When I was doing the research for my blog piece about visualization I came across this article. As you can see it's a brief eight-point checklist for how a police officer on the street (and I'm going to assume that would refer to both foot-based patrolling as well as in their cruiser) to maintain a "warrior mindset" for sharp tactical performance. These points are essentially how officers can stay ready for a life and death situation while on patrol and come out alive.
While it served no specific use in the visualization piece, the eight checklist points got me thinking about how they can be applied to the "combat" in which we engage while sparring or at a HEMA tournament. While there is clearly no one-for-one comparison to the potential danger level a cop on patrol is in compared to the fighting we do there are several analogs we can draw from it, so I thought it might prove interesting.
But before we get to the checklist, a quick word about using non-HEMA sources to inform our practice. One thing we need to be very mindful of when doing this to remember that a non-HEMA source is, by definition, not HEMA, and therefore can't be considered a "source" by which to interpret the historical treatises and manuals; this gets back to the idea of historical validity. However, by making analogies I think it's perfectly reasonable to use a non-HEMA source to inform some specific aspect of our work.
This checklist is a perfect example. No one can realistically say the fighting we do in HEMA compares to a cop potentially getting shot unexpectedly while on patrol. But we can review the information from this checklist, or some other non-HEMA source, and analogously use it to make us better understand some aspect of our HEMA work.
For example, maybe you took ballet as a kid. As a result, you know the importance of firm yet well balanced and light footwork as well as how to engage your core to make quick, powerful turns. You can use this knowledge as an analog to apply to your HEMA work, whether it is with Longsword, or Ringen, or rapier, or whatever. You'd never claim your ballet knowledge as a "source" for your fighting (although historically there does appear to be a connection between the two), but it certainly does inform your fighting to a great extent. I think we need to keep wide open minds and draw on as many other sources as we can in this similar, analogous way.
That being said, let's take a look at the police officer checklist. I will include the original point from the article and then discuss how we can apply it to our work in HEMA.
Clearly, when we are approaching our opponent in a sparring match or competition we need not be concerned with what is behind us or above us. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't take in the total environment before us.
Some people move around a lot, some people like to change guards frequently, some like to largely stand still and slowly yet steadily gain measure. Regardless, most everyone will develop physical patterns and might even have some tell-tale telegraphing before striking. If you go in with eyes "wide open," by which I mean being acutely aware and intentioally taking in every little tell of what your opponent is planning, you can respond to them as fast as possible.
The faster you can detect your opponents tells and patterns the better off you will be, and so this is our version of the cop 540-degree awareness.
Like the article itself says, "Sometimes a single step to the to the right or left can give you better tactical edge."
Uhhhh...yeah, you think so?!
The focus on positioning in the context of the original piece is to protect your back, to have an escape route available or to have a route for reinforcements, but we are all very well acquainted with the idea of having a strong yet flexible stance. It is, literally, the foundational lesson taught to new students, and is largely the basis of the Meisterhauen.
And yet, it is one that in the heat of the fight can often be forgotten. Fencers rush directly in at each other rather than stepping aside to put their sword between themselves and their opponent, for example, or wrestlers try to throw each other by sheer force rather than cool leverage. So even though we know that superior positing is key it is worthwhile to reminded of this from time to time.
Indeed, a single step to the left or right really can make all the difference.
As I've said in other blog pieces, our club focuses strictly on the earlier German Kunst des Fechten of around the late 1300s. That being said, this whole "attack the attack" mentality is hard-wired into us.
Given our very specific temporal focus there are plenty of other fighting styles and weapons of which I am largely unaware, so I can't say with absolute certainty there are none that would advocate a more defensive posture; despite that, I much prefer an "I am the danger" mentality to sword fighting.
Don't passively respond to your opponent, don't react to their action, take the fight to them! Put them on their heels, make their minds whirl with your swirling blades of death -- or at least blades of touch points counted! Attack, feel, attack, feel, attack, attack, attack! I've discussed before how this is a mindset we largely take from a favorite source of ours, as well as in numerous entries about how to live a HEMA-empowered life, but police officer's fighting for their lives is the very crux of this powerful mentality.
It works for cops on the beat, it'll work for you in sparring. Don't be in danger, be the danger.
This is related to the item above about taking in the whole environment at once but is also primarily about knowing what makes you react.
Many opponents like to make uncommitted moves to test reaction, or perhaps to create an opening. Have clear mental triggers allows you to know beforehand how you will respond to a sudden move on their part. This is an excellent thing to have in mind as you enter into a fight.
What you do after responding to the trigger is the focus on the next point...
According to the article, it can be vital for a cop to have personal standard operating procedures (SOPs) to manage difficult situations. While every department has official SOPs it comes down to the individual officer to determine his or her own personal ones, which could mean refusing to draw their weapon to shooting first, tasing second, and then maybe asking questions.
