Hope not to bore

[Todd Eriksen]

Well, I hope not to bore anyone with this post, and if I do just send me a PM and I'll stop. The venerable Pyneneberg came down here a few weeks ago to teach a desiring yet ignorant group of folks here in southwestern Minnesota, and, to those who are still leary of joining ARMA, do so now. The experience was unbelievable. I sadly had a head cold and had put in an ungodly amount of hours at work to get the weekend off, and so may have not been an ideal student, but the ideas that I was left with still hover in my mind continually.
The insight was incredible. My learning at limited past fencing and lame 1600 sabre drills had trained me to be a fool, at the least, with Aaron. No, my skills will never equal or come close to his, but I think daily of the mistakes that I made in my first sparring session with him, and wonder if the men of old felt the same way when they faced an opponent on the battle field or tourney ground?
Reading the wonderful books by so many in ARMA is fantastic, but when you actually see it in use and finally understand the principals behind the training a whole new world is opened. In the 'Olympic' style fencing that I was trained in, you made an attack and if you failed it was over. No recovery or defense was made. Against Aaron, I learned that every offensive move I made, I'd better defend, too. (the two knots on my head and broken pinky attest to that).
I also learned about swords. I have a wonderful sword from Arms and Armor out of Minneapolis of Edward, the Black Prince which is on permanent display in my basement and (sorry Aaron) will never be used for cutting tests, yet I pulled it out after his visit and compared it to some other swords I have in the rigors that he had taught us, and for the first time was aware of the differences between good and poor blades and construction.
Look, I've spent my whole life in high school and college sports, but never has one days worth of training caused me to analyze the mistakes that I make to someday rematch, not to win, but to defend better against a better trained and disciplined disciple.
Thanks, ARMA,

Todd Eriksen

[Mark Driggs]

Welcome to the broken pinkies club Todd! Seems to happen occasionally in Arma. Mine is mostly healed from when it was broken at the last Prize Play in March. I wasn't bitter about it (well, not too much), but I realized that my defense was lacking. No better teacher than pain sometimes, though I plan to be on the giving end of lessons in the future and not on the receiving end.

[Aaron Pynenberg]

Yikes Todd, broken pinkie?- i had no idea, sorry about that.

The other component in all of this is control and we should not be breaking each others bones. I realize of course that it happens but I think now the focus at our group in Appleton is going to be on control, and solid technique.

Of course we are still going to spar, but control is going to be used and honed. It does us no good if we are all busted up every sunday, or whenever the training day is, which is something I used to not think about as much. I think that my opinion has changed on this point a little. We can still get the same results, maybe even better results if we add a bit more control and focus, while still maintaining the emotional content.

Well, sorry again Todd that was not my intention-- AP

[Byron Doyle]

Hehe... Welcome to the club. I think, however, that the best way to prevent broken fingers (besides your parter's control of course) is learning to protect your hands. I broke my left little finger back in January and have since gotten much better at protecting my hands... Also I've become more proficient in single sword. <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

[Todd Eriksen]

The finger doesn't bother me at all. I find it all part of the wonderful learning experience. My main point was that from just one days worth of learning, things are so much more clearer about what it may have been like. Through practical use, ie training, I've learned what my good swords are and what are the ones that aren't so good, how my cuts are much better with a stiffer blade like my Black Prince from A &amp; A as opposed to the less stiff Towton sword by Museum Replica.

[Jake_Norwood]

David Welch and the guys down in ARMA-Knoxville, TN have a great saying about busted up hands in particular: "If I didn't want it to get hit I wouldn't have left it out there."

Was sehrt, das lehrt.

Jake

[JeanryChandler]

Were y'all using my paddeds? I'm wondering if I need to improve the design a little. I broke my hand (hairline) fencing with some ARMA guys in Houston a few months ago. Not fun. I wasn't too upset about it at the time but i couldn't type for like 5 weeks, and while I agree with Jake it's a good reminder not to leave yourself open, it's also as Aaron says not condusive to regular sparring! And for the record, I wasn't even aware when it happened so I didn't learn too much from the event anyway....

JR

[John_Clements]

You all are definitely going way too hard, and using your hands to block with if you are getting pinky's broken.
I've been at this 26+ years and have never sustained any serious finger injury ---and I haven't bothered with padded gloves in years ---nor have I ever caused any serious finger injuries. Wooden swords &amp; steel blunts must be controlled in free-play and the fingers should not be targeted on purpose.

JC

[Steve Ames]

John... newbie question here. Why shouldn't the hand/fingers be targeted on purpose? No hand = no sword = fight over right?

[Allen Johnson]

not to answer for John but... I think its more of an idea of safety than not being a legitamate target.

[John_Clements]

The back of the hand is fine, but striking to the inside is just an extremely easy way to ruin a novice's week, since the thumb and fingers can be quite easily sprained from hits there. And if you have poor control it will happen very soon. It's just not necessary with wasters or steel blunts.

[Mark Driggs]

As martially sound as it may be, targeting the fingers and hands will make continual training rather difficult within our study groups. Besides, our orthopedic doctors get enough business from us already. As for protecting your hands, gloves are not always guaranteed to protect as evidenced by my healing proximal phalanx (above the 3rd joint down on the pinky). It is better to prevent the hit from ever happening (through obsetzen or warding) than to rely on gloved protection.

[MurrayMoore]

"Against Aaron, I learned that every offensive move I made, I'd better defend, too. (the two knots on my head and broken pinky attest to that)."

Just FYI, because of a finger break two years ago to a minor (age 15) student, I mandated hockey/fieldhockey/lacrosse gloves. I cannot afford the financial or ethical liability if I did not do that. Of course, I'd say that 2/3rds to three quarters of our local group is under the age of eighteen.

Also, since I'm an employee at a government lab, with a high safety standard, I had no option but to enforce the padded glove policy.

Yes, if all my students were adult, I might reconsider, but that won't be happening any time soon.


Murray
ARMA, LA, NM

[Claus Sørensen]

Greetings!

In our studygroup we use metal gauntlets when sparring, and metal helmets. The hands are such good targets that if you leave them out as legitimate targets we feel that you remove the fencing too far from how close we can get to fighting historical correct. But this does however cause other problems, like being ekstra carefull when moving into close quarter combat and wrestling, since metal gauntlets can cause serius damage here. So I wouldn't recomend beginners to use the hands as targets but something that needs to be incorporatet later in ones study of historical medieval fencing.

Best Wishes

[Todd Eriksen]

Gentlemen, I truly did not mean for the focus to be on the broken pinkie. It was really a very 'weird' action that caused it and I was not aware that it was broken until about a week later when I went to the Doc for my cold and asked him about my black pinkie tip. The reason of my post was to say that my training class was awesome, well controlled, and well taught. I only meant to say that in all my life's experiences I've never done anything that has caused me to analyze every action as my many hours with Aaron did. It was like opening a candy store to a kid who never had tasted candy in his life.