Nah, it's honestly better than a lot of what else I've seen on youtube. The whole of the left guy's footwork and bladework screams to me 'someone who spars, a lot, doesn't have any formal footwork training, leans around too much (it makes it harder to be nimble in the follow through) and started off with an extremely poor base but has built up to here; is more concerned with being tricky than attacking safely.' I should know; I was there xD Lots and lots of room to improve, I think particularly at the intersection between foot and bladework, but that they have footwork at all is a step above a lot.
@@aidencleary I don't think I'm much beyond where they are at the current moment, but for the most part I see in the left fencer a lot of the things I did, didn't like, and worked on improving. To try to describe... 0. Both fencers have aggression down pat - the willingness to strike, probe, and fail. This is very good - the fastest learning fencers tend to be the aggressive ones. When I joined that category, I learnt drastically faster than before. 1. The bigger/left fencer might benefit from putting some focus and attention in feeling out what his bodily leaning is doing or not doing for him. In my case, I found that leaning around was drasrically slowing down my footwork, and was the primary cause of my getting overwhelmed, especially if I ever leaned backwards. Leaning around constrained the range of valid fast footwork and even bladework, and was a gigantic tell when done before or leading up to any given strike. Leaning isn't categorically wrong or anything, especially in wrestling range, but I'd advise trying out how doing things with an avoidance of unnecessary leaning, especially in defending or as preparation for strikes (prepare long before the strike and have several options from that position; that avoids the obvious telegraph). 2. On footwork: What unlocked fast footwork for me was a particular old Olympic fencing video from the 40s where they illustrated a drill whereby one shouldn't be moving their hips or upper body when advancing their foot. Put in more useful terms - in a reasonably loaded position, the gathering step was most readily performed by kicking the front foot out to the place I wanted to step to, with the rest of the body following as a consequence - time of the foot style analogous to time of the hand. The consequence of moving in this way was to have my center of gravity relatively stable whilst I accelerated forward, avoiding wasted up/down movement. This served as the first useful footwork practice that led to reasonably better footwork on my part. I then chained it into passing steps, and then it turned out that retreating required the movement of the hip backwards first if it was to be stable and fast. I suppose the real insight is 'try to move from your center of gravity, and the rest of your body should move to accommodate for that' 2a. However, easy to say and drill; hard to put into practice. Footwork ultimately follows bladework; for practiced footwork to really work out for you, it should actively support or be part of your intent led with the blade, or else you'll probably forget it. At least that's what I found helped me. This also applies for said leaning. 2aa. On leaning: Might be helpful to think less about 'not leaning' and more on 'having the foot move further if I want to move further in that direction'. 3. Left fencer lacks fast, non-telegraphed strikes (time of the hand). Whilst telegraphing isn't the worst possible thing, it contributes heavily to one thing that seems to be popping up: A lack of confidant attacks and useful, initiative-stealing defenses. Those strikes are also still too committed to be feints - they expend his potential, whereas in a feint you want to be able to conserve that potential, or mutate it in the moment to the true strike. Practicing confidant fast first strikes in time of the hand (hand moves first, then arms, body, foot follow - ex. a zornhau that lands under 0.3 seconds) is the start of that process of developing confidant attacks, along with a better probing/feinting game, and the masterstrikes. 4. On that note, a lack of useful, initiative-stealing defenses. He parries the strikes by striking out at them, but has no potential to follow up and strike the opponent after. This was my biggest weakness, and what I've been focused on over the last 2 months. In the framework of Meyer, it's the taker part of the provoker-taker-hitter paradigm. You want to parry in such a way as to restore your potential to strike, or at least suppresses your opponent's potential to strike. Abstract as heck, but what I found useful here was the use of the krumphau and thinking about crossing the opponent's blade, actually hitting the opponent's strike on the way in, and barring/suppressing/capturing/restraining the opponent's strike. I had something