Medieval Spear Play (Part 2)

All right, now comes the run through the technique. So because we don't have our ideal fight very often and because once you have this, when you can acquire that, you don't really need much more martial arts. We look at the moments when both make the same, have the same approach, make the same entry trying to claim the center. Then there will be a struggle to gain the center. So in this first example I will be the one to gain the center. There will be a bind and instantly as I make contact I probe this bind. I probe the quality of this bind pushing my spear over his and I feel okay now I'm stronger. I feel his counter pressure so I can safely thrust here into his face by lifting this hand and thrusting at him. All right, so don't strike weapons into each other. So we're not doing this. While we're going forward we see okay the other one is doing the same thing. You don't strike to win the center because if you just strike, as you see that I'm coming in, you try to gain the center by striking into it. This strike makes you too hard and you cannot really use the advantage you gain by striking into the weapon. So it's really easy for the opponent to adapt to it and respond with weakness to pressure. Yes? It's really important never ever strike into weapons and if it's swords you don't want to ruin your edges anyway. But even with a spear here the one crucial aspect is that you will give him too big a signal and thus make yourself vulnerable. In this fighting there's a lot more delicacy and sensitivity than most people assume. So instead, if we do it in slow motion again, we go forward, we both claim the center and as we make contact, because if you take your weapon away, because I'm just positioning my weapon here, I'm not striking anywhere, I'm positioning it. But if I feel there's contact, as soon as there's contact, I try to win, to probe the quality of this contact, to get a good pressure signal. And now it's like inserting a key into a lock sideways. I want to bring my weapon over here. This is one of the criteria of winning a vine. If this were a blade, I would also turn my edge against this flat. I'm actually doing this here too, only a spear doesn't have an edge with a pole. But if you look at the spearhead, it's actually my edge going over. Now I've won this one, I can feel it and I start thrusting. Mind you that if you don't feel enough pressure here, he becomes slack, it becomes dangerous to do this thrust. Now I have lost control and we're back to square one, the double kill. So I have to feel, give me the bind again, I have to feel that he's actually trying to win the bind and then thrust at him. If he becomes slack, I would just stop walking here and forcing that pressure that I need to do this thrust. Technique number one. So I was stronger in the bind, there was a bind, contact, and then I started, both started to probe the bind by cutting into it. I felt I was stronger, so what did he feel? That he was weaker. Exactly, he felt that he was weaker. There's actually nothing wrong with being weaker in terms of martial arts because in martial arts you respond to weakness with strength, this is what I did, but also when you feel you are weaker, you respond with weakness to strength. You don't ever go with strength against strength, that is stupid. This is what we see in all the movies where they press swords against each other, make it like kind of a reverse tug-of-war, or where people just keep hammering at each other, just striking forcefully. This is just primitive. It says in the 14th century manuscripts that if it was all about strength against strength, if you would respond with strength to strength, then the stronger one would always win. And in a world like that, of course, there would be no need for martial arts. Why would you practice for years and years and years, if you could just go to the gym and do weightlifting and then become, just by becoming stronger, get a better fighter. Alright, so he feels he's weaker. This is this information he gets from probing the bind. So we do it in slow motion again. So we both strike to win the center. We both probe it. I am stronger, so I start thrusting. Now he waits as he feels he's weaker. This is when he refers to the place that he has trained. This is what it says in the fighting books as well. It says like, find out in a bind if he's soft or hard, if he's strong or weak, and then pick a play that fits this particular context. So he has trained, so he knows what's going to happen. He knows that this is what's going to happen. And so he waits for this for this particular thrust and just binds it down. Now we were doing it statically. If you do it in a flow, you're also well advised to step back and take and make sure that you're well out of range of the opposing weapon. So can you win the bind and do the thrust against me? Give me a little more space. Yeah, like so. So now he's taking my part and thrusts. I go down and flip the weapon off. Can you do it in a slightly faster, but keep the same relaxation. Don't be hasty, don't rush it. Be absolutely precise. Precision is the one thing which is important for your training. You don't speed up and say now we're doing it seriously. This is not true. You just try to do it correctly and the more often you do it, like with any physical skill, the more proficient you will become and speed will come as a byproduct. But some aspects you cannot realistically simulate in slow motion and one of them is, for instance, the skipping stone principle. So as he's coming in and thrusting at me, this skipping stone principle of pressing down and slipping up, this is hard to do in slow motion and thus slow motion fighting also creates artifacts. You should be artifacts which distort the reality of a fight that is done at maximum speed. Yeah, so keep that in mind too. It's just one combat simulation that's good for you, but it's not the only one. So we have seen that counter here. So again I'm going to go to technique number one, trying to achieve the ideal fight. If I cannot do that and meet resistance, I try to win that bind. This is what I will do again. So I will win the bind. Thrust and as I thrust, he binds it down and retreats in order to do that skipping stone. But we do it, and cups to my face, but we do it at slow motion here. Learning a distance is really difficult. It takes like three years or so. As he's in the process, as he's in the process of pressing me down, he's accelerating, he's actually accelerating my spear butt if I let it run free. So pressing it down and falling into a void is my death because he then just lifts up. Lift up straight away. You don't have to thrust. So look, when I push this down, no, it's this side. Yeah, when I, no, actually when you have thrust it, it would be this side. So if I press this down here, I just go up leading with this part here. So I'm not retreating. I'm not retreating to thrust. I'm going straight up to you. So if this results in an upward slice or a thrust, it doesn't really matter to me. But I take the shortest route. Again, geometry. Yes, a shorter route is shorter than a longer route. You can train to run as fast as possible and become a great athlete. But still, if you run at your maximum speed, you will need more time for the longer route than for the shorter one. So in combat, go for the shorter one, right? You cannot change geometry by training. That's physics. Okay, so in slow motion once again. I'm winning this bind and he feels it. So he waits for my thrust. He retreats and finds it down. As I feel that I'm falling into a void, then I relax this hand and let this just go forward like a wheel. And this may result in a blow. And of course, next you can thrust or maybe if it falls short. Can I have a short spear? So if your blow would fall short, then you may do a double turn. All right, so these are the three techniques that we have done. And all of this in fighting would be boom, boom, boom. And then that's over. It took us a day just to go through all the details, to find motor skills and the sensing in the bind. But it well prepared you for some free play. And you did really well yesterday because we were moving at a reduced pace. I loved it. Now that you have heard this lecture, you want to move. So we're going to do some free play now. Thank you.