Living in the shades of grey

This is a response to a comment left by Hugh on my post on Training methods.

I think that the grey area is where all training takes place, as close to reality as we can get to make it have some value and meaning, while balancing it with safety. In the long term it is all shades of grey, what works and when it does are suggestions not absolute truths.
Especially when studying and recreating historical arts, where the process is in many ways the goal. It also depends very much on what actual arts, skill, you want to recreate. Better, more safe weapons, better protective equipment, may be great, especially if your goal is more free-play and competition.

However we are trying to recreate a lost or historical arts. So as well as trying to find out what they did, or how we can go some way toward how they put those skills into practice, should there not also be an equal drive to understand how they learnt it? What methods they used, how their training might of developed? Is this not the other wheel of the cart of understanding what the people of the past did? What they could do and how they actually learnt it.
I'm not saying that one has to but its worth considering.
Jonathan

Do Western Martial arts need a Uniform?

There have been suggestions and discussions about a more formalised uniform for Historical European Martial arts training and what that unifrom should be.

A number of groups’ wear clothing more or less closely based upon that worn by fencers. Others wear clothing loosely replicating 14th/15th century clothing and footwear. Others who concentrate on wrestling and grappling wear uniforms based on what surviving traditional systems wear. All suit the needs of the groups that use them or at least they are adequate, otherwise why wear them.

In the Guild we have a uniform of loose black trousers, (I wear heavy-duty martial arts trousers) and a T-shirt of the Chapter colour fitted with the Guild badge. This was a decision based upon the fact it needed to allow movement, be relatively easy to wear, purchase and clean. Also as a group studying more than one period and style the uniform needed to be adaptable. We also suggest that members wear flat soled, un-cushioned shoes with good grips, as these more closely replicate period footwear than modern super sports shoes.


Clothing or uniform needs to be considered in several ways and should address certain points, which I shall address below

How it affects the movements one can carry out. If one works in the clothing of a period, and this includes the appropriate footwear, one understands the how and why of the movements and footwork better, it can also lead provide insight to why certain movements are done in what may seem illogical wearing a different type of clothing

How it affects the technique, this is obviously relates to the above but also specifically certain techniques, in grappling for example, where the clothing is used to secure holds etc. Only by wearing the appropriate clothing will you understand the action, it may also be that you can only properly apply the technique when wearing the right clothing

How practical is it? The clothing should not be another expense that burdens the students unnecessarily. It also needs to be hard wearing enough to put up with the rigours of training with out the need to repair or replace it.

However if we are striving for accuracy or authenticity then there are other things we should insure as well.

One should train in realistic environments, outside, on uneven terrain, or if inside then on surfaces that replicate those of the period understudy. After all the historical techniques were not designed to be used in a modern gym.

The clothes need to reproduce the originals as accurately as possible. If what you are wearing is not fitted or cut like the originals then you aren’t going to get the insight, you are just going to be training in fancy dress. However do you risk slipping in period footwear and injuring yourself or those you train with. Of course if you wear period footwear all the time you will become accustomed to it and should be no less likely to slip than anyone else. However if you only wear the clothes and shoes when training what are you really learning? After all our ancestors wore the clothes all time.

There are the secondary reasons for wearing a uniform. It helps to develop a group identity for the Chapter/organisation. A uniform contributes to develop a more disciplined approach and mind set, in that when you take of your normal clothes and put on your uniform, you are also entering in to a training mind set. It looks better, everyone is uniform and certainly when attending a multi-group event it can help to identify different groups and schools Ultimately these are considerations of less importance than those mentioned above

In conclusion, when possible any scholar should try to work when they can in a good approximation of the clothing and/or armour of the periods they are studying. This should include correct footwear and training while wearing these things outside on appropriate surfaces.
However it is the training that is most important, the clothes, footwear and environment when worn can give insight and understanding to certain things, but they have to be appropriate, otherwise one can end up just training in “funny” clothes.

Jonathan Waller

Ways to train and understanding that they have in built flaws

Continuing my examination of how to approach the study of Historical Martial arts. Once we have made decisions about our reasons for training we should consider the ways to achieve that goal. I am going to look briefly at how we can go about training and developing our skills.

It is not my goal to dismiss any form of training. Rather my aim is to take a look at various approaches to training and understand why thy are flawed.

From the standpoint of the Guild as a whole and from a personal preference I will look at training with the goal of recreating/understanding the combative systems of the past.

While doing this one strives to respect the past, that we should be safe, improve our understanding and continue to enjoy the process.

