Category Archives: Fiore

Fiore, 8 April 2012

Status

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

 

High hands

Status

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

Fiorean counter plays to dagger remedies

Status

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.

Fiore – third master of dagger intro

Status

We are continuing our focus on dagger this week. My goal is to cover all the empty-hand masters (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9) by the end of March, and then move onto the armed masters (6-8), and advanced counter-remedies, in April.

This week we are focusing on the third master of dagger, who is catching a reverso strike and proceeding with a number of breaks, locks, and takedowns that are effective from this outside-the-arm position. The rationale for “why” an opponent would enter with a reverse attack comes from the second play of the First Master: where the dagger-wielding assassin strikes with a mandritto fendente, and then quickly transitions to a reverse hit when the defender attempts to catch his forearm. Thus, we are working on hitting into the reverso in a flowing way, as a follow-up to the mandritto fendente.

There are two nice followups that are reasonably safe to do in class: the first play, and a modified version of the third play of the first master. I don’t like the arm bar because it’s too easy to jack your classmate’s elbow, and I feel that it is difficult to work these locks vigorously while also avoiding injury. So we practice as follows.

The first play involves off-balancing the opponent backwards – coming off the catch, you slide the left hand up to the enemy’s shoulder, and then pull back on the shoulder, or press down on his chest, as pictured in the book. I had the guys modify the third play to cut pressure to the shoulder joint rather than at the elbow. That way, plays one and three are mirrors of each other, and the defender can practice going with the opponent’s energy (e.g., you try to off balance backward by pulling back on the shoulder, he is strong that way, so you instantly reverse and press forward on the shoulder to force his face to the ground). And, we can work these two variants strongly, even going to gentle takedowns.

For safety reasons, I always teach the escape from the arm bar at the same time I teach the arm bar. I learned this escape as part of my Wing Tsun studies. The problem is that your wrist is being held tightly and pressure is being exerted against your elbow, which is rotated up. To release the lock, drop your knee to the ground while simultaneously rotating your elbow in so that it is restored to a natural position. This rotation, sourced in the shoulder and adductive, is very strong. The classic standing arm bar is actually easy to escape. This is another reason I prefer the shoulder pin.

We started with hitting: practicing the manditto and reverso strikes with body shifts, then with shuffles, then with passes. We then practiced the catch a bit: the left hand raises to catch the mandritto, and the right hand is coming up to cover as well, when the opponent reverses the strike. Now both of your hands should be up to cover. I like to think of the catches of all of these masters, as transitional movements that can flow one to the other as you adapt to the changing position of the attacker. At some point, we hope you will gain a solid catch and be able to proceed with Fiore’s instructions: strike, take the dagger, lock, break and throw. Obviously, the longer time that passes with the enemy swinging a sharp blade in your proximity, the greater chance of getting hit.

We then drilled the two basic follow-up options technically and then worked them intensively with two feeders attacking three defenders. The feeder won if he was able to get either the mandritto or reverso strike to hit home. Net was lots of drilling on the catch, both first and third master. At the end I asked the guys who had it easier, the guy with the dagger or the guy without the dagger.

The secondary activity starting at 8pm was freeplay-oriented longsword drilling. Monday evening we worked on performing the sword grab (5th play of the zogho largo). The drill worked like this.

  1. Free hit (mandritto fendente from posta di donna)
  2. Defender parries, overbinds and the attacker angulates around his parry *in the time of the parry* to stab.
  3. Defender grabs the tip of attacker’s sword and throws a reverso fendente to finish.

As with all longsword plays, if you miss a critical pressure or timing piece, you should get hit. The angulation will not work unless you do it while the defender is binding to the outside. Done against a stationary bind, or a bind whose energy is directed on you, you should get hit.

Fiore, week of 13-Feb 2012

Status

This week we worked on parries from the left side, building from a couple of plays that Guy Windsor teaches. We are defending attacks from the strong side (mandritto fendente).

The first left-side guard comes from Fiore’s Master of the Sword in one Hand. This master holds his sword on the left, with his back to his enemies. The parry movement out of this guard starts with a volta stabile with right accressere, accompanied by a large sweeping parry rising from the left, with the true edge.

The second left-side guard is dente di zinghiaro, or boar’s tooth, in which the sword is held at the left hip, point forward, with right foot forward. The parry in this case is a false-edge sottano, also rising from the left.

When defending using either of these parries, you are sweeping your sword upward, collecting the opponent’s blade from the outside. Your accressare right helps to power the motion of the parry. As with any parry, you want to meet the middle of the opponent’s blade with the middle of yours, and you achieve a mechanical advantage if you are parrying your edge against his flat.

Guy prescribes a canonical drill that uses this exchange, as one of his foundational exercises:

First, you allow the strike to land. Second, you perform the parry, the attacker’s point is beaten wide, and he is open to your mandritto fendente counter-attack. Third and fourth steps play through counter-remedies using the pommel strike for follow-up. Playing through to the third or fourth steps, everyone continues their roles. In other words, when performing the pommel attack, the attacker is forced to cover properly, because the defender is performing his fendente as planned.

