garethpr.org

One of my students asked for a ‘theory session’ – and I agreed.

However I then spent a lot of thought on what exactly was lacking from my teaching to warrant the request. I run a HEMA Class for two hours on a Monday evening with a rolling beginner’s programme of 10 lessons each designed to complete within one hour and students can repeat lessons as required. Indeed it is a rolling programme so that new students may turn up at any time. Some of my students have previous experience of either Olympic style epee or sabre and or Stage fighting so they have some basic knowledge of what it’s all about and some have very little experience at all. I am lucky to have such a range of students, the differentiation for each class makes every one slightly different while covering the same core principles, exercises and drills, using what some of the students already have a passing knowledge of and keeps it interesting.

But I find myself guilty of assuming that anyone who turns up to a class (because they are interested enough to have found us) has an inkling of what fighting is about. The main source we study is Brief Instructions by George Silver unpublished in the first years of the 17th Century. George also assumes that you know what he talking about – that like most people of his time you are familiar with wrestling at least (as a kind of national sport) and therefore know something about distance and the foot work required to cross it and the balance and manipulation of your opponent’s balance as you come to the close.

So what was my student asking for other than more clarity and perhaps repetition of the basic exercises contained in “Brief Instructions” and in the first 10 lessons of basics that build from, as George says it was taught “first their quarters, then their wards, blows, thrusts and breaking of thrusts, then their closes and grips, striking with the hilts, daggers, bucklers, wrestling, striking with the foot or knee in the cods and all these are safely defended by learning perfectly of the grips. And this is the ancient teaching,” a planned progressive delivery of material? Maybe, and I do this myself, they want to know why we do things the way we do them? This is explained with the technique but maybe it is not emphasised or reiterated enough, though it is demonstrated that all the parts of a technique are martially justified.

George Silver gives only a hint of any foot work and frequently uses a phrase “and strike up his heels” which is neither clear as to how you should do this nor from what position. So I use some of the basic footwork of Fiore (1407), Marozzo (1536) and Di Grassi (1594) all of which I suspect Silver was familiar with to support students in this respect, a passing step, a slope step (away or across the line), a compass step and an accresce (shuffle forward both feet in line). I see many manuals that start with footwork alone and I know how this can turn off some students as it did me with Karate when I was just a teenager. George does say that hand and foot agree so we know that the majority of strikes and thrusts use one side of the body to generate power and reach.

But what of the fundamental theory of sword fighting? A man charges at you with a c. 42” sword (total length), what do you do? The first thing must be not to get hit with the sword or allow the enemy to take the grip of you. George says never suffer your enemy to win the place of you or you will be sorely hurt or killed. If you are surprised, run away until you have sufficient distance to draw your weapon. If aware of the developing situation you will be drawing your sword before your enemy has finished drawing his sword. Then you have a choice, assuming that your enemy manages to make his first blow before you have completed drawing your sword. Again you can try to make distance by slipping back or sliding sideways off the line of the attack, or with courage you can step inside his attack (you failed to make distance to begin with) and choke up his blow with your hilt/strong of your sword even if the point has yet to clear the scabbard, but against a vertical blow “for no eye in making a true ward for the head to defend a blow can discern to take the same within three or four inches” (Paradoxes H2) you would continue to slip backward or traverse “the removing of two or four inches shall save all”. If you made distance then you would ward his blow with a true cross while slipping to disappoint him of his true place and return a blow or thrust as he is then spent, lying spent or drawing back.

So, things you need to know all covered in the first ten lessons are the Four Principles; Judgment, distance, time, place and their applications the four governors Judgment, measure and the two fold mind to press in or fly out, the four actions bent, spent, lying spent and drawing back upon which all men fight and the choice of three defensive actions, strike or thrust as he comes into your distance, to ward and after strike or to slip and strike after him and the principle of over-reach; if he strike low you can out reach him with a blow to his head (you have the right angled triangle and he has the hypotenuse).

It occurs to me that some of these stated Principles need more repetition of the demonstration/drills of the practical element/ application of the theory to get it to sink in and form muscle memory. Whilst I don’t expect anyone to be perfect after just ten hours of instruction the basic theory and practical elements can be covered in that time, but is that enough for each basic building block to be assimilated and used as a foundation for the next principle?

Guy Windsor says it takes something in the region 10,000 strikes with a sword to understand cutting. I don’t think it takes that long myself if you are able to take part in some kind of test cutting with sharp swords against a reasonably resisting medium e.g. water filled two pint plastic milk cartons (there needs to be sufficient weight for the edge to bite before the weight of the sword bats away the carton) a clean edge strike will leave the bottom half of the carton on the pell. Blade and body momentum, blade angle, speed and control, footwork can be learned quicker when real results give feedback to the exercise. I can now cut milk bottles with a semi-sharp (1mm thick edge) blade due to learning proper edge alignment and striking with the appropriate part of the blade (judgment of distance) this has taken maybe several hundred strikes against air (you can tell good edge alignment from the sound of the blade cutting the air – even a thick edge) using flow drill exercises (weekly practice with sword analogues and I suspect ten years of playing cricket helped my hand-eye coordination) and a few hundred striking plastic bottles and cardboard cartons (once a year over six years) using various sharps and semi-sharp steel weapons.

I like the adage “Practice not until you get it right, but until you cannot get it wrong.” Some students have the time to practice between classes and others have real life commitments that make this impossible so that training night is the only time they get to train. The only way I know of overcoming this barrier is visualisation. Visualisation enables your muscles to react as if they were doing the real thing and therefore can be used just like repetition though it helps greatly if the visualisation is as accurate as possible, after all only “Perfect practice makes perfect”, it can be done anywhere and at any time your focus isn’t needed elsewhere. But we are still left with the need to drill with critical observation to make positive corrections in technique before visualisation will be of greater benefit.

I have produced two Theory documents for my students one a précis of Fiore’s foot work and basic movements, the other a power point of Silver’s True Fight built up from Silver’s Principles including basic tactics and so on.

Neither of these, while useful to a student, seem to fit the bill though except that all sword fighting takes place based on Silver’s Four Principles of True Fight and The Four Actions on which every man fights. Maybe a flow chart of the discussion above might be Useful.

As an instructor of a particular style of sword fighting and using period terms for concepts e.g. ward as opposed to parry, perhaps a glossary might be useful for novice and beginners alike? But that’s bedtime reading and some students will engage fully and some less so depending on the time they have to study and learn the terms – three months in to my initial training I still was not fully cognisant of the period terms being used quickly enough for them to be applied in good time.

So the only thing left is to ask my student what they are expecting in terms of a theory session?