback loop as attacker does likewise and you end up crossguard-to-crossguard with hands at or above face level.
Remedies for high hands (attacker side)
  • Attack from within range so you can safely bring the hands down when completing the hit
  • Better footwork to stop yourself
Remedies for high hands (defender side)
  • Move offline or back to make room if attacker is carrying forward with momentum
  • If attacker is using high hands to bring his strong to bear against your blade, you can’t resist that pressure unless you also go to the high hands position. Instead of doing that, keep hands low while moving offline (typically to the left) and then use your blade to cover.
  • If attacker then loses blade contact while you are doing that, you can safely cut around and smack his blade into the ground, then false edge cut to the head. Don’t forget to then bring your blade down and cover against a possible follow-up.
  • If attacker maintains close contact you can probably reach in to control the wrist, push the elbow, or envelop the arms.
  • Moving offline allows for a better angle for cutting around– trying to cut around from stationary is harder, you have to bring the sword point back more and you can lose contact
Remedies for high hands (both sides)
  • Use the stretto grabs or elbow checks
  • Canonical Fiorean nut kick
  • Pommel through the forearm triangle

BWAHAHAHA, 21 March 2012: Knitting the strands

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We’ve been meaning to add grand bâton to our repertoire. We now have the equipment in the form of four rattan sticks 1.4 m (55 in.) in length. We also have the beginnings of some curriculum in the form of Dr. Ken Mondschein’s new book The Art of the Two-Handed Sword. This is about the spadone, an immense sword used during the Renaissance, so might seem irrelevant to a 19th Century group. But even after the use of the spadone died out, its techniques survived in the form of the grand bâton, and so Dr. Mondschein’s book can be used as the basis for a “big stick” curriculum.

P. 119 of this book contains some interesting and useful remarks about the importance of keeping the weapon moving. The spadone was so heavy that starting and stopping it required a lot of effort and entailed some delay, and so normal practice was to keep it swinging around all the time in large circular cuts called molinelli, as shown starting at 1:12 of this video from WMAW 2011.

The grand bâton and the la canne cane don’t weigh as much, but their weight is concentrated at the distal end–they are maces–which makes them unwieldy and obliges the user to keep them moving. That’s why we begin each practice with stick circling exercises and it’s why we have recently begun working on the drill, described in last week’s blog post, in which a failed attack is followed up by a molinello and a second (or third, etc.) attack.

As it happened, this dovetailed nicely with Mr. B’s saber curriculum for the evening. We drilled the case in which the attacker’s first cut misses because the defender steps back out of range. Because the saber is a heavy weapon, the correct response is to keep the blade moving in a molinello while advancing for a second attempt.

We also worked drills showing how these circling movements can be actuated from the wrist; from the elbow; or from the shoulder depending on the tactical situation.

Fiorean counter plays to dagger remedies

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Working dagger masters one (inside catches against strong-side fendenti) and three (outside catches against reverse-side mezzani), we get into the counter-master actions against the remedy masters. We can focus on the first master as this section shows the array of basic counter-remedy responses. The latter sections likely have some variants but there is plenty to work with in the first master:

  1. A taking of the dagger / play 1 is countered with a hit-around / play 2
  2. A lock (middle key) / play 3 is countered with a reinforced counter-lock / play 4
  3. A break / play 5 is countered with a strike to the right arm / play 6
  4. The catch is countered with an immediate wrist lock / play 9
  5. The catch is countered with an immediate parry of the catch-hand and hit / plays 10-11

