RingoChances are when you start fighting Steel fighting you’ve never done anything quite like it. Maybe you played sports your whole life, but few team sports are as deliberately violent. Maybe you were an unarmed fighter, a Boxer or Wrestler, but chances are you never really used weapons. Or Maybe you did cause you were a fencer or some form of LARPer, but it’s unlikely your sport integrated grappling, punching, kicking, all at full force or encouraged the use of hard kit as heavy as ours is required.
From what I’ve seen no one comes into this sport as the complete package. They are always missing some skill, whether field sense, armor time, weapon familiarity, grappling competence, or something else. Finding out where those holes are and filling them in is often the first step to becoming a good fighter, but it seems people tend to want to find them the hard way. Falling into the holes face first, sometimes literally as they are slammed to ground repeatedly due to an easily exploitable flaw. What happens less quickly or at least less often though, surprisingly, is people returning to the skills they had and adjusting them to this sport.
The number of Martial Artists who I don’t see landing kicks or punches is staggering. Examples abound : The football players who give up on checking and tackles because they always fell over doing it, The baseball players who don’t figure out how to axe, the larpers who give up on weapons and grapple only, the wrestlers who give up on takedowns to focus on grinding. It seems that people either give up on the skills they had or ride them forever despite their flaws and are unable to adjust.
I’m gonna try and address this. Explain what skills I’ve seen transfer from each background, how they work, how they don’t, and how I think they should be adjusted. I’ll also speak on what skills I think DONT transfer. Worth noting I’ve been wrong about this type of analysis before. For the longest time I didn’t think the traditionally shown hip throw would work in armor because of how close you were required to be, how much energy was put into it, and how armor caught. It seemed it would always turn into a suicide to me, but then I saw it pulled off and it changed alot of how I thought about armored grappling. I will make that mistake again and am likely making it here…However I do think the basic analysis I’m providing will hold up for most fighters coming over. Please let me know where you disagree if you do though! That type of conversation can only improve the level of the sport. Also if you have insight into the background I don’t cover would love to hear them
Let’s start with the big one in American Sports. Football. The sport every remotely large boy athlete is supposed to play in High School. The prototypical American Past Time(sorry baseball) seems to be a large pool we draw our Athletes from. I wonder why…Can’t possibly be the image of men slamming into each other at high speeds covered in protective gear. Unsurprisingly when football players get into this they seem to want to run straight at people and try to just push them over…and sometimes it works! But very quickly that turns into a loosing strategy.
The power to drive, the technique on blocking and even tackling seems to apply, but either seems to end with both fighters downed or the football player simply driving himself into danger or out of the play and getting ditched or downed by the one he hit. My theory is because so much blocking and tackling is aimed at a person directly opposing you, putting all their energy into a resistance, that football players naturally over extend and drive in Armor. This can lead to flattening a person so fast the lack of resistance causes you to fall. They can also simply ride it out cause there is no need to meet force with force, which ends up with the one being hit able to maintain good position while the football player drives themselves to a bad space.
The technique is right but the instinct is all wrong. Football is played mostly linearly, with some side to side work for deception and very little moving backwards. An Armored Combat Melee is much more chaotic exploding in all directions. This leads into the biggest flaw I see in football players. No field sense or dude potential. 90% of football plays either happen in front of you or have zero relevance to your job. Looking at football plays, it looks like they are designed for players to ignore the rest of the field and make thier run looking up just in time to do your thing, and once you’ve done your thing, you may be completely out of the play.
The strength, the explosiveness, the footwork(god do I want to steal some football footwork drills), even the endurance(short bursts of a lot of work, then rest) are mapped very well. But the “simplicity” of the objective and the field makes football able to be a game with discrete specialized positions and full commitment to one job. It’s not just the hitting. This is true of runners too. The jukes that wide receivers use, the agility of backs, and the breaking of tackles are all great skills that could be transferred, but in armor we do it at 80% at best. Running at full speed in armor is a great way to fall over without anyone near you when you hit a divot in the dirt or try to corner. In football, they be going 110% when put the jets on.
