Longsword Constraints Led Approach For Fighters w/ Stephen Cheney (SSOF Ep 141)

Stephen Cheney0:33

So we've been doing CLA at my club ever since then. Basically games based learning with other ecological methodologies mixed in and yeah it's been working great. I really see it having been able to compare the two, like the pre-pandemic traditional style versus the post-pandemic CLA style.

It's really a huge difference. I see people getting proficient a lot faster. And really an important aspect of this for me because I'm also still a practitioner is fun. So people are a lot more fun to fight against, right? Because they're more creative. They do more interesting things. They're just more fun.

James de Lacey4:49

For listeners like myself who don't know much about long sword fighting, just to give a background, I think it will help when we go into maybe some of the examples you have there. Kind of do you want to just quickly break down some of the rules of and how the matches work and things like that?

Stephen Cheney5:05

Sure. Well, first of all, so this is what we use. So, it's sword in two hands. It's fairly long. This is 53 inches long is kind of the standard length of these. They've got some weight to them. They're about 2 and a half pounds. And the most basic goal is hit the other person with the blade, ideally without getting hit yourself.

There's no standard rule set in Long Sword. It kind of varies by event. But by and large, if you're hitting the other person and not getting hit, then you're winning the match basically. And we wear full gear.

So, we wear fencing masks with, you can see something in the background here, we wear fencing masks with extra padding. We wear big padded jackets and heavy gloves and all that stuff. Usually you are fencing to the first hit.

So, after somebody is hit, the judges will call halt and you separate and then the judges will decide who they think scored points. So, it's not usually not a continuous kind of thing where you're just bashing and bashing away each other.

So that affects the tactical framework. If you're trying to compare this to boxing or MMA, that might be a difference that might come into play.

James de Lacey6:39

So you could almost say it's kind of like fencing but slower because of the equipment you have.

Stephen Cheney7:02

I mean I think it's pretty fast. I guess technically, I mean those the modern fencing weapons they're very light, so yes. I guess you can say that it's slower, but it's not slow, right? It's still the time frame of like someone cutting with this is like faster than your reaction time basically. So it's still a very fast sport. But I guess yes, it's technically slower than.

James de Lacey7:18

Nice. So it'll be I think it'll be interesting even if you just I know it's kind of different games. I guess it's hard to maybe extrapolate other sports, but it might be interesting just to hear some examples of things that you're doing and maybe what you're looking to get out of some of these games within long sword fighting and then that might just spur further conversation, maybe get some people's minds thinking of how it could be applied to to other martial arts. But it just be interesting to kind of see what you're kind of manipulating in these games to get what kind of outcomes.

Stephen Cheney7:57

Sure. So there's a couple of different things that, well actually before we talk about games I do want to clarify one thing which is kind of a common misconception I see about the ecological approach, which is a lot of people see it and think that it's equivalent to just games.

So they'll be like, "Oh, well, games, ecological approach is games and we do a game sometimes, therefore we're doing," or similar to positional work or something like that.

James de Lacey8:29

Similar to that. Yeah. Right.

Stephen Cheney8:29

And I mean positional work can be ecological, but it just depends on how you use it, right? So the ecological approach is a theory of perception and a theory of learning. So what you do, what is ecological and what is not, depends on the goal. But it just so happens that games are very good at, are a very good tool for executing the ecological approach in antagonistic sports and martial arts.

And the reason is because you need to set up a situation that represents whatever you're trying to do. And in order to do that, you need some, you need an opponent who's acting in a realistic way. And the best way to get someone acting in a realistic way is to make them actually be doing the thing for real.

So, just a little bit of background before, because I hear that a lot. I know you didn't ask that, but

James de Lacey9:37

No, perfect. That's good.

Stephen Cheney9:37

A lot of these ecological conversations I hear that misconception. Oh, ecological that means games. Well, no, not really.

