4 Steps, Part 2, 45 degree Angle Steps

If you aren’t familiar with the idea of a line/lane or a box, go ahead and take 5 minutes to look up what that means in the context of fighting. (I've also written about it here)  The extremely simplified version is that a box is the area bounded by your shoulders and your hips (the 1-shot kill zone) and a line is the plane on which your static guard protects.  The basic gist of winning a fight is a matter of breaking another person’s line to either kill the hand that guards them or to get that line off center so that it no longer protects a person’s box, which in turn gives you a kill shot.  You’ll find that this idea is super important in the amtgard (been spelling that wrong for years…) and is starting to become more of a thing in other versions of the sport.  Peter the quick has lots of good tutorials on working and controlling those lines if that’s something you want to learn more about.  

Step Diagrams

In addition to the 4 steps that were taught in the first training manual there’s an additional 4 steps that I’ll go into here.  The previous steps were all versions of moving or responding to combat in 90 degree increments.  Having a good sense of those is important but none of those maneuvers will help you break your opponent's line, or deal with an opponent breaking your lines.  To do that you need to know the 45 degree angle steps.  

The basic 4 steps look something like this:

And you can look them up in the training manual.  Now we’ll talk about the next 4 steps which look something like this:

45 degree angle steps

In an effort to make my life easier I’ve labelled the steps 1 through 4 so I’ll rotate through them in that order.  All of these scenarios assume a right handed fighter fighting another right handed fighter, typically as a florentine fighter against sword and board.  If you find that you are a lefty fighting a righty or vice versa, simply switch your feet and hands so that your offhand matches their sword arm while your dominant hand matches your back foot.

Offense

The first step is designed to bypass the line created by their sword arm.  Generally speaking this is a risky engage because you put your entire body close to harm in order to get into this position.  Against a sword and board fighter however this often puts you at a significant advantage.  If they don’t move you can easily bypass their sword’s guard with your left hand while defending your swinging arm with your right hand.  If they see the opening that you’ve created by breaking this line you can instead block with your left hand and then throw a counterblow to their arm with your right hand.  The step mechanics are pretty straightforward.  From neutral footwork take your front (left) foot and step it 45 degrees out and forward in front of you.  This will briefly put you into an awkward position as your feet are overextended.  This first step is the stagger step, typically it’s done as a half step because a full step would set you completely off balance.  Then, simply allow your back foot to slide back into a neutral stance.

The second step is the one that I generally prefer when fighting sword and board fighters as it takes me closer to the outside of their swing arc, thereby reducing the effectiveness of their swings, while simultaneously using their own shield to guard me from some of the shots they might otherwise have access to.  This step is typically done with the intention of throwing a wrap shot with your back (right) hand.  In this case your back foot takes a straight step along the 45 degree angle it’s already lined up with.  Once your foot has landed you’ll want to allow it to turn so that it faces the same direction as your opponent while allowing your back foot to rotate so that it is now pointed at a 45 degree angle to the left instead of straight at your opponent.  This one step should be sufficient to keep you lined up without throwing you off balance.

Defense

The third and fourth steps are defensive steps designed to react to an opponent who is closing on you, often by doing either the first or second step.  The third step counters the second step by unbreaking the lane from your left arm.  As a counter move for a person moving in towards you it’s often done with a wrap shot for your right arm at the same time you throw a block with your left arm.  The wrap shot will shift your shoulders (per the arm exercise earlier) which will get your front hand back so that it’s in a better position to absorb an incoming wrap shot.  The step is done mechanically so that you take your front foot and pull it back and out at a 45 degree angle.  Once you’ve taken a full step back you allow your front foot to rotate so that it is now facing your opponent.

The fourth step counters the first step and similarly involves throwing a right handed wrap against a sword and board fighter.  This step is also a stagger step in which you take a half step backwards at a 45 degree angle.  You can generate the speed for the step by pushing off with your front foot.  Once you’ve repositioned your back foot you’ll want to allow your front foot to be pulled back into a neutral stance closer to your body.  Typically when a person engages with the first step they’re trying to break the line on your left arm.  By stepping back into line with the opponent (or close to it) you close that lane back off.  Your opponent meanwhile has stepped their body closer to you which leaves them susceptible to wrap shots.  If they were the one to engage then they probably also intending to swing at you meaning that once you see the shot coming and can block it you have the freedom to swing as well without having to worry about losing your arm in the process.

Range Control

Range control is your ability to effectively control the distance between you and your opponent.  This starts concretely with where your feet are vs where your opponents feet are and then begins to take into account details from the waist up.  Range control comes down to being able to measure/control your own threat range relative to that of your opponents.  Your threat range is the area in which you can quickly swing.  For most people this is the length of their weapon when swung to full extension plus a single step.  There are ways to improve your reach that I’ll get into later but for now get that picture in your head.  The range that you threaten also includes the full range of the arc of every swing that you can take, so it’s not JUST the maximum distance you can swing but also the left and right of the peak of your arc.  For most blue weapons this is just a normal strike, but for reds this often involves “casting”, IE, throwing one handed swings that lose speed/force and gain a significant increase in reach.  Knowing a person’s threat range is supremely important when fighting florentine because literally every support weapon will out range you.  Knowing by how much is the difference between skating safely outside of their threat range and being skewered.

Swing Arc

Range control is done primarily with a person’s feet but also takes into account where a person is vertically (as controlled by how much they crouch/stand tall) as well as the position of their arms.  Your maximum reach for any weapon will always be directly out in front of you.  Additionally the most force you can generate will always be in the center or the apex of the arc.  The more you go to either side of the center the more of the maximum force you can deliver is being given up.  This becomes important later but just table that in your mind for now.

