December 2022 Update

Howdy y'all. Here's what I've been up to towards the end of 2022.

New Digs

The big news is the move: my partner and I have moved to Victoria, on the south end of Vancouver Island. We co-bought a place with another couple, they went in for 2/3 and we went in for 1/3, so when we found a 3 storey house, we decided that we'd get the bottom level, and they'd get the top two. Our level is currently split in half between a finished suite (the South Wing), and an unfinished workshop area (the North Wing). We're pretty much moved in and sorted in the South Wing, and the next month will see us fitting out the North Wing with a few walls, so it'll be an additional two rooms for a rentable room and an office/den area, while keeping the bulk of the unfinished workshop unfinished, which we'll be using as a workout/training area. There will be a squat rack, kettlebells, indian clubs, plyo box, rings and agility ladders, as well as space for a short piste/fencing area.

A view of the North Wing. Shelves are going to come down, and we're going to clear some ceiling space. The window in the background will be obscured by one of the new walls.

Beat the Crap Out of Cancer XIII

At the start of November, Maelstrom Martial Arts hosted the latest iteration of their annual event that raises funds for the BC Cancer Agency. This is probably my favourite event every year, and you better believe that even though I've moved to the island, I'll be coming back again next year. The format runs relatively close to a Dog Brothers gathering (I'm told, I've never been), in that fights are agreed upon by the combatants themselves, and they run for a set time (two minutes), and at the end of the clock the fighters hug/shake hands and no victor is declared. The difference from a gathering is that fights aren't full-force no-holds-barred, but each pair can decide if they want to do technical (no/minimal contact), light (reduced speed & power), or heavy (full gusto, but not actively trying to break each other). Also, any given pair is free to add any other restrictions they want (no throws, no groundwork, restricted targets, whatever).

I managed to get eight fights in, a blend of Nova Scrimia assalto cortese, sword vs sword, sword vs two daggers, single short stick, double short stick, and walking stick vs double stick. It was a blast, but I don't think I'm training enough right now for it to really be an effective feedback mechanism. The main feedback that I got was that it's been a while, and I'm out of shape!

Daze of Derby

A week after BTCOOC the folks over at NWO roller derby in Chilliwack hosted Daze of Derby, an event that they usually run annually, but it's taken a few years off due to the plague. I was scheduled to be a support ref, which I was excited for (local derby's small enough that I usually end up as head ref for any given event), but one of the three crew heads had to call in sick at the last minute, and I ended up inheriting the role of crew head ref.

The tournament overall was a whole lot of fun, even with some organizational scrambling at the beginning of the day. With two tracks right next to each other, we tried to use Fox 40 Pearl whistles on one track, and Fox 40 Classics on the other, but only 2/3 crews got the memo, which led to a handful of very confusing jam transitions, where one track had started/called off a jam and the other track thought it was their track that had started/finished. Overall, for a first post-covid run, I think the event went pretty smoothly, and I'm fully confident that next year will be even better.

Book Club

Back in September, when I went to WMAW in Racine, WI, Michael Heveran invited me to join his book club, which was about to start tackling FA Marcelli's Rules of Fencing, originally published in 1686. We've been meeting weekly (ish) for two hours or so, on Sundays, getting through a chapter or three each time. I'm super grateful to Michael for the invite; I've been collecting Holzman translations for so long, it's nice to finally start reading one.

New Town, New Job

After five and a half years at the little shop on Broadway, I've moved over to Victory Barbers here in Victoria. I knew that I was going to need a place to land as soon as we made the decision to move, back in the spring, and I'd already talked to Paul, the head barber at Victory, about the barbering scene in Victoria, so when I saw a posting for barbers back in June, I dropped them a line. It was an odd place to be: I wasn't sure where I was going to be living, nor when we'd actually be moving over, but Victory's central location made it accessible from wherever we'd be getting a place, and Josh seemed amenable to me just coming over for a couple of Monday/Tuesdays once or twice a month until I could actually make it out full time.  

Looking Forward

What's next? I've now unpacked so many of my to-read books that there's a part of me that thinks I have no time for anything that isn't reading my to-read books, at least for the next few months, but I know that's also a road towards stir-craziness. Locally, I'm just getting to the point of figuring out what I want to do training-wise. I've reached out to a few boxing gyms, and I'll be looking up fencing clubs and HEMA groups in the next few weeks as well, although I'm not sure the extent to which I'll be down to clutter up my schedule in the immediate future.

