Solving The Problem

 Recently I had the pleasure of taking a class with Rob Childs, the #1 rated HEMA fencer in both single rapier as well as rapier and dagger. The crux of the class was using feints to create predictable responses in your opponent that you can bookmark in your own head and use against them later on. This dovetailed nicely with a lot of other approaches to the art I’ve been focusing on lately and I figured that writing it all down would help me put things together.

 In his absolutely groundbreaking book, Epee 2.6, Olympic gold medalist Johan Harmenberg talks to us about what he himself sees as the fundamental difference between the western classical and Japanese approaches to fencing. Specifically, his idea of Japanese fencing came from his friend Eric Solle who spent WWII in a Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines, where he would watch the Japanese soldiers practicing swordplay in their free time.[1] According to Harmenberg, the western classical approach focuses on what you can do to hit your opponent, whereas the Japanese approach has a focus on what your opponent wants to do.[2] While I don’t know for certain if the two are connected, it’s important to note that Childs majored in Japanese in college and spent considerable time deployed there.

 With almost every martial arts class I have ever attended, whether it be with or without a sword, the vast majority of class time has been dedicated to helping students “perfect” their technique, generally either on their own or with a compliant drill partner the idea being that once they have their technique down all they need to do is to drop that in to a fight and that success will follow. Harmenberg, however, takes a very different approach. For him, fencing is not the art of executing the perfect technique at the perfect time. Instead, it is the ability to shut down your opponent’s ability to strike you and then, as the only person in the sword fight left with a sword, to then hit with whatever will land. As the saying goes, fencing is to “hit without being hit”.

 A major step forward I have seen in the coaching around me has been a move from saying, “this is THE technique” to “this is the technique for you”. For example, I remember a few years back seeing a highly regarded rapier instructor insist that the only way to be in a proper stance was to stand with your back foot turned out such that your toes pointed backwards. Similarly, I’ve seen highly successful fencers standing at 6’5”  (2m) who could never seem to produce a successful student who needed to get up on a chair in order to reach the top shelves in their kitchen. As well, I’ve witnessed plenty of folks who rely on powering their way through a bind with upper body strength unable to successfully coach anyone who’s strength lay more in their legs. Perhaps the worst of these I’ve had the misfortune to witness are the coaches who reach forward by contorting their spine, hinging at the waist instead of the hips, pushing their ribs into their pelvis. At best the results of this have been discouraging students with wider hips and at worse actively causing people to incur back injuries. Thankfully, as the years have gone on, our community has begun to shed instructors like this in favor of those who recognize people come in all shapes and sizes.

 What both Childs and Harmenberg have intuited from their own personal experiences as the next step in coaching is in fact exactly what sports psychology has shown us to be true. There is no perfect technique that we can get to by rehearsing on our own for some mystical numbers of reps. Instead, what we have is the idea of perception-action coupling. Our brains don’t function with an OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop where we see an opportunity and then decide on what the best course of action might be. Instead, our motor senses function as a continuous loop between what we perceive in the moment and what actions we are taking. For instance, we don’t see a ball being thrown toward us, predict its trajectory, and then place ourselves in a spot to intercept it. Instead, when trying to catch something we are constantly adjusting where we are standing as the ball moves towards us, using what’s called direct perception.

 Returning back to our fight, there’s a few ways to figure out what our opponent is going to do next. One tool for this, on the defensive end of things, is to set up intentional invitations. The difference between an invitation and an opening is that an invitation is something you set up on purpose, whereas an opening is either something that your opponent is the only one to notice or is a line you don’t have a plan to close off. If you set up in a high guard, you might be inviting your opponent to strike low. If you set up with the inside line fully locked down, you know your opponent is going to have to start by threatening to your outside line. Another tool is the use of counterguards. If they’ve got their sword resting on their shoulder, you can close off their direct line of attack by pointing right at their hands. If they change from one guard to another, you can point your dagger at their debole meaning they’ll have to open with a disengage along a longer path. Here’s you’re not just limiting where on your body your opponent can threaten, but you’re actively working to cut off their closest line of attack. Finally, as Childs covered in his class, we have feints. These don’t necessarily have to be fully committed. As long as they’re enough to provoke a twitch reaction, you can use that info to draw out a larger response later on.

 At the end of the day, the lesson here that I’ve been trying to take to heart is that we shouldn’t be looking for when in the fight to fire our favorite technique. Instead, we should be on the lookout for what openings our opponent is giving us and from there figure out what the answer in that moment might be. It’s far too easy to get caught up with, “Well, I only like thrusting to the inside” or “I only know how to target the hands”. Instead, prod your opponent’s defense to see where it is you can get in and go from there. You might be surprised what shots you find yourself landing.

I’m currently interviewing for roles as a product manager. If you’re at all invested in helping my book on “The Ecological Approach to Historical Fencing” coming out sooner rather than later, the fastest way to make that happen is to help me stop having to doomscroll through LinkedIn. If you know of anyone hiring in the product space, please feel free to reach out.

If science-based learning is your thing, then make sure to grab tickets for the upcoming Constraints-Led Fencing Event happening on Saturday, April 25th in Ft. Wayne, IN. This will be a day long exploration of how to use lessons from sports science/sports psychology to help you improve both as a learner and as a teacher of this most beautiful art. https://www.tickettailor.com/events/arsgladii/2105964

Lastly, I will be teaching a brand new class, “Getting Weird with Fabris” at CAD (Constellation academy of defense) on Saturday, May 9th in Columbia City, IN.

[1] While I’ve studied both Shotokan karate and judo, I’ve never personally studied any Japanese sword arts, so I can’t attest as to how accurate Solle’s take is here. The fact that he never studied with the soldiers, but only watched them from afar likely influenced his stance as well. Regardless of how historically accurate the dichotomy is, I still find it a helpful way to look at fencing and martial arts more broadly.

[2] Harmenberg, page 7.