What's the "art" part of Historical European Martial Arts?

Allert's slightly spicy take on swords...

I actually don't study La Verdadera Destreza because it's an effective system for winning tournaments (although I believe it can be, and is, in hands more skilled than mine).

I study it because I believe it to be true and beautiful. I believe it holds some important lessons about human nature, decision-making, and self-mastery.

Do you walk up to someone in the park flowing through tai chi postures and say, "tai chi sucks in a real fight, I think you'd be more effective martially if you took up Shaolin wushu"?

"Bruh, you guys are never gonna medal, what's the point?"

No. Because you see and appreciate that the goals of the person who is meditatively practicing tai chi are not the same as yours. You'd be more effective martially if you picked up a glock. You both accept that there's more to what you're doing than just that one element.

We know that tai chi assists in stuff like lowering blood pressure, helping in rehabilitation, getting you out socially, and encouraging thoughtful, reflective engagement with your body and the world around you. We feel the practice of perfecting an art form through careful practice has merit.

Why don't we allow this kind of conversation about swordcraft?

Why do we still have modern masters of swordcraft who drop out and never pick up a sword again once they stop regularly winning tournaments?

I think HEMA - and all similar sword-based sports - will mature once we allow students to have different reasons for studying their form of choice and different successful outcomes. It is important to encourage love in what we do. We must celebrate the study and practice of those forms as purposes unto themselves.

Swordcraft can be gentle. It can be beautiful. It can be an intimate dance. It can be a terrible reckoning. It can be a celebration of the human body and what it can do. It can be a tribute to the past. It can be a tool for unlocking secrets about the self. And yeah, absolutely, it can be a thing you do as a sport to wreck people in tournaments.

Do I want to win tournaments? God, yes, do I ever. But that's not the beginning or the end of what we're doing - is it?

What do you fear will happen the most?

I'm an avid "fight journaller" - by which I mean that I have a lot of notebooks with incredibly strange esoteric ramblings in them which are sometimes recognizably related to swordcraft, but often aren't.

When I fight journal, I focus a lot on goals and motivations. I know intimately what my North Star is, for example, and I hold it very close to my heart all the time. What I don’t do very often is really take a hard look at the shadow cast by that bright light so I can see what shape it is.

When you feel anxious, disappointed, lonely, frustrated, trapped, scared or angry during your journey, what is that shadow trying to tell you? What are the deepest fears you have behind your highest goals? How are they holding you back, and how are you going to take meaningful action to either address them or make peace with them so you can keep moving?

Here's a little bit about my stuff. 

I know that I really fear being disliked. I really fear abandonment. I really fear being misunderstood. I really fear harming others unintentionally. I don't think any of those are very uncommon, honestly, especially for those of us who are neurodivergent. 

One of the things that kept me back from fencing when I started in the SCA was some pretty unfortunate issues in the community at that time. I remember being a second or third-hand witness to interpersonal conflicts of absolutely brutal intensity - sometimes due to a lack of courtesy or honor on the part of one party or another, but often just because of years of critical failures in communication and excessive competitiveness that spiraled out of control. Most of those big personalities are gone, but I'm always a little afraid that it's a problem that might come back one day. 

I know that those fears absolutely impact what I'm confidently able to bring to the field when it's time to fight, and so now they're a problem for my fencing.  

"We're, uh... we're still getting beers later, right?"

Knowing that those are my fears, what can I do to make myself feel a bit more comfortable bringing some competitive spirit to the field while still trying to make sure I'm not contributing to a future problem?

1. Communicate clearly with my fencing partners to make sure we're on the same page about intensity, blow-calling, conventions, calibration, emotional state, etc.

2. Greet people warmly before the tournament and after the tournament so if I need my "game face" on during the proceedings, people understand that there is no personal issue. 

3. Assume the best intentions, work out problems as much as possible in practice time, encourage communication directly between impacted parties and not gossip, and politely but kindly communicate boundaries at appropriate moments. 

