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Better Athlete - Better Team

A Different Kind of Honor

1/20/2016

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A Different Kind of Honor 
by Lane Atteridge

Lane has been involved in the ACS since 2014. He traveled with The USA Knights to Poland in 2015, competing in the IMCF World Championships and is the current Captain of the Boston Dark Knights. He trains at The Knights Hall in Nashua, New Hampshire. 
“Well, you wouldn't want to attack a man with his back turned, that's not honorable.” I overheard a fan saying after our latest Chapter Match. His sentiment is completely understandable from an outsider's perspective, but misses the mark a bit. The brutality of this sport sometimes makes spectators think we adhere to a set of vague guidelines on top of the rules of the sport. Maybe some do, but I have a good reason for following the letter of the law when it comes to rules, no more and no less. It's a different sort of honor, one that is not immediately apparent to an outsider. It can be broken into two pieces, “Honor your Teammates” and “Honor your Opponent.”

Honor your Teammates
    This sport is no joke. Broken bones and concussions abound, armor failures lead to bloody scars and I've seen more than one man spit out his own teeth. I've only been fighting for a year and a half. This level of violence leads to injury, and the old saying goes “It's not a question of if, but a question of when.” Some of these injuries can be career-enders. You get a stray shot to the knee with a polearm and suddenly you're walking with a limp for the rest of your life, and get to watch your buddies fight from a comfy seat on the sidelines. We're warriors, it's in our blood, and the idea of getting retired by a blow is a very real and very terrifying thought. While good armor and training can mitigate this risk, it can never go away. Damaging another human is the core tenant of our sport. So how do we come to terms with this? We fight hard, and we fight fast, and we protect the people standing next to us.     “Honoring your Teammate” means doing anything and everything to stop another fighter from hurting them. If you hesitate, if you pull punches, if you stop and worry about hurting the man on the other side of the list field, that moment could cost your teammate. If you pull your punches on an attack from behind, that might not be enough to stop your enemy from swinging his weapon into your teammates hip. That weapon swing might be the swing that misses armor and lands straight on flesh and bone, destroying both. That might put your teammate out for days, weeks, years, or retire them forever. In the context of our sport, it would be your fault for hesitating, because your opponent is fighting just as hard for his own teammate. Ending the fight quickly will be your best insurance against a friend and teammate getting injured, and sometimes the only way to end a fight quickly is by brutality. When you rely on your team, and your team relies on you, hesitation to hurt people is not an option.

Honor your Opponent
    Steel Fighting takes a certain kind of person, I think we all know that. New fighters are entering the sport constantly these days, and I am seeing new faces at every event. I don't know these men, and they don't know me. So I fight them as hard as I can, and I expect no less from them. A sign of respect is treating every opponent like a dangerous adversary, even if it's their first day in armor. Part of that is respect for anyone willing to get in kit and get out on the field. It takes guts, and I admire anyone who is willing to do it. I'm going to treat them with the same level of reverence and respect as a storied warrior who has been fighting for years, because I respect the act of getting out there and fighting. Another aspect of honoring your opponent speaks to the danger inherent in this sport. Someone could have never held a falchion in their life, but it comes naturally to them, and they start swinging it with bone-breaking power. You have no idea what you're coming up against, and so I treat all comers with respect, because underestimating them could land myself or a teammate in the hospital.
    When I had my second Knight Fight, I went up against the legendary Dave “The Mangler” Olsen, and he took me to task. In the last round of the fight, I was exhausted and my arms were lead, and I literally couldn't defend myself from his blows. But I wasn't kneeling, or saying yield, but I was stubbornly staying on my feet the best I could. After four or five clean, unimpeded punches and chops to my head from The Mangler, I saw him hesitate for just a heartbeat. It was a stutter in his swings, a momentary calculation. He knew he could just step back and wait, seeing if I would yield, or the ref would call a TKO. But he did me the great honor of hitting me as hard and as fast as he could until the bell sounded. I truly take that as an honor, and I know it sounds insane, but taking pity on my exhausted body and just stepping back would have been devastating to me. He had won the round, and with that won the match, but he still treated me like a legitimate threat until the end. It was an honor.

