I love the speed of our combat. I love being a ghost on the battlefield, moving in an out of my opponents reach, avoiding their blades by a hair’s breadth, and moving in mercilessly.
A large part of me wants to consider efficiency as a subset of physical speed, and just throw it in on that topic, but it's so very important that I had to break it away. When I talk about efficiency of a swing, I'm actually talking about a lot of factors. While some might argue that you can reach a cap on your physical speed, I might counter that you can always improve on the efficiency of a swing.
The first factor is the path of travel the weapon makes. It's starting point, it's ending point, and the in between. The shortest distance for a weapon to travel is a straight line, right? Why is this important? Well if you can't increase your speed, decrease the distance your weapon has to travel. When you break down speed, it's usually a number relative to distance and time. Miles per hour. Meters per second. So on and so forth. If you think you can't swing a weapon any more meters per second, try decrease the distance. Simple. When a fighter first starts out, they usually have long armed wild swings that go way out of the way to get to the point of contact. You should be editing down your swings like an author edits their writing. Remove anything that's unnecessary to your point.
You might be asking yourself “How can I go about that?” “How do I know if I'm traveling at the most efficient I can be?” First of all, assume you're not. Look at pictures or videos of yourself fighting, get a good outside view. Ask yourself, where is your arm in relation to your weapons path of travel? Are you fully extended way too early? Where is your weapon in your ready stance? Is it as close as it can be to your enemy, while also not leaving yourself exposed? When pictures, and video is unavailable, ask your friends. “What does my stance look like to you?” It's not perfect, but having them show you, can help you edit your starting position. Another trick is to use a mirror, look at yourself at ready, look at your attacks, figure out what to edit out, and edit down.
The second factor of efficiency how much you can do with one swing; Can you parry, feign and strike in what seems like one fluid motion? If you can, you'll leave your opponent feeling like you've just released lightning from a bottle. This can take some editing and practice as well, because you need to have an understanding of what the minimum motion you need to make in order to make a feign effective, you need to be able to predict what shot will come from that action, and what opening those two things leave for you to take advantage of.
Something to consider, in editing your feigns, is the ability of human perception, and the how much of our combat is a result of predictive behaviors. At any point in the act of combat, you are communicating something to your opponent, and they are communicating something to you. Being aware of what you're communicating, and lying, is the art of feigning. If you can communicate that idea with a smaller or less relevant motion, then you are creating a more efficient feign.
The other component to efficiency is the understanding of distance. Previously, I talked about editing down the distance a weapon travels when you make an attack, but now I'm talking about distance in a different way; what I mean in this instance is the the understanding of when your opponent move's into the maximum reach of your weapon, and when you are in theirs. Watching two fighter's who are accomplished in this is very exciting for me because so much is happening while nothing seems to be happening at all. That might sound confusing, but let me try to explain what happens, the two fighters face off, straddling the invisible line that is each other's maximum reach, then they begin to rock, like two tides, slipping to and fro over the line, trying to bait each other into swinging, slowly, imperceptibly, becoming more daring until someone slips up, and either moves in too close, and the other attacks instantly, landing a blow or they trick the person into believing they have moved in too close, and the attack misses, but now the attacker is open, and taken advantage of. Mastering this means standing unflinching when an opponent swings missing you by a hair's breadth, and you capitalizing by moving in unerringly as the swing moves passed it's peak, and you strike them down. Master this concept, and your opponent will think you're an untouchable ghost on the battlefield.
You might think the concept of efficiency in fighting is new and exciting, but in reality, you've probably been learning it the entire time. One of the first things I hear people teach a newbie is just how small a motion you need to make with your wrist to make a successful block or parry. It is literally the first defensive correction we make, almost every time. But it's all about being more efficient, just find ways to work that into the rest of your combat, and you'll be golden.
I should note there are times, when fighting less efficiently will be useful, in that it can land you a shot sometimes, but today we’re focusing on speed, and how to be faster, and understanding efficiency can be a key to that. So think on that, and next time we’ll think on thought.
See you on the field,
Saegan/Keith