James de Lacey9:52

Do you want to give an example of that then? So, okay. You mentioned obviously the outcome is what will make it ecological. So, what would be the difference between, may I don't know, I don't know examples in longsword, but I'll give a quick example maybe in jiu-jitsu or something and you can relay some else. So if you're doing positional work like side control, one person's on top, one person's on the bottom, side control, and you're just doing positional work from there. And then what would be, what would make that ecological essentially?

Stephen Cheney10:08

Well, I mean, so that's just, I mean, you're just playing the game, right? At that point, you're just playing the game, but you're starting in a specific position. So your students are going to get out of that, whoever is doing that activity is going to get out of it whatever they would have gotten out of it playing the real game.

So what is their mindset, right? What is the mindset that you are encouraging during the class? What preceded this? Did you do a specific drill for a specific technique and give them a bunch of prescriptive, this muscle has to move like this, this arm has to move there, and now they have that in their mind and that's exactly what they're trying to do.

If that's the case then they're not going to be learning ecologically during it. If you are trying to get them to explore the aspects of this position and what they can and can't do and if you're encouraging exploration, then you're executing the ecological approach if that makes sense.

James de Lacey11:31

Yeah. And you mentioned the mindset there, which is actually quite interesting because that doesn't often come up. How often do you play around with this as part of say your constrained approach to games? For example, maybe one person's being more aggressive or one person's trying to, you know, whatever it is. Is that something that you're often playing with in these different games constraints?

Stephen Cheney11:49

Yeah. So yeah, this gets back to your original question of what exactly are we doing and what are we manipulating, which I did want to get back to. I didn't want to sound like I was dodging the question or anything because I do want to talk about that.

James de Lacey12:02

No, you're good.

Stephen Cheney12:02

So I guess let's give you an example of some of the games that we do. Okay. So some of the very highly constrained games.

So what some of the first games we give to beginners, one of them is called the direct attack game. So basically, you have two people, an attacker and a defender. Defender holds their sword down, attacker starts in shoulder guard, and they're both standing in one spot.

The attacker, their goal is simply to cut straight and hit the head. Okay? So they're not allowed to fake and go to the other side. They have to go straight up. The defender's goal is simply to block the attack with their sword.

Okay. So if the defender lands a hit or sorry, if the attacker lands a hit, they step back and try again, right? So now they're further away. It's going to be a little bit harder. If the defender blocks, the attacker gets closer and tries again.

Okay. So the purpose of this is, well, there's a couple purposes. One is to learn to attack. And in this case, so you can compare it to a static drill where you can say one person just stands there and the other person is hitting and the coach is giving them tips on how to hit better and what how to make their form better, right?

So in this case, your coach is the fact that your opponent is blocking. Okay? So the fact that they're blocking means that you have to attack in such a way that you can hit before they block, which means you have to go fast. You have to be efficient and get to your target quick. You have to eliminate any tells from your attack.

So ways that this can go wrong, right? What if somebody just can't hit? I think this is maybe what you were getting at, right? So what do you do if somebody just can't hit and they're just getting closer and closer and closer and they just can't hit at all? You have to in that case, you have to intervene, right? You have to intervene as the coach and give them some tips.

So there's a few possible reasons that this could be happening which you have to diagnose. One big common one is people are moving their body in before they start or they're forcing themselves to take a step with their foot. And if that's the case then the person's going to see them. That's going to be a huge tell. The person's going to see them coming and they're going to be able to block every time.

So my tip for that is just say like look, you don't have to step if you don't need to. If you can just reach them, then just reach them. And think of it as if—this actually comes from a historical source—think of it as if a string is attached to the tip of your sword and it's being pulled to your opponent's head. Just get it there as quickly as possible.

Great. So I'm not telling them any specific muscle movement. I'm not telling them to move any specific part of their body to extend their arms or anything like that. It's all results based. So I'm giving tips based on outcomes. So I don't know if that answered your question.

James de Lacey15:58

Yeah. No, that's awesome. That's awesome. It's just getting my mind running on kind of different things you're doing and what you're trying to get outcomes wise. I think the audience will also start to see that I guess the different outcomes you're trying to get from a, I guess you could say, a really simple game that one as you mentioned for beginners. So then how are you then progressing that as they get better or maybe as just in terms of variation and things like that too?

