The Armour Archive

I am tired of being a middle to good fighter. I intend to become a god of war. I am middle aged, pot bellied, and without anything resembling an ounce of athleticism, but by God and the Absent King I cannot bear the plateau I am on, and I cannot give up the game because I love it so. The only direction I can stand to consider is up.

The advice I always get is stop wearing armor.

Nope. I don't consider that necessarily winning. I want to have prowess while fighting with the knightly weapons, and armed as a knight.

I have very particular ideas about success. If I win, I don't want it to be because I gamed the system.

You go Noe!

To quote Freiman, GET SOME STICK!

Leo Medii wrote:The advice I always get is stop wearing armor.

You didn't have to take them seriously enough to sell off all your armor, man...

Yep. It was lame.

Sacrificing looking like a bad ass tank to be a bad ass stick tagger was stupid on my part.

Things that helped me.

1) Lose the weight.

2) Treat fighting like a sport, train at fight practice instead of fighting to win always. Fight to learn.

3) Travel and fight everyone who is better than you that you can find. Ask questions after the bouts on what your opponent thinks you can improve and shut up and listen to the answers.

Gryffith Fitz William wrote:Things that helped me.

1) Lose the weight.

2) Treat fighting like a sport, train at fight practice instead of fighting to win always. Fight to learn.

3) Travel and fight everyone who is better than you that you can find. Ask questions after the bouts on what your opponent thinks you can improve and shut up and listen to the answers.

Agreed.

Mord.

noe, my advice to you is the same advice i give my students. sca sport combat isnt about physicality as much as it is about the mental chess match. proper technique will allow most people the ability to throw powerful blows. strength plays a part in it of course but when you learn to use your weapon as a tool it will allow you to allow it to do the job. ask any framer (and most of the ones ive worked with are wee little guys that weigh about a buck twenty). they can drive huge nails into lumber all day with one or two strokes of their hammer, when used properly.

out think your opponents and you will be the better fighter.

regards
logan

Oddly enough Viscount Edward Zifran put himself through college framing houses, he got paid by the running foot rather than by the hour.
His focus is pretty spectacular.

As I've gotten older I've found cross training to have a growing benefit. If you can increase your endurance you can train longer in armour, and have more gas left in the tank at the end of those really long fights. When you're exhausted it's harder to focus on the mental game Logan's talking about.

[quote=
out think your opponents and you will be the better fighter.
/quote]

This is true, but be careful not to out think yourself.

Additionally, you want to have all of the physical parts of your fighting to be "hind brain/ remote" so you don't think about anything but what is happening in the now and so you respond instantly.

Lucan Dux wrote:[quote=
out think your opponents and you will be the better fighter.
/quote]

This is true, but be careful not to out think yourself.

Additionally, you want to have all of the physical parts of your fighting to be "hind brain/ remote" so you don't think about anything but what is happening in the now and so you respond instantly.

yep. we're playing chess, but it's not just speed chess, it's hyperspeed chess. There's a bunch of our game (and I think of any combat activity) that involves knowing the appropriate responses to opponents' actions - and correctly recognizing the actions so that the responses are appropriate - after which the "hind brain" takes care of applying the appropriate responses.

There needs to be muscle memory that insures unhesitating application of the selected actions, and conscious awareness that is constantly analyzing for what actions to select. And the occasional moment where that "hind brain" sees something, acts on it and may or may not report in that there was an opening for "shot X" and we went for it without checking up front first

Noe -- you will need to travel. No way around it. The pool is not deep enough in Japan.

Failing that, or in between -- don't just do SCA fighting, cross train. Judo works, boxing works, various kick-happy martial arts work (but don't translate as well). I honestly don't know whether kendo and its ilk will help much, I have my doubts... ask people who've actually done it.

Folks, thank you for all the encouragement and advice. I taking it all in.

Dmitriy, you are absolutely correct. I need to travel and the pool is not deep enough.