If we are training combative skills we should remember that the main goal is to neutralise the opponent as efficiently as possible while preserving ourselves. As such we are developing skills that are designed to injure, cripple or kill other people. Unfortunately there is no way to accurately replicate cutting, stabbing or breaking people without actually doing so. Therefore the training will have to be modified in some way if we do not want to keep finding new training partners because we hospitalise them and we don’t ourselves want to spend large amounts of time out of training while we have to recover from injuries.

It should be noted that while martial artists of the past were arguably not so concerned with safety issues, minimising the risk of injury through training was important. No training program for warriors could tolerate a continued high rate of injury from training. An injured warrior that can not train or fight is not fulfilling their role

However any modification to the effectiveness of the technique is training a flaw, in effect training the technique to fail.

This paradox has challenged martial artists in all eras and cultures. The need to address it is the search to find, to quote modern combatives instructor Tony Blauer, "the best fake stuff out there".

Unless we recognise these flaws and understand how to compensate for them, we are training ourselves to fail under pressure when things become real. Even if our goal is research, the modifications and the flaws can lead us to draw false conclusions from what we do. We have to be careful that the flaw does not become the "right" way of doing it, if it does the conclusions and solution it will be more and more false.



The important elements that make a technique effective are,

The Target attacked

The Timing/Speed

The Power

The Distance

Therefore at least one of these core elements will have to be modified or changed for the sake of safety in training.

Training can be divided into the following broad categories;

Solo Drills
Repetitive co-operative drills
Scripted co-operative drills
Competitive drills

Solo drilling
Solo drills are as the name implies those that are carried out with out interacting with a partner. Solo guard drills, progressions, moving or cutting from one position to another, carrying out solo forms or striking against a pel or punch bag, or test cutting all fall under this type of training.

Here there is no partner to be kept safe, so there is no need for modification of the technique and as such allows the actions to be carried out with proper Power, Speed and Intention. Also by removing the opponent, it allows the scholar to focus only on the technique they are carrying out.

Training this way can also allow for live weapons to be used, which would be too dangerous to use when working with a partner

When correctly trained Solo exercises are very good way to pick up the fundamentals of movements of combat. Because you can attack with proper Power Speed and Intention these drills, unlike others, should do not inherently create bad habits, provided the instructor knows what they are teaching.

The flaws come from what is missing, It is hard to learn proper targeting when attacking thin air. Also hitting something feels very different to hitting nothing. While striking a pel, punch bag or test cutting gives an approximation of hitting an opponent, it is not the same as hitting an active body. The dynamics encouraged when hitting a static test cutting target are different than a dynamic and active human opponent, who is trying to hit you at the same time. To quote Bruce Lee "boards don’t hit back"

It is also hard, especially for less experienced students, to understand what the moves would actually be doing in reality, this is especially true if the student is not balancing the solo training with other partner drills.

A well-executed sequence of solo movements will almost never work the same way against a live opponent. Hitting and being hit by someone, even if you interfere with their strike feels completely different, and things that feel completely different lead to freezing.

Cooperative drills

These drills involve 2 or more scholars, training within a predetermined structure of movement, attack or defence etc. The goal is training through the exercise, it is not about winning in any way you can.

I would further divided this type of training in to the following;

Drilling and Sequences/Plays.

Drilling is the repetition of specific techniques or simple attack and defence or flow type drills.

Sequences/Plays are scripted patterns of actions, dealing with specific tactical type situations.

The advantages are that you have an opponent/s so you are dealing with a real moving target and real attacks coming at you. However as you are working with another person there will need to be some modification for the sake of safety and so an in-built flaw is being trained

Other flaws that can develop with a set drill, is that "knowing" the drill can lead to the scholars pre-empting and anticipating the next move and not committing to the action they are doing now. Or the scholar wants to win and so cheats because they "know" what the other person is going to do.

Often techniques start or are carried out at too great a distance to simulate a real sudden assault. This is often the case when dealing with grappling or dagger techniques. This is often done to substitute Distance for Time, by starting further away the defender has more time to make the reaction work. This is often why many of the techniques seen in the manuals don’t work in free-play. Free play is more like duelling, where as what we generally see in the manuals is dealing with a sudden unexpected assault. Different contexts call for different techniques.

Another problem one often sees in cooperative drills is people getting fixated or carried away on all the things that they can do after they intercept the attack. They block the dagger arms, and then get carried away with the locks, disarming and the other cool stuff they can do then. What has been forgotten or ignored is that the attacker allowed the block to work, by modifying one of the core elements, usually Distance and/or Power.

