Dominance is the point of competition, its why its scored and has declared winners and losers. Practice is about learning, which is about skill development and growth. Sparring during practice can be quite variable depending on what the goals of the sparring are. If you don't know what the goals of sparring are maybe its time to think about them. F. Malaguti has great YT on the benefit of play for learning, which has the odd title "Is sparring dead"
One of the huge benefits of isolation is that our club culture is the HEMA culture that my students know. Our club doesn't have any Alpha male types which makes fencing so much nicer and fun
I think your argument here would be a lot more impactful if you gave actual examples of what you’re taking about. As it it, it just comes across as you waffling about a vague problem you only ever gesture to without directly pointing out. As a queer man in HEMA, your experience has not aligned with mine at all. I’d love to understand your experience better, but you don’t really do a good job of helping me understand.
Agree. I have no experience with HEMA and know very little about how it is in practice and how the culture is. I didn't understand what he meant most of the time.
Clearly Thibault system means a lot to you. I would love to know how you got into it. How you started constructing your interpenetration and the details of some of the mistakes you made and fixed on your journey towards being a student that Thibault would be proud of.
The world in general has an alpha male problem. Having weird small minded fixations on being the most powerful in the room. The power plays can become exhausting, but theres enough fun people in hema that you really can just drown out the "alphas" and enjoy the art and practices of the sport. Theyre like the boogie man, only as powerful as you let them be. If some meathead wants to fence you and you know hell risk hurting you to win, dont fence him.
All niche areas have this problem. Small population = small talent pool = low competition which means it’s easier to be the best without actually being particularly talented, consistent or hard working. You’re less likely to look bad compared to someone else. It’s a dream situation for insecure men. It’s hard to find a consistent solution, but promoting a reverence for highly skilled and accomplished individuals can help. It’s hard to act like you’re the top dog when you’re actively comparing yourself to someone levels above you. Even if they’re in a different sport altogether. There’s a reason bodybuilding gyms still have posters of Muhammad Ali on the walls.
I found it really shocking when I bumped up against someone trying to do me a social dominance at fight camp. Like, doing the fencing thing is really kinda intimate and needs to be so inherently full of care (my experience training w Ironfolk). It caught me right out of left field when I realised this wasn’t AT ALL the case for this other person. Some men have a really fragile sense of self worth, and they really love to make it everyone else’s problem 😵💫😵💫😵💫
Have you checked out liberation martial arts? Same goes for working with the Constraints Led Approach? You might find a better mindset you enjoy. Aside from that I'll paraphrase a quote from a teacher and one I try to keep with me when I enter competitions: Happiness isn't guaranteed but you have a chance to create and witness art. It can sometimes disappear in the moment but be mindful and do the best you can to realize it.
While I agree with your vision of martial arts and the problem you talk about, I also find that the majority of the european HEMA community I know (mostly Switzerland, Austria and Germany) don't have this problem. Of course there are "alphas" to be found everywhere and they can be disproportionately loud and thus misrepresent the community as a whole, but they are often taught to be better or ostracised. Either way, I appreciate your message a lot!
I appreciated the garden metaphor at the end, which is really clear even without ample context. Some of the more indirect stuff in this video may well have been missed, as other comments suggest, but I found it valuable nonetheless. And yes, Craig Jones sure is quite good! I don’t do BJJ but I know who he is, so I get where the opening thoughts come from.
I'm kind of confused about what you're trying to argue, who is an alpha male in this case? And how is this any different from other martial arts? "I just hit them," in the context of people hitting too hard? Disregarding technique? Are they just wailing on their opponents? If the latter is the case, then that really seems like it's a failure to respond to aggression in sparring (no one's perfect, but it's a reflection on how you teach your students). Is the person just very athletic (equivalent to highly fit boxers or wrestlers)? That's going to look bad when the majority of people who practice HEMA aren't that athletic (high standards in training looks bad/dickish to people who don't compete at that level). Domineering people who want to dominate the room are a by-product of martial arts whether boxing, wrestling, muay thai etc (HEMA's not the only place that does this). Trying to dismantle that throws the baby out with the bathwater; the answer to this culture: yes it's a headache and yes it drains you but remember *you run the club* Yes, you run the club: you get to dictate what happens in your club. If someone is being an alpha male and stomping around, speak to them, tell them their behaviour isn't accpetable and if they don't discontinue it, they'll need to leave. If they make excuses and say they "don't understand" tell them it's your club, your rules and they if they don't like it, they can go elsewhere. They need to understand that. Alternatively, if you're looking at fencing which dominates and that doesn't coincide with your idea of the "whole thing" remember, this was probably an issue in Fabris' time as well, and is an issue in most combat sports. I would take a guess to say there aren't that many people in the world who are competent with Fabris in the way you want, that's probably a by-product of numbers. People will be incentivised based on how you're structuring your classes: what type of lessons are you doing? Drills? Tournament level lessons? Easy level/playful sparring? You need to be clear when teaching lessons what people are going to get out of it, because it'll justify what behaviour you ultimately want. If alpha-male long-dick comes along and start competing in a playful sparring session, there's an inconsistency there, so best to have a word with them. Finally, people who want to dominate the conversation are common at this point, and can't be controlled/taken into account, it's probably best to just move on. Arguing with a donkey is fruitless and the donkey will just laugh at you. Similarly arguing with an idiot will inevitably be a defeat because the idiot has experience of arguing stupid things.
