Fight Fight Fight and health

It's been awhile since I posted here. I'm kind of losing the drive to keep posting. I also took some time off from fighting for a medical issue. That issue has been corrected.

TRAINING
Is limited to my normal workout of pushups, squats, and pell work daily. I've run a couple of times on the treadmill, and once outside, but walking and stairs is most of my cardio (12,000 steps yesterday=6 miles).

TECHNIQUE
I've not been working on anything specifically. I've been using Count Gemeni's wards, for the most part-- at extreme range fighting a strong high open form (bellatrix), at medium range a weak high closed form (Von Drachenklau), and at close range a strong high closed form (almost everybody else). I still mix in a few A-frame.

FIGHTING
My health issues were three fold. The first issue was the possibility of a blood clot having developed at Pennsic from wrapping my knee too tight after I was injured (see earlier post). My D-Demer test was positive, and my leg was swollen, but two ultrasounds revealed nothing.

The second issue was a concussion suffered at the Cloisters. I developed concussion issues after I hit myself in the head with a sword while doing pell work years ago (no, really), and suffered my first recognizable fighting concussion a year or so later, (i'd probably had at least one before, but this was the first one with classic symptoms), when Gui accidentally face punched me at Acheron, resulting in a concussion that I felt as a pain at the back of my head from my brain bouncing off the back of my skull. I took time off from fighting, told my doctor, and retired that helmet. I changed my helmet and padded it with anti-concussion padding from Windrose. It worked, but my new helmet did not allow for any padding beyond that.  I stopped getting my bell wrung, but at Pennsic I did have a couple of headaches. Then, at Cloisters, I got hammered literally, with a big hammer-headed polearm. The next day I had a migraine that was pretty bad. It went away so I fought that Thursday at Hawethorne, and had another migraine the next day. I had concussion symptoms for a couple of weeks, and ended up taking a lot of time off for reason three.

The third issue was a spell of really high blood pressure. This was  result of a lot of things -- pain from the concussion, fatigue, work stress, general politics stress, producing a show stress, and--especially--SCA stress brought on by the arrest of Louis Rondon/Lousi de Castillo, whom long-time readers of this blog will know from mention of our bouts over the last few years, particularly the drown that he won last May. At the same time, my doctor changed my medication. I'd been really dehydrated at Pennsic, and I asked her to take me off the hydrochlorothiazide, a diurettic. My blood pressure started going up, and so she switched me from Lisinopril to Nephedipine. It this time I was suffering from fatigue and headaches. The neephedipine had a lot of side effects, including chest pains and shortness of breath. The first or second day I was on it, I went to the ER with blood pressure of 198/154, which is very bad.  Eventually, I was switched back to my old regimen of hydrochlorothiazide and lisinopril, which had worked before. I just need to hydrate a LOT (as I type this I had another bout of fatigue and headache, which is dehydration). I missed Crown Tourney for the first time in years as a result -- doctor's orders -- and ended up taking about three months off from fighting.

My health is good. I had a great stress test and echo. My BP is 110/70. Both my GP and my cardiologist have cleared me to fight.

I'm back to fighting, but in my Crusader helmet, which is big and heavy and has a lot more padding in it, but has lousy visibility. I've got a big heavy bascinet I'm going to pad up, but it's not the period I like to fight in, and it doesn't have an aventail yet, which is an aesthetic that I think is necessary for bascinets. But it it will do for the moment. Long term I am going to go to an open faced helmet with a suspension liner. I've considered for some time going to a late period rig with a shoulder mounted helm (Icefalcom makes one I really like) but I would not want to fight in crown in that helmet, for a lot of reasons.

Meanwhile, I have been fighting a bit lately. I had a great time at Aedult Swim this year. I was only there for one day, but I fought 18 opponents, which works out to right around 100 fights (I fought at least five fights with al of them, and more with some). I ended my day with fights with Duke Rangvaldr, in my book one of the top ten fighters in the SCA. I killed him twice (he killed me five times). Any time I lay stick on Rangvaldr I count as a great day. I also had a great set with Duke Christoph from Atlantia. The only Easterner I fought was Pelandreas, but he's from Quebec, so I never see him anyway. He will likely be a tough out at Crown. I did get him once with a good face thrust, and fought him pretty well over all.  got to fight a couple of those Ansteoran two sword fighters too. At first I was totally dominated by that style, which I'd never fought, but after four or five bouts I started winning most of my fights. It mostly requires attacks down the middle. After that I fought a knight using a more standard two-sword style, and I did well.