4. Appreciate that sometimes tournament experiences are not fun, even if they are rewarding, and not everyone has to go away smiling that day - but if they don't, that doesn't mean I did anything wrong. 

5. Trust that everybody else is also here to have a good fight, and that giving your best fight is a sign of mutual respect and admiration, not spite and aggression.

Maybe this won't solve every problem, but I hope it will help with some. 

On persona #2 - Pinterest for the visual learner

I personally feel that Pinterest is one of the best tools for anyone working on persona development.

Pinterest is a tool for creating digital "vision boards," and works on a sort of chain of association model. You can search terms directly, or you can click on a picture and it will show you a bunch of different related pictures and/or links. You can "pin" these to a board and create a little themed collage for yourself. 

As a persona development tool, this is pretty priceless, especially if you're not 100% sure what you're going for yet. 

Here's mine, for reference.

Let's do this step-by-step.

1. Create a board for your persona.

For example, here's the top of the Pinterest board I made for my persona, Allert Pierson. I have some word associations here from a visual standpoint to help guide my costuming, but also to help me better define how Allert presents himself to the world and what niche he fills in that society. You may not have all this information yet, and that's okay. Start simple, and refine as you go. 

2. Use the search function to learn more about what your persona looks like. 

Let's say you don't know a whole lot about your persona yet, but you know you really like The Tudors or Vikings and you'd like to portray someone from one of those periods. That's fantastic! We can work with that. 

If I was going to search up some visual inspirations for Allert at the very basic level, I would type in "17th century man" or "1620s male clothing". You may type in "Roman man" or "Tudor woman". 

Scroll down through the suggestions and make note of anything that really pops out at you. Pin everything you like to your persona's board. Don't be choosy, you can go back and remove some later! 

Once you've been doing that for a while, go back and look at your board. Is there a cut of garment or color scheme or hairstyle that you really love and is coming up a lot? Click on the images and links and see if you can figure out what that's called, or specifically what time period it's from. If you can't narrow it down, that's okay - you can always ask for help later. 

Quick note here - while it can be tempting to pin screenshots from movies and television shows (and that's a great place to start for general inspiration!) try to stick to portraits, sketches, and work from reenactors if you can. You don't have to duplicate what they're doing exactly! But, it will help give you a better picture of what folks were really wearing and doing at the time, rather than dramatized versions which are selected and designed for a very specific on-screen purpose. 

3. Learn more about where your persona fits in the world.

Are you pinning a lot of pictures of noblemen, middle-class women, or soldiers? Are there some professions or particular locations that keep coming up? Why not try adding that to your search terms next and see what comes up? Google things you think are interesting. Let yourself be dragged down inspiration "rabbit holes" as you find them. Pay attention to what you really find engaging and exciting. 

Pin pictures of landscapes, settings, buildings, books, and even color palettes and objects that might have existed in the world around them. This will help you to build texture and realism into your persona's life. 

4. Use Pinterest's "more to explore" function to help you refine further.

You've found a pin that really interests you or seems to perfectly reflect the niche you want your persona to fill? Click on it. Scroll down. Pinterest will offer you lots of what it thinks are related ideas, and that can be an excellent way to discover more. 

5. Revisit often and keep it joyful. 

Persona is a conversation with yourself and with the past. As you play more and learn more about who you are and want to be, it's totally natural to go back and change and further define your persona. This is a vision board exclusively for your own use, not a set of rules! 

On persona

What is a persona, and how to make one

The concept of “persona” is a little confusing to people new to the SCA. Is this a carefully-researched but plausible historical character, like in a book? Is it a kind of alter-ego, like Batman? Or is it just a way to describe the impression you’d like to make with your choice of clothing and accessories?

The answer is—it depends!

Like so many things in the SCA, “persona” is whatever you make of it. There’s no wrong or right way to approach persona, as long as you’re roughly following the rules and etiquette of the SCA and modern society as a whole.

