The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

No drilling this week, so only the fighting from Thursday to think on.  And it boils down to two Significant Thoughts.

Form

Or, where I say “Dante was *cough*cough*right*cough*cough”.  Per his suggestion in a comment, I spent Thursday with my feet at an obtuse angle, experimenting with how it affected my ability to stay in guard and act.  It interfered with my retreats (more on that later) but otherwise felt more stable and less fatigued in my guard.  I was able to keep it ongoing through most of my fighting pretty easily.

Messo Tempo Fighting

In review of Giganti’s manual I’ve come to understand that, basically, the whole “when your opponent gives you a tempo, kill him” strategy boils down to “lots and lots of stop thrusts”.  When lunges, stop thrust.  When advances, stop thrust.  When tries to close the line, stop thrust.  When he disengages in preparation for a lunge, stop thrust.  When he sits there waiting for you to act so he can counter-lunge, lunge (while properly closing the line).  And the end result is a lot of my opponents lunging onto my blade, often while I’m lunging, too.  So that whole “can’t retreat too well” didn’t really matter, since I tended to take my ground and let them die on my sword.

We can talk about “Breaking the wrist” all we want, but that shit is gonna hurt, and it’s gonna hurt them, not me.  I could execute from a wider measure, but I’d be executing a different action and it would probably end up the same way.  Is my opponent’s failure to understand measure, tempo, and line ultimately their responsibility?  Is expecting it not to hurt when we perform the same actions that, in period, killed people, realistic?  This is where I get into trouble, though, for teaching my students to say “Learn to parry.”  Yes, there’s a level of responsibility on my part to make it as unhurty as possible, but…

60 in 60

One of the households here in Atlantia put out a challenge to fight 60 fights in 60 days (with one opponent only counting once per day).  Now, they made these seem all hard and shit, and there’s some sort of prize.  But the thing is I feel like it would be cheating for me to enter.  Monday is the first day of the 60 days.  As it turns out, Monday I’ve invited a ton of people over for drills, and fighting (totally not because of this, but because it’s MLK and I’ve got the day off).  So, call that maybe 5 fights?  Tuesday is heavy practice (though I think not next week, but let’s consider them for the example), so another 5 fights.  Wed. more drills, 5 fights.  Thursday practice, 10 fights.  Saturday an event, Songs of the Stone, so another 10 fights at least.  First week, 30 fights.  Second week, heavy Tuesday, Wed. Drill, Thursday practice, Saturday Ice Castles (15 fights?  20?), another 30 fights.  Before THIS MONTH is out, I’d have 60.

With heavy, drill, and rapier practice, that’s 20 events a week, and then events three weekends a month through April, that basically means at least 30 fights a week.  8 weeks = 240 fights.  And frankly I don’t want to keep track of that many fights (plus, they’d think I was lying).

Ultimately, though, the purpose seems to be to get otherwise inactive fighters to get out and fight.  I really don’t think it’s directed at me, and maybe entering it would be like having a Provost crash a novice tourney (I’m a provost only in so far as I waste too much of my life with a sword in my hand).  Those Atlantians out there, though, I’m curious as to whether or not you’re going to participate.