better worded here before I accidentally deleted my previously prepared post, apologies! I'm focusing on the left fencer because I see much more of things I did (and probably still do) to varying degrees that I've been working on. I'm far less confidant about the things that I'm about to say that apply to both fencers, but these are things that I think I'm seeing that apply to them both: 1. Their starting stance is useless to them and actively detrimental in that it telegraphs the obvious strike they will be pulling off from that position. This is not to say that they shouldn't be utilizing the various guards/positions, but rather that they should experiment with them, to discover the full range of strikes, thrusts, probing actions, feints, preparatory actions, etc. that they can do from them, and adopt their positions according to their opponent's visible preparations. In the German tradition, I've been finding that you should be able to do every strike from the four main positions, and the positions merely change the context of the strike (ex. zwerch from plow is effectively a winding). I have been experimenting on left ochs for example, which has proven to be oddly versatile - threatening the long thrust, endless change-throughs with tiny movements of my left arm on the pommel, guarding the right with the zwerch position, threatening to climb over and muterin-thrust long-point positions, and already being in a good hanging position to receive and counter any attack from above. 2. Neither seem to have confidant setups for safe attacks. There are three main pathways for this: Strikes that are simultaneously hitter and taker - that is, strikes that are meant to hit the opponent and constrain their actions with the sword (the master strikes, especially zornhau, schielhau and zwerchau), preparatory probing/feinting, and almost impossible to react to near instantaneous time-of-the-hand hitter followed by a rapid move to take the opponent's blade in nearly the same tempo (this last one is mostly to punish opponents who get too close without a high potential position). 2a. On the masterstrikes: Schielhau and zornhau are capable of hitting and constraining the opponent's blade in the same go, and are largely won by whoever has their hands in a (slightly) higher position. This is part of why the meta at my club tends towards high arm positions (which then unlock a lot of grappling options if met in an equal bind). Anton Kohutovič's videos, th-cam.com/video/sMVNKpHTY5A/w-d-xo.html and th-cam.com/video/7gCNwrIM9ss/w-d-xo.html , are instructive. Though shown in the context of defending against an approaching attacker in those videos, I can verify that they work equally well as attacks if you have set up the positional advantage beforehand, and have a good time of the hand strike. If you have that advantage, the best your opponent can do is parry without ability to instantly strike back. The principle in the attack works by blowing through the weak of the opponent's sword. A low-held vom tag can be destroyed by a higher held vom tag, especially if both fencers attempt the same move. 2aa. Conversely, I found that the krump to the blade likes hands slightly lower than my opponent at the moment of impact. This unstuck me from my 'hands higher until my opponent is simply taller than me what do I do now?' meta. 2b. On probing and feinting - this one just needs practice, but it's partially a matter of being able to identify what are good positions for yourself, relative to how your opponent's set up, and getting there. I found the trick against blade-forward positions is to think about 'thrusting through' the length of the opponent's blade in a perpendicular manner - getting your strong on their weak. Against threatened oberhaus, being higher or getting ready to trigger their strike and krumping it away helped. This one less less mechanical and a lot more experience-based I find. 2c. The main trick to fast strike then constrain is to not commit full weight and strength into the first strike - just commit the speed and 'bounce' off the opponent. I am still working on this, this is my least confidant first strike method. 3. Completely unrelated to anything I've seen in the video, but what helped make me understand thrusts is the medieval string pull analogy - imagine a string tied to the tip of your sword to the position on the opponent's body you want to hit. Then imagine the string being sucked in by that position. That's how to thrust. Care about hitting first, defending second when it comes to thrusting. 4. At times in the video I wondered if they have practiced close range grappling at the sword - if not, might be useful to help illustrate the possibilities at differing distances. Hopefully a bunch of this is useful! A lot of this is just me trying to crystalize my own experience here :D
Y'all are getting better!!
