A Constraints-Led Approach to Swordplay w/ Bryant Coston & Seneca Savoie

A Constraints-Led Approach to Swordplay w/ Bryant Coston & Seneca Savoie

Welcome to the combat learning podcast I’m your host Josh peacock we have a brand new website combat learning.com it’s a lot better than the previous website much more userfriendly and there’s more content on there uh you can look at all the episodes the backlog um

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Up to speed on what we’re talking about go to combat learning.com newsletter to claim that now today I’m joined by Bryant C and cica Savoy historical European martial artists who specialize in coaching the sword at their Club Arena webin arts in this episode Bryant and cica recount their

Journey from a traditional technique and drill-based sword coaching style to a games-based practice in finally arriving at a fullbore constraints Le approach they go into detail about how they approach practice design curriculum development as well as coaching and correction we also talk at length about representativeness and how previous

Experience and other skills can aform what called attractor states that influence the way you move when acquiring developing a newer skill of note also is their account of how training with more aliveness actually lowered their injury rates instead of making it worse so if you’re excited to

Jump in hit the Subscribe button on your podcatcher and enjoy the show all right you guys welcome to the combat learning podcast um I would like you guys to introduce yourselves to the audience and and um give your background in martial arts I guess we could start with

Brian hey yeah I’m briyan Coston I run Arena weapon Arts um I have been doing weapons-based Combat Sports for a little under the last 10 years all in all I think my martial arts experience is is probably around the 20 year mark I have a number of traditional martial arts

Behind me those are um mostly chinese-based um I’ve spent time in various forms of kung fu I’ve also spent time with you know like the distill version thereof L Chun um I did a little bit of boxing and kickboxing I’ve played with a little bit of wrestling um I

Rolled with some couch guys for a little while and uh I’ve made studies of kind of various uh forms of all of these different kinds of Arts that exist throughout um a lot of the wrestling I’ve spent time looking into kind of older variants so um you know go and

Look at a lot of the old Indian martial arts it’s Kushi and so on those types of like long lineages and what has changed and what hasn’t based on you know maybe Regional variance to rules and what kind of techniques are allowed and stuff like

That so um I I wouldn’t call myself a martial arts scholar because I’m a terrible terrible student but um I certainly I’ve spent a a large amount of my time digging into um martial arts from around the world and and trying to fit them into the the mix of things that

We do and finding what works and and what really doesn’t awesome yeah moving on to ca yeah so um my uh initial exposure to martial arts was um as a middle school and high school student um so I had the luck that um my babysitter uh when I was

Relatively young um was the wife of uh a Ukrainian exp uh expat um who was on the pentathlon team and had a bronze medal and so P pentathlon is like all of the the fancy uh gentlemanly sports right so like horseback riding shooting and um

Fencing um so you do all five and so his of course was was EPA fencing so my early exposure was with uh kind of an Olympic level uh Olympic fencing coach um and you know that was as part of the the Round Rock Fencing Club U which produced some Olympic alternates and so

On um and me just being a a terrible terrible athlete uh in terms of like actual practices so unfortunately uh for me I was pretty genetically gifted uh at fencing um and so I didn’t do any gpp uh my entire uh middle school or High School uh which made me like a terrible

Fit to actually doing sports as an adult um then I started doing uh like martial arts a little bit more in Earnest um around my early 20s um that was primarily uh in response to a brief period of time experiencing homelessness which is like more violence uh plugged

Into a year and a half than I experienced my entire life up up to that point uh because you know people [ __ ] with you when you’re homeless uh and so I I just kind of started shopping around I did craw for a little while um it’s terrible we can discuss all the reasons

It’s terrible I um did pikiti tersa uh for a fairly long period of time and I would still probably identify that it’s one of being one one of my base Arts um in terms of like how I move and how I analyze other people’s movements um I’ve done various forms of basically the

Place where I was Tak um collie was on top of other places um so um we studying with Leslie there was also like an inosanto place right below it you just go classes for like 25 more bucks and you could go take um copper classes with Dean who’s another guy

We’ll probably discuss at some point um and so I had some exposure to to other Combat Sports I I’ve done some boxing um I’ve uh I’ve wrestled as an adult as as part of Jiu-Jitsu um I started doing Jiu-Jitsu um around 26 and it became really hard for

Me to keep my my schedule up for it um because I worked in a call center for a majority of that time so I would go like six nine months off so I’m a I’m a one of those people who’s been a blue blue belt for like seven years yeah in

Consistency of training um and those are my bass Arts I’ve also uh I I I was part of uh monolith which was Austin sombo Club um when it was still established um and that that was a pretty good club you know it set some people to to Worlds a

Few times um and I I’ve trained pretty extensively with with uh Nino Kuro Kelly who’s probably the the best SBO player in North America um in terms of competition results um did a bunch of Judo um as part of kakuro um which is a local Judo club uh and then I started

Doing well I initially started doing hea as um part of Arma back in the day which was like a oh yeah 1.0 of hea um and that was uh mostly an adjunct to my col study and then I I started doing um you know these kind of mixed weapon Arts uh