Stephen Cheney16:34

Right. So that game, it's highly constrained there. There's not very many options for either side. So it's pretty limited. And we don't really—it's also not very representative, right? So being representative, it's an important, it's something we think about a lot in CLA because what you're doing has to transfer over and if it's not representative it won't transfer as well.

So this game's not as representative as it could be. So a few obvious limitations are lack of movement is the big one, right? Both people are static. That's never going to happen when you're fencing. Another one obviously, you can only attack one way. The defender can only defend one way. So yes, there's a lot of limitations to this one.

So we kind of use that one for the purpose of, you know, showing people—well twofold actually. I said two things before and I only mentioned one. So the one thing is getting your attack going right. The second one is showing people or giving people an idea of the distance at which you can hit with a direct attack. And that is closer than a lot of people think.

So if you're fencing and you're trying to hit someone, and you're doing it from too far away, then that's a recipe for frustration because you're never going to land a hit. You're going to get countered every time. So this kind of shows them that no, you actually have to be really close in order to land the hit. So they'll have realistic expectations on defense.

So regarding those limitations, so the next step up kind of is, in my view, is a game called Finnish chicken. We call it that because a guy from Finland came up with it and it's kind of like a game of chicken. So basically two fencers start from a further distance and they're both starting in the shoulder guard again. And they're not allowed to move backwards. They can only move forward, but they can do whatever kind of step they want. They can alter their patterns. They can jump. They can do whatever they want as long as they're moving forward.

At any moment, either person can attack. And if they land their hit, then they win. And if they're blocked, then the person who blocks them wins. Okay? And either person can do that. There's not an attacker and a defender role.

So this is still a highly constrained situation. You still have to go straight in. You're not allowed to do any feints or any weird stuff like that. But it adds, it adds (a) footwork and (b) it adds a mind game aspect, right? Because if you attack from too far away, then you're going to get blocked. But the closer you get, the more likely it is that your opponent is going to be able to hit you quickly. So that's a pretty representative mind game of actual fencing. That's going to come up a lot.

And the idea of knowing when you're in distance and maybe creating a situation where you're in distance and your opponent doesn't, and executing on that or forcing your opponent to attack before they're ready. So you're adding all these aspects, all these representative aspects that exist in the game. But it's still highly constrained. It's still missing a bunch of pieces.

But the idea is that everything—so you're not learning footwork first. You're not saying like, okay, put your swords down. This is how you take a step. Okay, pick your swords up, don't move. This is how you swing a sword. Right? You're not learning each of them one by one. This is how you block. You're not learning each of them one by one. It's all, you're learning all of it at the same time.

So we call this nonlinear pedagogy, right? And you're just simplifying the game. So you're, as opposed to breaking it down into pieces, you're simplifying it.

James de Lacey21:06

Yeah. So I'm assuming as well when you're fighting against different size people as well, you, the range that your opponent has changes each time as well. So you've got more elements that are going into it?

Stephen Cheney21:06

Yes. Yeah. That's definitely an aspect. And you're doing this and you're switching partners. You're doing it with a bunch of different people. You're getting a lot of different perspectives and everybody has their own strategies and everybody is learning in their own way. And by doing that, you're getting variation and you're learning.

And some people are left-handed, too, right? So if you're left-handed, then if you do this game right-handed, you're going to go straight in. But left-handed, now both swords are on the same side. So you kind of have to figure out how to create a situation. And I have some people sometimes they're like, "Oh, should I switch to a right-handed stance to make this work better?" And I'm like, "No, you definitely shouldn't because that's not going to happen when you're fencing."

No one's going to, no one's going to put themselves at a disadvantage by switching their hands when you're fencing. You got to deal with it.

James de Lacey22:06

For sure. And this is obviously you mentioned it's in a straight line. So in a straight line, correct? You can still move around.

So is that the next step on top of this kind of game you would go to?

Stephen Cheney22:22

Not necessarily. So offline footwork is definitely an aspect, but if you're talking about engaging at distance, right? So fencing happens at a further distance than boxing or especially grappling.