A common flaw that one sees is in Timing, the attacker makes the attack badly to allow the reactor to succeed. The attacker does not properly keep their weapon between them and the target, and thereby makes it easy to pull off the reaction. This not normally done consciously, rather it happens because the goal has become to make the defenders technique "work". It also happens when scholars make the attack against a teacher or more senior scholar. The more junior does not want to make the teacher fail, so they subconsciously make their own attack badly! Worse still is when the teacher subtly encourages this attitude in the scholar. The problem is that this becomes the way the technique should be done, in this case the technique will fail against someone who does not play by these unwritten rules.

Probably the best way to make Cooperative drills safe while minimizing the flaws is to do them with slow speed, not unnaturally slow, but so that the scholars can maintain proper power generation and delivery while maintaining enough control to keep the action safe. The actual speed used can vary and can increase as the skill level of the practitioners’ increases. In this way the same attention to detail can be applied while keeping it safe. However one has to be careful when the scholar starts to cheat and exploits the fact that their training partner is going slowly by speeding up or doing things that would not work against a full speed attack, like deflecting a staff strike with their forearm



Competitive drills

These include sparring and free play. They have a random or free element in that those involved may choose what techniques they use. This can vary from having two or three choices up to a full no hold bared (with certain restrictions) free play assault.

The danger here is that free-play and sparing are dynamic and we know that combat is dynamic and as such, sparring or free play becomes a reality test of what we have learnt. However it MUST be remembered that free play or sparring is nothing like a real fight for your life.

Also free-play is active, dynamic and fun and therefore habits that are developed in free-play will go deeper and last longer than skills from other less engaging forms of training. Also free-play looks more like what most people expect a "real" fight to look like, most of which expectations are based on fantasy and entertainment, not reality and so will reinforce those untruths and misconceptions

To quote Combative Instructor, practitioner and author Rory Miller "Almost twenty-five years ago, I asked my Karate sensei why we practiced kihon (basics) and kata when the techniques we used in sparring looked nothing like kata. He didn't have a good answer, just some vague nonsense about discipline and muscle development. Twenty years ago, after my first ugly brawl in the casino, I remember sucking wind, shaking, and thinking, "Shit, that wasn't anything like sparring.""

Most of us will not get in to "an ugly brawl" and there is even less likelihood of us using the weapons based elements of our training. So for most people Free-play WILL be as real as it gets. Also free-play is fun. However it must not be forgotten that free-play, sparring, or competition is nothing like real combat.

Free play can become a very sophisticated strategic game, which is a flaw in and of itself. For example people do not attack with a knife the way they spar with one. The reality is fast, close, staccato and overwhelming. The sparring is often a chess match of distance timing and rhythm. The skills are not the same and they don’t transfer.

Wear Protection or modify the weapon?

As Targeting, Timing/Speed, Power, Distance are integral to real combat, one or more of these will have to be messed with to make the training safe. To reduce the need to modify the core elements one can wear armour to allow the better use of power and targeting. Another option is to modify the weapon to make it safer, often a combination of both is done.

Wearing protective armour to allow the replication of un-armoured combat allows people to hit each other in a better approximation of "reality". This can be OK when practising specific techniques or situations However in free play the protection that people wear invariably makes them braver than they would be if they were not wearing the armour and then takes the situation further away from reality again.

If the armour is being worn to replicate armoured combat then the weapons and techniques would change to defeat the protection worn. After all armour is worn to protect the wearer, so defeat it would require more aggressive and therefore more dangers techniques to defeat it. Because of this increased danger it will mean modification in targeting, speed, power or distance or the types of technique used.

For example almost all-combative grappling techniques are by their very nature extremely dangerous and therefore can not be done properly in free-play or competition, so they are either banned or have to be modified to make them safer

If the weapon is made safer then it can reduce the need for armour and allow different level of freedom. However one now has the problem that the less threat/danger the weapon poses the braver the scholars become, and can start to do things that they would not if it were real. Also being hit by a "safe" weapon will produce a very difference result than being hit by a real weapon. Again this is less of a problem in set training than it is in free-play. Also modifying the weapons generally stops it from handling like the real thing and this will also change the way the technique works and lead to false assumptions and conclusions.

Conclusion

So what is the answer? What is the right way to train? Well there isn’t one. As said at the beginning there is no way to replicate real violence without injuring and damaging people. However you train it will be fake in some way. One has to recognise what the deliberate flaws are in the training that you are doing. Minimise those flaws as much as possible to make sure that the skills you are developing are not based upon false assumptions or untruths. If you can, counter act the flaw by adding another type of training to your program where that flaw is not present, just remember that the new drill or exercise will also have a flaw in it!