So your range for a shot at arm level is going to be greater than your range for a shot above or below your arm level.  If you want to get more reach vertically you can do so by either standing up more straight or by crouching lower.  As previously mentioned a red user can throw a one handed shot to extend these arcs, making it so that by giving up more of their power they gain reach instead.  This actually becomes an excellent opportunity to block, but more on that later.

Coiling  

Range control can also be done with the positioning of a person’s body.  By starting with your body coiled, IE, all joints slightly bent, you will get slightly more range then you would if you started with your body at full extension.  For those who don’t believe me there’s a simple way of testing this.  Set yourself sword distance away from an opponent and set your stance so that one hand is forward and one hand is back.  Without moving your feet, or rotating your back into the opponent's range, place your sword as though you were going to swing it with your forward hand.  Now repeat with your back hand.  What you’ll find is that the back hand has 2 to 3 inches on the front hand in terms of range that it can safely deliver.  The reason for this is that because your front hand is already at extension it’s range is only the range of your weapon plus the range of your arm.  Your back hand meanwhile is coiled so it’s range is the range of your weapon, plus the range of your arm, plus the range of your shoulder joint, plus the range you get from pulling one shoulder back to put the other shoulder forward, plus any range you can get from your back knee.  With your front hand engaging your shoulder joint means breaking your line and giving your opponent a shot at your back.  Engaging your back knee while swinging with your front hand doesn’t do anything, and if you engage your front knee for reach then you’re bending over which again exposes your back to being struck.  That’s a practical example.  Here’s an easier one - sit down, take on hand, put it into a fist and reach out as far as is comfortable.  Next, using the other hand in a fist simply punch into the air.  You’ll notice that one fist is now further in front then the other fist.  If you do this backwards you’ll notice that it still works.  Both of your arms have the same reach but when you punch you pull the forward hand back slightly so as to give your new forward hand more distance.  This is just body mechanics but it’s important for understanding your own reach as well as your opponents.  This is also an example of transferring momentum - by taking energy from your extended right side (for example) and shifting it to your left hand (for example) your left hand is able to move faster and go farther than it would have been able to if lock up the right side of your body and prevent it from moving at all.

Putting it all together

Range control then is broken down into three basic pieces that you control - the placement of your feet, the positioning of your body (crouched, standing tall, leaning forward, leaning backwards) and the placement of your arms (forward vs backwards) - as well as a few things you don’t control - the length of your arms and legs, the distance you can make in one step, and the length of the weapon you are currently holding.  There are things that you can do that will increase the distance that you can make in one step through training, but at any given moment that will be a static attribute.  You can also of course change the gear that you’re using but moment to moment that is also a static attribute.  The only exception to the last bit about gear is that how you hold a weapon can increase/decrease its range.  By choking up on a weapon you’ll lose reach but gain power and speed for your swings and blocks.  When in close and grinding on an opponent this is a great thing to do.  By pulling your grip down towards the pommel you’ll lose some power and speed but get additional range.  One of the easier feints is to miss a shot while choked up on a weapon to show an opponent that they are out of range, only to then hold a weapon down by the pommel and strike them easily.

I'm good at florentine, but I suck at teaching it.

I'm generally known for being a good florentine fighter.  That's a nice thing to have be true, since I've spent the last now going on 13 years honing that particular skill set, albeit with the occasional break to spend time fighting with other weapons.  The problem is that trying to translate all that time into a coherent set of teachings on how to do florentine well is... well, difficult to say the least.  So when a person comes to me and asks me to teach them florentine this is generally the set of thoughts running through my head.

Which florentine?

For one there's a kind of inherent cliff when fighting florentine between a person who simply runs out there flailing and a person who is actually good at what they do.  For another, over the years I've developed 13 different styles of florentine (I literally just finished counting them) so when someone talks about "teaching them to florentine" I look at them without actually knowing what they're asking.  Did they want to learn to fight in close or do they prefer to fight far away?  Is the person generally a more defensive fighter or are they a more aggressive fighter to begin with?  What weapon sets are they trying to learn how to beat, in what context or field are they learning to fight on?

Depending on how they answer the tools that I give them may change.  A person who is never going to be aggressive as a fighter probably shouldn't learn an offensive, point blank range version of florentine.  And a person who is always going after their opponents is probably not well suited to learn how to play a game of counter blows at mid range.  The issue for me also with teaching these things is that with the exception of 1 of my 13 different styles they're all the same thing in my head.  Switching from one style to the next has become seamless in my head so I don't really have that one default setting that I always start out in to teach someone the way that I do for fighting red, spear, or sword and board.  Instead it's all about context.  Speaking of which...

Teaching Chess

Assuming that I COULD narrow it down to just teaching someone just one of the 13 styles, (well, 10 that are actually valid things to teach a person)  so much of fighting with florentine is about learning how to play a game of chess well, and that's not something I necessarily know how to teach as that generally comes with experience.  Playing chess is the idea that when you move your body in a certain way, or throw a certain shot you can expect your opponent to respond to that swing/movement in a way that's predictable.  Playing chess is punishing them for their predictable response which is provoked by your swing/movement.  In some cases going so far as to train the other person to play chess against you badly, by doing the same thing repeatedly and then doing what looks to be that same thing, only to punish them in a different way.  While there's lots of useful swings/combos that you can learn to throw as a florentine fighter, when it comes right down to it, it's really a judgement call on what to throw and when based on your ability to outwit your opponent.  If they'll just sit there while you swing at them it certainly helps since you can fail repeatedly, but most fighters will not be be content to be used as living pells while you figure your shit out and will instead come kill you instead.