For us, the analogy here is having an overall plan. Do you plan to be aggressive and attack for almost every exchange, or do you prefer to be defensive, or a combination? Do you rely on the Meisterhauen, or fighting from the Hangen, or something else? What is your plan? In this case we needn't wonder about what our reaction will be -- this is a martial art, after all, so of course, we're going to fight! -- but rather specifically how we plan to fight to overcome this opponent.
"Static positioning...leaves a terrible training scar," says the article.
This point isn't really even analogous, it is perfectly valid from all forms of HEMA!
Regardless of what we're doing, we want to do it moving. Whether fighting Longsword, Messer, rapier, saber, shortsword, Ringen, dagger, spear, sword and buckler, etc., we want to move!
One of the worst habits we can develop is to do all our fighting from only the arms. We want to move our feet to gain advantage and stay counterpoised to their sword, we want to engage our core to properly move our weapons or to throw our opponents, we want to move.
So definitely make a commitment to movement, just like the article suggests cops do.
This is also one that needs little connection to make the suggestion work. If you're not working hard when you're training, if you're not breathing heavily and breaking a sweat, then you're not training.
And, hey, maybe that's your thing and your club's thing, and if so, cool. But if it is don't wonder why your fighting isn't improving.
If you want your fighting to improve then you need to train uncomfortably. You need to stretch yourself -- literally and figuratively! -- you need to go a little further than you want to, a little longer, a little harder.
This is also something of a one to one comparison with only a bit of analogy-making. While police officers have very formal, set debriefings that come from a superior after actions we do not. That does not, however, mean we shouldn't go back and review what happened and why. We can do this by ourselves through memory and visualization, but it can also come through a chat with your club members, coach, or instructor who was watching to see what happened.
It can be absolutely maddening, for instance, to find you're again and again not executing a proper Zorn, and it can be even more so trying to figure out why. If you have a mate "debrief" you after sparring and hear that you're failing to engage your core, then not only is it less maddening but you also have the chance to improve before the bad movement becomes a training artifact.
So, in as much as you can, debrief one another to help improve everyone.
OK, everyone, I'm going to wrap up here for now. Today's entry was pretty much a bonus based upon some leftover material, but it does bring up some interesting points as well as pointing out the wise use of non-HEMA material to help us understand our beloved art.
What additional, non-HEMA sources do you use to help in your understanding? Do you often come across things in life and intentionally use them analogously for HEMA? What other, non-HEMA things have you found most helpful in your HEMA work?
Stay loose, everyone, and train uncomfortably hard.
-- Scott
While it served no specific use in the visualization piece, the eight checklist points got me thinking about how they can be applied to the "combat" in which we engage while sparring or at a HEMA tournament. While there is clearly no one-for-one comparison to the potential danger level a cop on patrol is in compared to the fighting we do there are several analogs we can draw from it, so I thought it might prove interesting.
But before we get to the checklist, a quick word about using non-HEMA sources to inform our practice. One thing we need to be very mindful of when doing this to remember that a non-HEMA source is, by definition, not HEMA, and therefore can't be considered a "source" by which to interpret the historical treatises and manuals; this gets back to the idea of historical validity. However, by making analogies I think it's perfectly reasonable to use a non-HEMA source to inform some specific aspect of our work.
 |
| Very Sherlockian, don't you think? |
This checklist is a perfect example. No one can realistically say the fighting we do in HEMA compares to a cop potentially getting shot unexpectedly while on patrol. But we can review the information from this checklist, or some other non-HEMA source, and analogously use it to make us better understand some aspect of our HEMA work.
For example, maybe you took ballet as a kid. As a result, you know the importance of firm yet well balanced and light footwork as well as how to engage your core to make quick, powerful turns. You can use this knowledge as an analog to apply to your HEMA work, whether it is with Longsword, or Ringen, or rapier, or whatever. You'd never claim your ballet knowledge as a "source" for your fighting (although historically there does appear to be a connection between the two), but it certainly does inform your fighting to a great extent. I think we need to keep wide open minds and draw on as many other sources as we can in this similar, analogous way.
That being said, let's take a look at the police officer checklist. I will include the original point from the article and then discuss how we can apply it to our work in HEMA.
540-degree Awareness
Clearly, when we are approaching our opponent in a sparring match or competition we need not be concerned with what is behind us or above us. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't take in the total environment before us.
Some people move around a lot, some people like to change guards frequently, some like to largely stand still and slowly yet steadily gain measure. Regardless, most everyone will develop physical patterns and might even have some tell-tale telegraphing before striking. If you go in with eyes "wide open," by which I mean being acutely aware and intentioally taking in every little tell of what your opponent is planning, you can respond to them as fast as possible.
The faster you can detect your opponents tells and patterns the better off you will be, and so this is our version of the cop 540-degree awareness.
Superior Positioning
Like the article itself says, "Sometimes a single step to the to the right or left can give you better tactical edge."
Uhhhh...yeah, you think so?!