Your persona is:

1.      A plausible historical person with a name;

2.      Who lived in a general time and place before 1600 CE;

3.      Who filled a role in the society of that time.

A lot of people in the SCA don’t get any further than this, and that’s just fine! A common response to the question “what’s your persona?” will be something like “I’m a 10^th century Viking named Sven,” or “I’m a 16^th century English noblewoman named Margaret.”

If you feel like you want to delve a little deeper, you can get increasingly specific. There’s really no end to how specific you can be! In the same way that there’s always something more to learn about any person you meet, there’s always something new to learn about your persona and the time and place they lived in.

How do I make a persona?

Let’s look at our three points above, but in a slightly different order.

1.      Choosing a time and place before 1600 CE.

When you think about history, what images immediately pop into your head? Is it Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare? Is it plate armor and princesses with tall pointy hats? Is it fierce Norse warriors on longships? Is it devoted samurai serving their daimyo fearlessly? Sophisticated Roman ladies reclining elegantly in a villa?

What do you wish you were, or wish you could wear? Is there a particular period in your family’s history you’d like to explore further, or a special place you visited on vacation once that inspired you forever to be interested in that time period?

What drew you to the SCA—what is your Dream?

2.      Choosing a type of person to portray.

Society takes all types of people and always has. Think about a class or level of wealth you might like to explore based on the clothing of the place and time you’ve picked. If you don’t like being restricted by layers and layers of fussy garments, you might like to choose somebody a little lower down the social ladder. If you have a job you love, maybe you’d like to know what your historical predecessors were like and the challenges they faced. Maybe you have an activity you particularly love in the SCA and would like to know more about the type of person who did that thing. Maybe you want to choose someone who is as different from you as humanly possible!

3.      What’s in a name?

The question “what’s your SCA name?” is a common one. There’s no right way to choose this for yourself, but it should be a name you’re willing to be called by and which existed at the time and place you’ve chosen.

Some people choose based on coolness, some people based on historical references (although be careful picking names from people who are too famous!) or based on the meaning of the names and what they want to communicate about themselves.

I’ve had two personae – Alice Percy (16^th century rural Sussex) and Allert Pierson (17^th century urban Dutch in London). My mundane (real world) name is Allie, with a last name sort of similar to both of those. Both Alice and Allert can be shortened to Allie as a nickname. I wanted to give the impression that both personae are sort of “alternate universe” versions of me.

What’s next?

If you want to, you can register your name and some personal heraldry with the SCA. Talk to a local herald about this if you’re interested, but it’s totally optional.

Now you have a starting place to gather clothing, equipment, accessories, feast gear, camping supplies and all kinds of other things based on what your persona might have had—if you want! Creating an “in persona” appearance and collection of items is a lifelong pursuit for some players, and you should not at all feel pressured to have everything worked out before you jump in. Persona is a journey, not a destination.

One of my favorite things is to use my persona to help me orient my research. I like to ask questions about Allert’s daily life, his relationships, and his work, and then go and find the answers to those questions.

If you’re really into it, a fun thing you can do with your friends who have personae from similar time periods is to come up with increasingly elaborate backstories and interactions between them. This is a great source of “shtick” and will also challenge you to learn more about social conventions and relationships in your chosen time. These shared backstories and historical contexts are common in household groups.

A few quick notes to the wise

Equality. When you are “in persona” (you're in a situation where you're pretending to be your persona), you should treat everyone around you with the sincere courtesy you would treat an absolute equal. Bigotry, classism, ageism, sexism and xenophobia may be period, but it is not tolerated, accepted or welcome in the SCA in any form. We are working together to re-imagine this time in history as it should have been.

Religion. Discussions of religion should be kept to the academic and in historical context. Approach religious personae (monks, nuns, etc.) with extreme caution.

Titles and offices. The SCA has ranks and offices which have the same name as titles and roles belonging to the nobility in our period. These are earned through service to the community, achievement, and the pursuit of mastery. Just because your persona is a knight doesn’t mean you are entitled to be called “Sir Steve,” for example. (Likewise queens, princes, barons, etc.). SCA rules come first.