What the hay, that’s not me that’s Josh the new guy.
that footwork atrocious
Nah, it's honestly better than a lot of what else I've seen on youtube. The whole of the left guy's footwork and bladework screams to me 'someone who spars, a lot, doesn't have any formal footwork training, leans around too much (it makes it harder to be nimble in the follow through) and started off with an extremely poor base but has built up to here; is more concerned with being tricky than attacking safely.' I should know; I was there xD
Lots and lots of room to improve, I think particularly at the intersection between foot and bladework, but that they have footwork at all is a step above a lot.
@@DarkwarriorJhow would you advise they improve and what helped you to do so to get you from where you were to where you are now?
@@aidencleary I don't think I'm much beyond where they are at the current moment, but for the most part I see in the left fencer a lot of the things I did, didn't like, and worked on improving. To try to describe...
0. Both fencers have aggression down pat - the willingness to strike, probe, and fail. This is very good - the fastest learning fencers tend to be the aggressive ones. When I joined that category, I learnt drastically faster than before.
1. The bigger/left fencer might benefit from putting some focus and attention in feeling out what his bodily leaning is doing or not doing for him. In my case, I found that leaning around was drasrically slowing down my footwork, and was the primary cause of my getting overwhelmed, especially if I ever leaned backwards. Leaning around constrained the range of valid fast footwork and even bladework, and was a gigantic tell when done before or leading up to any given strike. Leaning isn't categorically wrong or anything, especially in wrestling range, but I'd advise trying out how doing things with an avoidance of unnecessary leaning, especially in defending or as preparation for strikes (prepare long before the strike and have several options from that position; that avoids the obvious telegraph).
2. On footwork: What unlocked fast footwork for me was a particular old Olympic fencing video from the 40s where they illustrated a drill whereby one shouldn't be moving their hips or upper body when advancing their foot. Put in more useful terms - in a reasonably loaded position, the gathering step was most readily performed by kicking the front foot out to the place I wanted to step to, with the rest of the body following as a consequence - time of the foot style analogous to time of the hand. The consequence of moving in this way was to have my center of gravity relatively stable whilst I accelerated forward, avoiding wasted up/down movement. This served as the first useful footwork practice that led to reasonably better footwork on my part. I then chained it into passing steps, and then it turned out that retreating required the movement of the hip backwards first if it was to be stable and fast. I suppose the real insight is 'try to move from your center of gravity, and the rest of your body should move to accommodate for that'
2a. However, easy to say and drill; hard to put into practice. Footwork ultimately follows bladework; for practiced footwork to really work out for you, it should actively support or be part of your intent led with the blade, or else you'll probably forget it. At least that's what I found helped me. This also applies for said leaning.
2aa. On leaning: Might be helpful to think less about 'not leaning' and more on 'having the foot move further if I want to move further in that direction'.
3. Left fencer lacks fast, non-telegraphed strikes (time of the hand). Whilst telegraphing isn't the worst possible thing, it contributes heavily to one thing that seems to be popping up: A lack of confidant attacks and useful, initiative-stealing defenses. Those strikes are also still too committed to be feints - they expend his potential, whereas in a feint you want to be able to conserve that potential, or mutate it in the moment to the true strike. Practicing confidant fast first strikes in time of the hand (hand moves first, then arms, body, foot follow - ex. a zornhau that lands under 0.3 seconds) is the start of that process of developing confidant attacks, along with a better probing/feinting game, and the masterstrikes.
4. On that note, a lack of useful, initiative-stealing defenses. He parries the strikes by striking out at them, but has no potential to follow up and strike the opponent after. This was my biggest weakness, and what I've been focused on over the last 2 months. In the framework of Meyer, it's the taker part of the provoker-taker-hitter paradigm. You want to parry in such a way as to restore your potential to strike, or at least suppresses your opponent's potential to strike. Abstract as heck, but what I found useful here was the use of the krumphau and thinking about crossing the opponent's blade, actually hitting the opponent's strike on the way in, and barring/suppressing/capturing/restraining the opponent's strike. I had something better worded here before I accidentally deleted my previously prepared post, apologies!