So I'm not, I don't know very much about boxing. I'm not going to pretend to either. But I imagine that moving from side to side can give you some advantage. In some ways in fencing, it sometimes it can, but it's marginal, right? The further you are apart, the less good, the less stepping to the side is going to help you because the other person can just change.

Now, when you're in close, stepping off definitely helps and close game is definitely an aspect that we practice. But if we're talking about engaging from distance, then we tend not to focus too hard on offline movement, although it does come up sometimes.

So progression from there, from Above You Finished Chicken. So then once the game is less constrained, the world kind of opens up because now it's like okay well we can do sparring but you can only go for thrusts maybe, or this person has to start in this guard, the other person has to start in that guard. This person can only, whatever.

You give either side either something to do. And what you choose for them to do depends on what skills you want to work on at that particular moment.

James de Lacey24:35

What are the typical outcomes you're looking for in HEMA? Because obviously you talked about the range, you're trying to find the range. You're looking at pairing everything with footwork. So what are some of the other outcomes you're looking at then and you're designing games around?

Stephen Cheney24:52

Interesting. Good question. I feel like the answer to this is like the system. Like a system with fencing. What is a system with fencing?

James de Lacey24:52

Yeah, I guess I guess more kind of like, so for example I think maybe just from my experience using this within say live rugby. Like in for sprinting right, we use a constraints approach because we're trying to get an outcome of the foot landing on the ground from above, so we want that kind of hammer the nail down.

So we'll use different things to get that outcome. We want to be able to dissociate upper and lower body by doing different things because we want to be able to sprint and do other things. So we'll design things around those outcomes of speed for that sport. So I don't know if that helps at all frame the question any better.

Stephen Cheney25:50

It does. Yeah. So at the high level, the outcomes are results based. So say we're working on thrusting, then the outcome we're looking for is the thrust lands, right? There's secondary outcomes that are helpful but not necessary. Like if you thrust while, if you line up thrust while the sword's bound up against your sword, maybe that'll be better in some situations. Or if you're doing it as a, in a certain timing or whatever.

There's also some, I don't want to, I guess I don't want to use the word, oh what is it? Or something. Oh man, I forget this class word for a thing that is constant whenever you do a technique. An attractor, is that what? Attractor? No. Oh, I don't know. Attractor. Attractor. And now I forgot the other one. Attractor. And jeez, now I can't remember the other one either.

James de Lacey26:59

Yeah, it's, it doesn't happen. But is that what you mean though? Like an attractor of movement?

Stephen Cheney26:59

Just an aspect of a movement that happens whenever you do this movement. So basically like a kinetic chain, right? So if you have, if I'm doing a step, like if I'm doing a passing step, then there's a moment when the leg, the upper body and well the leg and the upper body are all in line. They're all in a diagonal line pushing forward.

And if that's the case, then you're on the right track with your attack. And if you're not creating that, then there may be something that needs to be coached. But again, it's not 100% necessary because if they're getting the outcome, if they're landing with it, then I don't really care how, if they're doing this thing that I think should be correct. But there are certain things that are common, that are commonly seen in a correct outcome.

So I guess those are the main things that I would be looking for. Invariance. That's the word. Invariance. But yeah, mostly I mean the big one is just did they land the hit or did they not? Did they defend themselves or did they not? If you're working on some kind of defensive thing.

Yeah, we also, this might be like maybe like anti-ecological. I don't know. I haven't decided yet. But we're also trying to learn a historical fencing system at the same time. And it contains prescriptive techniques, and there's a sparehouse where you go like that and that's like a move that exists in this system and it's really useful in modern fencing.

But we sometimes go out of our way to look at those types of techniques even if one of them might not be the most useful for modern fencing. Although we try to make them all as useful as possible. Because part of the appeal of longsword is that you are studying this old system that existed 500 years ago. But that being said, we do try as hard as we can to produce positive results for fencing and yeah, a clean hit is the outcome we're looking for.

