The Armour Archive

I have seemed to have hit yet another plateau in my fighting and was wondering what others do to overcome the plateaus they have had.

Back to basics. Seriously. There is always a lot to learn at a fundimental level.

Have you actually hit a plateau or have you improved and others are upping their game to beat you?
The 2 can be very similar.

Change gears.

Try a new weapon form for a bit. If you JUST do benchpresses all the time, you'll hit a point where you just get stuck at a particular weight. So you do ROWS to keep the muscles guessing, and allowing them to get stronger.

Same thing for skills, physical or mental.


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Three things have worked very well for me whenever I've hit a plateau:
1: Focus on having fun, or enjoy what I'm doing be it practice, tournament, pickups, whatever.
2: Look for people I haven't practiced with to fight, preferably people that are much better than I am.
3. Get introspective: when I lose, try to determine why, try to learn what to do to overcome the flaw, and then implement the solution.

1) Go back and do pell work.
2) Do something new. A new weapon or new style. You *will* suck at it worse than where you are now. But as you get better you will get new skills and some will apply to what you were doing previously
- I recommend (if you haven’t already) get authorized in rapier. Your footwork will improve, mine did!
3) Read about fighting, (re)watch videos about fighting, think about fighting.
4) Create a fighting journal, write down what your working on, what your thinking about, etc. When you fight someone else ask if they’d like to leave comments in your fight journal. Heck even spectators.
5) Watch other fighters. Learn how to critique.
6) Take a new fighter under your wing and teach them, or take over a local fight practice and teach for one (or more) practice(s). You can learn a LOT teaching

Anything to shake your out of your current routine.

And in a worst case scenario, take a break. Give yourself some space. Go to an event and just enjoy yourself!

Get yourself to some of Paul's classes. I hear he's doing a bunch of them at Pennsic.

That's what I do. Get the single hip return and all that goes with it.

Regards

Avery

I usually get hurt before i get to one and then have to take time off and then half start over.


Try a different weapon style, a smaller shield, fight 2 guys at the same time, fight at a different practice.

Travel. Get outside of your regular area. Have a complete stranger at a big event tear your form apart. Or shock the system with something new.

1) Identify what you want to improve.
2) State a specific goal. I find it helps here to both know what your ideal performance would be like, and break down what things need to happen to accomplish it.
3) Formulate a plan to achieve that goal with specific, explicit steps along the way.
4) Visualization and action. Practice obsessively, and obsess about practice.

This works best if you also work on a deep understanding of your combat system so you can evaluate your progress against a theoretical ideal.

Or take a short break. Much like a heavy schedule of exercise you should give yourself some downtime to recover.

While your mind may be pushing in the right direction it is possible that your body has hit a point where it will only do so much. You need to give it some rest and focus on recovery. After the break push hard again for improvement. Do work on specific goals such as defense. Try not attempting to kill your opponent but rather surviving any onslaught they can throw at you. Figure out how the jukes and fients they throw force you to move and correct that problem. Learn to easily block the basics and combinations so that it becomes effortless. Work your defense until it is extremely difficult for your opponent to hit you. They will tire attempting to get through a solid but relaxed defense. It is much easier to strike an opponent who has gassed themselves trying to get you.

Ian Mac D wrote:I have seemed to have hit yet another plateau in my fighting and was wondering what others do to overcome the plateaus they have had.

Teach.

I do not believe in the concept of the "plateau" in our progression. You are either moving forward or you are falling back. I actually think that the idea can be a disadvantage to the training fighter, because it places some kind of intangible obstacle in their path. I didn't always think this way, and have changed my mind in recent years. Just keep fighting and know that you are most likely moving forward if you are fighting.

While I have turned away from the belief of plateaus, I do believe there are times when progression or regression is in such small increments that either is hard to notice. For my squires, and any that I train with, I espouse "Helmet Time" as the panacea for all ills. This is my 30th year and each time I throw a flat snap, I still get a little better at it or I learn a little more about it. Each time I spend a practice focused on my feet, I get something out of it. Each time I pick up an off weapon, the same thing happens. In other words, each time I don my helmet, I move forward. At this point in my career my progress is miniscule.