The simple truth is that I cannot leave Japan. I cannot even leave my business.

The good news: My business is a school for Western Martial Arts. I teach Lichtenhauer longsword and sword and buckler. I also have the practice space for Avalon.

Yes, the pool is too shallow now: I will make it bigger and deeper, by sheer will alone if need be. And will? Ooo, I got me lots of will.

Bob said something that reminded me about my one good effort for cross training:

What I do to cross train is have open tournaments, in which folks from different Japanese dojos come to my school to practice and discuss techniques. It's been one of our most successful programs. Also the tournaments are wild: longsword vs. bojutsu, spear vs. iado, etc.

I want to come to your school.....

Leo Medii wrote:I want to come to your school.....

Me too!

Leo Medii wrote:The advice I always get is stop wearing armor.

The advice I got was to fight you

I'm looking forward to it, Sir.

Noe,

You are in a tough spot, because you have a really small group of possible opponents. The first steps are pretty easy, but the middle steps are going to be tough.

First, you need to commit. I get the impression that you have done that. Train like a champion.

Second, you need to consider a certain level of fitness to be the price of the ticket. You can't ride the ride unless you buy the ticket. You don't have to be a professional athlete to compete, but you DO have to achieve a basic level of fitness, or you will be fighting with your own body as much as you are fighting your opponents.

Those are the basic steps.

The interim steps are a lot harder for you.

Get a lot of hat time. There is no substitute. Find anybody that is willing to fight, and fight them.

Fight the very best you can get on the field with.

I have no clue what the advanced steps are.

f

Lucan Dux wrote:

Leo Medii wrote:I want to come to your school.....

Me too!

Noe, there might be another path for you. I suspect that if you could find somehow/someway to sponsor over some of those great fighters, they would jump at the chance to visit Japan and teach some receptive listeners.

JP

Learning fighting is difficult. Most people can learn the basics in five or so years, basic shots, basic movement, basic defence on to a level where they are almost natural reflex. This is not the really diffcult part (though it takes time and comitment). The really diffcult part is having the mental discpline (or single mindednes) to thoroughly analyse and think about fighting. To understand what rythm actually is, why are we faster or slower, what is timing, how can rythm be broken, and how do opponets react to specifc things. It is kind of a mental chess game (as I think Duke Logan mentioned).

On top of trying to understand fighting I play a mental game where I imagin what my opponent does and where there actions would levae them voulnerable, and plan my attack according to that then my opponet attacks my evident opening, and so forth. This is a simple mental exersise which helps me visualize fighting and has eveloved into more complex forms as I continue to learn.

Interstingly this has also motivated me to practice the physcal aspect of fighting more. It is nasty to notice that you know what to do but your body is just not fast, or strong enough to do it.

I will reinforce the comments about traveling, cross training, and actually "practicing" at practice, but I want to add one more thing.

The fact that your business is teaching Lichtenhauer gives you a certain advantage of mindset. I am not expert on the subject, but my experience has been that the manuals feature some pictures and text and requires analysis on the part of the practitioner to put it all together. Do the same with your own fighting.

Figure out what you feel is "wrong" with your fighting that is keeping you in mediocrity and I would suggest doing that with the help of someone taking pictures or recording your fighting. Then, like you do with the manuals, break down "where you are" vs. "where you need to be".


Do you teach "Le Jeu" as well?

I concur with my evil twin, JP. Bring the great ones to you. Duke Paul travels to teach. Some great fighters here would like to visit- seriously I hunt Lucan down whenever I can to learn things from him. Get him to Japan if you can. They run a tourney in the West every month called The Crapaud. Major league fighters drive for hours on a week night to a spot that's pretty much the middle of no where for the honor to compete in it. If you can establish a similar event with prestige, folks will come to fight you and your students. When folks come out, bring your "A" game and show them a good time.

I have a large amount of free time right now "downsized". I would be willing to travel to wherever folks would like training.

PM me if you so wish.

