Ok it's rant time again. The Bear has been off on his travels again looking at how others train. I am now seeing a type of practice that is now becoming almost ubiquitous throughout western martial arts. There are three particular bugbears that are now driving me nuts. 1. Plate posing. I now see this obsession with taking postures in swordsmanship that match exactly the plates from period manuals. Even when the postures are completely ineffective and contrary to the principles laid down in the rest of the text. Added to this, people are now claiming that if you don't look like the plate then you aren't doing the art properly. Swordsmanship is NOT about looking good, it is about surviving the fight. Don't look at the pictures, read the text. If I see another group posing like Meyer I am going to scream! 2. Dead Drills. Now when you are first learning technique, dead drills are useful to get the actions down and explaining the underlying principles. However, training to the level where your drills are superfast and beautiful against an unresisting opponent is utterly pointless. You might get in a couple of early hits but an experienced fighter will learn your patterns and within a short number of passes you will find you are getting taken to pieces. DRILLS must include resistance! 3. Ego Freeplay and infrequent freeplay. First, very few groups out there are freeplaying enough. What I hear all the time is "we only freeplay at events" or "we freeplay once or twice a year". The usual reason is fear of injury and when you watch freeplay in these groups you understand why. Ego are running rampant so they are willing to injure a training partner rather than lose a point. FREEPLAY is NOT a competition! Freeplay is training, if you think you are going to injure your partner, you DON'T take the cut. Once you have practiced enough you can raise the level and intensity of freeplay. Everyone takes hits in freeplay, THAT IS THE POINT. You are trying out techniques and applying principles so that you learn and experience them. You are not there to flatter your ego. Rant over The Bear.
That's supposedly why there's a difference in Randori and Shiai in Judo. Randori is just practice. If it fits then it fits. It's not competition. Practice your stuff. Shiai is where you compete. But, even in Judo, there seems to be more folks who can't tell the difference between Randori and Shiai than there are who can. Peace favor your sword, Kirk
Yeah well, I expect HEMA to fall very quickly to the standard of bad mall Karate very quickly. The Bear.
Too many arts are about looking good and "winning" even if it is not a "killing" blow. Any true approaches would most likely resuly in injury to the winner and the loser really losing. We cannot actually make such contact BUT we MUST show such attitude rather than attempting to look good for the judges.
Couldn't agree more with points 2 and 3. Haven't really ever dealt with #1 given the different context of my training.
If what you want is an art that recreates "killing blows," and that's not what you're getting from competition, I think the easiest/best way to fix the issue is to just change the rules of competition. It's kind of like how the change in foil debounce timing (how long the point of the weapon must be depressed in order for a point to be scored) all but eliminated the flick as a viable attack. I think that works better than telling competitors "flicking might help you win, but don't do it because that wouldn't have worked with a live blade in a life-or-death situation that you'll actually never really face." Similarly, if someone was concerned with making modern epee more like 19th-century epee first-blood dueling (not a big deal to me, but it is to some), the lockout time (the time in which the opponent can hit you after you've hit them in order to score a double-touch) could be changed from 0.04 seconds to 0.5-1.0 seconds. A third example is how Yahara's KWF dramatically changed the "feel" of karate point kumite by changing the rules as to what it takes to get a point from WKF ("sport karate"): KWF: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY7oTlk6ImI"]YouTube- 3rd KWF Japan Cup, 2005. FINAL[/ame] WKF: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRCQ0boDvxE"]YouTube- wkf 2009 world champion morocco[/ame]
So, just as a curious outsider, I have a question about #1: If you're not supposed to look like the plates from the period manuals, why were the plates included? Is it that they're supposed to be snapshots-in-motion and people are holding the poses; or is it that period art wasn't good at conveying body mechanics and was just supposed to convey the basic blade position, not the minutiae of body mechanics, but people are now using it for the latter; or is it something else entirely?
They were mnemonic devices or, sometimes, intended to draw attention to certain, specific elements. For instance, artwork from some of these have over sized hands, or oddly placed feet. This is supposed to draw attention to that part at the expense of other elements. I don't really understand it well, but there is a lot of modern scholarship going on now surrounding this topic. And what it boils down to is what the original artist thought the artwork was supposed to convey isn't always what we as 21st Century folks think. We've had centuries of evolution and revolution of artwork. Few of us study Plato and Aristotle but we all know about perspective and tromp l'oeil. Revolutions in artwork brought about by late Renaissance Masters have little bearing upon pre-renaissance pedagogy (good Lord I dislike using that word!). Peace favor your sword, Kirk
The earliest longsword manual (the one I use) has no plates. Later manual do. However, the plate only show snapshots of guards and beginning or end positions of techniques. Therefore you see technique that moves from static pose to static pose and no fluidity of movement. Also in the text it clears states that the guards are not fixed but cover a general area, however this gets lost and people end up standing in rigid positions defeating the purpose of the guards. The Bear.
Okay, that makes perfect sense. It reminds me of the whole karate discussion about stances (zenkutsu dachi, kokutsu dachi, kiba dachi, etc)...they're not positions you're supposed to hold, but positions you might find yourself in at the moment of impact (and only for that moment).
Yeah that is exactly it. Guards aren't postures they are just points you pass through in the fight. The Bear.
It matters not at all what posture ,guard or attack is used if the proper fighiting attitude is missing. I have seen too many posers in martial arts who think it is possible to "train" without sweat and bruises.
Well unfortunately it cuts both ways. I've also seen guys training with attitude and plenty of sweat but making little effective progress because they were not understanding the principles. The Bear.
First of all - good rant and I totally agree. This is interesting (with your first rant point) from my training (i.e. good old Italian Fiore). Fiore calls these Postas and actually states that his Postas are both Guards and Postas. His Postas are positions that you pass through and can find in the engagement ("pin points" for the brain). Looking back at the different Fiore MS (4 of them with images) we can see how there are variations in the same Posta - i.e. they are not to be used "picture perfect". Also (and this is my rant) people keep forgetting that they have two primary weapons with longsword - left and right hand - and each hand can work independantly (both on the hilt, one on the blade, one on your blade, one to grip/grab/punch, etc, etc) rather than staying rigid within one part of the system. Cheers, Mark