A lot of people have said that throwing scissors or atomic scissors is ALWAYS a bad shot.  The truth is, it's perfectly fine to throw that swing.  In plenty of cases it's the best shot to throw but what matters is context.  The reason why people say that scissors (a swing from both hands at their torso) or atomic scissors (a wrap from both hands aimed at their torso) is a bad shot is because every new florentine fighter instinctively throws that right away as their first shot.  This is bad for two reasons.  The first being that even if you hit something you're likely to die and the second being that there's no guarantee you'll hit anything.  Also, in most cases the people throwing that shot don't even know how to throw it effectively because they haven't learned how to throw wrap shots and they telegraph their movements so it isn't thrown quickly.  Atomic scissors done correctly starts OUTSIDE of your opponents range so you don't get hit while you wind up.  It then goes into a step to inside of their range, and ends in two very deep wraps that are thrown quickly.  The whole process if done correctly takes about a second and a half, which, relative to just throwing swings is a lot of shots you aren't taking but, if thrown correctly, is two very difficult shots to block.  The way I typically see it executed is; guy runs at enemy, looks at the ground and then gives the opponent a hug with their weapons.  That way is bad.  That way telegraphs, misses and gets you killed nearly 100% of the time.  The way that I throw that shot, I can't think of a time when it's missed, even if it's not a kill shot it always at least gets an arm.  But the thing is, there are lots of times I don't throw that shot because I KNOW ahead of time that it JUST WON'T WORK.  When it is the right shot to throw, it works wonderfully because it's the right shot to throw which is typically against slower moving, defensive boardsmen.

Do you even know what you're getting into?

I feel like also people come and ask me to teach them florentine because they see me doing it and I look cool.  The fact that I can beat people with florentine though has nothing to do with any inherent traits of the weapon set however.  Usually the reason I can beat people with florentine is because they've been fighting for 1-3 years and I've been fighting for 13.  With that kind of skill gap I can also take them apart sword and board, with a red, or a spear but since I favor florentine that's what I usually get asked for.  The issue being that nothing I can teach them is going to overnight translate into an instant +10 years of fighting experience, regardless of the weapon set that I teach them to use.  Being as good as I am with ANY weapon set is the result of a shit ton of time and energy fighting and training consciously to use whatever I'm using.  Sometimes that's trying to be more fit in the form of exercise or trying to up my cardio, other days that simply practicing a shot I'm trying to get down until I've nailed the body mechanics for it and it's finally correct.  But most people don't see that time and energy I spend on those things in part because I travel to different realms and in part because it looks a lot like just fighting.  So when a person comes up and asks me for training, it's often with words like, "I want to fight florentine like you do" or "teach me to fight like that".  It's not that I'm opposed to trying to impart my knowledge of florentine fighting to other individuals, but I suspect for the majority of people they're either going after it for the wrong reasons, or aren't going to spend the time developing their skills so that they reach the point where they're effective.  I've seen and helped at least partially train a TON of mediocre florentine fighters.  In all my something like a decade of teaching there's only a handful of noteworthy florentine fighters that I've trained.  The secret to why there aren't many good florentine fighters is simple.  It's hard to become good.

It's not to say that I can't train a florentine fighter.  But my way, my method of teaching of people, is time consuming.  While it certainly has it's advantages if you stick with it and learn everything I have to teach, learning just a few tricks from me will only get you so far.  The rest, is your own time and energy.  I can help you learn how to do things, but how much you improve and how quickly you improve are things are that are by and large beyond my control.  So when someone comes up to me and wants to learn to florentine just like I do but won't be around for any further training... I'm usually at a loss for what to do, because the truth is, I'm not going to be able to do much for them.

Intro

Florentine, in it's most broadly accepted form, is simply the wielding of any two weapons with one in each hand.  Originally it meant a very specific thing, as it was a style of fighting rapier from Florence dubbed the 'florentine method' which involved rapier fighting and a dagger so that you had an added bit of defense.  What I'll be talking about here is likely neither of those things.  In my application of the art of two sword I've learned to fight with similarly sized weapons in either hand, regardless of what style of weapon that happens to be.  I don't prefer a long and a short sword, one for blocking and one for striking as was once the original style either.

Florentine to me, in the context of the rest of what I'll write, is the art of fighting with two similarly length weapons wherein both weapons are a source of offense and defense.  The closest corollary I can imagine is that a florentine opponent is closest to fighting 2 single blue fighters then it is to anything else.  Both weapons can swing from either side and both weapons can potentially block for either side.  While each weapon will tend to prefer to stay on it's own side and guard it's own lane, because - for efficiency's sake - that's easiest and safest, anything is permitted with either hand.

The Cliff

It is my opinion that of all the weapons arts that you can pick up florentine is the hardest to learn.  The difference between success and failure at any given moment in combat is usually by the 1 inch rule.  If you were an inch closer, or could reach an inch farther you win, and if you fail to get a block it's because you didn't move that last inch to absorb the swing.  Everything can be broken down into these small degrees of difference.  The issue for florentine fighters both new and old is that mistakes as a florentine fighter within that one inch margin usually get you dead whereas making similar mistakes fighting sword and board, red, or spear wouldn't necessarily kill you.  So fighting florentine is a lot like deciding you want to fly and to start that process you go jump off a cliff.  What you're going to do for most of the time that you're involved in it is simply fail, fall, start over again.  You will die, over and over and over again.  Until, somewhat miraculously you learn to suck slightly less then you did the last time and perhaps something clicks so it takes you 2 seconds to die instead of one.  This is why I think there aren't a ton of florentine fighters out there of any real level of skill.  It takes a certain kind of person to be able to put your ego through the shredder just so you can find that one good fight.

