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. 

Double Wars

Drachenwald's premier fighting event is the ten-day long Double Wars, which takes place in the Principality of Nordmark (Sweden) every May during the week Ascension Day falls on. The main war concerns the lasting debate of which side a slice of crispbread (knackebrod) should be buttered on: the flat side or the hol(e)y side. Otherwise, the event includes plenty of tourneys and training opportunities, as well as other usual SCA activities. For me, it is the year's best opportunity to get training from the top fighters of the kingdom and to connect with fighters outside Insulae Draconis. It is also the base of the extended household I belong to: the lineage of Duke Matthew Blackleaf.

This year, work has been inconvenient, and I had not planned to go at all, but the aspects of fighting and family weighed on me so much that only a few weeks ago I made the decision to go for the first half of the event, as it would interfere with work less.

I had three full days available, so I wanted to get in as much fighting and training as possible. In practice, I was forced to conclude once more that especially in the case of training, when you are actively working with your head as well as your body, you can only keep going so long.

1. Rose Tourney

I wasn't sure to begin with whether to fight in the tourney or to just do pickups, but I'm glad I went. The tourney was great fun. You issued a challenge and queued up to the list field with your partner, and the loser would retrieve a rose from the Queen and bring it to the winner's consort, or whoever they wished. Towards the end of the tourney, the marshal set up a few last man standing scenarios, which awarded more than one rose to the winner or winners. I fought for my friend Jasper and brought him six roses, for which he was very proud for the rest of the time I spent at the event.

2. Tournament of Chivalry

This is more of a three-hour high-level fighter practice with members of the Order of Chivalry. You invite a Knight to fight you, and possibly another one to observe, and you can ask for guidance in a particular element or just get general feedback. I had a list of things to get out of this one, which were:
1) Get time with my Uncle Knight George
2) Get time with Duke Gerhardt
3) Find every belted two-stick fighter and make them train me how to fight against them until I couldn't train no more.
I proceeded to do exactly this. I got some very useful pointers on fighting against two-stickers from Sirs Morales, Gilliam, Rok, and King William, but I feel that I need to put in a lot of further work towards figuring that one out properly.

Afterwards, my Knight invited me to do some pickups with him, but soon enough he sent me off to get out of armour, observing that I was too tired to do anything useful. The intensity of learning from the Knights and fighting them had creeped up without me noticing, and I held off from attending the fun pirate melee in the afternoon I had greatly enjoyed in previous years.

3. Training

On my third full day, I had offered to help marshal a new fighters tournament, but there were only two participants, so I wasn't needed. I got into armour nonetheless around noon hoping for pickups and training (although the previous night had been very late and involved a great deal of gin with other squires). I ended up spending most of the afternoon with Duke Gerhardt, who's one of my favourite trainers, working on how to control the fight in various ways. It was intense, but we took breaks and talked about what we had worked on, then put our hats back on and trained some more. Other people came and went, but we must have been working for about three hours. Afterwards I did a few pickups with Sir Wlfric and my own Knight.

More analysis and thoughts forthcoming, now that I have introduced the event.

Cruinniú - Lough Devnaree Fight Camp

Some time the year before last I got sick of the lack of dedicated fighting events in the Isles, and decided to have my own. Thus was born Cruinniú - which in Irish means gathering, meeting, assembly, the participants on a sports field. In January last year, I harassed, cajoled, encouraged and threatened people in Ireland and the UK until we had about twenty people in attendance, as well as a small group from Nordmark accompanying Sir Torbjorn whom I persuaded to come over to teach. We did a lot of melee training, which we don't normally get to do much, and it seemed people really liked it.

Coming up to this year, I had been up to a lot of stuff and wasn't really intending to run another fighting event, until my Knight noted that it would be a really good idea and he would like to see me do it. I had made acquaintances at previous Estrella War, and Sir Donngal and Mistress Iona from Atenveldt figured they would enjoy a holiday in Ireland and respectively teach fighting and Middle Eastern dancing at this event.

You'll note that I talk about importing knights - we don't have any knights on the island of Lough Devnaree, so a few years ago I started talking my high level fighter friends to come over every once in a while to give lessons, and some others have used their contacts as well. Since they usually go to some effort to teach a bunch of provincials (among whom I include myself) I try to make a bit of a fuss of them at the same time.

Unfortunately, just before the event, Sir Donngal hurt his back and was unable to travel. Happily, his friend Sir Sly and Sly's lady Josephine still made it to Ireland, and Sly very generously dropped over on the Saturday to give people some pointers and to teach a class on the spear. Master Alexandre d'Avigne and Crown Prince Vitus provided individual and pair coaching, and the latter gave a class on efficient pellwork.  Master Robert spent much of the weekend with complete newbies, running through his curriculum. All in all, we were quite well served in terms of teachers, in the end.

