Raglan Fair 2: the training

At Raglan, my Knight and I continued certain ongoing projects we had more or less started at another event in the early summer. He has been concentrating on really deconstructing elements of fighting and how to train it to logical parts of a functioning system, and I have been leading on efforts to incorporate mental wellbeing and mental training into the sphere of the practice of fighting. There's a lot to be said about that, and I will most likely write several posts about it in the future. Enough to note for now that so far we have run two discussion classes at events, one at Raglan, and they have been well received.

In terms of physical training, we met on four mornings during the event, with me running a short pilates-style core workout, followed by my Knight spending some time talking about the principles of training. We had a couple of people who turned up to every session, but mostly the participants varied. Essentially, this set of sessions was a short series of linked classes on how to train smart in the context of deconstructed fighting. We hope that at some point a version of this series will make its way online in video format.

My endurance and strength have increased considerably over the past year. Not uncoincidentally, I suspect, a little over a year ago my Knight started me on a systematic training programme, which moves on in c. 6 week periods. As mentioned in the previous post, my power generation has also gone up in the past couple of months, although it's not yet consistent enough to my liking.

Main principles of training: cardio & strength

I don't do crossfit or powerlifting (despite the fact that I like lifting very much). Our principle is moderation: doing a moderate amount of training means that you're less likely to be sore the following day, and thus you're able and willing to do another training session. This leads to you training on most days of the week.

For endurance and cardio fitness, I run. I have gone through several 6-week cycles with differing emphases, but as a rule a week's programme includes one short run, one session of sprints, and one long or two longish runs. I am not fast by any manner of means, but I can do 10K in reasonable comfort. We focus on consistency, rather than speed.

For strength, rather than working with an Olympic bar (which I otherwise am very fond of), I do one session a week with dumbbells at the gym, and, if I have time and the relevant machines are free, some further upper body -focused exercises. Because I'm working on gaining strength, I alternate between a heavy set and a light set of weights. At my most recent session I used 2 x 9kg and 2 x 3 kg weights. I do three exercises, 3 reps of heavy weights and 20 reps of light weights each, 3 sets of each.

I also have a set of TRX straps, which I use for bodyweight exercises once a week.

Main principles of training: core

The first thing everyone starting SCA armoured combat is that power comes from the hips, but it seems to me that we should be actually talking about our core: the area of deep muscles around your lower abdomen, and, yes, hips. Engaging the core, activating the muscles of that area as though you were zipping up jeans that are slightly too small, substantially aids with strength and balance. When you engage your core, your hips will tilt slightly forward. Apparently Musashi mentions something very similar. I have found that engaging my core while training & fighting leads to much better footwork and better striking power. A strong core also protects from back and hip injuries.

I do at least one core workout a week. Pilates is fantastic, but due to their cost I don't attend classes at the moment. I strongly recommend it to any fighter, all the same.

Raglan Fair 1: the fighting

Raglan Fair took place at Raglan Castle in the shire of Mynydd Gwyn (Wales) in the beginning of August. It is the Principality's major event with ten days of camping around a ruined castle, which is our playground for the event. Unfortunately, this time, on the last Friday the event steward made an informed and likely correct call to close the event early and advise those who could to leave due to some very bad weather rolling in. I, in the meantime, had allocated the first part of the event for non-fighting activities I enjoy: cooking, sewing, and camp life, and had intended to devote the second half of the event to fighting. As it was, I got only two days of actual fighting and four pretty intensive sessions of unarmoured training in.

Wednesday: I sponsored several tourneys during this Raglan. One of them I called the Path of Chivalry, which was adapted from the concept of Tournament of Chivalry from Double Wars in the Principality of Nordmark, which is less of a tournament and more of a large practice with knights. In the end, only two knights out of our very small chivalric population were available on the day, so the King, who was ill, was substituted by two of his squires, me and my brother. The tenans were arranged in different spots of the castle, where challengers could come fight them for feedback, circling between the locations on the evolving Path.

In the afternoon, I participated in small melees to amuse Her Highness the Princess, which was great fun. 

Thursday: In the morning, I took part in the Principality Protectors Tournament, which is an hour-long bearpit and one of my favourite tourneys. There's always a great, relaxed atmosphere, despite the victory of the tourney being prestigious. In the late evening, my very favourite tournament took place: torchlight Pas d'Armes, where tenans with closed face helms fight challengers in the castle courtyard lit by (gas) torches. This time, the misfortune that was the second weekend's bad weather already started on Thursday evening, so we all got soaked to the bone and eventually the King ended the tournament early. Usually I have fought this tourney as a tenans, but during the past year I sold my closed face helm due to being broke, so this year I was fighting as one of the challengers. As the conditions deteriorated, my invisible marshal hat sank deeper and deeper in my head, and I found it difficult to simply enjoy the fighting without being distracted by safety conditions. 

Analysis: I am reasonably happy with how I fought overall, although realistically I was only just about getting warmed up. The Protectors went the best of the lot - I think I got six points out of it. I had spent the two months previously basically practicing footwork out of armour, with very little else, and it seems to have borne fruit in that my footwork was better, even if still not great, and my power generation had improved considerably. As an important progress and success marker, I killed someone on their knees exactly the way Duke Gerhardt taught me at Double Wars. However, I need to keep working further on the footwork and start properly applying weight shifts to change angles and keep adding power. I also wasn't paying attention to range sufficiently well, ending up too close a lot, and failing to take much advantage of sideways and diagonal movement. I think what is happening at the moment is that I hold myself back too much, in an attempt to retain control of myself, my equipment and the fight, but by doing that I'm blocking my own natural flow. For much of the summer, I have felt like I have been right on the threshold of cracking the next level of movement and controlling the space of the fight, and I had had hopes that I could actually crack it Raglan. It was not yet to be.

I do seem to have got over the idea that I still need to desperately prove myself to other fighters, though. I felt much less need to fight on every single opportunity to demonstrate keenness, as I would have had in the past, even when there was something else on at the same time that I very much wanted to do. It seems that I am now pretty confident that other fighters know where I'm at, and I am comfortable with that.