James de Lacey29:36

What do you see, maybe I don't know how I'm going to frame this, but what do you see that is different from say the best or better guys in the sport versus the ones that aren't so good? Is it just time in the sport or are they able to pick up these games and stuff faster? Is there athleticism? Is there something that you have seen that maybe is a trend for the better guys?

Stephen Cheney30:26

Good question. I mean this is going to be true of any training method, but the better people are the ones who are more dedicated, the ones who are showing up to all the classes, the ones who are asking questions, working on finding things to work on. They're always going to be the people who turn out to be better fencers.

As far as the games go, I guess I see creativity from the better people. They're more bought into the games. They're really trying to win and really working hard to figure out the game. So a lot of times a game, you set up these constraints and which are rules, right? They're the rules of the game.

And sometimes you can kind of figure out, like gaming the rules a lot of times is, you think of gaming the rules as being something negative. Like oh you're compromising your principles to do something that's not intended. But in the case of these games, a lot of times that is intended. Like you want to game the rules because you're trying to, you're trying to be creative. You're trying to figure out the best solution. So the people who end up being better fencers sometimes game the rules more than others.

James de Lacey32:20

I'm sure there's an aspect as well of guys along with that creative line that aren't scared to lose. I think a lot of people in different games as well, they like, the ego comes into play. It's like I don't want this guy to get, whatever on me, so I'm just going to play it safe essentially and only do this one thing.

And then you kind of lose the benefit of doing it where you can. Because you're doing maybe, I don't know, let's just say you're doing five minute rounds, you've got five minutes to just try as much as possible and see what happens and what works.

Stephen Cheney32:51

Yeah, that's a good point. Not being afraid to lose. Yeah. Because if you're afraid to lose, you're only going to do, you're going to limit yourself to what you think is going to be the best. So you're not going to be trying to figure out new solutions. You're not going to be exploring your solution space, which is the point of the game.

I also think that that's a kind of a limitation of games. You hear about, even Rob Gray talks about this is the 70% rule, right?

So if you're coaching somebody then you should be, whatever activity they're doing, you should set it up in such a way that they succeed 70% of the time. And if you're playing a game that, which is if it's a 50/50 chance for either side to win and both people are equal skilled, then they're going to be winning 50% of the time, not 70% of the time.

So, but it's a limitation that we kind of don't have a solution for. But yeah, if you're not afraid to lose, then you're going to benefit more.

James de Lacey33:53

How much then, because of some of these maybe limitations or some of this stuff, how much actual just open sparring then do you like to do?

Stephen Cheney34:15

A lot. So we do a two-hour session. We always start with sparring, and then we'll do maybe we'll read from the source for a couple minutes, and then we'll do a couple games, and then we do more sparring at the end, along with maybe some dodge matches. So yes, we do a lot of sparring.

James de Lacey34:36

How do you manage the sparring in the beginning then? Obviously, is that part of kind of like, are you sparring lighter in the beginning, almost like as a warm-up, and then you just progressing it throughout the session? How does that look?

Stephen Cheney34:50

Yeah, so the first sparring session is essentially a warm-up. And if somebody feels that they would rather do like a static warm-up on their own, then they're free to do that as well.

Yeah, usually we start slow and then build it up as we go. And then by the time we get to the games, everybody is a, should be loosened up, should be ready to go, and b, hopefully has been thinking about their sparring and thinking about what they want to work on for that session.

So that's kind of why I decided to start with sparring, is so you can use that as an opportunity to think about what you want to work on. Like, oh, when I got here I didn't know what to do, but during that sparring session I feel like I was having trouble parrying on this side or whatever. So maybe I'll focus on that in my training today or whatever.

James de Lacey35:53

No, I like that. Do you ever have to change I guess some of the games if you have two guys who are maybe really different skill levels? For example, I was talking to Josh Peacock a few weeks ago and he gave some examples where, if someone can't do, if someone's too new and they don't have the skill level for the game, they'll just kind of regress the game right back for that person. They'll start maybe like for example in your range game, they might start closer than the other person starting further away. So I guess how are you managing that?