Note that in this sequence, the attacker *allows* his point to be beaten wide because he has chosen to continue his attack by covering with the pommel strike and stepping in.

We then looked at some stretto variations of the above, also taught by Mr. Windsor. Both of these stretto variations occur when the parry succeeds in moving the point to the right, but the attacker resists having his point beaten wide. So, as the defender, you have an open line on the left of the blades. Your blade is on your right side, and the attacker’s blade is parried to the right of your blade. But, he is not going wide with his point. He is sticking with the bind.

The two defender options we explored are the following:

  • You move in slightly, maintaining the bind and reaching with the left hand to palm the attacker’s hands. With a good hand-check in place, you can then march in with your stance behind your arm, forcing the attacker’s hilt upward, while simultaneously stabbing from the right side.
  • You slide up on the attacker’s sword, bringing the edge of your strong (hilt) in contact with the flat of his weak (point). The resulting leverage advantage lets you perform a clockwise circle, driving his point down, while palming his hilt left to right from the outside. The circle brings your point on line to his body and you can then complete with a thrust, and/or perform a disarm.

If he is binding hard enough to bring his sword more into the middle, you’ll be forced to cover, wind around and hit, enter with the pommel strike, or move to one of the stretto plays that deal with the opportunity created when there is a lane made available to the right of the blade. I note these here, even though we did not practice them.

Tips and thoughts collected during these practices include

  • The acressare is a sideways movement. You don’t advance.
  • Proper timing of the parry arm movement with the accressare, contributes to a more substantial parry that does a better job of clearing the line. Start the hit first, cross in the middle and then accress right.
  • When delivering the pommel strike counter-remedy, if the attacker’s hands are high, you can strike upward through the triangle of his forearms, if you are in front of his arms. You can also hook your pommel over his forearm and slam it down, cutting into his face, if you are on the side of his arms.
  • As Guy points out, Fiore did not show hand snipes with the tip. He does show attacks to the arms, across the forearms. The former does not mechanically control the enemy’s sword, while the latter does.
  • Fendentes delivered with the hands high are susceptible to hand snipes. Fendentes delivered with the hands low, are much less susceptible, as the sword point is brought into threat more quickly. That said, partners sometimes attack with hands high, which causes this parry to feel different. The parry will be more on the tip of your sword than in the middle, due to the partner’s position. So attack the hands in this situation.
  • The parry for both of these movements, is a large motion. The sword point ends up well in front of the right shoulder. The point needs to clear high enough to decisively knock the opponent’s point out of line. For the sword in one hand version, the hand ends up in front of and above the right shoulder. For the sottano version, the hands end up in front of the body, in the middle of the trunk.

Fiore 12 Feb. 2012

Status

After warming up with some dagger work we moved through a planned curriculum of drills geared toward thrust defense.

  1. Worker holds sword out horizontally in front of him between both hands. Feeder applies pressure to the middle of the sword, then shoves. Worker’s job is to move laterally, deflecting the shove while remaining square to the feeder (and, of course, while using correct footwork). Worker is backed up against a wall so that he can’t step backwards.
  2. Worker stands backed up against a wall with no weapon. Feeder stands facing him with a long staff and makes “pool cue” style thrusts to worker’s midsection. Worker’s job is to move laterally and dodge the thrust.
  3. Feeder and worker both have swords. They move around, freely adopting different postes, and feeder makes occasional thrusting attacks. Worker needs to both collect the incoming thrust with his blade (exchange or break), and move laterally.
  4. Same as previous except that if the worker notices errors in feeder’s footwork (e.g. crossing the legs) he should attack.

After that, more discussion of the right fenestra stance in Fiore’s spear system, which Fiore seems to think very highly of but which we find awkward and strange.

Fiore 10 Feb. 2012

Status

Five in attendance for this early bird session. We spread out into a larger space and worked on spear drills: moving out of right fenestra to counter attacks from all six canonical spear positions. This led to a discussion of tactics against the thrust in general, which we went on to practice using longswords.

Fiore 8 Feb. 2012

Status

A discussion of the unnamed posta, frequently depicted in Fiore when both combatants are in the incrosada. Why it’s not the same thing as posta longa. Why it’s a good idea to strike into that position (i.e. with hands lower and closer to the body) than to strike all the way out into posta longa. Most of the session was then devoted to the sottano parry up out of boar’s tooth, its footwork and its variations.

Fiore, evening of 6-Feb

Status

We are continuing to assimilate newcomers on a weekly basis. This is both exciting and challenging.

Monday we worked on a basic crossings drill, courtesy Mr. Guy Windsor:

  1. You wait in PDD destra.
  2. Defender also waits in PDD destra.
  3. You attack the defender with a mandritto fendente, passing.
  4. Defender strikes as well, aiming to cross in the middle of your sword, to cover.
  5. Seeing this defense occurring, you shorten the strike somewhat so as to force the crossing to occur higher on your blade, giving you an opportunity to do a quick tip release, offline step and doubled mandritto fendente through.
If you are unable to pull off the tip release, and remain crossed in the middle of your blade, you need to do a reasonable alternative, such as one of the zogho largo plays.