Jonathan Waller

Guild Secretary

New Guild website and emails up and running

I'm happy to say that the new Guild website is up and running a few thinsg need ironing out, and I will be updating the site as I work through it over the coming days and weeks.

My email is functioning again as well.

Hope the site proves easy to navigate. Once you have visited please tkae a momemnt to fill out the poll on the opening page.

Guild website and emails down.

The Guild website is currently down and Guild emails are not functioning.
This is due to a transfer of servers hosting the site and a new site about to go live.
The new site shall be easier to update and so we will be offering more information, articles, links and updating current information over the coming weeks.

Also a reminder that there is a Facebook page at
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=15962131366

I'll notify the groups when the new site goes live.

Above All, Honour

Jonathan Waller
Secretary, EHCG
www.ehcg.net

The Reasons to study Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) in the modern world

I previously looked at the reasons why people studied martial arts in the past. I will now look at the reasons or ways of HEMA in the modern world. (Thanks to Rory Miller for voicing a number of these ideas relating to Martial arts in general, they seemed a good fit with some adaptation to HEMA)

Of course there will be some overlap between the past and the present day, but there are some important and major differences that need to be considered.
Again my aim is not to claim that there is any ONE right way, rather we should consider what we want to get from training in HEMA. We can then determine how we focus our studies; which arts are most likely to give us what we are looking for and equally, which modern approach best facilitates it.
Much of what is written here may equally be applied to someone considering which of the more “conventional” martial arts to study and again I make no claim to be presenting anything new. Rather my goal is to, perhaps bring together different trains of thought and to highlight areas that I have observed in the HEMA community at large and in the EHCG specifically.

Many of the subjects I will be discussing below could be explored in much greater detail and in greater depth. For some of the topics I will do just that in later articles.

As I discussed previously, historically people studied martial arts for different reasons.
In the modern world the study of these historical arts can be broken down in to the following five categories:

1 Self-defence/Professional use of force
2 Tradition/Physical art/Self-discipline
3 Spiritual Growth/Health
4 Sport/Tournaments
5 Entertainment/Education/Demonstration

There are now a huge number of historical martial arts being studied and an even greater number of groups studying one or several of them. Each group will be working from the materials of one or more masters, or one or more versions of the works of those masters or the traditions they spawned or evolved from. Other groups, like the Guild will deal with the under lying common Principles found though out the arts.

As such one should consider the goals stated or otherwise of the group that you train with or are thinking of training with and how that relates to which of the five ways you wish to follow.

The following will go some way to defining these areas of focus.

Self-defence/Professional use of force/”Learning how to fight”
Historically this would have been the reason why most people learnt the skill, though was not always. Self-defence here refers to those skills and techniques that one can use when suddenly and unexpectedly attacked, in daily life. Professional use of force here refers to those skills used by members of the armed forces, police and those involved in personal/professional security.
If your goal is to learn self-defence then there are many better ways of doing so than by studying HEMA. I am not saying that there are not valuable lessons in these works for someone who knows what they are doing, or that the skills of the practitioners of the past were not effective, they clearly were. In some ways that is where the problem lies, what was acceptable in a self-defence situation in the 1400s may not be legally or morally acceptable today. Also most of what constitutes self-defence is to do with situational awareness, and about how to avoid the places, people and situations where you are likely to become a target. In most cases by the time you need to be using the physical techniques which we see and are described in the manuals and which it should be pointed out are similar to many techniques seen in different cultures and in different eras, its already too late. Again all of these skills need to be addressed first and foremost in the modern world.

If your interest is in the professional use of force, then you should be someone currently involved in the legitimate professions for whom these skills are necessary. As such you should already be involved in the study of appropriate skills.

Of course one can want to study and learn in these areas from a tradition/historical perspective, though in this case that is better addressed in the next focus

Before moving on. What we must not forget, is that in the historical context, these skills were very much practised with a deadly intent. We should then approach the recreation and development of these skills with the respect and seriousness of intent that such skills warrant.