With that one inch rule in mind it should come as no surprise when I tell you that in order to actually become good at florentine you have to master a number of different skills before you even begin to become competent.  There are many people who pick up two weapons, run out onto the field and just sort of flail until they kill someone.  A few even learn how to do suicide dives on important targets, hoping to do some damage before they get taken out.  But neither of these groups are even novice florentine fighters, there's no art to what they do.  The trick of fighting with two weapons is not in being able to kill your opponent, it's being able to kill them while staying alive.  In the same way that you wouldn't necessarily be happy with a shieldsman who simul'd every time they fought a florentine fighter should be held to the same standards.  That means that the gap between a person who picks up two weapons and even a novice florentine fighter is huge.  To become a mediocre fighter you need to have mastered the fundamentals.  To become a good florentine fighter you need to be able to apply the fundamentals consistently while also knowing how to get your weapons around any opponents guard.  To become a master at this art you'll need to be able to do all that, but also do it against multiple opponents at the same time, or in the context of a line or flank.  Fighting florentine well in a dueling scenario is all well and good, but it's rare to be given those opportunities, especially as your skill and reputation develop.

Assuming though, that you don't mind dying and you'd like to also jump off that cliff there's a lot you can learn in the interim that will help ease the journey.  The first thing is using other weapons sets to start teaching yourself the basic set of skills you need to have down to have a chance.  The first piece is footwork.  Being able to comfortably engage your opponent by closing, or disengage your opponent by retreating is a must especially as a florentine fighter because anytime you can hit someone they can hit you and you have almost 0 passive guard to absorb swings, which means you don't want to let someone swing at you unless you're prepared to hit them.  Good footwork is something that fighting sword and board can teach you.  The second piece is knowing how to do weapon blocks because that's all you'll have to block with when you go to florentine henceforth just 'flo' to save myself some time.  The easiest way I know to get this is to fight a bunch of single blue, both with your main hand and your off hand.  You need to have mastered feints.  As a flo fighter not every opponent you fight will have glaring holes in there defenses which means you'll have to learn how to make them first, so that when you do swing you get something for it.  This goes back to the idea of not flailing.  Finally you need a full complement of offensive strikes which include wraps, stabs and some trick shots.

If you can get all that down, then you're ready to START learning flo.  If you start without that stuff then you'll mostly just die.  You can figure all that stuff out while fighting flo but because of the amount of time you'll spend dead it'll be slow going.  I definitely recommend learning that stuff first and THEN picking up a florentine set, rather then simply starting there.

Bliss

So, I've talked about all the hardships about learning flo, let's talk about some of the benefits to learning how to do it.  For any particular 1v1 matchup I would rather be fighting florentine then any other weapon set.  When utilized properly flo will win those matchups in a way that other weapons won't.  The most common scenario is being pitted against a shield.  This SHOULD be an easy win if you know what you're doing because you only have to block one weapon while they have to block two.  Any attempts they make to aggress on you ca be countered by immediately taking the arm that swings and if they attempt to stay on defense then a good flo fighter will be able to pick them apart with feints and wrap shots.  In a fight against a red weapon a skilled flo fighter can arbitrarily absorb weapon swings, and because they've got less weight then a person carrying a shield they can close and chase faster.  So those are the easy fights.  In a fight against a spear, it's going to be much harder.  However, most spears will go for the kill shot right away, since most flo fighters aren't good at blocking stabs.  If you can get that first stab block, you can push the spear to the side, and once you've closed past the pointy end of the weapon it's all over for them, even if they have a secondary.  The only bad fight is potentially an archer given their ability to hit you at range.  However, this fight can be made much easier with use of a buckler, a back shield or a helmet.  So long as you can run at the archer there's not much they can do to stop you, shy of a kill shot or a leg shot and once that arrow is loosed, they aren't too likely to get another shot.

Flo fighters also make excellent flankers in part because they aren't usually carrying much gear so they can run faster, in part because with their overwhelming offense they can quickly kill most opponents and in part because if they've reached any level of skill they likely are fleet of food as a result of all the footwork required to fight flo effectively.  Additionally, once a flo fighter gets behind an enemy line they can lay down shots faster then any other weapon set, meaning that letting a flo fighter into your back line is twice as bad as letting a sword and board fighter back there because people will disappear at twice the rate, in part because of how fast the flo fighter can swing and in part because of how fast they can run.

Finally... it's fun.  Living or dying by an inch every time you swing, or everytime you block is exhilarating so as long as you don't mind failing it can give you a kind of hard earned bliss you won't necessarily find with other weapon sets.  When my flo game is on point I nearly feel like I'm flying as I weave through the battlefield.

What's in here

I've got 13 years of fighting florentine to unload into one manual of arms so it's going to be time consuming.  Part of the problem is that I won't be teaching just one weapon style, I'm actually going to be teaching several.  Just teaching the differences between offensive vs defensive styles at short, medium and long range generates a set of 6 different styles of fighting each with their own particular sweet spot of how and when to do certain things.  A seventh style approximates seamlessly switching between each of the different styles which means taking design decisions from each of the different styles and modifying it slightly so it's a bit less extreme.  An 8th style is one I developed to fight with two weapons while surrounded.  A 9th style was developed in order to avoid being stabbed in the chest which is independent of all the other concerns and a final 10th style I've been working on lately to counteract red fighters using one stick as a downstick.  There's an 11th style that I'm still working on that flips the axis of the weapons sideways as well that I have to decide whether or not I'm including.  In the last year I've also developed two things I wouldn't even called sword styles mostly to be silly based on having both weapons inverted.  With all of that floating through my head... it's a bit overwhelming.

