Mistakes

I've been teaching people how to fight for 10 out of the 12 years that I've been fighting.  When I first started teaching what I knew it was almost nothing.  But even more then not being experienced myself I wasn't a very good teacher because I had no experience teaching much of anything.  All of that stuff came with time.  Most of the fighters I know now weren't around when I first started learning.  They have no idea how bad I used to be.  Running into one of the fighters who was there when I first started learning at Battle For the Ring gave me a reminder of the person I was back when I first started.  I wanted to write a post of two pieces.  The first being how I learned what I've learned which was mostly by making a series of mistakes.  The second being how I learned to teach people things over the years. (That last bit may be it's own post).

OW... alright, not that way

Face Forward
As a new fighter I had a tendency to fight with my back arched so that my face was forward when I was fighting.  Theoretically having your face forward will mean there are fewer target locations for an opponent to swing at.  However, this also means that rather then learning to block by either getting out of the way or using your weapons to intercept the shot you're basically choosing to just put your face in the way.  If someone cares about you then they'll tend to avoid taking that shot but in the context of a larger field fight it's a great way to get a concussion.  Especially as you get into larger fights the chances that your face will intercept a swing that wasn't meant for it increases.  After getting railed in the face 3 times by a red in one fight my mistake was made pretty obvious.  It still took me a while to unlearn that habit even after I'd decided to stop fighting face forward, so my advice to any new person is to not develop that habit in the first place.  The solution to fighting with your face forward is to simply straighten out your back.  This lines your body up with your spine.  In addition keeping your center of balance over your center of mass will make footwork and swings cleaner.

Spear Blocking
For years I used to block spears down and simply dodge back with my legs.  This meant that I could get away from most stabs.  My friend Brian (another fellow Grinnellian and part of the realm of Chamonix) used to fight primarily spear.  After missing me repeatedly he decided he'd just keep putting more on the shot until I stopped being able to escape it.  Eventually he was successful in getting it to land by railing me right in the nuts.  To say it was an unpleasant experience is and understatement.  What I learned from this is that you never block a spear up or down.  Blocking down gets you hit in the nuts.  Blocking a spear up increases the chance you'll get railed in the face.  The right way to deal with a spear is always to block it to your left or right, causing it to go past you.

Hand Blocking
Back when I was younger and felt invincible I used to reflexively use my hand to intercept swings.  Initially I even did so without gloves until I discovered that was a terrible idea.  Hand blocking let's you use your natural reflexes to intercept swings.  The problem being that it's not safe for your hands to get repeatedly beat up.  While it may be possible to absorb many blue swings this way, the same can't be said of red weapons.  Most people who one hand block a red learn that that's not a good idea pretty fast because of how much it hurts.  That's not to say that one hand blocking a red isn't possible, it's just much more difficult and requires a person to have a good sense of how body mechanics work to absorb the swing without injury.  Punch blocking red swings will eventually lead to serious injury.

Turns out, gear matters

Gloves
If you're still fighting without gloves... don't.  Seriously.  Hand injuries are probably the most common injury that we get as fighters.  I can't even count the number of fighters whose hands are no longer the same as they were before they started fighting.  Some people have a knuckle that's out of place or a joint that behaves strangely now because of either one good shot to the hand or a number of swings that eventually lead to injury.  Protecting your hands is important even when the weapons are safe.  There was a time back in college when I took the flat of a blade to my knuckle (in part because of punch blocking).  To add insult to injury my knuckle managed to find the part of the weapon that was failing.  A tiny little gap in the foam that allowed my knuckle to get hit by the weapon's core.  I remember being unable to use that hand for 3 days.  I was fortunate to not have any kind of lasting injury as a result of that swing.  If I'd been wearing gloves with proper protection perhaps I would have been able to avoid that particular injury.

Knee pads
While knee pads aren't always necessary it's a good idea to have some for when they are.  It's also important to develop the habit of wearing them BEFORE you get your knees injured.  Once your knees are bad because you haven't been wearing knee pads they'll become even more necessary.  For me knee pads became necessary when we started fighting indoors in the college's gym.  While it's good to develop the reflex to take a knee as soon as the leg is hit you should avoid doing that unless you have knee pads.  Over the years I cannot count how many times I've taking a flying knee only to land on something hard and injure my knee temporarily.  Fighting requires enough focus without also having to check to see where you're going to land if you take a knee.  Get into the habit of wearing knee pads early so that you avoid that particular mistake

Protection from the sun
Most people I know aren't good enough at keeping themselves appropriately covered with sun screen.  After years of fighting I can no longer count the number of times I've gotten sun burned at an event, even at times when I've made an effort to get myself covered in sunscreen (totally got burned at BftR).  What I eventually settled on was wearing a bunch of clothing/garb that inherently protects the areas that I most often burn.  I tend to wear a t-shirt under my tunic so that my core doesn't get burned.  I wear a bandanna to keep my forehead from burning.  That means that for the most part I just need to get sunscreen on my arms, face and neck.

Properly balanced swords
This is probably the thing that most people overlook.  Having a weapon that isn't well weighted is going to apply extra torque/strain to your wrists and elbows.  The weapon doesn't necessarily have to be poorly balanced to cause you injury either; if the weapon is simply too heavy for you to use based on the amount of developed musculature then you are also likely to injure yourself, especially if you don't know how to use proper body mechanics.  Now that I've been fighting for a while I keep around a set of heavy gear that puts extra strain on my body so that I can tune my body mechanics when I get sloppy.  But, that same set of gear can injure me and strain my muscles if I keep fighting with it despite having some pretty well developed musculature related to the swings that I know how to throw.

While there's something to be said (in my opinion) for having heavier gear to help slow down and correct your swings it's also important to balance how much strain you put on your body.  Pushing yourself too hard will only lead to injury.  Pushing yourself after you've been injured can make those injuries permanent rather then temporary.  Another friend from college/chamonix basically permanently injured their wrists as a result of repeatedly aggravating what had initially been a relatively minor break/sprain.  Years of therapy and surgeries later he's starting to get proper use of his arms back but trying to fix the amount of broken in his arms has been both time consuming and expensive.  Better to be out for 3 months to let something heal then to be down for a year and a half because you re-injured something or turned a minor injury into a major one by continuing to fight on it.

Fin.

There's a quote I picked up long enough ago that I no longer remember where it comes from which goes something to the effect of "Learn from other people's mistakes, you won't live long enough to make them all yourself".  There's nothing wrong with learning from experience but the point is that you don't have to have it be YOUR experience.  Learning from the people who have gone before you, or your peers can help you side step some that pain.  Hopefully if you're reading this while you're relatively new you can avoid getting repeatedly hit in the face, getting your hands injured or getting your knees injured.  Better to pick up good habits early so that it takes less time to learn.