Tradition/physical art/self-discipline –
Tradition is, I would argue, where most of us stand. We are interested in history, we are interested in developing a skill that was used in the past and in wanting to find out about our past we strive to understand how our ancestors applied martial skills. Recreating these traditions is a worthy and valuable cause.
The physical art that goes along with this recreation is in itself worthy of learning and developing any skill to a high level is a worthy practice. The self-discipline required can allow us to master ourselves in ways that other pursuits may not. If for no other consideration, Tradition, Physical art and self-discipline are reasons to study and train in HEMA. After all, these are some of the main reasons why people study Asian martial arts

Spirit/health –
The development of the physical and mental discipline required of any martial art, will arguably develop your spiritual growth, and can also arguably make you a better person, though this is not always the case.
Almost all warrior/martial traditions contain aspects that one can label “spiritual”. After all, if such traditions are to function within a larger society, then those that practice them need to know when to kill or harm and when not to. Also, those that make the use of violence part of their lives generally try to come to terms with the act of doing harm or taking the lives of others. They generally also address and attempt to come to terms and accept that serious injury, disability or death are likely results to themselves. At least they should if they want to retain some mental stability. As such, I would argue that this form of “spirituality” is a by-product of the other aspects of the training, rather than a goal in itself.

There are also those who seek to use martial arts to develop both inner peace and harmony that goes beyond the aspects offered by the self-discipline discussed above. This si something that one can see in Japanese martial arts when one looks at Bujutsu and Budo, in Budo the art is used to develop spirtual growth.
As yet this is something that is not really encountered in in those groups studying HEMA, though there are a number of groups, studying arts of dubious genuine historical ancestry that do emphasise spiritual growth as a major goal.

Health is likely to be a greater lifesaver than any other aspect of HEMA. Keeping physically active offers a number of health benefits that I don’t need to go into here. Training in HEMA is just as effective at keeping one physically fit as many other forms of exercise, without going down the path of “Swordfightercise”© etc.

Sport/tournament –
This is a growing aspect of the HEMA community. Some see it as fun addition to their training, some take it more seriously training, preparing, and approaching it as one would for any other sport and seeing in the sporting aspects, a way to popularise HEMA. Yet others try to emphasise rule sets, weapons and protective equipment to come as close as possible to real combat with the skills and weapons that were used. They seek to test their skills in what they see as the closest approximation to real combat that is currently acceptable, because of its un-scripted nature and competitive drive.
None of these approaches are in or of themselves wrong or bad. However it must always be born in mind that sportive and combative are very different one from the other and ability and proficiency in one does not of itself prepare you for the other.

Of course historically tournaments were a major aspect of life for certain parts of the fighting classes, These tournaments in a similar way to their modern counterparts, emphasised protective equipment, safer weapons and rules, all of which moved the action away from real combat to a greater or lesser extent. However there is one major difference between the past and the present. Generally in the historical context, certainly during Middle Ages, such “sporting” events were an adjunct to actual combat. Someone who fought in a tournament could and often did, fight in actual combat, either on the battlefield, in self-defence or duelling in earnest. This balancing of the sportive with the combative, the reality with the game, is something that is, for obvious reasons, missing from the modern practice of HEMA. This should be born in mind when considering and comparing the sporting aspects of HEMA in the past and present.


Entertainment /Education/Demonstration
An understanding of the HEMA can obviously be a great benefit when creating fights for film, theatre and television, whether to make the action more historically accurate or to produce more efficient movements. Understanding how to use entertainment to bridge the gap to education is vital if one wants to attract a wider audience to an understanding of history in general and specifically HEMA.
So a Fight Director, fight performer, Historical interpreter, historical show fighter, can and arguably, should all make use of HEMA. When done well and with proper consideration of the other areas already mentioned above, are all valid aspects of HEMA, which should not be looked down on as inferior or less serious reasons for training.


Conclusion
Everyone interested in studying HEMA should ask themselves questions including;
What aspect/s of the historical martial arts draws their interest?
Which of the modern ways offers the best opportunities to achieve that in the modern world?

One should try to understand what it is they want from their study and training in HEMA.
The different focuses have different goals, and will have different optimal mind and skill sets, and these will be best brought about by different training approaches.

I would maintain that the different ways are not mutually exclusive and that one can address and do well in many or perhaps all of them. However to do so, requires that one properly understands or at least recognises the differences between. One must also not forget that, by spreading ones focus over a wider range of study it is likely that one will not achieve much or gain as great an understanding as if on makes a tighter focus of one area of study.

Quiet and travels

Been quieter than I intended, such is life on occasion.
Been orking and travelling in Italy, have renewed and strengthened friendships, made new friends, seen some amazing places and have had lots of fod for thought.
Insights into people and places which are generally stronger when you are away from your comfort zone.

More to follow