So how does a football player retrain their mind and body to fit the armored combat world?
- Do drills in armor at 50% speed. Get used to the armor and just moving at half the output. Learn how to coast, cause you already know how to red line.
- Chaos drills. Any drill where the person needs to learn to scan the field and pick up what is happening. There are a bunch of these, 2 Man forever is one the Knights hall has been doing, get in softkit, form a 2 man team, go run around and try to fight. If you get tapped your out and go find another teammate and jump back in. Ursus does a frisbee drill where you run around holding a frisbee balance on one hand trying knock down the frisbee on the other persons
- Pressure grappling drills. Anything that teaches the concept of go weak when they press hard and hard when they press weak. Sumo Drills are my preferred.
- Lastly, I’d like to see plays designed similar to Basketball, where fighters rotate positions, with the idea of opening up a specific opponent for a heavy check by the football player. I think this hybrid approach of total chaos, to the completely designed plays of football would a good way of utilizing the disciplined nature of a football player mind, and shaping it to a more free form environment.
Next we moving onto the other super common background. LARP fighting. Whether Rattan or Boffer whacky bat fighters are often found moving over to steel. When they come in they generally have some decent weapon skills, potentially a little armor proficiency, and from the larger battle games, a good field sense. They find some limited success at swinging swords, moving around, or reading the field. It isn’t long before they hit a wall though, when they notice the conventions of combat changed significantly and they don’t have an answer in the tool kit.
In particular they often come into singles, do well…then get their ass kicked by someone who spent more time getting fit than most LARPs require, and then never come back. Most sword sports stop on the first acknowledged blow, maybe one or two more. Due to this lots of fighters have a bad habit of pausing after they know they’ve beaten an opponent or pausing at the end of a combo. In Steel shit don’t, more like a Boxing or MMA match, and just putting out more shots can beat alot of fighters simply for not being able to match pace or dropping guard thinking they are safe.
There is no safe in the list and that’s often the other big mistake I see. Many other melee games have some form of convention that prevents people from blowing up players from behind. Whether its rules about getting their attention, requiring light blows, or simply not allowing it, there is not the need to constantly be watching your 6 like in Bohurt. So…when a fighter gets into it, they can be cleaned out HARD, for not paying attention. This is a similar flaw to the Football player above and will make an appearance for Baseball and for Unarmed martial artists who come into the sport as well.
The last big flaw I see from larpers is a quick rejection of weapon blows as effective. Armor works really really well and most of the time when a sword nerd who comes here was already expressing their sword nerdery in another sport, they were able to “win” simply via striking and that’s exceedingly difficult for us. Dropping a fighter from strikes is almost always done with 2 handers, wielded very well, and when catching opponents off guard or after a complete pounding.
However weapons are super effective at hurting people and opening up opportunities, if you know how to swing them. Teaching fighters with no background how to do this takes alot of time and energy, but there’s a number of us who came into the game with most of the basics down and just gave up swinging completely. Far more decide they will only swing with a 2 hander and while that’s good, weapon mix makes for a more effective line in my opinion, than everyone running a cowboy axe.
So how do we fix it?
- Pausing gets fixed via specific sparring drills. I like doing offense and defense. One person is only allowed to strike, the other only allowed to defend for a round, then switch. The striker should not take breaks for the whole round but be striving to strike the whole time. I also like Shark Tanks. Put a fighter in the list, send in an opponent to fight them for a round. Next round a new fresh opponent. The fresh fighters are always pushing the pace, forcing the one in the tank to get used to always being in the action. Breaks alot of bad habits
- The failing to protect the back via two types of drills. Ass to rail drills. Have the fighter do an activity, tires, strike the pell on the run, cross check, and then rush to rail and turn ass to, post up and survey the field. Drill the idea of never pausing in space, always getting ass to rail. The other is Dude potential drills. The simple idea is divide a practice into two teams and then have everyone run around chaotically, trying to keep track of everyone else. Randomly pause to ask someone what their Dude potential is, forcing them to keep track of it. This works best after a really hard work out when everyone is really tired as that’s usually when your brain stops working and the time you most need practice at it. You can also add it to any other chaos drill like the frisbee drill or 2 man forever from above.