Stephen Cheney36:24

Yeah. So that's another logistical difficulty because we are like, we're not a professional club. We're like a casual club that ultimately, like we produce people who get deep in brackets and high-level tournaments, but ultimately it's a hobby. It's a casual hobby. So we have people of all skill levels in all of our classes.

And there's a couple of ways that the skill difference will go down with that. First of all, regarding what Josh Peacock said about sometimes someone just won't be able to do something, that does happen sometimes in fencing, but it's a lot less likely than in something like jiu-jitsu.

So like in grappling, so I did judo, so I didn't do very much. I did like a couple years, so I'm not an expert, but I have practiced it. In judo, if you are going up against somebody who's good and you're not good, then you have zero chance of doing anything ever. That person will grab you and you will not be able to do anything. You'll be on your ass.

James de Lacey37:50

Yeah, you're just ground.

Stephen Cheney37:50

It's going to happen and you won't be able to throw them. In fencing it's a little bit different, right?

So anybody can move around. Anybody can pick up a stick or like a sword or whatever and move around back and forth and swing that stick. So anybody can get lucky and land a hit on someone who's good.

So that being said, they, like any skill level can at least participate in any game. There's not going to be, there's not, I mean, unless someone has like an injury or something, there's not going to be any physical barrier to participating in the game.

Now, as far as skill difference goes, so one thing is with the direct attack game, I'll bring it back to that one. That game is kind of special because due to the fact that they're both static.

When you swing and hit, you step back. So the more you hit, the harder it becomes for you, and the more you get blocked, the easier it becomes. And what that does is it basically self-scales the game. So either side can be any skill level and it will just be like if the attacker is a higher skill level, they'll be back further, and if they're a lower skill level, they'll be closer. But either way, both people should be winning about half the time.

If all games could be like that, then it would be awesome, perfect, but unfortunately that's not how it is. So sometimes there'll be a big skill difference. So maybe the higher-skilled person has to go a little bit easier, which is not ideal for training. But again, casual club limitations. That's what we do sometimes. And then sometimes we just separate the class into groups based on skill level.

That's something we've been doing more recently. And that just allows everybody to get more meaningful reps with each other.

James de Lacey40:01

I like that. That's really good. For someone who's listening to this and maybe wants to kind of learn more as well, do you have any books or resources that you recommend?

Stephen Cheney40:20

Like that I produced or just in general?

James de Lacey40:20

Just in general. Or if, have you produced anything?

Stephen Cheney40:20

Well, me and a few other longsword coaches have this website called Game Design for HEMA. So that's gd4hema.org, and we have a bunch of articles up there, mostly about CLA and the ecological approach and applying it to teaching HEMA. Sources that I have found useful are, so Rob Gray, the Perception Action Podcast, and he has three books.

How We Learn to Move was his first one. Then Learning to Optimize Movement and then Learning to Be an Ecological Coach. So if you really want to get into CLA and the ecological approach and applying it to coaching, then those I think are kind of the gold standard on at least digestible sources, right?

You can go academic, right? You can look up studies and papers and that kind of stuff, and that's going to dive you deeper into the rabbit hole. But for getting into it, I would definitely recommend those.

James de Lacey41:35

Nice. I'm going to link your site in the description too for listeners. But one more question to finish this out too that is kind of unrelated, but are you familiar with the melee or the melee fighting championship?

It is probably something that you're sitting there and you're probably like, "[Expletive] that. This has nothing to do with this." It's basically like five on five dudes in medieval armor in a wooden octagon beating the [expletive] out of each other with weapons. I don't know if you've heard of that or seen that before.

Stephen Cheney42:23

So I've heard of like Battle of Nations or like Bober, I have heard of, which is that, and like the, the win, the scoring condition is like if you get knocked off your feet, you're out. And last team with somebody on their feet wins. Is it different from that or?

James de Lacey42:37

I think it's the same thing. I guess here in Austin it's that they have like their own championship that they do at different events, and dude, it's crazy man. Obviously I don't think there's any actual skill component other than just trying to bash the other dude with something heavy.

