One inch

What Inch?

It's been my experience that most of fighting comes down to one inch increments.  One inch is the difference between a stab that connects and a stab that misses.  One inch is usually the distance between a leg sweep that connects or misses.  An inch separates a swing that lands on an arm instead of the torso.  An inch can easily be the difference between a shoulder pick and a head shot.  An inch is the difference between the pommel being where it needs to be to block that hip wrap and your torso.  An inch is the difference between having gotten that block for your arm and losing it.

An inch can be a lot of places, and in a lot of things.  It doesn't just have to be shots, it follows for body mechanics too.  You can be an inch short of a step, you can fail to reach extension on your arm when throwing a shot.  You can fail at getting a wrap shot because you didn't throw out far enough (by an inch).

Flinch, I Dare You.

Florentine taught me all about those inches.  About the difference between the block that was and the torso swing that wasn't.  But once I learned to see that inch, that small gap, it appears everywhere.  My fighting style eventually became an homage to that inch.  If I could get someone to flinch by just an inch then I could find the one inch gap they'd left in their defenses and exploit it.  Perhaps it was a shot to the gut, or perhaps it was a shoulder pick.  Wherever that shield had moved to compensate for them flinching my swings weren't.

This revelation of that one inch gap cuts in two directions though.  The one inch gap isn't just about offense it's about defense too.  If almost everything in fighting comes down to an inch in one direction or another it means that the most effective styles will use minimal amounts of movements to capitalize on that one inch.  A classic new person mistake is to wind up for their swing.  Any decent fighter knows that a good swing starts from your guard and returns there as quickly as it can.  Taking a huge swing not only exposes you to being swung at but it also gives your opponent plenty of time to react.

One Inch Revelation

A good defense uses minimal blocking in order to make those blocks fast.  It also means that if a person causes you to move your guard due to a feint you move it a very minimal amount.  It still amazes me how sometimes good fighters are able to be faked out so that they make enormous movements in an attempt to block a shot that hasn't even been thrown yet.  (A certain gnome comes to mind...).  It means that when you go to block you block as much as you need to... plus about an inch, so that if the shot would go through your guard because you misjudged the distance you'll still be okay.  What that doesn't mean however is that you block an extra 6" out, just because you're afraid of that wrap shot.  It means that until you learn exactly what that distance is, you're going to miss a lot of blocks, but once you've figured that distance out, not only will you get most of your blocks but it will be harder to feint you out, and your return strikes will be faster.

When it comes to offense it's a question of finding those gaps.  There are plenty of one inch spots that most fighters don't guard well enough so this will not be an exhaustive list by any means... but here's a few of my favorites: wrist rather then hand on weapon, chicken wing, on either side of the arm, hip just below your opponents pommel, stab to the gut in between a sword and a shield (thrown to the sword side), hip on the shield side (if it's not a square tower shield), and shoulder on the shield side when it drops (often from a feint to torso or a leg swing).  The caveat for most of these swings is that they aren't high percentage shots, in that because you only have an inch gap to make them with most of the time they won't connect.  However, many of these shots are much safer then (for instance) getting into a high cross war with your opponent (if you're fighting board to board) or trying to go for big swings with a red, or deep stabs with a green.

All of this eventually comes down to practice.  To get the defense good, you just have to block enough shots.  To get offense good, you just need to throw enough shots that your overall accuracy gets down to about an inch.  Because my friends, if you can master that one inch, it will change your world.

How about you?  What's your favorite one inch gap that you exploit?  or, What's an example of a sloppy block that you see a lot?
Comment below :-P.

Limits, fuck 'em

Preamble

If you hadn't figured it out already, I am a vulgar person.  Expect more of the same... I find that being blunt helps me get to the point, and since I'm already very long winded that cuts down on the overall number of words.  Anyhow... onto the thing.

The Master has Failed...