Dominance is the point of competition, its why its scored and has declared winners and losers. Practice is about learning, which is about skill development and growth. Sparring during practice can be quite variable depending on what the goals of the sparring are. If you don't know what the goals of sparring are maybe its time to think about them. F. Malaguti has great YT on the benefit of play for learning, which has the odd title "Is sparring dead"
One of the huge benefits of isolation is that our club culture is the HEMA culture that my students know. Our club doesn't have any Alpha male types which makes fencing so much nicer and fun
I think your argument here would be a lot more impactful if you gave actual examples of what you’re taking about. As it it, it just comes across as you waffling about a vague problem you only ever gesture to without directly pointing out.
As a queer man in HEMA, your experience has not aligned with mine at all. I’d love to understand your experience better, but you don’t really do a good job of helping me understand.
Agree. I have no experience with HEMA and know very little about how it is in practice and how the culture is. I didn't understand what he meant most of the time.
Clearly Thibault system means a lot to you. I would love to know how you got into it. How you started constructing your interpenetration and the details of some of the mistakes you made and fixed on your journey towards being a student that Thibault would be proud of.
The world in general has an alpha male problem. Having weird small minded fixations on being the most powerful in the room.
The power plays can become exhausting, but theres enough fun people in hema that you really can just drown out the "alphas" and enjoy the art and practices of the sport.
Theyre like the boogie man, only as powerful as you let them be. If some meathead wants to fence you and you know hell risk hurting you to win, dont fence him.
This is all important
All niche areas have this problem. Small population = small talent pool = low competition which means it’s easier to be the best without actually being particularly talented, consistent or hard working. You’re less likely to look bad compared to someone else. It’s a dream situation for insecure men.
It’s hard to find a consistent solution, but promoting a reverence for highly skilled and accomplished individuals can help. It’s hard to act like you’re the top dog when you’re actively comparing yourself to someone levels above you. Even if they’re in a different sport altogether. There’s a reason bodybuilding gyms still have posters of Muhammad Ali on the walls.
I found it really shocking when I bumped up against someone trying to do me a social dominance at fight camp. Like, doing the fencing thing is really kinda intimate and needs to be so inherently full of care (my experience training w Ironfolk). It caught me right out of left field when I realised this wasn’t AT ALL the case for this other person. Some men have a really fragile sense of self worth, and they really love to make it everyone else’s problem 😵💫😵💫😵💫
It was kinda an important reminder that I shouldn’t actually expect the best from strangers, unless I wanna get, like, really upset 😵💫😵💫
Have you checked out liberation martial arts? Same goes for working with the Constraints Led Approach? You might find a better mindset you enjoy. Aside from that I'll paraphrase a quote from a teacher and one I try to keep with me when I enter competitions: Happiness isn't guaranteed but you have a chance to create and witness art. It can sometimes disappear in the moment but be mindful and do the best you can to realize it.
While I agree with your vision of martial arts and the problem you talk about, I also find that the majority of the european HEMA community I know (mostly Switzerland, Austria and Germany) don't have this problem. Of course there are "alphas" to be found everywhere and they can be disproportionately loud and thus misrepresent the community as a whole, but they are often taught to be better or ostracised. Either way, I appreciate your message a lot!
I appreciated the garden metaphor at the end, which is really clear even without ample context. Some of the more indirect stuff in this video may well have been missed, as other comments suggest, but I found it valuable nonetheless.
And yes, Craig Jones sure is quite good! I don’t do BJJ but I know who he is, so I get where the opening thoughts come from.
I appreciated this comment probably only a little more than you expected me to ☺️
I'm kind of confused about what you're trying to argue, who is an alpha male in this case? And how is this any different from other martial arts?
"I just hit them," in the context of people hitting too hard? Disregarding technique? Are they just wailing on their opponents? If the latter is the case, then that really seems like it's a failure to respond to aggression in sparring (no one's perfect, but it's a reflection on how you teach your students). Is the person just very athletic (equivalent to highly fit boxers or wrestlers)? That's going to look bad when the majority of people who practice HEMA aren't that athletic (high standards in training looks bad/dickish to people who don't compete at that level).
Domineering people who want to dominate the room are a by-product of martial arts whether boxing, wrestling, muay thai etc (HEMA's not the only place that does this). Trying to dismantle that throws the baby out with the bathwater; the answer to this culture: yes it's a headache and yes it drains you but remember *you run the club*
Yes, you run the club: you get to dictate what happens in your club. If someone is being an alpha male and stomping around, speak to them, tell them their behaviour isn't accpetable and if they don't discontinue it, they'll need to leave. If they make excuses and say they "don't understand" tell them it's your club, your rules and they if they don't like it, they can go elsewhere. They need to understand that.
Alternatively, if you're looking at fencing which dominates and that doesn't coincide with your idea of the "whole thing" remember, this was probably an issue in Fabris' time as well, and is an issue in most combat sports. I would take a guess to say there aren't that many people in the world who are competent with Fabris in the way you want, that's probably a by-product of numbers.
People will be incentivised based on how you're structuring your classes: what type of lessons are you doing? Drills? Tournament level lessons? Easy level/playful sparring? You need to be clear when teaching lessons what people are going to get out of it, because it'll justify what behaviour you ultimately want. If alpha-male long-dick comes along and start competing in a playful sparring session, there's an inconsistency there, so best to have a word with them.
Finally, people who want to dominate the conversation are common at this point, and can't be controlled/taken into account, it's probably best to just move on. Arguing with a donkey is fruitless and the donkey will just laugh at you. Similarly arguing with an idiot will inevitably be a defeat because the idiot has experience of arguing stupid things.
Hell yeah
If winning wasn't important, then you wouldn't be crying about losing .
(Ironic)
Interesting points, but have you posted physique?
I'm just unable to take such a path