In the new year I'm planning on heading over to Vancouver at some point in January, for a full day of training/sparring. Forms in the morning, sticks/sparring in the afternoon? Location(s) and time TBD.

Why do I train?

Why do I train? It's a pretty complicated question, and one that I don't think that I can answer right out. The question "why?" is also closely related to "what?" and "how?"

What is training?

The first thing to think about is what training is, and what it's supposed to accomplish. Mark Rippetoe, the author of Starting Strength, and a barbell coach with decades of experience, distinguishes between exercise and training, the former being done for immediate results, and the latter for results over time. Exercise is done because it feels good, and training is done because you want to get better at something. 

Almost everything I do I do for very short-term goals. I fence because it's fun, and I enjoy the chemical rush of adrenaline and endorphins. For the longest time, I only worked out for the social aspect of moving heavy objects with a fun group of people. But, since discovering Starting Strength in late 2012, I've started trying to think about my activities not just as fun things to do, but as a means to improve myself.

What do I train?

The human body is a highly adaptable machine, and those adaptations are governed by the principle of specificity: The human organism adapts itself to the specific stresses that it is subjected to. If you're going to start training for something, you'll need to think about what characteristics you're looking to improve. Here are a few:

• Strength - The ability of your muscles to produce the maximum amount of force. This can be improved by increasing the quantity of muscle producing the force, by increasing the efficiency of each muscle's force-producing mechanism, or, most often, both.
• Range of Motion - The ability of each joint to move functionally to its maximum extent. A lot of the time a restricted range of motion is a direct result of insufficient strength.
• Recovery/Strength Endurance - How many repetitions can you perform of a strenuous action? How long do you need to rest between sets of repetitions? This is the core of conditioning training.
• Technique - How well do you mechanically perform an action? Is it efficient, or are you moving in such a way that you're wasting energy?
• Tactics - Can you identify which actions are the correct actions given the current set of stimuli? Is you defense the correct one, based on the attack you are receiving?
• Strategy - How do you manoeuver your opponent into a position that's favourable to you? Of the many possible actions that could be considered correct, which one is the best for the current situation?

How do I train?

Each aspect listed above has a different method of training. Operating at the highest possible speed is not the best way to learn a technique, but it is required to fine-tune it. Swordfighting, contrary to what some people think, does not in itself make you stronger.

Likewise, you have to ask yourself how far you want to go with everything. How strong is strong enough? How much range of motion do you need in order to perform your tasks without injury? Does my mandritto fendente really need to be that perfect before I start fighting?

Want to get stronger? I mean, really, stronger? There's no substitute for barbells, especially for lower-body strength. There's a lot of gymnastics stuff out there that'll do wonders for your upper body, though, frequently in ways that just aren't possible with barbells.

How about conditioning? I like kettlebells. None of those goofy, million-variety moves, though. Just good old swings, snatches, cleans and presses, and maybe a turkish get up or twenty.

Technique, tactics, and strategy have the problem of being difficult to assess. Conditioning and strength are easy: how much weight is on the bar? How long did it take you to do 100 snatches? Unfortunately there's no easy assessment for combat performance, since there are so many variables. You can't measure your ability based on how easy it is for you to beat someone else in a fight unless you expect that person to stop training just so they can be a marker for you. Training to fight really requires a coach/instructor with a solid idea of what you should be capable of, who also has enough knowledge and experience to know the best way to get you there. For those instructors, sparring and drilling can be assessment mechanisms, but all the hard work of improving (the training itself) happens in drills.

Why do I train?

I train strength for the simple reason that I know I can be stronger.

I've gotten back into kettlebell training for the simple reason that I signed up for a certification workshop in the new year, and my conditioning isn't up to snuff, so I need to train to pass.

To be honest, right now I'm not training my swordplay at all. I'll fence from time to time because it's fun, and I teach because I like seeing other people get better, but I'm still looking for a reason to get better at swordplay that isn't just "I don't want to suck." I'll let you know if I find one.

New Toy

Made myself a new toy! That is indeed a bowling ball on a stick. I haven't weighed it, but I think the ball is ~14 pounds, with another couple of pounds for the steel pipe. It was really easy to put together, just drilled a hole in the ball and the threads on the pipe grabbed nicely.
Played around with it a goodly bit, too. It's pretty brutal.