The words that echo in my head are "the master has failed more times then the novice has even tried".  The point being that the master didn't  become a master by some sort of magic or sorcery, they just stuck with it and did their particular art long enough to become good at it.  In an age where everything can now come with instant gratification, (I want it NOW!) the idea of actually taking the time to master something is starting to get lost because honestly, who wants to fail over and over again until they get it right when they can just have mediocrity handed to them?

... But that's what's required.  A lot of fighters that I know and many more that I've seen eventually plateau.  They learn a particular skill set that works for them or pick up a certain set of gear (*cough* tower shields *cough*) and then never improve past that point.  Back when I spent more time training people they'd get through the stuff I'd file under "basics" and because that meant they killed 90% of new people and went 3/10 or so fights against better fighters many of those trainees decided that they were done learning.

...and that's fine.  It's important not to demonize a fighter that plateau's or opts to stop improving. There's more to life then fighting and each person has to find their own balance.

I wanted to be a great (or the best!) 

At least for me though, I decided I wasn't content with being a mediocre florentine fighter, I wanted to be a great (or the best!) florentine fighter.  I wouldn't say that I'm the best by any stretch of the imagination but I definitely have some renown for that skill set, enough to make me feel as though I've gained some mastery over it.

Florentine is one of those styles that will absolutely get you killed over and over again.  Since you only have blades to block with, missing a block even by an inch, is the end of you.  Even when you've learned how to aggress effectively you'll still wind up dead more often then not simply because the hand you swung with was also the one you needed to block with.  It is not a thing for the easily discouraged, not for people who can't die over and over again, and if you want to be any good it's not for a person who can't dedicate themselves to that art.  To become truly great at florentine you must, 1) learn how to block every conceivable shot from every weapon and 2) at the same time know how to counterattack or retaliate for each shot thrown.  It's not enough to simply flail until you hit something, and repeatedly suiciding for kills doesn't make you good regardless of who you've thrown into.

Dying, A LOT

The way that I got good at fighting was by dying, A LOT.  To date I am the worst fighter I've ever met compared to when I started, and in 12 years of fighting I've met a lot of fighters.  Back when I started I didn't move, I didn't swing, I just sat there and got hit.  Learning to become as good as I am was the process of simply trying over and over until something clicked and I started to move.  When I started I just sparred every person who would spar me until everyone left the field.  Eventually I started to respond when people swung, eventually when the battle was started I actually moved and swung.  ...but it took time, time I was only too happy to give.  You have to fall in love with the process of getting better.  If it feels like work it's hard to keep at it.

Now that I've reached some degree of skill, it would be easy for me to rely on the things that I've learned in getting to this point.  It would be easy to plateau myself, to stop pushing myself to improve, to stop trying to be something greater then what I already am.  As years roll by it would be easy to start to use being older then I used to be when I started (18 then, 30 now) as an excuse to stop moving.  But doing any of those things would be accepting limits.  Fuck limits.  Being "old" translates to being winded or being slow.  That's just cardio and hand speed, there are plenty of guys who are much older then I am who still manage to move at insane speeds.  So I don't think that's valid.  It just means more cardio, more work, compared to a time when that all came easily.  With work, that limit is easily surpassed.

I could also rely on the tech that I already have; it's not as though I don't rack up kills with my current skill set (even as I knock some rust off).  I could be comfortable with the shots that I know how to throw and comfortable with the gear that I've grown accustomed to.  I choose not to.  I fight florentine in an effort to get back some of my lost skills, even against unfavorable match ups, because that's how I'll improve.  By learning to breach a line with a florentine set I'll have to up my blocking game, and learning to get those blocks is going to involve a ton of failure in the interim.  To become good at fighting many vs one with florentine again I'm going to spend a bunch of time missing blocks from odd angles.  I'm going to be practicing sword and board and trying to get some really good deep wraps, but before I've got that locked in, I'm going to be throwing some really shitty wraps that I'm going to get murdered for.

Getting Murdered is Just Fine

The point is, that getting murdered is just fine.  Getting murdered is just fine because I want to surpass my own limits.  It's my heartfelt belief that if I'm willing to go out there and do something I'm bad at long enough, I will eventually improve and whatever it was, whatever limit I thought I had, I'll eventually be able to break through.  That having been said... it's important to correct errors when you find them, because if you practice doing only the wrong thing, that's what you'll get really good at.