Fighting Your Hardest for Yourself, Your Team, Your Opponents
    A lot of people like to talk a lot of things about honor, and off the field “honor” can be a lot of things, too many and too varied to talk about here. But on the field, this is what I consider to be the most honorable actions. It seems strange, my honor code seems to demand hitting opponents as hard as I can in weakly armored areas, or grabbing them and turning them to a friend who will hopefully do the same. It's counterintuitive until you realize what it would mean if you didn't do these things. To me, these guidelines are unwavering rules, etched in stone, letting me know that I gave my all on the field.

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KnightFight® (Part 2)

1/8/2016

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So, You want to have a KnightFight®

By Evan Ringo

So, you want to have a KnightFight®, do you? Good. They’re fun. More than that they are, in my opinion, the purest form of this competition.
         
Want to find out what you’re made of? Want see how good you really are? This is the place. No one to carry your slack and no one else’s slack for you to carry. Duels are fun, but they don’t have the violence. Melee’s are great, but they lack that mano y mano aspect. No, this is it… The purest, rawest, and in my opinion, most enjoyable aspect of our infant sport.

In case you weren’t sold before I hope you are now, but regardless you’re probably asking yourself some questions. What’s the fight really like? How’s my training line up to this competition? What do I need to pull this off? And how can I get myself a fight? If those aren’t the questions you’re asking….I guess you’re out of luck. Cause that’s what I’m gonna answer. Or I guess you could comment below or reach out to me personally and I’ll try to help, but it won’t be in this article. This one is gonna answer the pre picked question like it was a presidential debate. Yeah, Politics!
    
   Where Do I Start? How Do I Know When I’m Ready?
Let’s deal with what you need to pull this off. First and foremost, Information. You need an accurate assessment of where you are as a fighter. You need to know the rules. You need to know how your gear works, what weapons you have access to, what weapons your proposed opponent has access to, and how they fight with it. Let’s break that down a bit more.

   The Rules...
Well, we’re still working on them. Read the singles rules for duels. That’s basically the same.
  1. Remove anything that prohibits kicks or punches, (though the knee and groin as targets are still off limit), 
  2. 5 rounds, not 3.
  3. It’s subjectively scored, based on fight dominance and weapon dominance.
  4. Clinches will be broken up after 3 seconds always, not 3 seconds of inactivity.
  5. No striking a downed opponent and
  6. no fighting once you’ve fallen (3 points of contact).
  7. In terms of judging, weapons strikes are worth twice non weapon strikes or takedowns where both fighters fall.
  8. Take downs where one fighter keeps their feet are worth twice weapon strikes.
  9. Disarms are not officially recognized in such a manner, but I’d say they are weighted about the same a takedown where you keep your feet.
  10. Each round is scored  by 3 judges,
                       A) 10 to the winner,
                       B) 9 to the loser unless the winner was truly dominant
                            in which case the loser may get 8 or even 7.

                       C) Penalties will remove a point from the total  
                       D) Knocking an opponent out or causing them to submit will also grant victory.
                       E) Fighters are given 1 minute of total time to fix any armor problems. If they can not fix                             it before that time elapses they forfeit the match.  
                       F) The total after all rounds are added up to determine the winner.

    Assessment:
          Getting an accurate assessment of yourself as a fighter is not easy. You need to give yourself a hard look in the mirror. Don’t look away from your faults, but you also can’t focus so much on them that you lose sight of your prowess.
  1. First off, are you in shape? No really, I mean “300”, “Adonis”, or even “Conan”, shape. You don’t want to carry extra fat into this fight, especially if it pushes you into a higher weight class.
  2. Can you do a full 5 minute Schifino work out? How bout 10 minutes? KnightFights® are a grueling endurance event and it’s absolutely essential you get your body in place, before anything else. Think about what your weight would be at 12-15% body fat. What weight class does that put you in? Try to aim for that. If you’re on the border you can bulk or cut as you feel works better for you.
  3. What weapons are you skilled in? How are you kicks and punches? What’s your grapple game like? Figure out what you’re strongest asset is and build your fight game around it. Figure out what your biggest “hole” is and spend the next few weeks and months trying to close it. Ask others for their assessment of you. Take the time to watch videos of yourself, especially ones where you lose. Figure out what you did wrong.  We’re all new at this game and right now we all have huge gaps. You’re going to get the most out of your training time by self assessing and closing your biggest holes.

