Continued Notes on Windsor's "Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts," Part 3 - Theory Conclusions, Practice Beginning

Using Bellatrix as a demonstrator for Windsor poses some unique challenges.  First, the ruleset, standard equipment, and so forth, is already laid out elsewhere - in the SCA's marshallate handbooks and in kingdom participant manuals, and in the book itself.  However, it is enlightening in other ways.  I talked about the foundational four-count drill last time - flat snap, punch block, teardrop, and "fouling."  What I have found, having continued to read Windsor and having continued to work on a curriculum, is that the base four-count elaborates itself very quickly.

One of the points Duke Paul makes very effectively is that the most dangerous moment of a fight is the moment of crossing into range.  To explain this to any of my readers not familiar with fighting terminology as we use it, there are five basic ranges in SCA combat - commonly simplified to three because two of them are trivial cases in our game.  I shall explain in the order that they are encountered.  First, there is completely out of range.  This is at a point where neither participant can contact the other.  This is one of those trivial cases, though it's less trivial than it sounds because one of the mind games we play is tricking our opponents into thinking they are out of range when in reality they are three inches inside our range.  This leads to the second range, what we describe as "C" or long range.  At this range, most strikes are in play, but they are at the outer limit of a combatant's reach.  The next ring inward is "B" range, where the arm is at least partially relaxed during a strike.  The closest practical range is "A" range, which is not quite grappling or body-to-body contact, but where body pressure can be applied to, for instance, a shield press.  Finally, there is body-to-body contact, which we typically don't do (which, it is vital to note, makes our art less historically realistic).  I personally like to fight at "A" range, but in all cases, crossing from out of range to into range is a dangerous moment.  Because of this, the Bellatrix book spends a great deal of time on the subject of closure shots, commitment shots, and other ways to make sure that you control the battlefield while crossing that threshold.

Where this relates back to Windsor is that changing the four-count so that it does not start from a flat snap in range, but a step out of range and a flat snap to close, is a very simple exercise in curriculum development.  It also fits with the Bellatrix doctrine of variations on a theme, rather than a hundred new shots.  Windsor's basic contention throughout the curriculum development phase is that each lesson should elaborate on the one before, and should be capable of both direct relation to what came before, to the manual, and to an actual tactical problem.

This brings me to a point where I think I disagree with Windsor.  Windsor describes three sorts of drills - attribute, technique, and tactical, which sound a lot like "be-know-do" for someone with a military background.  Attribute drills include things like push-ups and physical exercises - and, also, critical reading of a text, so this set of notes is in a way an attribute exercise.  They are the things that allow proper execution of a technique to even be possible, and that allow the evaluation of the tactical environment.  I am less certain that I buy his separation of technique and tactical drills, but that is because I was "raised," so to speak, to believe that each technique exists to solve a tactical problem.  Thus, the technique drills are a subset, not a separate set, of tactical drills in my experience.  You start by training someone that a particular problem exists, and that a particular solution exists to it; you then elaborate the problem or present multiple solutions and contexts to those solutions, to expand their training repertoire.  At each new stage of training, the trainee receives more flexibility and less direct guidance.  Where Windsor and I differ, then, is not so much in training methodology - start simple and grow to more complex - but in the belief that "know" and "do," or "technique" and "tactic," can be separated.

Thus, it is frequent in my drills with my kids - my primary victims in this - to discover a slightly different solution than the one I had originally intended in the drill.  Often this is a superior solution, more often it is simply a different one that we then explore for its ramifications, because the book didn't describe this situation.  To use last night's drills as an example, the Bellatrix book teaches the punch-block as the basis of defense.  This is all well and good, but in that four-part drill I was describing, what happens if, after punch-blocking into the opponent's sword, instead of withdrawing the shield, you stick the shield (or off-hand sword, in my daughter's case) to the opponent's hand, and then just pin it back against them? This is a technique my knight describes as "putting the lid on."  It's not described anywhere in the Bellatrix book, but it is a viable method, and it explores an area Windsor doesn't cover well in the theory section - what do you do when the system you're designing a class or curriculum for doesn't address a perfectly viable movement?

This is one area where kata and drills break down, but is well-covered in free play or sparring.  Mind, Windsor's answer is that sparring is an essential part of training, and should be part of any curriculum, but because he's writing a book that covers everything from "this is how you I.33" to "so you've been mugged in an alleyway, but you have an umbrella," he is deliberately vague on the balance between sparring and drill work.  However, one area that he does mention that many authors fall down on is that drills should be directly related to sparring if sparring and drills occur simultaneously or near simultaneously.  The Bellatrix book discusses slow work in great detail, and talks about how people want to spar at practice, but what it doesn't do a great job of is talk about how to take the work you've been doing in slow work or drills, and then practice it in a sparring environment.  This is at least partly due to the nature of the beast - SCA fighter practices are terrible places in my experience for doing anything other than whaling on each other with sticks, rather than saying "nothing but wrap shots count."  That's not because they can't be better, but because we as an institution resist anything that smacks of organization.

Back to Windsor, though - the "practice" section begins in an extremely pedestrian manner, which, given that he's talking about starting a HMA group from the ground up and how to do that, is thoroughly appropriate.  I actually appreciate this a great deal even if it doesn't apply to the context where I am working.  The idea that you should give thought to your equipment list before you even start echoes everything else I know ("amateurs talk of tactics; professionals talk of logistics").  I think I disagree with him on the ideal being steel training equipment, but that's partly because the art I'm training in uses rattan and I know of multiple historical situations where the actual combat situation was resolved using a non-steel implement.  A wooden waster is more than sufficient for training in most circumstances; he acknowledges this but also argues that steel should be the desired end-state.  I think that's less a matter of verifiable truth than of Windsor's personal studies.  There's a simulationist argument to be made ("train like you fight," or the closer to the real thing the better), but that's very different from training requirements where you acknowledge up front that you're never going to use it in "real life."  In any case, it's a valuable pointer, as is the chart where he sums up the performance characteristics of swords for various types of historical martial art.  I'm surprised that the imperial chart being an exact duplicate of the metric chart made it past the editors, but then a lot of minor errors crept past his editors that I have not been harping on because, for instance, pointing out that Japanese as a language doesn't support the word "kory" and koryu is the correct term for a historical martial art tradition in Japan is nitpicking and doesn't address his point.

His chapter on sword-handling is flat-out excellent; I recommend it for anyone learning any sort of sword-handling art, whether it's eastern or western, because it gives a description of a series of drills used across multiple sword types, from pell work to point control, and a variety of exercises, some of which I hadn't ever heard of or considered.  I probably won't be doing them - one of the compromises I have made in training is that I am terrible at maintaining interest in pell work, and having a training partner is a key way of keeping me engaged - but that does not keep me from recognizing their training value, especially as someone whose training partners have occasionally demonstrated more enthusiasm than control in slow work.  In conjunction with the Bellatrix book's section on pell work, the Windsor exercises are a great way of training to get a handle on proper mechanics for new fighters, and to practice solo drills without the risk of your partner cracking an unexpected shot into your head or hand.

Next up is his discussion of the practice of drill progression and free play.  I suspect it'll answer some of the criticisms I have of his theory section, based on past experience.