I'm going to start with the basics/fundamentals that I think you need in order to get off the ground.  That's footwork, blocks, and shots that are theoretically generally applicable to ALL of the above aforementioned styles.  After that I'll dig into each style on at a time, starting with the in close style I learned first and then slowly backing my way out to range.  I'll start with the offensive form of each style first and then talk about the defensive style at that range.  When I get clear of all that stuff and have set, at least theoretically, a solid foundation, I'll move on to talk to the modified styles that I've invented for specific scenarios.

As you can see 1) there's a lot in here and 2) I have my work cut out for me.

[and so it begins: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JiWh4fvJK-3p-GQTWFiwSS098yJ2ZN0cvZIo_A9siGc/edit?usp=sharing]

Volley

Whole bunch of posts today.  Finally getting up off the ground again and finding the time for it now that other things have stabilized.  Apologies for my time being off/distracted.  Every now and again life happens after all.  I'm scrapping my last attempt to start the florentine manual and am going to start over by writing it down as actually part of it's own thing.  As I complete sections I'll start to port them over to blog posts.  For now I'm going back to posting random thoughts about random things int he hopes that that is still useful.

What I learned from running a unit

For those that don't know I used to run a unit called simply "The Blades".  The whole thing got kick started way waay back in Chamonix(Grinnell, IA) when I was a second year fighter.  It wasn't properly a unit until much later though when I arrived in Anduril(Irvine, CA) that it actually took off as a real unit.  Things eventually came apart for a number of reasons that I'm not intending to get too deep into here.  The blades had a time and a place in southern california helping to get many of the units and groups in the LA / Orange County area started/off the ground.  Once there was a saturation of units in the area and the blades as a group were coming off the rails it was their time to end.  All having been said and done, I still look back at the group fondly.

The good.

There was an intensity that we drilled into new fighters as part of the group.  The saying went "die spectacularly, or live trying".  Our golden rule was that fighter for fighter we should kill 2 opponents for every one of us that died.  Now, that didn't inherently mean that every person in the group could automatically beat any other 2 fighters on the field.  Much of that was related to teamwork and learning to move well together.  If 2 people died while fighting a group of 6 fighters and 1 guy backed all of that pile of 6 that still counted.  By having a high priority target (like myself) pull the attention of several enemies it created openings for my teammates to either back that group or win a fight somewhere else on the field because of a local advantage that having me fight 2, 3, 4, 6 people (even briefly) would create.  We created intensity by always vowing to fight our hardest, to give 100% when we fought together and donned our tabards.  At any other time it was optional, but when the tabards were on, or while you were fighting a unit mate the idea was to give and receive the best you had.

Another thing that went well for the most part was the culture aspect of the unit.  We had 4 oaths that pretty much everyone forgot the letter of but they wound up living by the spirit of them anyways.  The first one was about being honorable, and that meant that by making ourselves better we'd make the field better as well.  No matter how shitty other people were, winning only counted if it was done with clean honor.  The intensity that we had helped with that.  The third oath was about respect.  That meant that you treated everyone well, and everyone equally.  That once you became better then another fighter you were still a decent human being to them and if you happened to beat a fighter who you though was better then you, you did so graciously realizing that they still probably had things to teach you if you'd just listen.  The last oath was about camaraderie, the idea being that everyone was an equal in the group, regardless of their year of experience fighting, or relative veterancy/position within the unit.  So, even though I ran the unit, I was still just as culpable and human as the rest of the unit.

We used to do a drill called 5 minutes in hell where you'd fight teams of 2, 3 or 4 of your unit mates depending on your level of skill.  You would keep fighting the same group until you killed all of them in one go, which always wound up being a huge achievement.  The second you stopped resetting quickly for the next round, or had to stop to catch your breath you were done.  This meant that a person could give their all and push themselves in a way that was safe.  As soon as the person was done, having cleared one group, no groups or many groups they could collapse knowing that they'd done a good job at doing a hard thing.  I think I heard someone use a turn of phrase for that called "shoot for the moon" thinking.  Where basically we challenged fighters with an impossible task where they were given the chance to fail indefinitely with no negative repercussions, so that when 1 out of 20 or 1 out of 50 rounds they finally succeeded it was infinitely sweeter.  It also meant that you got used to failing, and used to not taking yourself too seriously.

Because of the 5 minutes in hell drill our teamwork was also phenomenal.  All that time we spent fighting with and against each other meant that the majority of people in the unit knew EXACTLY how every other person in the unit moved.  It meant that when we fought out on the field we were generally synced with one another without having to speak much.  Because we were usually the smaller group out on the field it meant that we had to do those things well because we couldn't hold together as a line.  Our teamwork, our ability to skirmish, to be fleet of foot, and our ability to work well together is most of what carried us during our inception.

The bad

In many ways the unit was simply myself.  When I had energy and time, when I was in a good place, the unit flourished.  When I was low on energy, when I was having a bad day, when I didn't find the time to give to rest of the people in the unit it quickly would start to fall apart.  One of the things I did poorly was convince other people in the unit to help take responsibility for running it.  I did not make other people leaders / in charge of things.  I did not set up systems so that it would run autonomously without me.  To be fair, most of the members of the unit had only a few years of fighting under their belt even as it started to mature, but that meant that when I faltered so too did the unit as a whole.