It's not for everyone.  Ego is a real thing that I feel like the sport as a whole doesn't talk about enough.  Going from being the biggest bad ass on the field, to getting murdered repeatedly while you learn that new thing isn't an easy pill to swallow.  The question is just what's more important, would you rather plateau and be good?  or suck for a while so you can be great?

What about you?  Do you allow yourself to be defined by your limits or do you let yourself get murdered so you can surpass them?

Comment below :-P.

Updates weekly

I've decided that in an effort to make this into a real thing I'm going to try and make myself post on a schedule so that I guarantee at least one post a week.  I'll make that Thursday's going forward.  Today however I'm suffering from being sick so I'll hold off on posting the thing that's in my head until tomorrow when at least theoretically I'll be feeling better.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

The "best"

There was some chatter in some or other Facebook about the best red fighter in California and eventually it set me to thinking about what that claim really means.  The thing is there isn't just one kind of redsman.  There are lots of different ways to do that job and a person who excels in one of them may be bad at other skillsets.

For instance.  A person who excels at being a glaive in a line likely has a long (heavy) weapon and is good at generating torque to land shield breaking swings, or perhaps they've become really adept at stabbing and working pockets.  But the thing they probably aren't awesome at is dealing with people charging them directly.  But I've seen redsman who are, often equipped with some version of a red sword, some armor and a back shield, so that they can take or dodge hits while swinging very very quickly.  That person tends to be pretty useless on a line, unless they're able to stand on the edge and work their way in though which means that in both cases the redsman's relative skills and proficiencies are determined more by the gear they've chosen to pick up then by the actual skill of the fighter themselves.

Now, that's not to say that skill doesn't matter; I, as a person picking up a line pole can still duel relatively well (yesterday I won a few of the 2boardsvmewithalinepole rounds even though theoretically I should have lost almost all of those), but that fight would have been much easier with a lighter weapon and a little bit less reach.  So, for the rest of this particular discussion I'll assume that the fighters I talk about are all equally skilled at their chosen weapon set ...but that's just the thing.  If you get the gear that you need to excel in a particular niche it inherently makes you bad at doing the other kinds of jobs you could do, not because you're unskilled, just because your gear inhibits you from being successful.  Again, that doesn't mean you'll automatically fail, it just means that given a different set of gear it would be easier.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

In my mind it came down to rock, paper and scissors.  The first time I ever saw this in action was during a chaos wars several years ago.  There were 3 of us florentine fighters sparring, myself, a guy I don't know, and peter the quick.  I was fighting with a set of short swords built from red cores, at the time my primary strategy of attack was to close fast, and then unload a flurry of stabs and slashes until my opponent fell over.  The second gentleman whose name I have forgotten was wielding bats and his primary strategy to win seemed to be basically throwing a feint or two and then going for a Hail Mary stab.  Peter the quick's strategy back then (and I think it hasn't changed much) was to keep his range and beat you hand for hand, punishing you when you made even the tiniest mistake.  I was able to beat the guy who threw stabs consistently, because the second he missed I was all over him.  Peter the quick consistently handed me my ass (and still does) every time I went to close because he can make quick work of the openings that are available to him.  The gentleman whose name I've forgotten was consistently killing Peter the quick because his stabs always seemed to make it in, and while he'd lose an arm in the process to peter's counter attack it meant that for the majority of the fights we took part in he'd trade arm for torso.

From watching that particular interplay the idea of a triangle came to me because it wasn't as though any of the three of us were bad fighters, quite the opposite, we'd all become adept at doing a particular thing well.  The issue wasn't so much whether or not one of us was better then the others the issue was simply which strategy we chose to use and what was effective or not against the other two.  Being hyper aggressive against a person with excellent range control and hand speed is a great way to get murdered, trying to throw deep stabs against a person who is hyper aggressive is a bad idea because if you miss you're toast, and trying to snap arms and throw counter shots when your enemy only ever is trying to impale you in the torso is also a losing game.