Here is some video of one fight from SCA tally, starting a bit out of focus. I'm so slow! I also wonder why I didn't take that backhand. The rest of the video is cool too.


It is exactly 60 days until Crown. My next time in armor will be Nutley next week, and my tournament with be IceDragon in Aethelmarc on March 15.

Train every day

I do. I train every day.I do my pell work, push ups, and squats every day. As Crown gets closer I start to run daily (although this time round I've been doing it gingerly, since I injured my knee at Pennsic and it hasn't fully recovered). My squats, at the moment, double as part of my PT. Also, Ibuprofen and ice.

But fighting, that's where training really has to be concentrated. I'm practicing at once a week now, but it's going up to two a week. I've made it either to Nutley or to the local Brooklyn practice, or to hopewell, every week so far.

This week Nutley was wonderfully intense. I didn't fight a lot of fighters, but I got good quality ass whuppins. A Duke told me at Pennsic that, when you're getting ready for crown, you should stick to fighting people who are better than you. That's nice. As I was getting into armor on Wednesday, so was Stephan Von Dresden. He yelled "hey, Val!" So I jumped into the shark-infested deep end of the pool. That was fun. I did not have a thrusting tip on my sword, which makes it all the harder against Stephan. I did not lay stick on him, but with Stephan, sometimes the benchmark is how long it takes him to kill me, but which I did quite well. Then I fought Horic and did extremely well. I won six out of seven bouts. After that I fought Duke Brenan. He said he was impressed. I won several of our bouts. He said that he thought I was doing much better when I got a flow going to my blows than when I fought staccato (interesting, since Staccato was how I'd planned to fight on Wednesday, but I started throwing combinations out of habit. There was a pole-arm fighter visiting from Meridies, an unbelted fighter with Japanese armor. I took my poleax out against him and won three out of four bouts. To finish off, I got a set of great-sword bouts in with Cullyn, probably the top great weapon fighter in the kingdom ATM. He actually had his body armor off, but when he heard I was looking for some great-sword practice he put it back on. We had some good sets. He definitely bested me, but I won three bouts out of (I think) seven). Great stuff.

This Sunday was the Cloisters demo. I was pretty sure I was going to be the only knight there and, since I wanted more pole-arm work, and since I also wanted to handicap myself, but mostly becuase it was a subway ride from south brooklyn to the far north tip of Manhattan, I left my sword and shield at home. Taking just a bastard sword, or just a poleax, is so much easier than hauling around  a shield, which is sort of awkward. I fought in the noon session for about forty minutes. There were five other fighters in armor, including Gawaine, who is tough with anything, and Murdoch, who has good weapons depth. I had some great fights and some great wins, but Murdoch beat me twice with pole-arms and once with great-sword. I think I beat him once with my poleax vs. his glaive. He was a real test. He also won the provincial championship later that day.

But my favorite moment was against Alberecht, a tall lefty from Queens. Because he is left handed I used a left hand lead on my poleax, which I rarely do. I threw my best polearm shot--a feint thrust to the head, and a circle that looks at first like a leg shot, but then continues up into the face. It's my patented "best shot," and I've killed people with it using both glaive and bastard sword, but I don't think I'd even thrown that left handed before. As I saw that it had worked, and my point was getting in behind his shield, I stepped off line to give myself a better angle, and landed a face thrust.

It's 40 days until Crown Tourney. My next time in armor will be Wednesday at Nutley.

This summer was a bust

 Boy, has it really been since June that I’ve written in this blog?  I’ve gotten even worse at  it. 

 A good practice tonight. I fought Beatrix,  Jan, Arne,  Gawaine,  and a newer left-handed fighter who told me his name, but it completely escaped me.   This guy, by the way, had an incredible kit. 14th century helm with a giant nasal and aventail, great coat of plates, but the best thing of all was that he had Kydex plastic arms that you could not tell where Kydex plastic arms, because he had built them on a freaking last!  They had a  Great coke bottle shaped to them, and he had riveted them so it looks like they had splints. 

 Nothing really special to say about my fighting tonight. I avoided the thrust most of the night and worked on the edge. I only managed to kill Arne once, but he told me afterwards that he did not like what I was doing. I had him back on his heels the whole time, which was the idea. I try to fight Arne by channeling Joe Frazier.  Beatrix I did really well against, and I think Jan beat me three out of five.   Not too bad. 

 I had a very decent day at Ducal Challenge couple weeks ago.   Well, I kind of decent day. I barely made it out of my pool.  I was in the pool of death, which also had brick jams, Ionis, Hassan, and Arne.  I ended up in a three-way tie for fourth place, the last slot to advance, with Hassan and Brick, but I killed both of them.  Then I went to quarterfinals and got knocked out by Cullen, who eventually won. So that wasn’t bad. 