The unit did not scale well at all.  What had worked when I was training between 1 and 3 people at a time quickly started to not work when I had to teach 6 people divergent styles all at once.  Teaching 3 people who to fight an aggressive, sprinting shield is totally doable.  Trying to teach 1 person to florentine, one person to defensive shield, 2 people to neutral shield, one person to aggressive shield and one person to fight with a red all at the same time, does not work.  Unfortunately that meant splitting my time between the different people, and their level of skill got diluted as a result.  I do my best teaching when I can mentor someone one on one and work with them over time, slowly tuning their muscle memory for how to throw each strike, as each bit of correct form gets built block by block from the ground up.  What I wound up trying to do instead was get the blades who were a few years in to teach their new unit mates the basics while I tried to drill on the advanced stuff... but unfortunately it meant that some of the building blocks for form got off because they were new to teaching as well.

Additionally.  The unit started off as a fleet of foot skirmish unit, with entirely melee weapons (no support gear of any kind).  When we developed into a group with a proper set of weapons/gear to be a wall we quickly fell apart, because all of the advanced fighters wanted to skirmish, even when we outnumbered, and out geared our enemies.  Not to say that flanking doesn't have it's advantages... but it's a tool with a time and a place.  When you're the dominant force on the field what you do is crush the smaller forces underneath your front line like meat going into a grinder.  Sadly, this was a thing that we never learned to do well.  As the unit grew in size getting everyone together on the same field started to be much more of a problem and unit cohesion began to break down.  Once that happened any remaining semblance of teamwork faded away.  Polearms ran out in front, shieldman watched flankers run by them, our archer would shoot at shields instead of enemy support weapons/flankers, and more often then not, the unit that had been known for maneuvering and backstabbing was suddenly getting backed itself.

The ugly

One of the things about running a unit is about keeping drama to a minimum.  Once that starts to get out of hand it becomes very difficult to patch things back together.  At a certain maximum threshold of people the unit basically got split in half.  One half of the unit was some semblance of the original unit that I had created.  They were lean mean fighting machines.  They fought hard and fast.  They fought because they loved the game and they were in it to fight regardless of the outcome.  The other group was the best things of the social aspect... but completely lacking in the combat department.  They were friendly and had a good time, they volunteered at events, they had a good reputation but they weren't great fighters.  They didn't push themselves, they didn't train hard, and even when they did come to practice they'd often spend their time sitting on the sidelines just hanging out with people.  That initial divide between the fighters and the social club never really got resolved unfortunately.  I kept trying to push the unit back towards being the thing it had started as, but in so doing I watched it break and splinter before my eyes.  In an effort to try and get people on board I begged, I pleaded, I cajoled, I threatened to try and bring back the kind of intensity that had originally been present.  In the end I tried to compromise in order to please everyone.  Instead I wound up descending into madness myself.  Eventually, I wound up quitting the unit myself because I was so frustrated by trying to get people to care about the unit in the same way that I did.

The unit, already in turmoil as the result of being divided received, very nearly, it's death blow when I wound up out for 4 months with a broken leg.  That meant no sparring with people.  No fighting, no teaching people.  It meant that I didn't get a chance to even make it out to a lot of things because without that leg I wasn't authorized to drive.  When I did finally make it back to fighting, I was no longer the fighter I used to be before I'd broken myself.  I've talked about this in other posts but long story short, my ability to do things like - take hits, communicate well, process my own shots, have field awareness, track incoming swings, throw wrap shots - is all the result of a shit ton of practice and plenty of maintenance by fighting multiple times a week.  After I spent 4 months out of the game, it all went away.  My muscles for throwing swings atrophied.  My eyes slowed down so I couldn't track swings anymore.  My hit taking became TERRIBLE and my communication was just as bad.  With that I wasn't really seen as the leader of the unit that I used to be as well.  What had carried the unit previously had been my fighting skill, the respect that the immediate area had for me and my consistent honor.  With all that out the window trying to fix the problems for a unit already off the rails became extremely difficult.

In spite of all the infrastructure that I'd set up in the way of a playbook for battle calls (which most folks didn't take the time to learn), in spite of a set of documents outlining the purpose of the unit, the bylaws for how it operated, the basic outline of what training was set up as, and getting the buy in from multiple people for what I thought the unit was... eventually it went under.  By the time we'd hit the end of the units lifetime I'd managed to find a place to screen print tabards and belt flags

In the end...

If I had to go back and do it all over again... I think I still probably would in spite of my eventual bitterness.  I loved the early days of that unit when we'd fight as a unit of 2 or 3 of us, eventually reaching up to 6, and we'd cut the enemy up as we danced between them.  I loved the intensity of the fighting that we brought to each other which is hard to find even out on a national field.  I even loved the social aspects of hanging out with a group of people that felt like my family.  I think that if done properly you can have a great culture on AND off the field but it has to start with clearly stating what a unit is.  The more people join a unit the more the vision changes as each person adds their own impression of what it should be.  As the unit grew in size, gained and lost members I always remembered initially how much it hurts to lose your own people.  What eventually came out of it was this though "a unit is a home, and I believe that everyone needs to find their home.  If they aren't in the right unit they should leave it, even if that means leaving us, because everyone deserves to have a place where they feel they belong".  In the end leaders from The Crown, The Sith and The Wardens all spent some time in the unit learning the principles of being better fighters and also, hopefully, being better human being while on and off the field.

