Singles in a 9 Foot Circle

This is the first post that I've shared on Facebook, so if you are reading this, please see some of my earlier posts.  I've got one on flanking, and another on melee tactics in general.

Having said that, I just got back from the East Kingdom Southern Region monthly practice and had a practice technique to share. We had 5 seasoned fighters tonight and did several rounds of a bear pit.  I fight singles with a 6 foot polearm and move around a lot on my feet.  Fighting against a shield can be very tiring, for both of us.

As we began to start another session, one of the fighters mentioned that he always gets tired fighting me, and in the interest of trying to focus more on fighting technique and less on making the practice a track meet, I suggested that we fight inside one of the 9 foot circles in the gym (used for basketball).  I needed to do some work on my inside game anyway.

The intent was only that we'd fight pole on shield that way, but the shieldmen seemed to enjoy doing it even against each other.  The mentality that we adopted was that "lay on" meant you were actively engaged in the fight.

Several positives came from this:

1)  It forced me to work on my inside game
2)  The fights ended quickly, so we got more fighting in
3)  Its good practice for the Birka tournament (which uses small arenas)
4)  Its good practice for melee where you often don't have the option to take a lot of time preparing your attacks.

There is also one additional positive that I think gets overlooked.  I've found that these kinds of scenarios teach you to think faster.  Often times in combat, things will happen to you that you just aren't mentally prepared for.  When you get into those situations, the lizard brain takes over and panic sets in.  When you train under these conditions, your body and your mind gets used to dealing with the stress and increases its ability to make quick decisions.

Then again........you can end up developing bad habits.  The key is to figure out when the practice is productive, and when its not.  I, for one, definitely got better and more comfortable fighting against these guys as the night progressed.

Check out my last post on flanking.