I'm focusing on the left fencer because I see much more of things I did (and probably still do) to varying degrees that I've been working on. I'm far less confidant about the things that I'm about to say that apply to both fencers, but these are things that I think I'm seeing that apply to them both:
1. Their starting stance is useless to them and actively detrimental in that it telegraphs the obvious strike they will be pulling off from that position. This is not to say that they shouldn't be utilizing the various guards/positions, but rather that they should experiment with them, to discover the full range of strikes, thrusts, probing actions, feints, preparatory actions, etc. that they can do from them, and adopt their positions according to their opponent's visible preparations. In the German tradition, I've been finding that you should be able to do every strike from the four main positions, and the positions merely change the context of the strike (ex. zwerch from plow is effectively a winding). I have been experimenting on left ochs for example, which has proven to be oddly versatile - threatening the long thrust, endless change-throughs with tiny movements of my left arm on the pommel, guarding the right with the zwerch position, threatening to climb over and muterin-thrust long-point positions, and already being in a good hanging position to receive and counter any attack from above.
2. Neither seem to have confidant setups for safe attacks. There are three main pathways for this: Strikes that are simultaneously hitter and taker - that is, strikes that are meant to hit the opponent and constrain their actions with the sword (the master strikes, especially zornhau, schielhau and zwerchau), preparatory probing/feinting, and almost impossible to react to near instantaneous time-of-the-hand hitter followed by a rapid move to take the opponent's blade in nearly the same tempo (this last one is mostly to punish opponents who get too close without a high potential position).
2a. On the masterstrikes: Schielhau and zornhau are capable of hitting and constraining the opponent's blade in the same go, and are largely won by whoever has their hands in a (slightly) higher position. This is part of why the meta at my club tends towards high arm positions (which then unlock a lot of grappling options if met in an equal bind). Anton Kohutovič's videos, th-cam.com/video/sMVNKpHTY5A/w-d-xo.html and th-cam.com/video/7gCNwrIM9ss/w-d-xo.html , are instructive. Though shown in the context of defending against an approaching attacker in those videos, I can verify that they work equally well as attacks if you have set up the positional advantage beforehand, and have a good time of the hand strike. If you have that advantage, the best your opponent can do is parry without ability to instantly strike back. The principle in the attack works by blowing through the weak of the opponent's sword. A low-held vom tag can be destroyed by a higher held vom tag, especially if both fencers attempt the same move.
2aa. Conversely, I found that the krump to the blade likes hands slightly lower than my opponent at the moment of impact. This unstuck me from my 'hands higher until my opponent is simply taller than me what do I do now?' meta.
2b. On probing and feinting - this one just needs practice, but it's partially a matter of being able to identify what are good positions for yourself, relative to how your opponent's set up, and getting there. I found the trick against blade-forward positions is to think about 'thrusting through' the length of the opponent's blade in a perpendicular manner - getting your strong on their weak. Against threatened oberhaus, being higher or getting ready to trigger their strike and krumping it away helped. This one less less mechanical and a lot more experience-based I find.
2c. The main trick to fast strike then constrain is to not commit full weight and strength into the first strike - just commit the speed and 'bounce' off the opponent. I am still working on this, this is my least confidant first strike method.
3. Completely unrelated to anything I've seen in the video, but what helped make me understand thrusts is the medieval string pull analogy - imagine a string tied to the tip of your sword to the position on the opponent's body you want to hit. Then imagine the string being sucked in by that position. That's how to thrust. Care about hitting first, defending second when it comes to thrusting.
4. At times in the video I wondered if they have practiced close range grappling at the sword - if not, might be useful to help illustrate the possibilities at differing distances.
Hopefully a bunch of this is useful! A lot of this is just me trying to crystalize my own experience here :D
The guy on the left is Josh, this was his first time fencing.