So go out there dear reader.  Find a good unit for yourself in the great wide world of fighting, or start your own if you don't find a place that suites you.  Hopefully if you do wind up starting a unit you can learn from the ones who have passed before you :-P.

I can do better...

I've been super bad the last few weeks about updating on time.  I am inclined to do better.  I'm not sure what exactly was going on that so caused me to lose track of everything but I am not re-committing to keeping the blog up to date.  In an effort to keep it the amount of full it was supposed to be I'm going to be spam posting random updates through the rest of the week to try to catch up with what I actually owe.  After that back to Thursday updates.  Sorry folks...

Retirement / Breaking / Developing good habits

Possibly fucked  up my leg in, to date, the lamest injury I may have incurred.  I was getting out of a hot tub on Monday afternoon when I slipped and slammed my shin into the granite edge of the thing.  I'll find out on Thursday whether or not there's actually a problem but in the meantime I'm grounding myself so that I don't make a problem worse if there is one.

When I was younger...

I never developed good habits at a time when my body was made of sterner stuff.  I'd sleep a few hours because I was excited about an event and that made sleeping hard.  Then I'd get up, and run out to the field because I'd missed the start of the thing.  I'd fight for 6-8 hours with my (at the time) extremely shitty gear.  On more then one occasion getting knocked around while out on the field with a few solid blows to the head.  One time I'm pretty sure I got a mild concussion.  I'd wander off hang out with friends after the event was over.  Get some dinner and proceed with drinking and staying up late.  The next day I'd sleep in a few hours, wake up, and be fine.  I so can't do that anymore.

Because I could run around like a maniac I never developed any of the good habits you ought to while fighting to help keep my body from degrading.  Bogun's made the statement that fighters age in dog years and I'm inclined to agree with him.  I never learned to do the basic steps you go through in order to keep your body in good shape, so I'm stuck trying to learn them now at a time when I actually need them.

The few things I did right..

It's not all bad though.  In spite of doing almost nothing good for myself, I also prevented a number of pretty bad things from happening to myself.  Another friend/fighter broke his wrists and kept fighting with them, swapping from hand to hand as each wrist became more or less intact.  One of the first rules I made for myself after watching that happen was to never fight on an injury.  If you get injured but you rest and heal completely, in the long run, you'll spend a whole lot less time being broken then if you get back in the fray as soon as you can possibly do so.

After a particularly vicious blow to my hands I also started to wear gloves religiously spending hundreds of dollars over the years to make sure that at all times I had SOMETHING to cover them with.  The initial blow that scarred me straight was catching the flat of a blade to my knuckles, which just happened to find a gap in the foam, meaning that I caught a bit of pipe from a full swing right to a knuckle.  I spent the next 2 or 3 days unable to grip a pen with that hand while I waited for the swelling to come down.  Around the same time I also got railed 3 times in the hand by a 12-6ish shot from a red.  At this point I'm up to using modified lacrosse gloves (I've clipped off the bits around the wrist) which have done an excellent job of keeping my hands safe.  There's plenty of extra padding on the top of the glove, but the actual fingertips have the profile of a much smaller glove, meaning that even though I fight florentine all the time I haven't felt like my ability to throw shots is diminished.

I've gone in and out of wearing kneepads depending on what the field I'm on looks like but ever since college I've been pretty adamant about at least OWNING a pair, especially when the fighting goes indoors.  In addition to giving you added mobility from skidding on hard floors kneepads will protect your knee from crippling if you should happen to take a knee on a hazard out in a field.  Storm, a fighter from weathertop wound up needing stitches and surgery when he took a knee while running full speed over drain cover.  I've seen countless people mess up their knees by taking a knee hard.  All it takes is a bit of momentum and the wrong bit of ground and you can take yourself out for a while or even do permanent injury.

Now that I'm a bit older...

There's certain shit that doesn't fly anymore.  Getting 3 hours of sleep before an even just means I'm missing that event.  I can by with something like 6 hours of sleep on a semi-regular basis but I can't short myself a nights sleep completely.  When I actually get a reasonable amount of rest though I find that my time to recover from an event goes down considerably.  I also need food to run on now so making sure I've had something to eat before an event starts is important... and I mean an actual meal worth of field, not a granola bar on the run.  Eating well in advance of fighting is also important as food isn't going to metabolize well if you immediately start running around right after consuming it.

During the event keeping myself full of resources has also started to become a thing.  That means that I don't wait all 6 to 8 hours before getting more calories into myself.  That means making sure that I actually drink water, especially if I find that I am no longer sweating as that's one sure sign of dehydration with how I fight.  It also means sunscreen so that I can last out there longer without going down from heat stroke.  Wearing sunscreen also reduces my recovery time after events since my body doesn't have to repair my muscles AND my sunburn.

There's also prep one can do before and after fighting in the form of stretching or generally limbering up.  I've finally gotten in the habit of trying to work out my shoulder before I actually start swinging stick, but you can also take the time to actively stretch things out between fight sessions.  The benefit of being consistent about this activity is that you'll see additive gains.  Instead of just making one's shoulder less crunchy you'll actually start to see an improvement in range of motion over time.  Taking time to do cardio or weight lifting for one's fitness can also help make a day of fighting a bit easier on one's body.