- Relearning how to use weapons is just more pell work and looking for different opportunities. Recognizing a sword strike is a jab most of the time. Learning to read armor and throw for spots that are usually less useful, like inside of arm or back of calf. The best practice for this is sparing in soft kit or armor and simply looking for those spots. You don’t need to blow em up, just touch em, as you should have the gross motion to deliver power.
Other backgrounds we see include more free form Ball sports like BasketBall or Soccer, Stick sports like Hockey or Lacrosse, unArmed Martial Arts like Wrestling and boxing. Some people come in with no significant athletic background, which means there will be fewer bad habits to break but alot of basics might not be there. As these are less common in my experience I’m going to address them a bit shorter.
Baseball: There is very little transfer besides swinging the bat. However that swing is 90% of a perfect Axe swing, imo. The big problems are learning to recover and swing again and to not completely twist on swing and put themselves off balance. Work on Moving to targe when striking to break bad habits and learn good timing. Also work 2-4 swing combos.
Boxing: Footwork is very good…minus the bouncing. Plant. Gross motions for Punching mechanics are the same but subtleties are Different. I’ll do a more detailed breakdown later, but basically throw overhangs, not straights. And punch 6 inches past where you think you should as distance displaced on the head is more important than impact power. Put on your armor and shield and practice punching/shadow boxing. You will start to feel how it moves your arm differently, just go with it, don’t fight it.
Wrestling: Grappling sense and endurance is great…stance is not, and 90% of techniques are ineffective without alot of modification. Primarily you don’t want to be tight during most throws, level changes are way more subtle, and most other motions are…less subtle. Also, learning to let go and find better opportunities is hard. I like a drill where you attemp to get a throw off in 3 seconds and if you fail, you try to separate and leave.
Soccer and BasketBall: Field sense and working with a team is good. You’re also good at running. That’s it. So run alot, like alot alot, but realize your team probably won’t be there to support you unless you work with them or show them things like Triangle drills. Also learn to grapple, to strike, and just fight in general
Hockey: Postitional movement is great. Checking is great. Honestly I think everything might come over perfectly.
Lacross: Polearms are just heavier sticks. Swing em alot.
No Athletic/sports Background: This one is much harder. So if you have no sports background learning first how to move is the hardest thing. Focusing on form on a lot of basic exercises will be very important to build a proprioceptive sense. I highly suggest practicing Yoga, Animal Walks, and tumbling and really focusing on where your limbs, core, and head are. If you can, get a running coach too, cause learning how to run if you’ve never done it is…surprisingly hard. More than anything else you just need to get that basic functional movement. Agility ladders, tire flipping, box jumps, balance work….all of this will have exponential gains for you when you are practicing striking and sparring.
The very last thing to think about what you bring to fighting, is your mental game. For alot of us, with the sport being so new, we will bring little things, pieces of ourselves, that will shape it for years to come. Perhaps something as small as a detail in a throw or a specific move/play. Perhaps an attitude that changes the way fighters interact, an aggression or a friendliness that infect your team first, and then the region, and finally the country or perhaps the whole sport. Maybe an attention to rules that helps refine them. Maybe a leadership that turns your region into killers. I can’t really speak on what that thing is. To apply a concept from 13th Age, the TableTop RPG, We all have our One Unique Thing. Finding your OUT and developing it, shaping it, deliberately interacting with it and bringing it to your team and their fights, will do more for your growth, their growth, and the sports growth, than all the bullshit I put out above. So find it. And help makes this something special.