 I didn’t  report on Pennsic.  Here is my report: every days fighting was more fun than the day before.  I pulled a calf muscle, twisted my knee, and probably got a small blood clot in my calf, my doctor freaked out a bit, but the ultrasound showed nothing so I was cleared to fight again.  If I did get a blood clot, I’m pretty sure it came from  wrapping my knee too tightly on Friday. I could not fight for a month as a result. So Pennsic wrecked me. 

It’s 52 days until Crown Tourney. My next time in armor will be Tuesday at McCareen Park. 

When You Play The Game of Thrones, You Either Win or You Die

This is three posts in one:

THE GAME OF THRONES
In the SCA, we play the Game of Thrones. It's what we do. The SCA is literally a game of thrones. As I wrote in my book (see sidebar), the SCA is a more-or-less accidental recreation of the medieval "King Game," a peasant game in which a contest is held for a mock king to reign over a mock court (king of fools, boy bishop, mock mayor, and May king are all examples). So, what happens in GoT is an interesting reflection on what we do in, and how we might play, the SCA. As such, last week's finale has a bit of a message for us. I won't go into all the flaming details. I was not nearly as disappointed in the ending as so many others were. I agree that it was rushed, but I thought they got to the right place on nearly all the story lines.  Dany was always going to turn into a tyrant, Jon was always a well-meaning idiot, and Bran was being groomed to be king in the first episode. No big surprise. But there are two ways in which the last episode intersects with the SCA.

First, with how to deal with a tyrant. Our tyrants don't burn cities to the ground. They are merely assholes, and they have a sunset clause. My personal philosophy has always been closely aligned with fighting: just as anybody I face has the right to decide none of my blows was good, every king has the right to be a tyrant. I put myself in danger, submit myself to another's control over me, in fighting and in serving the king. It is an act of trust. If I am let down there is no real harm. He's not going to take away my birthday, after all. I like our way. I am a big one for giving people the opportunity to easily be assholes, because only then do you actually give them the opportunity to shine and be heroes. But I know people who wish regicide were an option in our game.

The second thing is what to do with our kings when they are no longer king. Jon was crowned King in the North, and he is actually the rightful king of Westeros. In this case he is sent off to the Night's Watch (another way the show has come full circle), and then is (sort of) released to go off into the True North with the Wildlings (Ken Mondschein and I will be working on a paper on this topic later in the year). In the SCA, our ex kings get a county, or maybe a Dukedom. That's not too different from what happened to Jon. It is a good convention.

I think we do it right.

NUTLEY
Getting back into armor after Crown is always a bit difficult. What, exactly do I wok on. Staying with my plan? Power generation? Having no plan? Thrusts? What *didn't* I do at Crown that I need to do next time. The zen answer, of course, is "win."

The dangers of Nutley last week was getting lost, which, in a way, is what I did. It was the best Nutley practice in a long time. There were several out of towners, and 24 fighters in armor. I wanted to fight people I don't fight a lot, but in that crowd it wasn't easy. I only got five opponents, one of them was brand new, two were regulars. I worked with Dwight, who lives near me in Brooklyn. I fought great swords against Jonathan, and I warmed up with Galvin. I managed to get my set with Victor, which is the thing I wanted most. With the new, lighter sword, I was having trouble with power, but I was also firing too much into his shield which, with pell work every single day, should not be a problem. I'm very disappointed in that.  But with so many to choose from, I did not get in as good (read rough) a night as I should have.

HOW TO RUN A PRACTICE
We had a practice last weekend, with me, three brand new fighters,and one fairly new fighter. Two were left handed, two were right handed. It gave me an opportunity to run an actual class, as opposed to bashing practice, again. The curriculum this time was as follows:

(unarmored)

• Footwork drills
• Structured slow work (I worked with each of them individually, critiquing their form)

(armored)

• Slow work warm up. 
• Striking and moving: I drilled each one individually, having them strike and move, with the goal of keeping their shields in place as they did so. I'd occasionally lightly tap them if they let their shield drift too far. 
•  Sparing with each other -- righty on righty/lefty on lefty, then switch, with me critiquing
• Circle drill, (ie bear pit) in which one person holds the field against each of the others, in turn. I didn't hold the field but I did enter it to fight them. I used a small (22" round) shield for this, as a handicap, and I did get hit a couple of times. This last part is so people have fun and feel they've gotten enough fighting in, which is always important. 

