Headhunting

This is the fifth in a series of bouting tutorials we're creating in order to help the members of our online program who are at that stage in their broadsword training. All members of our Apprenticeship Program- especially those who are bouting- should study this video and article very carefully. Each tutorial will have a different theme, and the theme of this one is "Headhunting." All of our bouting tutorials will be explained on the basis of our "seven words": wait, provoke, overwhelm, simplify, deceive, disrupt and change.

Based on the tactical advice of the Highland Officer, Mathewson and others, we know that professional broadsword instructors taught a strategy we refer to as "predatory defense." This strategy, however, is not for everyone. It requires a high degree of focus, patience and alertness under pressure. Some people find it difficult to maintain this kind of heightened alertness for extended periods. Others have a highly aggressive temperament and find it difficult to go against their natural instincts. Others may find that their body type is not best suited to the waiting strategy.

We developed the "headhunting" strategy specifically for those fencers who do not feel comfortable with predatory defense. Headhunting uses the concepts of Simplify and Overwhelm. Because the overwhelming strategy is normally vulnerable to the waiting strategy, we have reduced that vulnerability as much as possible by giving the "headhunter" very little to think about. With a small repertoire of simple actions, the headhunter can concentrate exclusively on the task at hand- hitting the opponent on the head. Here are the guidelines for the headhunting strategy:

1: the hanging guard is used exclusively or almost exclusively. When you stand on guard, use only the hanging guard. When you parry, make all your parries from the hanging guard. When you make an attack, go to a hanging guard as you fly out, regardless of what the opponent might do.

2: the opponent's head, face and neck area (everything covered by the fencing mask) is the primary target. Make 90% of your attacks to the head or face.

3: you can shift back with the lead foot to avoid an attack, but your rear foot never steps backward at all. In other words, you can advance, traverse, lunge or shift but you can never retreat.

Let's examine how this plays out in an actual bout:

Bout #1- Chris, on the right, is the headhunter. Matt is fencing with no particular guidelines or restrictions. For the first few seconds of the bout, Matt makes several attempts to hit Chris in the body, but the hanging guard is such an effective and reliable defense that he cannot get through. Since Chris is using only one of the guards for his defense, there isn't really any chance that he will misjudge his parry. No matter which attack Matt uses, Chris will do the exact same thing and it will nearly always work. Matt's best option is to attempt a timing attack. Matt's first attempt is to time the wrist, but his attack strikes Chris's basket-hilt. His second attempt misses completely, and Chris's weapon strikes his shoulder. Even though Chris was aiming for the head, this is still a success.

Bout #2- Matt makes a series of attacks to the body interspersed with timing attacks to the wrist. Chris's arm is a moving target, so it is not particularly easy to hit. In addition, Chris is making all of his own attacks as tight as possible- an essential feature of the headhunting strategy. If you make any attacks in a broad and sweeping way while using this strategy, you will certainly be timed. You must imagine an invisible box, and keep all of your attacks and parries within this box. After a series of attacks to the head, Chris suddenly makes the same attack while shifting back instead of lunging forward. His blade comes down on Matt's arm, thus timing Matt's attack. Varying your pattern in this way will lead to most of your touches when using this strategy. Even though 90% of your attacks are made to the head, many of your successful touches will occur when you suddenly attack a different target.

Bout#3- Here we can see the concept of "overwhelm." Matt's attempts to hit Chris are all foiled by the simplicity and effectiveness of the hanging guard, but Matt can only parry so many head attacks before one of them gets through.

Bout #4- After a series of straightforward head attacks, Chris slows his hand down halfway through another attack and makes the smallest of feints before driving the strike home at full speed. This not only throws Matt off of his rhythm, but causes him to misjudge his parry. Matt is struck in the head. Explore this kind of "broken rhythm" thoroughly, as it is a very important aspect of this strategy.

Bout #5- Matt's attempts to land a timing attack finally succeed after several more failures. As Chris begins another head attack, Matt slices his wrist from underneath with cut 3. It might seem as if the headhunting strategy has been fully effective, with a 4-1 success rate. However, the situation is not as simple as that. We were treating this session as a series of one-touch bouts, but if we had been treating it as a standard 5-touch bout, the score would have been 4-1 and Chris would have been on the verge of winning. Having finally landed a successful timing attack, Matt then went on to do it again and again, landing three more unanswered timing attacks in a row. In a five touch bout, the score would then have been 4-4. At that point, Chris made use of a hanging slip to score a timing attack on Matt's wrist, which would have given him the victory (just barely) with a score of 5-4. (We weren't satisfied with the video of the rest of the session, so we didn't include it.) The implication of this is that the headhunting strategy has a limited shelf life- you can use it to establish a quick lead in a competitive bout or to quickly strike down a single opponent in a real sword fight. After a little while, though, the opponent will figure out to successfully time you, and once he has your number then the game is up. Some opponents will figure it out sooner, and some later, but some of them will certainly figure it out before you can overwhelm them and win the bout. For this reason, the headhunting strategy will never be as effective or reliable as the waiting strategy. However, for those who are just not in sympathy with predatory defense, the headhunting strategy can be an effective alternative.

Closing Comments :

Despite the fact that the broadsword manuals teach the waiting strategy, there is some precedent for the use of the headhunting strategy as well. Sword skills were widespread in Scottish society, even among those who could not afford to own swords, because of the rural sport of singlestick fencing. (Of course, this is equally true of England.) The custom in singlestick was to award the victory to whoever could first inflict a bleeding wound to the opponent's head. (There was once a Gaelic stick dance named bualidh mi thu `s d'cheann, or "I will strike you on the head," which is probably a reference to this custom.) This naturally led to a reliance on the hanging guard. Singlestick bouts were often fought in relatively close distance, without retreating. Anyone who grew up practicing this sort of singlestick play would be very likely to fight the same way with an actual sword if he later had reason to own one. The result would be very much like our headhunting strategy, which could therefore be seen in some sense as the typical fighting method of the common clansman, whose experience of fencing was based on the rough sports of the countryside rather than the methods of professional broadsword masters.