"For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack."
-- Rudyard Kipling
As you might recall, back in January we started a four-part workshop series called "Being a She-Wolf" designed by our friend Rebecca Glass to use HEMA skills to help women feel more empowered in their fighting and in their lives. At that time I wrote a blog entry detailing what we were doing and promising to return with more information after each workshop.
This past weekend we had part two of the series, and it was an absolute delight to watch it unfold.
Unfortunately, some of the original participants from January were unable to attend this seminar due to work and other obligations, but despite that, there were two things making it immediately delightful. First, for those who came back from the first session, there was a marked increase in their overall confidence and comfort level while fencing as well as an equal improvement in their overall fitness (which Rebecca is having them track). Second, two of the new participants were students of our club who just finished the Novice course, so it was wonderfully encouraging to watch them enthusiastically jump into this with both feet!
The main focus of the session this time around was developing confidence in your skills as a fighter, but then also extending that confidence by receiving and giving feedback. It can be hard for fencers, especially new fencers, to feel they have anything to offer in terms of feedback while being equally hard to accept feedback without a loss of confidence. The goal of part two was to expose fencers to fighting while being watched, accepting feedback to develop skills, and then to offer feedback with an empowered sense of agency.
There are several main points to be made here. Please note, these are my own personal interpretations (driven by my profession, obviously) of how we can take these HEMA lessons and apply them to a larger goal of having a life well-lived. These points all link back to the original reason we established this workshop, of elevating HEMA above just a martial art, or sport, or a physical past time. The points that were discussed will indeed help one's performance as a fencer, but more importantly, will help a fencer's performance as a well-balanced human being.
Confidence was really the core issue of part two and was the main point being worked on. As we all know, it can be terrifying to have a three-foot piece of metal come winging at your head, so fencing with a Longsword to any degree takes some confidence. However, all too often the impulse, especially by new fencers, is to recoil or retreat from the blade so as to not get hit, which invariably leads to their getting hit.
So one of the primary lessons from this most recent seminar was to believe in your own efficacy as a fencer. Believe you have the skills to manage your opponent; please note I didn't say defeat or beat or prevail against or any of that, I said manage. This is an extremely important distinction because all of us often fight against people who are significantly better than we are. In a case like that, realistically, we'll lose the bout, but that's not the most important thing.
What matters most here is that we have the confidence to know we can manage whatever gets thrown at us. Sometimes we will parry and counter well, sometimes not. Sometimes we'll step out of distance or not. Again, what matters most is that unassailable confidence in yourself that you can go against this opponent -- equal in skill, far better than you, doesn't matter -- and manage what they are throwing at you.
I really cannot think of a more important overall life lesson to take away from this fencing skill (and I've given some thought about how to correlate HEMA and living an empowered life; read this if you want to know more about that). This mindset can be the difference between believing in ourselves enough to take action when needed or to fretfully wait in the corner for things to happen.
-- Rudyard Kipling
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As you might recall, back in January we started a four-part workshop series called "Being a She-Wolf" designed by our friend Rebecca Glass to use HEMA skills to help women feel more empowered in their fighting and in their lives. At that time I wrote a blog entry detailing what we were doing and promising to return with more information after each workshop.
This past weekend we had part two of the series, and it was an absolute delight to watch it unfold.
Unfortunately, some of the original participants from January were unable to attend this seminar due to work and other obligations, but despite that, there were two things making it immediately delightful. First, for those who came back from the first session, there was a marked increase in their overall confidence and comfort level while fencing as well as an equal improvement in their overall fitness (which Rebecca is having them track). Second, two of the new participants were students of our club who just finished the Novice course, so it was wonderfully encouraging to watch them enthusiastically jump into this with both feet!
The main focus of the session this time around was developing confidence in your skills as a fighter, but then also extending that confidence by receiving and giving feedback. It can be hard for fencers, especially new fencers, to feel they have anything to offer in terms of feedback while being equally hard to accept feedback without a loss of confidence. The goal of part two was to expose fencers to fighting while being watched, accepting feedback to develop skills, and then to offer feedback with an empowered sense of agency.
There are several main points to be made here. Please note, these are my own personal interpretations (driven by my profession, obviously) of how we can take these HEMA lessons and apply them to a larger goal of having a life well-lived. These points all link back to the original reason we established this workshop, of elevating HEMA above just a martial art, or sport, or a physical past time. The points that were discussed will indeed help one's performance as a fencer, but more importantly, will help a fencer's performance as a well-balanced human being.
Confidence was really the core issue of part two and was the main point being worked on. As we all know, it can be terrifying to have a three-foot piece of metal come winging at your head, so fencing with a Longsword to any degree takes some confidence. However, all too often the impulse, especially by new fencers, is to recoil or retreat from the blade so as to not get hit, which invariably leads to their getting hit.
So one of the primary lessons from this most recent seminar was to believe in your own efficacy as a fencer. Believe you have the skills to manage your opponent; please note I didn't say defeat or beat or prevail against or any of that, I said manage. This is an extremely important distinction because all of us often fight against people who are significantly better than we are. In a case like that, realistically, we'll lose the bout, but that's not the most important thing.