Appropriateness. Be mindful of “the right place, the right time.” Your persona should add to the general atmosphere and enjoyment of the space for others, not detract from it or take up undue attention. While this tradition is uncommon here in Avacal, Enchanted Ground is a space or time at an event in which all willing participants are encouraged to portray their personae to the very best of their ability, “in character.” If you want to explore portraying your persona in more depth, why not host an Enchanted Ground at the next event?

Appropriation. We play a game in which we seek to re-imagine history as it should have been, but we are modern people who live in a modern society. If you want to portray someone from a cultural group that's very different than your own, listen, learn, do exceptional research, avoid stereotypes and generalizations, be as specific and informed as possible, and be mindful of how your portrayal of that culture will be received by others. Be open to critique and conversation about your choices. Understand that due to severe historical injustices, some cultural groups and peoples will not be receptive or appreciative of your choices, even if you mean well by them. Seek, in all things, to do no harm. We can be interested in a people, place or time without necessarily needing to choose them as the basis of our persona. 

"Maestro Allert," one day

Before I became an associate, I was asked what I thought "Maestro Allert" would be like. What could that person do that I currently find myself unable to do? What are the differences between that person and me? 

I came across the answers I gave when I was flipping through some old notes:

• Present opinions, decisions and ideas confidently (even at the risk of others disagreeing or potentially even disliking me for it) tempered with the wisdom to know when to take sound advice.

• Firmly assert boundaries (don’t be a doormat) and intervene when necessary to assert boundaries and ensure safety for those who are too afraid or without the circumstances necessary to do so themselves.

• Lead and teach others competently in the art of fencing and courtesy on and off the field (be a good "big sibling").

• If perhaps not the greatest fencer in all the land, considered a genuine challenge and a fencer worth respecting for their skill at all levels of competition. 

• Inspire others to greater participation and achievement in our community, and encourage a sense of camaraderie, belonging and ownership in others.

Whether or not I ever become a peer, I hope to achieve these things through my actions. Some of these I'm becoming more successful at as I go; some of them need a lot more work and attention. Some of them, some days, I feel like I'm backsliding on. 

But, I'm just going to leave this here to remind myself what I'm trying to do. 

Sources to Hunt Down

Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture (2003) - Jennifer Low

The Eloquence of the Body: Perspectives on Gesture in the Dutch Republic (2004) - Herman Roodenburg

Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books: Transmission and Tradition of Martial Arts in Europe (14th-17th Centuries) - Jaquet, Daniel ; Verelst, Karin ; Dawson, Timothy

Soldiers and Gentlemen: The Rise of the Duel in Renaissance Italy - Hughes, Steven C

Anxious masculinity in early modern England - Breitenberg, Mark

Violent masculinities : male aggression in early modern texts and culture (2013)

Masculinity, ambassadorial handbooks, and early modern English diplomacy - Sowerby, Tracey A.

THE DUEL: HONOUR AND AESTHETIC OF EARLY MODERN MASCULINE VIOLENCE - Glavina, Tilen

Anatomy of a duel in Jacobean England : gentry honour, violence and the law - Bowen, Lloyd

Honor and violence in Golden Age Spain - Taylor, Scott K.

Lesson Planning Basics

I used to be a teacher. I taught preschool all the way up to Grade 12 in various short and medium-term stints, including about ten years of experience tutoring kids and young adults one-on-one. It's a goal of mine to get back into the classroom one day.

I was asked to create a little lesson plan template with some very basic tips and advice for use structuring short lessons at fight practice. So, here it is. 

Step 1: Choose a Clear Objective

Students will… 

(Learn how to ______ in order to ______).
(Learn how to ______ in _____ steps so you can ______).
(Learn how to counter ______ with _______).

Your objective should be clear and fully understood by both you and your audience. It should express not only what you're doing, but how and why. 

Adult students must see value in any lesson or skill they are being taught, or they will not engage with you. 

Students will learn with a partner how to perform the basic Destreza (Spanish rapier) technique, atajo, using a single sword in three movements in order to gain control of the opponent’s blade. 