The focus on positioning in the context of the original piece is to protect your back, to have an escape route available or to have a route for reinforcements, but we are all very well acquainted with the idea of having a strong yet flexible stance. It is, literally, the foundational lesson taught to new students, and is largely the basis of the Meisterhauen.
And yet, it is one that in the heat of the fight can often be forgotten. Fencers rush directly in at each other rather than stepping aside to put their sword between themselves and their opponent, for example, or wrestlers try to throw each other by sheer force rather than cool leverage. So even though we know that superior positing is key it is worthwhile to reminded of this from time to time.
Indeed, a single step to the left or right really can make all the difference.
"Attack-the-Attack" Ferocity
As I've said in other blog pieces, our club focuses strictly on the earlier German Kunst des Fechten of around the late 1300s. That being said, this whole "attack the attack" mentality is hard-wired into us.
Given our very specific temporal focus there are plenty of other fighting styles and weapons of which I am largely unaware, so I can't say with absolute certainty there are none that would advocate a more defensive posture; despite that, I much prefer an "I am the danger" mentality to sword fighting.
Don't passively respond to your opponent, don't react to their action, take the fight to them! Put them on their heels, make their minds whirl with your swirling blades of death -- or at least blades of touch points counted! Attack, feel, attack, feel, attack, attack, attack! I've discussed before how this is a mindset we largely take from a favorite source of ours, as well as in numerous entries about how to live a HEMA-empowered life, but police officer's fighting for their lives is the very crux of this powerful mentality.
It works for cops on the beat, it'll work for you in sparring. Don't be in danger, be the danger.
Clear Mental Triggers
This is related to the item above about taking in the whole environment at once but is also primarily about knowing what makes you react.
Many opponents like to make uncommitted moves to test reaction, or perhaps to create an opening. Have clear mental triggers allows you to know beforehand how you will respond to a sudden move on their part. This is an excellent thing to have in mind as you enter into a fight.
What you do after responding to the trigger is the focus on the next point...
Personal SOPs
According to the article, it can be vital for a cop to have personal standard operating procedures (SOPs) to manage difficult situations. While every department has official SOPs it comes down to the individual officer to determine his or her own personal ones, which could mean refusing to draw their weapon to shooting first, tasing second, and then maybe asking questions.
For us, the analogy here is having an overall plan. Do you plan to be aggressive and attack for almost every exchange, or do you prefer to be defensive, or a combination? Do you rely on the Meisterhauen, or fighting from the Hangen, or something else? What is your plan? In this case we needn't wonder about what our reaction will be -- this is a martial art, after all, so of course, we're going to fight! -- but rather specifically how we plan to fight to overcome this opponent.
Commitment to Movement
"Static positioning...leaves a terrible training scar," says the article.
This point isn't really even analogous, it is perfectly valid from all forms of HEMA!
Regardless of what we're doing, we want to do it moving. Whether fighting Longsword, Messer, rapier, saber, shortsword, Ringen, dagger, spear, sword and buckler, etc., we want to move!
One of the worst habits we can develop is to do all our fighting from only the arms. We want to move our feet to gain advantage and stay counterpoised to their sword, we want to engage our core to properly move our weapons or to throw our opponents, we want to move.
So definitely make a commitment to movement, just like the article suggests cops do.
Uncomfortable Training
This is also one that needs little connection to make the suggestion work. If you're not working hard when you're training, if you're not breathing heavily and breaking a sweat, then you're not training.
And, hey, maybe that's your thing and your club's thing, and if so, cool. But if it is don't wonder why your fighting isn't improving.
If you want your fighting to improve then you need to train uncomfortably. You need to stretch yourself -- literally and figuratively! -- you need to go a little further than you want to, a little longer, a little harder.
Unsparing Debriefing
This is also something of a one to one comparison with only a bit of analogy-making. While police officers have very formal, set debriefings that come from a superior after actions we do not. That does not, however, mean we shouldn't go back and review what happened and why. We can do this by ourselves through memory and visualization, but it can also come through a chat with your club members, coach, or instructor who was watching to see what happened.
It can be absolutely maddening, for instance, to find you're again and again not executing a proper Zorn, and it can be even more so trying to figure out why. If you have a mate "debrief" you after sparring and hear that you're failing to engage your core, then not only is it less maddening but you also have the chance to improve before the bad movement becomes a training artifact.
So, in as much as you can, debrief one another to help improve everyone.
⚔
OK, everyone, I'm going to wrap up here for now. Today's entry was pretty much a bonus based upon some leftover material, but it does bring up some interesting points as well as pointing out the wise use of non-HEMA material to help us understand our beloved art.
What additional, non-HEMA sources do you use to help in your understanding? Do you often come across things in life and intentionally use them analogously for HEMA? What other, non-HEMA things have you found most helpful in your HEMA work?
Stay loose, everyone, and train uncomfortably hard.
-- Scott
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