Noe:

With folks like Logan, Lucan, Gavin, Gryffith, Leo, etc... providing advice, I'm not sure how much I might add.

That said, have you done a real, in-depth, critical assessment of where your fighting is, your strengths and weaknesses, and where you are in terms of the plateau you mention?

Perhaps if you can analyze where you are you might be better able to determine steps to take to more effectively move forward? Asking other fighters to watch you fight and and provide feedback can prove useful, as can tools like videotaping yourself (as King Logan uses so effectively).

Such an assessment can help determine if there are things you might actually need to deconstruct and reconstruct (e.g., improper basic biomechanics, positioning, maneuver, timing, etc...); if you need to work on building depth into your offense and defense in regards to new shots and blocks, combinations, fakes, and/or feints; if you need to work on enhancing your positioning and maneuver in regards to ranges, angles, timing; and/or if you need to work on the assessment of your opponents, focus/concentration/intent of the fight, etc...

Perhaps once you have determined such specifics, you can better put together a plan of attack regarding how to implement some of the tremendous advice given on how to diminish the weaknesses and enhance the strengths?

Just a thought.

Max Von Halstern

Noe,

I have fought you when I was in Japan, you have all of the skills you need . Thought the pool is not deep there is a Duke and a Knight living in the Tokyo area. Sadely you would have to travel to them to fight them and they might be out of practice.

And of course trying to travel to perhaps West Kingdom Crown for things like the Rose Tourney or Estrella.

You could fund Duke Paul to come out. He might be interested now.

Sir Guy

Sir Guy wrote:Noe,

I have fought you when I was in Japan, you have all of the skills you need . Thought the pool is not deep there is a Duke and a Knight living in the Tokyo area. Sadely you would have to travel to them to fight them and they might be out of practice.

And of course trying to travel to perhaps West Kingdom Crown for things like the Rose Tourney or Estrella.

You could fund Duke Paul to come out. He might be interested now.

Sir Guy

ps. Also while I was there while there was a desire to learn I did not sense that there was one to excel and compete. Which is possitive and negitive I suppose. Though there was great heart and joy in the fighting.

Lucan Dux: PM sent

Sir Guy: There is truth to what you say. Locally there is a love of combat, but not much of a competitive streak. Partly this is my fault, and there have been some negative socioligical effects because of it. As a matter of fact, lately I have been taking some very odd steps to turn that around.

Part of the problem is my own screwed up personality. I know that games are, essentially, games, so it is hard for me to get worked up about them. And this has affected my fighting skills because, in order to do your best, you must take the game seriously.

It has been better since I have come to view tournaments as crisis training. The object of the training is to excel despite knowing that failure will lead to death (or really, expulsion from the game). With that mindset, ti makes it more possible for me to be competitive.

Even so, I am not interested in winning because of rules quirks. Even if I win the match, I don't feel like I have really won if i did so because I took advantage of a loophole, like olympic fencers who win by relying on the bend of the foil and the lightness of the scoring button to get their points.

Hey Noe

One suggestion, would be to set up a good set or two of loaner gear, complete with weapons. Done well, these should be able to fit most people. Since you have the space, establish an open invitation to any SCA folk that come near that there is space to play, and you would love the company. Maybe offer rides from the closest airport?

Talk to your King, and the rest of the Kings in the Knowne World, ask them to let their people know that you are looking for folks to fight. Talk to corporate and place some ads, either online or in various kingdom newsletters.

Good Luck

Sigurd

I'll point out that round trip from Oklahoma City to Tokyo in the first week of June is only $870.... and that's round trip

JP

I had the same thought right before Fiedman's diabolical thread. I wanted to suck less as a fighter. I have completely revamped the way I thown shots. I committed myself to doing it right no matter how bad my ass got kicked in transition, and it did. I practice everyday. If I only have 20 minutes then that is what I take. Muscle memory is volumous repitition and also dailey refreshing. Its working. Keep at it. Good luck.