Step 2: Choose Your Method and Teaching Points

Be aware of your audience. Do they have the foundations to understand your lesson, or do you need to start simpler? What is the attention span of this group like? Use teaching points to organize and guide your delivery. The lesson plan should be so clear that somebody else with your experience could teach it from your notes. 

Method: 

I will explain atajo. I will have one volunteer who is familiar with atajo help me as a model to act upon. I will explain the technique using the “up, side, down” sword movement mnemonic, demonstrate it, and then invite students to pair up. I will ask students to place three atajos to either side of their partner’s blade and then switch. I will watch each pair and make adjustments as needed. 

Teaching Points:

1. Atajo is a Spanish word that means shortcut, but in Destreza we use this word to mean controlling the other blade. The goal is to control in a way that means they can’t attack you, but you are in a good position to attack them. We do this through creating leverage and positioning our sword as a barrier between us and them. We can do this in three simple movements – “up, side, down.” 
   
   
2. Line up the sword parallel to the other sword with both partners in a right-angle stance at measure.
   
   
3. Lift the point of your sword slightly, while taking care not to drop your hand. This is “up.”
   
   
4. Carry the point of your sword across the other blade using a movement from the wrist, maintaining your hand position as much as possible. This is “side.”
   
   
5. Lower your sword on to the other sword and lower your hand slightly to increase the angle, taking care to make sure you have stronger degrees on the blade than they do. This is “down.” 
   
   

Step 3: Assess Your Success and Make Adjustments

How will you know if your students have understood or not? What are you looking for? What are the common mistakes that people make, and how will you notice and correct them? Make mental notes of what you’ll change next time if things don’t go quite right. 

Step 4: Wrap Up Efficiently

Quickly recap the lesson. Ask for questions. Try to keep this short and gently discourage “helpers” from repeating information, extending the lesson, or discussing using technical language. This can overwhelm new students. Request that they come see you after for further discussion. 

Making good choices

My understanding of La Verdadera Destreza is changing all the time, because it's based around a pretty dense body of work that's a little hard to fully appreciate unless you're a highly educated Renaissance man who speaks Spanish. 

It's also deceptively simple - like Chess or Go, it might only take a few minutes for someone to explain the rules to you, but a lifetime to understand the mysteries and hidden depths. 

I have exceptional mentorship so I'm learning a lot anyway, but as I learn, different things stick out to me. 

At the moment, I see the True Art primarily as a philosophical self-improvement and brain-training program which conveniently moonlights as a martial art because people like swords.

I know I do. I really like swords. 

Ahh, swords.
Sorry, what was I talking about just now?

I also think it offers a very useful mental health toolkit. 

So, I go to therapy. This is just a thing that I do. It's like people who need to go to the doctor regularly - I need to go to therapy every week or two. 

Anyway, the type of therapy that I do is pretty well-known for teaching you a lot of skills and strategies to help you deal with sub-optimal behavior patterns. 

One of the skills they teach you is ODP, which looks like this:

OBSERVE - take in information with your five senses; experience your inner and outer world without interpretation or running commentary 

DESCRIBE - put words on what you have observed to describe it as accurately as possible, without judgement (the water is cold, I feel sad) 

PARTICIPATE - Based on what you have observed and described, make a decision about how you want to act. Be fully present, act decisively and with total awareness. Be engaged and present in what's going on, without ruminating, dissociating, reacting from reflex, etc. 

I was thinking about this skill the other day and comparing and contrasting it to what I have been taught about another decision-making process, this one extrapolated from the teachings of Carranza (the guy who invented La Verdadera Destreza) by Puck and Mary Curtis: 

KNOWLEDGE - Study, understand, gain experience to build a foundation
PERCEPTION - Observe carefully, see the options, see the potential outcomes
DECISION - From your existing knowledge and what you have perceived, decide what the best option is

ACTION - Decisively take action 

They're not really very different, right? One is maybe geared towards mindfulness and interpersonal situations and the other towards a combat situation, but the basic filtration system is the same. The goal is to mindfully and consciously decide what you want to do next. We don't want to just flail or act instinctively.