Finally there's supplements that you can get that help with various aspects of the damage you do to yourself.  A trick that I picked up from Bogun is pedialyte or equivalent beverage which helps with hydration.  A trick I think I picked up from Sir Kyrian was drinking pickle juice from a jar of pickles.  As far as chemical composition it's similar to what you'd get out of Gatorade but without all the added sugars and colors.  I felt like that nearly saved me one chaos wars after I pushed myself too hard.  From Princess Socrates I found out about using Vitamin C gummies to help clean out the garbage that your body leaves behind in/on your muscles after you fight.  There are also supplements that you can get that will help with joints and bones but I haven't gotten that far myself yet.

This may not apply to you... yet

I don't think that I've put myself into such a state that I'm a good cautionary tale quite yet as I'm still trying to fight my way back but a few changes to my process ages ago and I'd probably be in better shape then I am now.  Hell, a few changes in the opposite direction, like not wearing gloves, and I might not still be fighting now due to permanently mangled hands.  I'm not sure what of this will apply to you dear reader but I leave it here for your consideration that so you've at least got the chance to take better care of yourself then I did.  After all no one stays young forever.  From what I've seen though, that doesn't have to stop us.  While there are certainly some individuals (like kyrax) whose bodies don't let them fight like they used to, there's also plenty of older individuals (orion, winter, mordrach) who seem to still be pretty spry as they've gotten older.  If you actually take care of yourself there's nothing stopping you from becoming an older fighter who still dominates the melee game.  As for myself we'll see where I wind up landing.  At this point I feel like it's the flip of a coin whether I make it back to my old short florentine blades self, or whether I continue down the path of developing my mid range florentine combined with sword and board to keep myself in the game.

The good news is, that I think regardless of the state of my body I'll be around for a while.  After all, failing everything else, I can always retire to archery ;).

Equality

I was chatting with another fighter during the last event about the way women are treated in Belegarth vs in other versions of the sport (they were from amtgard).  One of the things that they noted was that it seemed like belegarth had many more females in it then the amtgard groups that she'd interacted with.  I think that, though are rules are relatively sparse, compared to many other systems, that's part of the appeal of our sport.  ...but let me break that down.

There's a wide range of sword arts that go from LARP touch-hit systems on one end to the MMA-esque, beat a person until they submit fights in full armor.  Within the realm of things done with foam fighting belegarth sits right at the edge in before you start requiring armor (things like kendo, fencing, shinai) and eventually moving up to steel (SCA [armor], ARMA, HEMA).  The sister sport of Belegarth is of course Dagorhir, which has a very similar set of rules, which makes sense because at one point they were the same sport.  In systems that favor lighter versions of combat you tend to also have an extended set of rules, that play up the production value of the fight and invite participants to delve into an immersive world.

One would think that, at least initially, an immersive world that has no force requirements might be more appealing (on average) to women but I think that what those systems also breed is the potential for an old man's club to prop up.  A person in that system (male or female) who has been doing it for long enough is able to rank up a class or classes and gain the in combat benefits of having done so.  Their weapons swing for more damage, they can call out spells that have any number of detrimental effects to their opponents and the overall number of hits they can take increases.  If you're trying to break into this world and fight with people who have all these classes it's going to be an uphill struggle for anyone, let alone for anyone who goes in stigmatized (the old, the young, women, etc). Amtgard, with a much heavier emphasis on combat has, as far as I can tell, many of the same problems because it also contains the magic and classes part.

Then you get to Belegarth and Dagorhir which have a nearly identical rule set.  Sufficient force is a thing that requires you to be able to generate enough torque for a shot to count, but so long as you can swing with enough force, all shots are delivered and taken equally.  Armor is available to everyone which confers an advantage, but that advantage is somewhat negated by requiring a certain amount of weight to it, thereby limiting mobility and speed.  Since it also only grants one additional hit it's far from an easy way to win.  The only time it really matters is when two fighters trade shots for the first time.  If both people throw a kill shot and only one of them has armor then the person with armor wins.  However, that only works for one fight, in the next exchange both people die.  This creates a relatively even playing feel for all participants.  It means that if you aren't cheating, you must learn to respect your opponent, whoever they are because failing to do so means you get dead fast.

Belegarth and Dagorhir are far from immune to gendered stereotypes.  There are plenty of male fighters out there who won't take shots unless they have an obscene amount of force behind them.  As a 6' tall man with plenty of muscle, I often have trouble getting those men to take my shots.  As a woman, a younger fighter, or even just a less muscular individual generating that kind of force is simply impossible.  Some fighters simply won't take hits because of their own egos and ignore shots from women or anyone else who they feel are "inferior".  Theoretically that's what heralds are for, but they can't be everywhere all the time, and they won't see every swing, so it falls to us, the fighters in the sport to engender a culture which is inclusive and looks down on this kind of behavior.

The important bit for Belegarth is equality.  When ego's are removed from the picture any fighter you encounter on the field is just as dangerous as any other fighter you run into, as far as you know.  A fighter that's relatively new could have trained hard, and be very good at what they do (think about Steele).  In our sport there are plenty of badass women who can mop the floor with most of the guys who are out there, (Rocca, Acorn, Anastasia, Cypress come to mind).  Older fighters are often even MORE dangerous then younger fighters because of their experience, (Orion comes to mind).  Often the people who you would normally think of as the most imposing can be relatively weak opponents.  Speed and form are much more important then strength when it comes to fighting so heavier set opponents, often ones with enormous shields can be easily picked apart by a smaller/faster opponent.  But making this assumption about all larger individuals with tower shields will ALSO get you killed as there are plenty of larger guys out there who can still move rather quickly.

It all comes down to respect.  If you underestimate or look down on your opponent you may wind up dead before you even know what hit you.  Don't be that guy (or girl).  Show all of your opponents the respect they deserve as a fellow fighter.