thegirlsclub

[Hakon]

Oh you get that talk but they might well mean it, to the extent of a concusion from a punch in a basketball game (I thought that was a non contact sport) and a teeth kicked out in the scrum ... before the ball was put in! That was all at high school.

H

[freiman the minstrel]

Sorry for leaving you guys to stew this long, but I was thinking that the discussion is a good one.

I just quit smoking, so you might want to take this with a grain of salt. I am white knuckling it through the first seventy two hours at this point. Sorry if this is rambling or odd.

Yes, I believe that there is no substitute for aggression. I believe that newer fighters tend to be much more passive than they need to be. They tend to view "just playing the game" as a great outcome. Please don't get me wrong, it is.

It is exactly and literally true that it really, really doesn't matter whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. I don't mean to take anything away from that. My other axiom is "if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong".

But...

At a certain point, if you have accomplished both the first goals, if you have played the game well and honorably, plus you have had a good time, there still needs to be a victor.

If that victor is victorious because she spent more time in the gym, sweated and prepared and won through her own merits, giving everything that she had and more, then the game is a beautiful, special thing, with each fight is a unique snowflake created from the stuff of human possiblility.

If she won because her opponent said "just playing is enough", and decided that he couldn't win because she was a knight and he was a newbie, then it is something a lot less cool.

Every new girl sweating and grunting in armor for the first time has exactly the same right to be a winner as the biggest, toughest superduke in the knowne word. There may be some differences in physical ability, but this means little. Folks like Robyn of Rye and Duke John the Mad Celt prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The answer lies in attitude.

Winners are winners because they are winners to their core, all the time. They spend their off time acting like winners, they spend their time on the field defeating their opponents, not engaging in exchanges of blows.

A great fighting trainer once said to me "Don't fight people. Kill People"

I know that this makes no sense. I am sorry about that.

f
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Surf less, fight more

[Hakon]

Freiman

You're dead on with the attitude but to me the cocktail starts with a measure of aggression and two measures of self-confidence and then add extras for individual style as desired.

High aggression - a charge, with a scream if you have breath, followed by a flurry of shots as fast as you can throw them until your opponent is overwhelmed.

Moderate aggression - advance to your chosen range with a couple of covering shots, open your opponent with combos and then finish them.

You must be aggressive but once you will walk into your opponent's attack you're aggressive enough and it's time to look at other aspects of your game. Overwork any aspect of what you do and the simple fact there are only 24 hours in the day force you to neglect another aspect and victory is crafted from bringing all the aspects of your game together.

[Alma]

It takes me almost an hour of fighting to get in the right flow, but sometimes I need to be on my toes earlier on than that. One of my best friends and I now have had this routine for many years:
before an important fight, he walk up to me, repeating: "come on then Alma, come on, what are you going to do, come on then", laughing while he is boxing me in the chest or face, grabbing me in the face grill, tossing me around, sometimes even push me down on the ground (he's much stronger than I am) giggling. That makes my adrenalin pumping from frustration, and I (still focused because I know that it isn't for real) get ready to fight whoever that comes up against me.

Sometimes he makes me TO frustrated, but only when I'm too tired and shouldn't fight anyway. So it's a mode checker as well, if I respond well to him being an "javla sumprunkare" (can't translate that from Swedish, it would make you clean your computer with soap, and we don't want that now, do we) then I'll go out there and have fun while I fight at my best wave of adrenaline, if I get mad at him for real or if I start to cry, then I take my gear of and have some water.

So what he does is very valuable to me, and whenever he isn't around, I just think about how annoying he can be

Oh dear, it sounds very strange now that I read this. He happens to be a knight, I really hope that other that can see us understand that he still is chivalrous. I trust him beyond everything I can imagine, he is my greatest supporter, and I know that he is as fond of me as I of him, so there's a big bucket of trust involved.
Any other that treats me like that will have to listen to me playing my husbands bagpipe - really early in the morning.

[Caileigh]

[haddyDrow]

[Arngrim]

[Cunian]

No, you're not. I fight way best when I am confident it's a controlled situation and I am not afraid. A lot of guys seem to want to get girls to ramp up by picturing some horrific situation, and - at least on me - that backfires so badly. Maybe it has something to do with the aggression/confidence cocktail Hakon was measuring. I think for me the limiting factor is usually confidence rather than aggression.

[Isabella E]

Not everyone is motivated by aggression but I think men are more typically than women. Part of it may be a cultural thing. When guys are amping up for a football game or whatever they are often encouraged to become motivated by aggressive talk where I think it is more common for girls to be coached with a different approach.
_________________
It's not the most powerful animal that survives. It's the most efficient. -Georges St-Pierre
http://windyvalleybanners.blogspot.com/

[Arngrim]

You may have something there Isabella, but I'm male, and it does not seem to work in a positive way for me.

I hava a bit of a temper though, so maybe I just fight worse when my body tells me it's for real (adrenaline) and my brain tells me I'm playing around.

Maybe Hakon has found something I would benefit from there?

But I digress; how is the coaching and encouragement of women different from the encouragement of men?

[Isabella E]

That's why I said typically. People are a wide spectrum but tend to fall into a similar mean in a lot of areas. There's always people outside that mean to varying degrees though.

I played 4 sports a year when I was a kid, so I can only base coaching really on what I experienced. My coaches always approached competition and the drive to win from a positive, teamwork sort of angle that I wouldn't say is absent from how boys are coached but is just different. Girls are generally not taught to be aggressive in the same way as boys. We're not usually taught to go out there and cream the other team. I'm not even sure how to really describe it. So maybe somebody else can help me out if they get what I'm trying to communicate. I'll think on it in the mean time.
_________________
It's not the most powerful animal that survives. It's the most efficient. -Georges St-Pierre
http://windyvalleybanners.blogspot.com/

[audax]

[audax]

To address aggression and agitation: they are not the same thing. As I said previously in this thread, one can be aggressive and not be agitated. IN fact a calm mind is an essential part of what this game teaches. Somewhat like kendo.

Controlled aggression is what wins fights. Out of control aggression gets you killed. And a bad rep.
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Martel le Hardi
squire to Meser Lyonel Oliver Grace, fostered to Sir Gaston de Clermont
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The Minstrel's Champion

[Hakon]

I've been thinking about this on and off since Frieman first posted it. I think the controlled aggression that Audax talks about is not the key, it's a key. The goal is a calm, almost empty mind state.

From talking to various people and reading more than one discussion like this I suspect that controlled aggression is the most common way to achieve that mind state and possibly the easiest to pick up.

I was shying away from saying folk should be more aggressive because I was looking beyond that to a calm mind set without aggression rather than seeing that as a route to get there. What I'm failing to find is a way of getting there with rattan, I used to be able to do it with rebated steel.

[audax]

Every knight I've ever spoken to has said controlled aggression wins fights.
_________________
Martel le Hardi
squire to Meser Lyonel Oliver Grace, fostered to Sir Gaston de Clermont
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The Minstrel's Champion