Obviously, Carranza wasn't secretly really into mindfulness meditation and he didn't invent therapy - but he did understand the heart of good, reasoned decision-making. 

When you leave yourself space for Observation of your mental and physical surroundings non-judgmentally, Orienting yourself to the options based on context and knowledge, Deciding what to do next, and then Acting (OODA - a term coined for the exact same mental process about 400 years later), you can do things with confident awareness. 

OODA!

You're not removing emotion and sentiment from the situation and you're not going to magically come up with a winning solution every time. That's not how life works.

However, by filtering information and making decisions in a structured way, you're taking firm control of the steering wheel and not just reacting desperately to every passing bit of stimuli. 

(Am I good at this? No. If I was, I wouldn't have to write helpful blog posts to remind myself about it later. But it might help you, and it's helping me.) 

That's useful whether you're fencing, responding to an angry Facebook post, or deciding what to have for lunch. 

See? Swords are still relevant. 

What can I do while I'm injured?

Injury is something that happens to all fighters, sooner or later. 

There's only so long that we can put our bodies under the stress of fighting - in any discipline, be it ranged, fencing, or armored combat - before things start to wear out and joints and tendons begin to get in our way. No matter how careful we are, accidents happen sometimes, too. 

Whatever the cause, the end result is the same: Down time. 

As somebody who is currently suffering through on-and-off down time, I understand that the urge can be strong to stay at home in bed sulking when fight night rolls around. Watching other people fight when you can't makes your whole heart ache. 

Something that has been really working for me over the last few months has been shifting my mindset from personal achievement to collective achievement. Am I going to be able to go out there and thrash everybody on the field right now? No. But can I still do something that contributes positively to the experience of others, while allowing me to stay connected to the community that I love. A victory for our weekly fight practice - whether that's one more regular participant, a marked improvement in overall skill level, or everybody having pretty new fight garb - is a victory for me. 

There are so many excellent things that you can do to keep your mind and spirit engaged, keep yourself in good habits and routines, and facilitate an easy transition back to the field once you've stabilized enough to participate again. 

In three months off, Karl picked up the flute and finished his stylish new pants - be like Karl!

A list of some things you might be able to do: 

• Show up at practice to contribute to a positive atmosphere 
• Check in with other injured fighters to offer moral support
• Keep in contact with your friends, family and Peer(s) - don't vanish off the face of the planet!
• If you have a car, help get other fighters and equipment to and from practice and events
• Learn how to do mobility-assisted fighting styles
• Run or support fundraising efforts
• Learn how to marshal one or more disciplines 
• Learn how to run lists 
• Make connections with people who do other fighting disciplines
• Teach technique or basics, if your injury allows 
• Work on slow drills, if your injury allows 
• Greet newcomers and onlookers and help them understand what's going on
• Coordinate special guest instructors
• Help maintain loaner equipment 
• Attend tournaments and championships to support your community 
• Take video and photos for other fighters to help them do self-critique (if appropriate, and with permission and consultation) 
• Learn a new craft or skill that can help support you or others on the field 
• Make and support connections between fighters, officers and branches 
• Watch video recordings of fights from other kingdoms to learn some different styles and techniques to share with others 
• Read historical combat manuals and learn some theory 
• Post nice things on social media to promote your practice (if appropriate) 
• Observe other people's fighting styles and form, ask questions, and use it as an opportunity to learn
• Journal about your thoughts and feelings so you can track your progress 
• Work diligently on nutrition, sleep, mental health, and rehabilitation

Things you should not do: 

• Push yourself beyond your health care team's recommendations 
• Obsess over previous performance and achievements
• Be a negative social influence ("well, I was watching the whole time, and I saw so-and-so...") 
• Be a negative personal influence ("I was watching you and your footwork is awful...") 
• Resort to substance abuse in order to maintain your ability to fight 
• Pressure other injured fighters to participate beyond their limits ("I've got half a spine and no bones in my right arm and I'm still armoring up, what's your excuse?")