As part of arena in 2020 um because during the pandemic it was like the only martial art you could do and make sure that people were staying six feet away from you well train live yeah awesome oh that’s those are quite quite the background I oh a funny

Thought when I I watched your videos a few months ago and there’s some footwork you were doing I was like that looks like hly footwork where you almost like a zigs like a the triangle what do they call it the um yeah the male and the female triangles footwork yeah the kind

Of diamond steps yeah yeah the diamond steps and I was like you know what that actually I feel like that would actually be more useful for a longer instrument like a sword than it would be for sticks because you have to get you don’t have a

Lot of room to move with the with the sticks because they’re shorter yeah so I I the footwork is one of the things that that um is definitely fairly strong in in my movement um and you know obviously that was produced um I mean we can get into whenever the

Questions approprate but there’s a mix of Representative unrepresentative particularly in Pik T coli so there’s a pretty strong attractor for me to move that way I also move that way when I’m boxing too oh that’s really interesting so yeah let’s start to get into um we’ll start at a higher level so

Um I I don’t know which one of you wants to to handle this one or actually we you could just both answer this in your own way but um how is hea usually taught and actually I don’t know if we’ve really covered what hea is so if

You want to cover what hea is real quick Bri you should take this since you’ve actually trained hea I only did Arma for a little bit and then I did this okay yeah uh so hea is an acronym it stands for historical European martial

Arts so um if we if we get down to the nitty-gritty and the real black and white definition of that what hea actually is is a reconstructive study of old um manuscripts that represent what are now dead martial arts lineages um those studies resulted in a bunch of people functionally trying to recreate

European swordsmanship in all of its uh various facets and and there are more elements to this than just swinging a big sword of course um any any sort of uh classical fencing technically falls under hea anything going back further than classical which is kind of the prec Contemporary model um that could include

Uh medieval long sword as likely as it includes uh you know what we what we think of is almost like the German machetes um these are messers just mess just means knife uh but they’re Long Knives um this is also sword and buckler um and honestly fencing as a as a term

Historically was largely applied to weapons in general so you you could fence and you know you could be using a pole arm you could be using a spear or Quarter Staff or some such so um fencing is is a very large umbrella term that has been narrowed down in today’s world

To mean you know basically Olympic fencing yeah with these these reemerges of of fighting Arts you know however however you want to put it functionally fighting Arts with these other weapons really that that term is is coming back as with its broader meaning um as far as

How these are are generally taught the fact that these lineages were dead and are being reconstructed is a is a huge influencer on how they’re taught right M when you have a dead lineage and you’re attempting to reconstruct especially in this case from like written word all you

Have to go on are the descriptions of the things you’re trying to recreate these descriptions are functionally snapshots they don’t speak to the evolution of the thing over time they don’t speak to the mindsets of the individuals if those individuals maybe are would would have been more flexible

In their inperson teaching um they’re super super rote um and and in many cases right and in many cases those techniques are fit into plays or devices or sequences or like little miniata where um it’s you do a I do B they do c we’re familiar with the prescriptive

Model right at this point so functionally even in the old works the the prescriptive model is used to give at at the very least examples of how this technique might have fit in how this concept might have been applied in certain situations um but at the most it’s this is specifically what you’re

Trying to do and you’re trying to do no less in no other situation than what I have described here and and rarely do any of the works actually say that and so um some of the light work some of the Renaissance Works Shi maroto for example um he he will functionally say you’re

Going to do this exactly the way I say it you’re not going to go outside of our school and blah blah blah blah blah but most of these These Old say quote unquote right um most of these old fencing instructors functionally just kind of gave examples in their Works um when we

Go to reconstruct that and reconstruct the techniques people are then taking those play blow byb blow plays and trying to recreate them in our current world with our current Technologies um that those could be the tools the modern modern design tools that we’re using our our training tools our swords um that

Are blunted and uh significantly more flexible and stronger and you know generally better constructed probably than they would have had um we have much better safety equipment and so um those kinds of variables influence the Reconstruction but when we bring in um when we when we bring in the fact

That there’s this big gap and people try to take verbatim like what’s in the book and put it down which you know forgive any errors in translations that somebody might come across not only um we’re trying to go from old high German in some cases to Modern English uh it doesn’t generally

Go well um but many people are are trying to fill in blanks that either weren’t discussed in the books or they’re just not getting maybe what what the manuscript is trying to teach them via translation or interpretation or something and they start to fill in um gaps either with their own assumptions

Or with work from other martial arts footwork from Olympic fencing is highly prevalent in Hema um and there’s actually no indication necessarily that footwork from Olympic fencing is what they would have used and yet it’s it’s everywhere um we actually find that you know we’ve learned that certain things work better

With certain weapons as you kind of indicated earlier with longer tools that lateral motion kind of matters more um so the coli footwork actually does better for us in many cases than the Olympic foot footwork does but there are times and places for a lunge for a direct lunge straight down