As far as I can tell, in any particular weapon set or job there's going to be (usually) 3 best fighters.  Each fighter will have gear and a practiced skillset that makes them a master of either; short range, mid range, or long range.  Short range fighters I call brawlers, because trying to remember rock, paper, scissors with fighting is confusing to me.  Mid range fighters, I call technical fighters and long range fighters I call snipers.

Design decisions, strengths and weaknesses

A short range fighter is all about closing and getting in your face.  With a red, it's the person who's tanked out with a sword, with a florentine set, it's the person who get's all up in your business and drowns you in shots.  Brawlers in general tend to be very good at blocking/having an active defense because in order for them to be in their comfort zone they have to close the gap between themselves and their opponents.  The main advantage they have is that many people aren't comfortable with close range and so once a brawler closes the opposing fighter flinches or no longer knows what to do.  Brawlers send to set the pace for the fighter because they determine when they will and won't be in range.  Brawlers also tend to throw a lot of shots knowing well in advance that the majority of them won't connect, and that's just fine because their shots can be feints, used to position the enemy's feet or other body parts, the shots can be to suppress the opponent, so they don't swing while you close, or the shots can be a setup either to get them to swing, or to move their guard so that another shot becomes available

A mid range fighter is all about outwitting you.  They are the masters of chess.  With a red it's a person with a 6' pole that's built to be light and maneuverable.  They probably have a buckler strapped to their arm and a mask on their face so that they can comfortably stand alone in a line and do work, but also have the freedom to roam without having to worry overmuch of being found by an archer.  As a florentine fighter it's the guy who seems to hit you effortless over and over again in openings you didn't even know you had.  Technical fighters don't have amazing offense or defense but they do tend to have incredible footwork.  By setting the distance the fight happens at they get to throw feints until you bite on one and then take advantage and punish your mistake.  Since they tend to set the range of the engage they don't often wind up having to spend that much time blocking, and because they can reasonably expect that the other person will make mistakes they don't have to swing nearly as often as you'd expect a brawler to.

A long range fighter is all about only having to swing once knowing full well that their shot will hit and will kill you.  With a red that person is a line glaive, because the weapon is so heavy they cannot afford to throw a swing that doesn't either connect with a person's body part or put a point of red onto a shield.  With a florentine fighter you either see a person who throws all in deep stabs or a counter fighter, one who blocks your swing and then immediately retaliates by taking shoulder or gut somewhere.  These fighters tend to have the best passive guard which means that there's no shots to get at the outset and you have to work really hard to make something land but, when pressed or overwhelmed by a flurry of shots they tend to fall apart.  This usually plays out with an opponent who walks up to them, throws a swing that can't possibly hit, and is then immediately executed by the sniper who knows exactly the spot they've now left unguarded and can hit that throw close to 100% of the time.

Ro, Sham, Bo

Generally speaking and assuming all fighters are equally skilled
technical > brawlers > snipers 

snipers > technical > brawlers
brawlers > snipers > technical

The how and why -
Generally speaking a brawler is used to overwhelming their opponents defenses and once they are able to close with an opponent that person's only option is to keep blocking or die.  A sniper is a person who generally kills someone in one shot, so if they don't get that kill immediately they are soon overwhelmed by the pressure of someone right up in their grill raining down blows.  The point where the brawler is weakest is when they are trying to close because at that point they don't have good swings, and if they are throwing shots to try to suppress the enemy it's compromising their own defenses.  Even if they aren't compromising their own defenses in order to take those swings it means that instead they're letting the enemy just take shots at them for free while they get into the range that is their comfort zone.  Since mid range is where technical fighters excel, they'll happily let the brawler begin to engage, and then just keep kiting away from them so that the technical fighter remains in their sweet spot while the brawler is never able to achieve their sweet spot.  This means that either a) the technical fighter gets to sit there and swing at the brawler without retaliation or b) the brawler is throwing lots of swings that aren't going to hit which leaves them vulnerable to counterattacks.  Both of these situations are bad news for a brawler.  Additionally, since a brawler tends to have an active guard they are more susceptible to being manipulated by the feints, mind games, and other bits of chess that a technical fighter has mastered.