I was very happy that we had about three people who were complete beginners, as well as others who had recently started and were able to avail of the classes. Altogether we had about 18 people in armour, as well as others doing A&S or cooking, so that the full event was about 30 people.

I felt that the morning slot was a bit slow, although we suffered a little from bad weather. People mostly stuck to the paved areas near the main building, which caused a little crowding and I felt it didn't lift the spirits. After Master Alexandre's class on fighting poleweapons was over, there seemed to be a little drifting among the fighters, so at a future event I might need to think of a way to warm people up, get them going, and possibly provide a little bit more directed programming, although I dislike very strict timetables at events. At this one, we had scheduled the meals, and otherwise we had "the morning slot", "the afternoon slot" and "the evening slot".

After lunch, weather was better, and we were able to spread out into a large green walled off area. I felt the afternoon slot went better - two classes took place, and people did pickups and ad hoc training without being prompted. At one point I looked up from my own training, and saw pairs of fighters everywhere around me, with other people talking and watching, and felt very very happy that such a thing was taking place in Lough Devnaree, where fighting had been pretty quiet for some time.

I had wanted to do something special during the evening slot, after dinner, and had asked permission of my Knight to organise a torchlight tourney. In a torchlit Pas d'Armes, a wide path is formed of torches stuck to the ground. This passage is held by a number of tenants, whom the entering venants must fight in order to pass through and to circle back to the end of the line. Typically, this tourney lasts for an hour. There is no winner: this tournament is about chivalry and the joy of fighting: a deed of arms, which is my favourite kind of tourney. I introduced the format to the spectators, and had all the tenants and venants to introduce themselves. Here, the pool of tenants consisted of the Crown Prince, Master Alexandre, Lord John and myself. Of us four, two held the passage at any given time. Our venants numbered approximately six. An hour was quite a long time of fighting in this format after already being in armour for the entire day, and for the last three fights I ran on a less than empty tank. I had the honour to finish the tournament with Master Cernac, during which I learned to tap into negative energy reserves.

Apparently we are running another such event next year - a household member has offered to steward it for me, as long as I organise the fighting. Now I just have to find someone to come over to teach....

Ostara: the other kind of first lesson

Visited a neighbouring shire's College's 10th anniversary celebrations yesterday. Two of my usual fighting buddies were going, so I fancied getting into armour and getting in some casual fun for the afternoon. I figured that there might be some potentially interested people present, and failing that, we could show good example at the very least and enrich the event.

I ended up somewhat distracted by the (to me) unexpected news that my Knight had won his fourth Crown, but counter-distraction was provided by the fact that there were no less that three people present who wanted to have a go at getting into armour.

Acquisition and retention of fighters are a big issue where we are. In a few years, we have evolved from having a number of fighters calculatable by the fingers of one hand, to a fairly healthy number, at least in our peripheral terms. So if any interest shows itself, I'm always going to prioritise that above my own armour time.

Gytha, Mícheál and I did a quick warm-up followed by a ten-minute bearpit between the three of us. I have an untested formed-before-going-to-sleep last night hypothesis is allowing three minutes per fighter and rounding up to a convenient number is a useful metric for a casual bearpit. (So, for four fighters, 12 minutes, round up to 15, for 5, ok, you get 15, but you can bring that up to 20 - so maybe it should be three and a half minutes... science to be done.)

Between the loaner gear that I had brought just in case (just as well), and pieces cannibalised from Mícheál and myself, we were able to get the three gents in full kit. Here, I took a different approach from teaching the newcomers in my own shire: they had approached us, were prepared to take things slowly, step by step, and understood the preference for a curriculum stretching over several weeks. In this case, I was mindful that, instead, we had, essentially, approached them, and had to provide a hook to get and keep them interested. That hook had to be the actual wearing of armour, keeping talking to the minimum (which was still quite a lot), and letting them have a go at Gytha: our moving pell, and each other.

One of the gents had done some training before, so after the introductory talk and instructions I paired him with Gytha for a beginners plus lesson. I pointed Mícheál to look after the other two, who were working on a very basic level. This arrangement had a few advantages: 1) We had the energy of two training pairs going on at all times; 2) all the newbies had the personal attention of someone more experienced; 3) Gytha and Mícheál had a chance to begin teaching.

We did two sessions with a break in between, and switched pairings so that the three had a chance to practice with everyone. It seemed to go well - when I had called time, two asked if they could keep going for a while longer.

We talked about the prospect of setting up a practice in their area, but it remains to be seen whether that would be actually viable or not. I suspect that a couple of weekend practices nearby to test the waters would be the way to go.