Identifying the Underlying Assumptions in a Combat System

Since my Fiore class series wrapped up, I've been helping a friend write up her own follow-on montante class series using mine as a foundation.  That led me to a discussion point: Before one can understand, and therefore teach, a system, one has to understand the underlying assumptions of that system.  For instance, neither boxers nor wrestlers are inherently better combatants; a boxer is a better boxer, and a wrestler a better wrestler, than either on the other's field because the underlying assumptions - in this case the formal rules - are very different.

Sometimes, identifying the underlying assumptions is easy.  Modern combat sports have written conventions; identifying them is pretty simple as a result.  Historical authors tend to get a little harder to figure out, and the more comprehensive the system, the harder it becomes.  Fiore writes in his first Italian foreword that he trained gentlemen for combat, specifically for deeds of arms from unarmed all the way through armored and mounted, and that he fought duels both armored and unarmored, and that his unarmored duels were with sharps but without serious injury.  This, and the language of the plays, shows that Fiore is concerned not with sport but with combat - or perhaps that the conventions of noble sport combat were deadly in his time and place.  In either case, it is clearly not written with "first blood" as the default ruleset.  Fiore wants to severely injure or kill his opponent, and is fully aware they might kill him, and everything flows from those two assumptions.

Sometimes, identifying the underlying assumptions is less easy.  To use an easy example, no one ever read Musashi or Yagyû and went "yeah, that makes perfect sense."  Even in Japanese, the language is often so obscure that understanding the fundamental basis of the system requires multiple close readings.  Perhaps the best single statement for the Yagyû is in one of the more abstruse parts of the Heihô Kadensho where Munenori talks about mutô - "without a sword" - and says that everything, even the armed part, is mutô because everything is about space, distance, timing, and awareness, none of which relies on having a sword in hand.  It is also the only thing explicitly held as a "trade secret," partly because it cannot be expressed simply, but is learned in the process of learning the rest.

Figuereydo falls somewhere between these two extremes.  He sets down his purpose in the afterword to his Memorial on the Montante, but it is not developed up-front.  His purpose is to teach the use of a single weapon, to teach the fundamental movements of it using a series of patterns, and to equip the student to improvise the montante when confronted with an actual fight.

How does one identify the underlying assumptions in a system? It is, beginning to end, a process of gathering information.  For modern forms - say, Brazilian jujutsu - it would be sufficient to watch competition or training to establish that it is a grappling-based martial art, and it might even be sufficient to say that it is distinct in that it assumes the fight starts at the ground rather than focusing on getting the opponent to the ground as in other grappling arts.

For historical forms, direct observation is less reasonable.  You may be able to watch modern interpretations, but they are, at day's end, interpretations, and should be used to inform your understanding, but not form your understanding.  As an aside, this is why I jokingly refer to my understanding of Fiore as Windsor Fiorekage, because Guy Windsor and the Yagyû school are the lenses I see Fiore through.

Instead, developing those underlying assumptions relies on two things - first, the text, and the test.  It seems counter-intuitive that understanding an inherently physical activity like martial arts involves reading, but our only evidence that they actually existed is the text, we don't have a continuity of instruction and we don't have eyewitness testimony regarding the teachings of Fiore the Friulian - and Fiore is one of our better attested masters.  Johannes Liechtenauer might as well be Paul Bunyan for all we actually know of him, but he is regarded as the father of German longsword, and his poem is the source of most of it.  The first step, therefore, is to read the manual, and not just read, but read closely.  One of the reasons that Hatcher's version of Fiore was such a big deal is that the translations were laid out along with the illustrations in the original layout, meaning that you had a whole lot guesswork to do to work out what he was talking about.  At this stage, you are reading from cover to cover, trying to make notes as you go about what you think matters (though I am very bad at taking notes).

Next comes the test.  Take each of the plays and, strictly from the text, try to figure out how it works, why it works, and what if anything you can change without breaking it, and what breaks it when you do break it - like Fiore's crossing at the points only works if your sword is between you, and your opponent's sword, and in fact is a preview of the exchange of points.

The text-and-test method is iterative, incidentally.  Every time you test a play, you will have slightly better feel for what the play actually means, and every time you read the text, you will notice additional information, better-informed by your direct experience.  This will make it easier to see, for instance, the way that feet must move in Fiore or Figuereydo, even though they are not made explicit in the text.

Along the way, patterns will start to emerge, like Fiore's emphasis on controlling your opponent's ability to attack, or the Yagyû emphasis on timing.  These will give clues about what mattered to each of the writers - that Figuereydo, for instance, recognizes that the montante is a difficult weapon to manage due to its length and speed, and therefore training the body to correct movement is more important than "do Rule 4 when you forget to put your shoes on."  One of the reasons that Fiore made it through five unarmored duels with sharp weapons is because he was so intent on denying his opponent the opportunity to land a blow in the first place.  The Yagyû forms, and the Heihô Kadensho, emphasize awareness of circumstances and appropriate action in the moment - whatever appropriate actions are.

In the process, you will learn what the form does not do.  Fiore is not a master of mass battle, for instance, even though he's included in Ludwig von Eyb's text that is very clearly a war-book, not just a Fechtbuch.  The modern forms of the Yagyû school are less practical in armor (there are armored versions, but what kind of loon fights in armor these days, right?). Figuereydo is only trying to teach montante.  Meyer is playing first-blood sword-tag, not trying to kill his opponents.  This is equally important for identifying the assumptions.

Once all of that has done, after however much recursive text-and-test, you should have a pretty decent idea of what your system, text, or whatever is trying to say, what its underlying assumptions are, and what it therefore has to say about pretty much any situation (Fiore on negotiations: Make the talks one-on-one, don't focus on one target, and if you can unbalance the negotiation in your favor, good!).  The beauty of this is that this is an infinite loop.  Mastery isn't a plateau, mastery is just when you can start passing the information on to others.  Actual "never learn anything else?" That point doesn't really exist.