Stephen Cheney42:52

Yeah. Well, I've thought about it. I mean it's about like the scoring condition. Yeah, I have watched this. I've thought about it. I haven't participated in it. I would be too scared to, but it does, like the strategies like do interest me. And I feel like a team of like American football players would probably do pretty well.

James de Lacey43:07

Well, that's the, you don't even have to use weapon. You can use your weapon or you can just kick people out of the body thing. You can do anything.

Stephen Cheney43:19

Yeah. It's like that is crazy. Or like a team of like really good judo or sumo players probably.

James de Lacey43:19

Yeah, it's a crazy game. I was, I watched it live. It was like a fitness festival here and I was like, what the hell is going on? Dudes fully armored out like chain mail, metal, everything, like actual, like that was, and they'll smash each other on the head with these things. I'm like, "Bro, I'm pretty sure that's like concussion central going on right now in there." And dude's just like after one round, like the helmets often, like lying there dead.

And I was like, I don't know. That's crazy to get into that, but I'm assuming that's, that's more a brutish version of HEMA where HEMA actually has some kind of skill and technical tactical elements to it.

Stephen Cheney43:53

Yeah. Look, I mean, I will never say anything bad about Bober.

I think it's really cool. Again, I wouldn't do it myself. And honestly, people can sometimes be a little bit snobby about like, "Oh, we do it the historical way, we study historical books." But if you look at what knights were actually doing for training, a nightly tournament was a lot closer to what the Buhurt people are doing, smashing each other in armor, than whatever we're doing with these swords and fencing. Which one is really more historical? I don't know.

Really, as me personally, I like the skill. I like the skills that fencing produces. I like the approach and the strategy of like, "Alright, what am I going to do? I'm going to block and go like that and I'm going to set up my hit and land it." That's the skill that I am interested in that I think is cool.

James de Lacey45:12

No, I love that. Yeah, this is a super interesting chat too. It was really cool to go into some of the examples you had with games and everything and your explanation around everything. But if people want to find you and follow you, is GD4.org the only place or you got some more places where people can keep up with what you're doing?

Stephen Cheney45:24

I have a YouTube channel called Overanalyzing Long Sword. I post sometimes, I post longsword analysis sometimes. I don't really have Instagram or Facebook or anything, but yeah.

James de Lacey45:44

Sweet. No, it's all good. I'll link that up in the description as well. Some of these got a lot of views. I didn't realize HEMA was this popular. You got like 1.1, 1.2, 1.3K views on some of these little breakdowns. That's sweet.

Stephen Cheney46:03

Yeah, it's I mean it's not widely popular, but we have a core group that like people who are interested in HEMA seek this kind of stuff out.

James de Lacey46:22

Do you have maybe Olympic fencers that come over to this maybe when they start competing in fencing and things like that, or it's just too far removed sometimes?

Stephen Cheney46:22

Yeah, a lot of the high level competitors, most of them have some kind of background in something. I have, as I mentioned before, I have a background in kendo. A lot of them came from modern Olympic fencing. Some people are natural trained killers. But I feel like that's how it is in everything too. You always have your background, right? Whatever sport you practiced in middle school and high school and whatever.

James de Lacey47:01

Do you find certain backgrounds lend themselves better to HEMA than others?

Stephen Cheney47:01

Yeah, I mean, modern fencing definitely doesn't hurt. It's definitely very helpful, especially if you're a high level modern fencer, because you have all that, even if the blade work isn't 100% the same. You have that sense of distance. The length of the weapons is similar, so you have that sense of distance, you have that ability to manipulate people. You have the mind games all ready to go. You just have to adapt some things.

For me, coming from kendo, the close game was the biggest adaptation that I needed to make because kendo doesn't really have a close game. When you get close, you just separate. But in longsword, once you get close, you can do close-in cuts, you can grapple, you can push. There's a lot going on there.

James de Lacey47:56

Oh, sweet. I might have to watch a couple of these later tonight or tomorrow just to see what's going on. But I appreciate you coming on, Stephen, and sharing everything and we'll catch up soon.

Stephen Cheney48:20

Sure. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it a lot.