While a technical fighter, with their excellent range control, can deny the brawler an engage almost indefinitely their choice to try and win at mid range puts them at a significant disadvantage against the sniper.  Most snipers tend to have reach on their opponents and an excellent resting guard.  This means that a technical fighter moving to engage a sniper is either a) walking into the striking zone of the sniper without being able to swing back or b) is trying to hit something from a distance with an incredible amount of passive defense.  In the case of a) think of an 8' glaive vs a 6' glaive, it's not to say that the 6' glaive is inherently inferior but it does mean that there's a 2' gap where they can swing at you and you can't swing at them.  If you're not used to closing that means you're giving your opponent some time to kill you before you even try to retaliate.  In the case of high passive defense, that's usually in regards to a person with a board, especially if it's a bigger one.  Many knights have chosen to learn to fight this way because of their heater shields which provide excellent defense but limit the amount of offense you get in return.  If you walk up to knight they probably know what they're doing and if you're close enough to hit them, odds are they're close enough to hit you.  Because of these mechanics a technical fighter attempting to engage a sniper by picking away at them is going to have that fight end unfavorably, their bread and butter manipulation of convincing the other person to make a mistake rarely works on a sniper because, due to their high passive guard they don't have to move to block most things, so they won't be caught out except by very aggressive play but if the mid range fighter opts to be aggressive they leave openings the sniper can easily exploit.  Since the mid range fighters sweet spot is mid range, they don't usually bring the amount of pressure required to overwhelm a sniper's resting defense nor are they comfortable at closing since their focus on the field tends to be on maintaining a specific distance rather then eliminating it.

So the next time someone claims to be the best reds fighter, or the best sword and board fighter, or the best florentine fighter ask them what they mean by that, because it's unlikely they're simultaneously the best brawler, technical fighter and sniper the sport has ever seen.

Introduction / Qualifications

Someone will inevitably find their way here who has no idea who I am.

So, hi, I'm Rift.  I'm a Belegrim that's been at it for 12 years now.  Started fighting back in fall 2003 out in Iowa as part of a now dead realm which was then called Chamonix which was part of the Grinnell College campus.

When I started, I was pretty fucking terrible.  Over the course of the 4 years I spent there though most of the really bad habits got beaten out of me, like blocking with my face or blocking polearms down (right into the nuts).

I've fought a little bit of everything.  While I tend to main florentine and sword and board, simply because I tend to be able to keep that gear alive the longest there isn't a weapon set I'm not at least proficient in.  There are even some weapon sets that aren't normally things that, having simply used them enough, I'm alright with, like dual javelin or spear and blue.

I've come a long way since when I first started and I've learned a lot in the interim.  I made a blog to unload my thoughts so that some of those 12 years of learning can be transmitted to you, dear reader, in the hopes that you don't have to make all the mistakes that I have made in getting to be the fighter I am now.

This is just my own 2 cents about whatever random bit of theory was floating through my head.  I am by no means perfect.  I'm still human, I still make plenty of mistakes but hopefully now they're better ones.  In the end it's up to you to sort out which way is up and use this information in whichever way is best for you.  As always read with a critical mind and take everything with a grain of salt.  What has worked for me over the years may not work for you after all.

That having been said, if you read something and think I'm attacking another fighter... take a moment to reconsider.  While I think that using myself and other high profile fighters as good examples for styles of fighting or ways of doing things is useful it's not with the intention of trying to insult or take someone down a notch if I happen to disagree with some way they do some thing.  

I'm sure that if I start poking this blog will generate heat, so if you find yourselves in the comments... at least try to be civil to me, and to each other, as part of a foam sword fighting sport we're all a certain kind of family.

....alright.  Enough rambling.  Onward.