Dirty Old Man Tricks

When you're new...

When you're new to the sport, no one knows wtf they're doing.  They throw sloppy swings, they leave tons of openings, and the winner is usually decided by random chance.  As people develop, they become better, their swings get faster and as they throw they use a little bit less gratuitous movement (see one inch for more on that).  So each fighter leans to become more precise, so that you can throw shots that previously you couldn't, hitting people in places that they still haven't learned to guard because only a person who has the accuracy of surgeon can sink those shots (sword side hip shot for example).  Eventually, you ascend to the rank of a veteran and pretty much all of the standard shots don't work on you.  You've developed enough of a guard that just by passively standing there you can absorb most swings without having to move.  Your footwork has developed to the point where you stand where you want to, choosing your range for the engagement or choosing when and at what angle you're going to fight.  Eventually you learn how to absorb wrap shots with minimal movement which shuts down the only shots that could actually get around your guard, and at this point in your career, you may feel like a proper badass.

...What you don't know.

What you don't know is that there are plenty of people who have reached that point of basic competency.  That's right I said basic competency.  Knowing how to throw a standard selection of shots plus being able to block most incoming shots doesn't make you good, it means you've reached the middle of the road for fighting, and it means that NOW you can start to master it.  The difference between a 5 year vet and a 10 year vet is NOT that the 10 year vet has better body mechanics, basic stance, or basic throws then the 5 year vet.  What the 10 year vet has on the 5 year vet is experience.  They've seen not only every shot you can throw, but every shot series you can throw when you start to chain them together.  The problem is that for that 10 year vet, there are 15, 20 and 30 year vets out there who have shit they've never seen before.

It's a trap!

Better fighters are often good at disguising themselves so that they appear worse then they are (guilty).  They do this by leaving pretty obvious shots that a fighter of their caliber shouldn't leave open.  ...don't swing at those, they are a trap.  If you've fought me, I do this all the time with sword and board by leaving my board side shoulder open by having my shield too low.  When they swing at it, my shield comes up to block and my arm takes their sword arm.  Since I usually do this board vs board, it becomes sword and board vs single blue or vs board only.  Game over man, game over.  There are lots and lots of spare openings that a fighter can leave available to you that aren't real, because they aren't actually there.  Every once in a while you're going to land that shot and get the thing that was bait, but the majority, 80 or 90 percent of the time... it's just going to get you executed.

Training your opponent

Often a better fighter will throw a shot they know won't hit, just to see how you react.  If they can get you to flinch a certain way and make an opening then that gives them the chance to hit you wherever you created an opening when you flinched.  If you don't flinch (and because we're human, most of us do) then they can still read your response.  Chances are you moved in some way to respond to their swing, hell, maybe you even threw a counter blow.  It's all just information for the vet at that point.  Once the vet has established your patterns, they can start to mess with your mind.  (Here's an excellent video on training your opponent).  By getting an opponent used to your throws and by getting them to respond consistently to your attacks (whether it's their attacks or defense that doesn't shift) you can now confidently switch up your offense and throw to a place you know they won't defend because you've gotten them used to putting their guard in the wrong place.

Four way

I could write a whole post about the three split but I'm not sure it'd have enough meat to stand alone.  The three split is this idea that basically any shot that's thrown becomes 3 other shots about 50% of the way through the swing.  As an example, if I start to throw a high cross I can convert that into one of 3 other swings (assuming I don't just follow through).  I can flip my wrist left/down and it will become a sword side hip swing.  I can flip my wrist right/up and it becomes a cross side shoulder pick.  I can also pull my swing up short, turning it into a stab.  So the basic premise is, you've got a straight shot, 2 wrist flips, and a stab that come out of every conceivable shot you can throw.  Now, depending on what you were throwing in the first place, you may never have a reason to throw any of the rest of the available shots, but it's important to keep them in mind.  You can always recover from what you were expecting to have be a kill shot by flipping your wrist and getting an arm and a leg.  Even though it's not what you were aiming for it's a far sight better then coming away with nothing at all.

Mindfuck

The problem with experience is that you never really know what shots your opponent will throw because many shots look the same and because we can throw swings at a certain level of speed it's almost impossible to perceive the difference between one shot and the next in time.  You can fight the same opponent repeatedly and that will give you some idea of their shot selection, or at least the shots that they favor.  The problem is that if they get inside your head they can play with those expectations for days and convince you to block where their shots aren't going to be.  Eventually the game comes down to experience and it's why old fighters should be both feared and respected.  Sure, they may not be able to sprint like they could when they were 20 but they'll hit you 6 times before you can blink because hand speed, (assuming you have proper body mechanics), has nothing to do with how fast you can move.

As a random aside, since the speed (and therefore the force) for most shots is generated mostly from your body and only very minimally from your arms (unless you're a red fighter) it means that having extremely built arms won't actually make you better at the sport, in fact if you're swinging from your arm then you're likely slowing yourself down.

The only advice I can give you about fighting better/older fighters is this... be the first one to swing.  If you can set the pace of the fight by going in at them it's possible you'll get a lucky shot to land.  After all, everyone makes mistakes, even people who have been fighting for forever and if they think you're terrible they may get sloppy.  If you passively stand back and let them swing, they get to choose the pace of the battle and they'll eventually land a shot when you make a mistake at choosing what spot to guard.  With the weapons we have, you simply can't protect all of your body at all times which means there's always going to be plenty of things to swing for.  So go out swinging, die having at least tried.  Figure out how they hit you and try again, in the end I feel like most of the game is just learning new blocks, adding new shots, and new combos to a person's repertoire so that they aren't relying on throwing the same set of swings every time.