What matters most here is that we have the confidence to know we can manage whatever gets thrown at us. Sometimes we will parry and counter well, sometimes not. Sometimes we'll step out of distance or not. Again, what matters most is that unassailable confidence in yourself that you can go against this opponent -- equal in skill, far better than you, doesn't matter -- and manage what they are throwing at you.
I really cannot think of a more important overall life lesson to take away from this fencing skill (and I've given some thought about how to correlate HEMA and living an empowered life; read this if you want to know more about that). This mindset can be the difference between believing in ourselves enough to take action when needed or to fretfully wait in the corner for things to happen.
The problem is that we're surrounded by a tremendous amount of inaction in our modern lives. In many ways, this over-emphasis on debating and thinking about things rather than doing is related to fear, which is a by-product of low confidence. Whether it's teasing out every last detail in our minds before making a decision, or talking an issue to death before a board or committee votes to take action, fear of doing the wrong thing compels us to talk endlessly; and this, ultimately, is because thinking about action is far easier than taking action.
The reality of life is that there are a great many things we simply must experience rather than wonder about regardless how much some people want that to be the case. There are some things -- most things, actually -- that you just have to actually do if you expect anything to happen. You can plan for a reasonable amount of time, but that only gets you so far. Eventually, you need to stop thinking about what you want to do and actually do it.
But that pervasive fear of failure, or embarrassment, or of error, will whisper in your head and convince you it's easier to not do something of great value to you. So in order to develop that confidence and to inculcate a sense of ability and agency in the She-Wolves, Rebecca had them fence against one another. There is nothing like taking a few hits with a Longsword to help you know you can manage that and nothing like getting a few good hits in on an opponent to begin developing confidence!
As I had said earlier, the overall goal of Being a She-Wolf is to use HEMA as a way to uplift others and help make their lives better. There are few things, in my opinion, that can facilitate that better than believing in your own agency to take action and effect change.
But this most recent class wasn't just about one's own fencing, or even doing that fencing while being watched. It was about maintaining that confidence while receiving feedback and feeling empowered to offer feedback as well. To my mind (which, admittedly, is always perceiving things in terms of therapy), this gets to the point of not being overly burdened by perfection and letting go of that false friend.
Please note, striving for perfection is an admirable goal so long as you recognize you will never actually achieve perfection; we simply don't live in a perfect world. But this desire to challenge oneself and aim for the stars can be debilitating when there is a concomitant insistence on perfection before a person even begins anything.
There is a saying, adapted from Voltaire, which goes "the perfect is the enemy of the good." This is the best way to capture the essence of this problem. A person that is so focused on being perfect at something can lose sight that being pretty damned good at it is an excellent option as well. Consequently, they chain themselves in anxious inactivity wondering how to achieve that ever-allusive perfection. The more we stretch to secure a guarantee of perfection before we ever start only moves it further away from us, and the result is often utter paralysis.
This quest for perfection leads to endless indecisiveness: The constant reworking of a work project, or a poem, or a plan of any kind until we're so frustrated with not achieving perfection that we abandon it altogether, not knowing what else to do. This is the end result of our obsessive thinking and endless worrying -- both of which are chains wrapped around a fencer too focused on their own perfection.
Our rejection of the good due to an insistence on the perfect will often raise its ugly head in regard to our physical pursuits. It can be eternally frustrating to learn how to play a musical instrument, or speak a new language, or pull off a certain dance move (and don't even get me started on doing the perfect Krump!). But, if after just a little work, we are raging at ourselves for not having achieved perfect art with our efforts and we put it aside, then we are denying ourselves the joy of noting small improvements, one inch at a time.
The simplest, though, admittedly, inelegant solution to the paralysis of the perfect is to simply start doing what you want -- hence the She-Wolves fencing while others watched. then giving and receiving feedback. Why? Because, like one of our favorite sources says, "practice is better than art; your practice may very well be useful without art, but your art is useless without practice."
Doing, even if you're doing it imperfectly, is better than not doing at all. If you're doing it imperfectly you will, with practice, get better; you'll never be perfect, but you'll be better. If you never do at all because you fear imperfection that's all you'll ever be: Imperfect.
The final take away from this weekend's seminar, which is alluded to in the quote I started this blog post with, is the idea of community. Change the words of the quote just a little and we get "the strength of HEMA is the fencer, and the strength of the fencer is HEMA." That's community.
We are indeed a community, a community that needs to support and uplift one another any chance we get. We can do that by hosting events like Being a She-Wolf, or by taking new fencers under our wings, or by formally training someone, or by volunteering your services somewhere. Or, perhaps most importantly at all, helping a fellow fencer out when they're struggling with something.
When we make one of us stronger, we make all of us stronger. That, my friends, is what the HEMA community in general, and "Being a She-Wolf" specifically, is all about.
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Alright, folks, time to wrap this one up. One final things, though: I've attached a brief video about the most recent Being a She-Wolf. Enjoy!
Stay loose and train hard!
-- Scott
P.S.: Some of the content of this blog post is taken from a forthcoming writing project of mine. Stay tuned to learn more!
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