 Accessories:
Make sure you have the accessories you need.
  1. A Full suit of armor per 
  2. Weapons combination that matches your opponents and also meets the rules, posted above. You want to know how your weapon moves, where your armor gaps or binds and how your want your points to sit, exactly. You don’t have time to be fussing with that the day of the fight so spend some time getting to know your armor before hand.
  3. A mouth guard, no exceptions! 
  4. A squire and my personal recommendation is that they know how to fight so they can act as a corner man. You only get one.
  5. Some form of cold compress that can go on your neck or under your arms
  6. A  water bottle that you can drink out of - in your helmet. You don’t ever want to take the helmet off. Open your visor but don’t take your helmet off.

Ok, Now you know what you need, time to look at your training and how it holds up to your competition .Well, I don’t know what your local competition is doing, but the most successful fighters out of “The Knights Hall” do 3 team sessions a week as well as 2-4 additional training sessions. Team sessions consist of a warm up, a Knightfit®, and some combination of footwork, pell work, bag work, agility drills, grappling drills, melee teamwork drills, or sparring. (It’s a minimum 6 hours a week as a team.)
Brandon Ross, (Captain of the Knightmares), supplements this with a few days of heavy weight training. I do 2-3 additional days of weapon technique classes and sparring, and try to get at least 2 additional days of 30 minutes at the pell or heavy bag and at least one day running. To break that down, if you want to compete physically you need to be training a minimum 5 days a week, (which should really be 6 or 7 depending on what you need for rest days).    
    
    Training:
Assuming you’re going to take on a 5 to 7 day regime, what should you do for your training? Well first you need to “cardio-up” and in particular, get  your, “recovery” and ability to “maintain”, at max output. You need to be doing some form of interval training at least twice a week. I’d suggest getting a heart rate monitor and making sure you are getting your HR into 90% or more of your max. Next, you need to have your, “striking” up, so make sure you’re doing at least one day of pell and bag work. The rest should address your weaknesses. If you can’t do a Schifino®, you aren’t ready in cardio and just need to keep upping that. If you can, but find that you get thrown a lot in sparring, you need balance. Do some lunges, boardwalks, (place a 2by4 on its side and walk the length), pistols, and single leg deadlifts. Practice footwork every day. If you find you’re punching is good, but you can’t swing a 6 shot sword combo, get on that pell, everyday. Find your weakness and train it. And, no matter what, Spar as much as possible. I can’t stress this enough! Nothing helps train fighting like fighting. Feel free to message me if you want specific advice. I’m not an expert by any means, but I have a clue.

    Getting a fight:
So, you have an idea what you need and plan to train, but now how do you get a fight? Well first you need to find an event. Unless you can make The Knights Hall,  KnightFight® , night or you plan on putting on an event yourself, you’re gonna need to get in contact with a regional commander or chapter head and try to arrange for a spot at one of their events. If you want to arrange your own KnightFight®, “only”, event that’s a whole different thing and Cat or Jaye Brooks would be far better than me to talk to that. When you contact the event runner tell them you’d like to fight at their event either before or after the melee’s, or in between rounds to fill an intermission break. If you get their ok, that’s good, but you still need to do some work. If you’re really lucky the event organizer will have everything handled for you, but don’t assume anything.

  Find an opponent in your weight class.
Weight Classes:
  1. (Featherweight - 140 and under),  
  2. (Ultra Lightweight 141-160),
  3. (Lightweight 161-180),
  4. (Middleweight 181-220),
  5. (Heavyweight 221-260),
  6. (Titan Class 261+)

  Pre Planned Arrangements For KnightFight® Match:
  1. Judges, (You’ll need to find 3 judges who understand boxing scoring as well as weapon fighting).
  2. A referee. (You can probably get one of the refs at the event already to double duty, but you’ll want to make sure they know all the details and have contacted Jaye T Brooks Sr. so they can be clear on all interpretations.)
  3. You’ll need a way of verifying weigh within the week before the fight.  
  4. You’ll want to have a DJ to play entrance music for you and your opponent,
  5. an MC to introduce you and explain the fight to the crowd,
  6. a videographer to film it. And If you’re really together,
  7. Get some commentators for a “Live Stream”.

As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into these fights and unfortunately we as fighters have to play multiple roles; promoter, trainer, and fighter. That’s what it takes to build this new aspect up and build it up we will. If you want to get in early, be on crest of the wave as it builds, now is the time to get in. So go get to work and I’ll see you in the List.
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