"Nah, I'm good bro, I'm just gonna fight through the pain."

Down time can be emotionally and mentally painful, especially if combat is a huge part of your self-concept and lifestyle. Even small injuries to the body can become massive wounds to the psyche if you don't have somewhere positive to channel that energy. Permanent injuries can be devastating. Some days are just going to suck, and it's okay for you to be gentle and patient with yourself. Forgive yourself for the days when you just can't make any enthusiasm happen. 

But, no matter what's happening with your body, you are a valuable, important and unique individual with incredible contributions that you can make. 

Reflections on gentleness

I've spoken about this before on this very blog (a lifetime ago!) but there’s one virtue that never seems to make it on the list of cardinal virtues that I really, really admire. 

The four cardinal virtues as understood by classical philosophy:
Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance

This is a quality that appears in almost all of the folks I admire the most (Peer or not) -  a spirit of gentleness. 

We have our modern conception of what being gentle means. It probably calls to mind certain feelings of softness or meekness, but that’s not what I mean when I say it. 

To be gentle is to know that you hold in yourself the power, knowledge, skill, privilege or strength to do great harm - but you don’t, unless absolutely warranted. It’s a state of balance. 

You measure your words carefully. You speak and act with integrity, especially in public spaces. You don’t punch down. You don’t share or exploit people’s vulnerabilities and secrets. But your values, boundaries and expectations around communication and behaviour are always clear. 

You are kind, generous and fair to those who you’re in a position of authority over. You’re a good example to others. You allow others the grace to learn and make mistakes. But you are an authority, and that is clear to all. 

You don’t use your strength to harm. You don’t throw your weight around to get your way. You don’t make other people afraid or miserable in your presence by being excessively forceful. But it is evident, always, that the strength is there and can be summoned if needed. 

You’re an iron fist in a velvet glove. When it’s time to make hard decisions and bring some consequences to bear, you are careful and precise in doing so. But you have the wisdom to know when and how to do it in order to do the least possible harm to others. 

We are all human and we all fail at this from time to time, but I admire the hell out of the many MANY gentle people I know, and meditate on this quality very often.

I'm hurt

In my last blog entry, I posted a little bit about some of the issues I've been having with repetitive strain injuries and I mentioned my back, very briefly. That did become a bigger problem almost immediately afterwards, as I feared. 

Image courtesy of a friend of mine who is an ER nurse. It's not ideal.

There was a series of diagnostics and back-and-forth between this doctor and that one and lots of second and third opinions, but what I basically ended up with was that I've got the spine of somebody in their 60s and a few slightly complex problems that won't be going away without surgery. The goal is to get everything very strong indeed through physiotherapy, keep the inflammation down, and keep everything as mobile as I can to delay surgery by a few years. 

I also want to be very vulnerable here and say that I ended up with somewhat of a dependence on tramadol, which was an extremely frightening couple of months for me and Andy and the people around us. When you're in incredible pain you'll do almost anything to get out of it again - but that's a road that was an extreme dead-end. Over 10 days around Christmas, with a lot of social support, I was able to discontinue use. With corticosteroid injections the pain is under much better control, but still present. There are good days and bad days. 

I'm doing physio and being as diligent as I can with my self-care, but this has taken me out of competitive bouting for some time now and I am feeling very vulnerable about it. I know chronic injury and pain is not an uncommon feature of fighters. I've heard a lot of sympathetic stories from folks who have been out for six months, a year, two years or even more - but impatience and impulsiveness are probably my worst qualities, and this is absolutely killing me. 

I had all kinds of performance goals for this year. There were so many things I really thought I was going to be able to accomplish. I may or may not get there, but I'm going to change focus for now. 2024 is going to be about doing what I can to build and maintain the community, supporting he performance goals of other fencers, and becoming well-rounded in ways that don't necessarily require competitive success.