It was a good practice. My most satisfying part is seeing how, even though I didn't work with him much at all last year, Austin, the more experienced fighter, was employing the footwork I had taught him effectively. 

HOW TO RUN A DEMO

I've harped on this before. 

We all do demos a bit differently, and for different audiences. A lot of the early demos I was involved in were simply that--demonstrations of how our combat works for a lay audience. It would be mostly built around pairs. They'd fight. Someone would win. Emphasis was put on explaining to the audience our conventions of combat and the armor and weapons being used. Effort would be made to demonstrate lots of different weapons forms. It's not about medieval history, it's about SCA fighting. 

The next step is often to emphasize the entertainment value of the violence. People take on "villain" rolls. There's lots of playing to the crowd. Some fighters do things (ignore blows, back stab) that are against the rules, but are entertaining to an audience not familiar with what we do. 

Another variety is to purposely fight in a more medieval fashion. This also breaks our rules through the addition of grappling, punching with shields, etc. We used to do a fighting show at the Renaissance Faire in Black Point. It had started out, years before, as an "SCA Demo," with SCA rules. It evolved into a show that was not a demo really at all, because we never mentioned the SCA. It was a tournament in which we used, basically, the conventions currently employed by ACL and BOTN. We fought to submission or to three point contact with the ground. I suffered a couple of concussions in those fights. 

I've always thought the best way to run a demo is to run a structured fighting event. Either a small SCA tournament, fought with SCA rules, or a challenge event of some kind. A pas d'armes with a barrier is great for this, because it requires less space, and because it does away with fighting from the knees. Another similar way is to do the event as a series of challenges. 

So, last weekend we also had a demo for the Brooklyn's Viking Day festival. As usual, the SCA set up on one side of a concrete path, and the MSR SET up on the other. In years past, we've gone back and forth between each other's spaces. This year, however, we each only had one fighter. The SCA had me. MSR had Douglas Henry, who is both an SCA knight (one of the top four or five fighters in the kingdom) and the Crown Prince of Acre in the MSR. He and I decided to fight a passage of arms with SCA rules using 5 different weapon forms: arming sword, great sword, two weapon, dagger, abd sword and shield. It's more or less the finals of Crown Tourney. Here is how it looked (thanks to the Vicereign for the videos):  

 We split even, two each and a double kill, but actually I thrust him in the face in the two sword fight, which he acknowledged, and kept fighting, so I won three of the five. This doesn't mean I'd have won in a tourney, but it does mean that every blow I killed him with was to the face, three thrusts and a cut with the great sword. Doug needs to improve his face defense.

The real point is that this is a fun way to do a demo if you only have two fighters. A passage of arms like this one is described in Hutton's The Sword And The Centuries. It allows us to teach a bit about SCA fighting, a bit about 14th Century fighting, and put on a good show.

There are 62 days until Pennsic (yikes!).

Crown #100

In the end, I was knocked out by the same two people who knocked me out of Mudthaw.

This was my 100th Crown Tournament. I have been victorious in 1% of the crowns I have fought in. 

In truth, I am extremely frustrated with myself over this crown. I should have been tighter against Luis. I should have closed the deal with Jan after I took his leg. They were both awesome fights, but I could have and should have done better.

I knew going into this crown that Luis would be my toughest fight, that Jan, Randall and Arne were really tough to crack, that Sterling would be a dark horse, and that Ryo can mess up anybody's day. There were no push overs in this particular crown. I had trained specifically to fight Luis, Jan, and Arne. I never got matched up with Arne, but I failed in my prep for Jan and Luis. 

It was actually a very small list. Although I made it to the final eight, That was only five rounds, and seven fights. 

Randal and I were both a bit surprised when the shields went up for the first round, and we found out that we were paired against each other. Turns out it was a bye, and they'd just drawn our names out of a hat. I took a polearm, on the theory that win or lose (I lost) it would be over quickly and neither of us would get tired. 

Next I fought Joseph von Ulm. I fight Joseph a lot at Iron Bog practice. He fought better this weekend than I have ever seen him fight. He was a tough out for me. Very strong offense and a solid defense. 

Next I fought Luis. It was a hard fought bout, and I lost. He toasts me with a head shot and a body thrust in fairly quick succession. They were both good. This video comes from SCATally on Youtube, who has great videos of the finals and semi finals. 

My fourth pairing was against Tomasso. I haven't fought him much, but he is one of Wulfsan's squires, and in the household, so I knew he was going to be rough, and he was. 