Do not believe in intangible ideas like "plateaus". Believe in "The One True Helmet Time" and put it on.

Rodrigo Falcone, KSCA

Recently I did two things:

1) Go to a different practice, new faces mean learning how to deal with different stuff
2) Invite a Knight over, get 30-60 minutes of pell, footwork, whatever instruction. Feed some form of angus beef (helps with the next plateau breaking invitation)

Ask everyone you fight what thye are seeing. A few practices ago one of our Meridian Knights counted me throwing 26 wraps in a series of pick ups. WTH was I thinking??? Well, he then called me over and worked on deeper opening shots and I agreed to no wraps for a while to get my other shots up to speed.

Bottom line. Ask for help and do something different. Plataeu = rut in my expereince.

Do something totally off normal. Fight with a different weapon style. Fight off handed. Do it for a couple months. For me, it breaks up the "same-old, same-old" and gives me a perspective on things from a different kind of fight.

Take your fighting style apart and put it back together again. Reexamine and question everything.

Thanks everyone for some really good advice so far. As I disect why I believe I am on a plateau of sorts I do realize it is due to: a nagging minor injury; lack of practice time due to mundane issues; and as someone suggested others "upping their game" to meet mine. I will endeavour to heed the advice I have received. Thanks again.

Apollonian wrote:I do not believe in the concept of the "plateau" in our progression. You are either moving forward or you are falling back.

I disagree. I feel plateaus are real, and inevitable. But they are part of the process, and as such, nothing to worry overmuch about.

For my squires, and any that I train with, I espouse "Helmet Time" as the panacea for all ills.

Yet, I agree. The cure for the plateau is training.

I have come to think of it like this:

You hit a plateau. Every time you practice, you are gathering energy to move past the plateau. Some plateaus are small, and require a a bit of training. Some are large, and require much training. But if you stop training, you fall back to the beginning of the plateau, or further, and have to start again. Think in terms of variably sized quanta of skill and the time necessary to acquire such, and it becomes plain.

Whichever way you look at it, though, the cure is to train.

Travel, travel, travel...
Get out and fight new people. I get into a rut when I fight the same people over and over again. At that point, I am learning to fight the person, not fight the fight. Facing someone I don't know forces me to be as perfect as I can in technique and strategy.

Work on something new-

Do you hit hard? pick up a light stick and work on fast.

Work on foot work and passing your opponent rather than forward and backward movement.

Leg and kill every opponent.

Stand in the pocket and watch what your opponent does and react (this required good armor). You will learn an amazing amount about fighting while losing a lot, but in the long run, it will pay off in hige dividends.

g-

I'm with Duke Alaric. Change ONE thing dramatically at first (adding, removing, or modifying). Then change another thing dramatically. Repeat as necessary.

I have spent many, many, many practices completely focused on doing (or not doing) one specific thing. Try a practice where you try to focus completely on killing by thrust (or removing thrusts). Or fighting from a lower stance (or higher stance). Or throwing only three or four shot combinations (or gunslinging). Or only in-fighting (or fighting at distance). Or killing only on the offside (or wraparounds). Or killing only on angle-changes (or in-fighting).

Don't try to change 100 things once. Change one thing and do that a hundred (or a thousand) times.

Just my $.02, of course.

Max Von Halstern

I spent an entire summer redisigning my style. I completely changed what I was doing. It helped me get out of the rut. Think about what you are doing and how you are doing it. Then imagine a different way to accomplish your goals. Then practice that new way until it works or you realize it "won't" work. Always redifine yourself. It will make you feel better and give your opponents something to be surprised by.

regards
ThorvaldR

Fight more, fight the best you can find, fight more, fight out of your comfort zone, fight more, travel if possible, oh and fight more!!!

If it sounds simple that's because it is!

Thor-