Maximizing the quality of resistive training with partners

The complexity of a three-step drill raised another issue Monday evening, and that was the basic flow and goals of resistant training with partners. Learning can be hastened or hampered by mental/emotional factors (competitiveness, reactiveness to new and confusing movements, introspection or lack thereof) and physical factors (reactive speed, differences between level of speed-governing of two partners, muscular stiffness). There are also the matters that I place into the communication category (minimalist/analytical versus expansive/speculative). These issues will be the subject of a future post, but to summarize some basic issues when engaging in resistive training with partners:
  • Separate pressure from power. The goal is flexible pressure, not stiff power. Remember that stiff power can always be overwhelmed by a larger or more skilled opponent. As illustration try picking up a small child who is resisting by going rigid versus writhing while going totally limp.
  • Doing it right vs. winning. Buy into the notion that you are going to fail due to new material and/or cooperative requirements within the structure of the drill.
  • Allow failure within the exercise (partner prevails) as a means to self-analyze and discover/correct failure points. With good control, failure does not equal injury/hurt/humiliation.
  • Cooperatively buy into half speed. Don’t “cheat time”. Effective technique relies on immediate adaptation. “Catching up” by getting jerky and fast when you were too late to respond at the outset, does not scale to full speed. Using that tactic during training subverts the drill structure and encourages everyone to get jerky and spastic. You can always tell your partner to slow down.
  • Cooperatively buy into relaxed power/pressure. If you train using your stiff power to compensate for your lack of skill, how much more spastic are you going to be when overloaded with adrenaline? Again, you will subvert the drill and sabotage your own and your partner’s learning. You can always ask your partner to relax.
  • Self-analysis and thoughtful analysis of one’s own and one’s training partner’s issues. Thinking through how an exercise works or does not work. Refraining from over-correction syndrome (talking too much). If it takes you a week to reflect and contemplate and come up with a well-reasoned solution (or even question!), then take a week! Or, to summarize, shut up and train. (That goes for coaches too!)
  • Continual self-monitoring and self-correction of essential structure and balance issues. (Am I off-balance, am I minimizing busy-ness, am I exercising good leverage, am I applying power flexibly and adaptively?)
Next, a quick stating of high points around the basic counter-remedies:

1. Hitting Around

He tries to catch your arm and you hit around / change angles.
  • Body-connected small-circle angle redirects
  • Driving pressure in behind the body, which is in turn anchored using proper structure
  • Employing a strong, ergonomic arm position
  • Avoiding pullback and exposure of the elbow
  • Immediacy and flow

2. Counter-locking

He tries to employ a lock, e.g. the middle key
  • Reinforce your limb with your free hand
  • Find a way to put the dagger point into him
  • Body connected movements backed w/ structure
  • Work for superior leverage while denying feeder the same
    • My limbs close to my body
    • Using my larger joints against his smaller joints
    • Drawing his arms out while keeping mine close
    • Moving my body to alleviate pressure on the joint rather than trying to move the limb against his strength
  • Immediacy and flow

3. Stabbing anything that is in range of the point

He tries to bring his second hand in to double his catch, e.g.. play 5
  • Stab that arm then immediately stab the body (yes, using body-connected pressure and flexible power)
  • Reinforce the dagger with your second hand
  • Draw my body backward to force him to lengthen and expose his arms
  • Keep my arms tight to my body to maximize my power and leverage
  • Immediacy and flow

5. Using the free (non weapon/check) hand

Yes, I skipped 4 but to keep things straight… your dominant hand is holding the dagger. Your other hand needs to be in play so it can do things like sweep the opponent’s catch hand away, or guard your face.

BWAHAHAHA, 13 March 2012

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Attendance: 5.

The new mailing list was inaugurated for Victorian-specific discussion that might not be of interest to the general Lonin population. We hope that this will also enable us to attract some new participants.

The physical culture routine continues to develop, and people are getting better at it; transitions from one exercise to the next are becoming quicker, which means we can get more done in the allotted hour. Part of the philosophy behind this drill is that each participant can ramp the intensity up or down by, e.g., using heavier clubs, or standing down and resting for part of the interval. To facilitate that, we may soon need to invest in more clubs and sticks, which is a good sign.

Partly because of the need to explain the new moving-target stick drill, physical culture ran a bit long and we concluded with about 45 minutes of cutlass work under the tutelage of Mr. B., mostly working a drill in which both participants, after an initial attack/defense-by-distance, keep their feet planted and take turns shifting forward to cut at the other’s arm, then shifting back to avoid the counter. Later this was complicated by allowing parries.