Then they decided to change the format to best two out of three each round, and I got three truly savage fights with Jan. He won the first, I won the second, then we took each others legs before he got me with the slot shot which is his bread and butter. At about 10:19 below you can see most of our third fight. It was a fun one. Unfortunately, the sound is out of sync. Tanaka is in the way, so you can't see the shot that kills me. I know what it did, but I'm still trying to figure out why my shield was so far out of position.  Thanks to Alexie Cruz for this one. 

So I lost to the eventual winner and one of the semi-finalists. I was a contender. I was fighting really well. I love my footwork in both these fights. Now on to #101. 

It is 79 days till Pennsic. My next time in armor will (hopefully) be Thursday Night at Rusted Woodlands. 

Crapaud #277, and Other Musings

Since last posting here, I've been training for crown, went to quarters in Mudthaw, and broke my training to travel to Oregon due to a family emergency. I even drank beer. While on the West Coast I ended up with time on my hands, and a need to get away, so I lit out for California and my West Coast home.

It so happened that Crapaud #277 was that week, and I would be there. I had my West Coast armor, so I decided to fight. I really really needed to hit something. When I was living in the West, Crapaud was in Cynagua and I was in the Mists, and I was only once (as I recall) invited. So fighting in Crapaud was kind of a bucket list for me. Plus, I wanted a tune up for Crown.

My participation in Crapaud was comically wrong. See, I did not want to fight with my bunny round. Crown is coming up, and I didn't want to get into any old bad bunny round habits since I would be using my heater. So I asked if anybody had  heater I could borrow. Bad mistake.

First, I got Hanse's heater. This is about--I don't know--maybe 30" long, maybe 28". And it's narrow. I used that for two rounds. Then I borrowed a shield from an Atlantian, which was about the right size, but strapped all wrong for me and a bit heavy. I used this for two rounds. Then I borrowed a center-grip heater, which was probably 32" long, maybe more. At least I was relatively comfortable with that one, but I fell into some Branos technique because, you know, center grip, which is decidedly NOT my style. Anyway, trying to use these different shields, not being comfortable with them, trying to figure out my defense on the fly, was all patently stupid. I'd have been better off just using my bunny round. Win or lose, I'd have felt better in the moment.

Oh, yea. I was also using a log with no counterweight as my sword.

As it was I finaled against Hanse. Video is below. It picks up in round 2. See Valgard move like a slug. See him try desperately to figure out his shield. See his blows come in at half speed and odd angles.



It's seven days until Crown. My next time in armor will be Crown.

Mudthaw is coming up

 Sometimes you need to train, and sometimes you just need to fight. 

 I have been training, but not truly fighting. I’ve been doing my daily pell work, Push-ups, squats, lots of walking, occasional running, and tackling that hill, though nowhere near as much as I need to or would like.  I have not been in armor very much at all. In large part, this has to do with logistics that I need to overcome. Translation,  it is no longer as feasible as it once was, or frankly as simple, for me to haul my armor to work with me and then go to practice in New Jersey, and quite frankly, after 25 years, I’m just tired of hauling my arm on the subway. So I’m taking cabs or Zipcars,  and due to the expense I don’t do that very often. 

 I have made it to Nutley, and the Hawthorne, and to the local Brooklyn practice.  Today was the first day at Brooklyn there was someone besides me in armor. But spring has sprung it, and practice is picking up. 

 At Nutley, and Hawthorne, all I want to do is fight. Last time I was at Nutley it was a fairly late night, but I got to fight four knights and an otc,  and it was a great workout. 

 Tonight, was in someway is much better. There was only me and Travis in armor.  He had already been doing some work by the time I got there an armored up, so he was not interested in slow work or warm-up drills.  We did some free sparring for a while. Then we did situational drills. We did duke Paul’s offense/defense drill.   Then we both did some work fighting from our knees. Then more free sparring.  He is super fast and has a pretty tight defense, and he nailed me with an excellent body shot in our first fight, in which we double killed.  In our last sparring session, I did a couple of things that I really enjoyed. And one of our fights, are used to technique that I’m playing with but had not done a lot of recently, essentially Duke Lucan’s  footwork, but with the heater shield. The way I use it I fight in an A-frame and clock my shield over to guard my leading, stored side, foot. It worked perfectly as I passed to my left and hit him in his offside body. 

This is the kind of work that everybody should do more often. You can improve your fighting more efficiently by drilling with one good fighter on a regular basis, then you can just by doing a bashing practice with five good fighters.  This is the kind of work that everybody should do more often. You can improve your fighting more efficiently by drilling with one good fighter on a regular basis, then you can just by doing a bashing practice with five good fighters.  But you definitely need both, and the bashing practice is a lot more fun! 

 My next time in armor will be Saturday at Mudthaw