The center line of the opponent M um so generally when heo taught it’s in a very prescriptive manner with this sort of frog DNA fit in whether people realize they’re doing it or not um and if you break out of the mold or if you’re somebody who maybe just wants to

Fight and isn’t necessarily interested in the historical component you know there there’s a little bit of Kickback in many cases and that’s less true now and it will be less true even luster in the future um but it is a very prescriptive approach it is uh and it

Does take its chops from traditional martial arts many people who are in hea have traditional martial arts background traditional martial arts instruction um and so the manuscripts themselves kind of lend towards trying to interpret and teach it from that lens excellent yeah I would point out

That you can correct me if I’m wrong here Bryant but basically most of these books right and kind of influences the way that it that’s taught um are just describing a very small number of techniques right like when I was doing Arma and we were doing like tall Huffer

Is literally just five right it’s just the five Master strikes and they’re like this is what you do against the the various incoming things and then here’s some guards uh to my knowledge the only books that actually give details on how to train the things are like probably Hans lukner and then like

You know later Renaissance stuff may have it that I haven’t read but in terms of the period that most people are thinking of for heo which is mainly like Italian and German sources most of those books have no instruction on how to do instruction at all maybe there’s a

Little bit Meer um so like people are sometimes very obsessed about like trying to keep you know the frog DNA out but it’s there’s it’s inevitable right because you’re you’re teaching the thing and there’s no instruction on how to teach the thing yeah yeah and and kind of lean on

What senica pointed out about um instruction across time periods people who study earlier manuscripts generally have less to go off of so those those individuals are working off a a smaller Bank of techniques generally or even when the the work is fairly wide widely encompassing of of different either weapons or or different

Scenarios the the solution set example is is generally pretty small it’s the same kinds of solutions to many of many of the problems and he’s just kind of like hammering in on this thing right so um it it’s it largely those kinds of things largely show tactical preferences

On the on the sides of the author rather than um a truly limited set of of Technical Solutions um the later works um in the Renaissance generally early Renaissance to later uh often include more fundamentals in addition to how you do the thing they tend to be very

Verbose Meyer is one of them um it’s kind of a very popular one late German Source then um f any of the Rapier manuscripts from later from later Renaissance tend to be um very articulate in and how those fundamentals are executed uh and in suggestions as to how overall concepts are applied and

Introducing them as Concepts and then giving examples of Concepts so the overall articulation and teaching of the thing dramatically improves over time um I personally I I struggle to see why many people uh pick up the earlier manuscripts first because they’re they’re largely inarticulate uh by our modern standards

And so um it would be a much better study to kind of work backwards and SW sword fighting was figured out a long long time ago um for somebody to say that that you know uh weapons work or fighting in general right um that fighting in general was is going to

Be dramatically different in the Renaissance versus the medieval period it is like I’m gonna say they’re kind of Clueless um and that’s gonna be a highly contentious statement among certain audiences um they’re kind of Clueless right because human human body mechanics ultimately have not changed that much in

Like a a couple hundred years at most so um the tools certainly influence movement and and styles of movement and like tactical necessity but at at the end of the day you know a hinge is a hinge a squat is a squat a press is a

Press the point is the point um I’m going to put it in you and I’m gonna try to not get hit and and that’s the essence of all Fighting right like I’m gonna try to get hit less I’m gonna try and hit you more until you’re down and I’m not

Yeah so broadly speaking um how has your training changed from I think you mentioned in one of one of our email correspondents that you used to teach kind of in a prescriptive mod model so or maybe you never did maybe you realized that you learned in a prescriptive model and you realize that

Was wrong so how is your training changed from what hum traditionally has done to what you now do yeah so um you know I can kind of start on that and then it would be good for senica to pick it up where I leave off with his experience as to how we

Just since he’s been with us because that that certainly has also been dramatic in a way um I started again my my background is in a lot of traditional martial arts um I I come from a culture of prescriptive approach to teaching and martial art largely because it was not um intended

For application it was intended for cultural preservation and uh dissemination right so when you look at it through that more snapshot and static lens it makes sense why prescriptive approach would be a thing that become fairly standard in that environment but when you move into a

Fighting art you have to you have to change things because you actually have to apply these things against a totally like crazy number of unknown variables all of that information kind of leads into the answer to your question I came from this prescriptive approach um the people that I was

Teaching heo with that I initially trained under and then taught with um all kind of came from a similar approach there was a little bit of maybe some mixed martial arts is in with that but it it it wasn’t necessarily um you know competitive it certainly wasn’t necessarily applied in a stressed

Environment I think and based on what I understand at this point and so all of my original hemo background was with this prescriptive approach and I knew that I struggled significantly trying to learn the stuff um I’m just so stubborn that I stuck with it and and ultimately

Kind understood it to some degree I started looking into the old Works myself I came with my own interpretations and and you know once you kind of invest yourself into the solution you usually it makes more sense to you right because you you found your own

Solution to a problem that problem in my case was I don’t understand why we’re doing the things exactly the way we’re doing them in the context that we’re doing them and and so I came with my own interpretations that roughly fit the context and roughly fit the shape of

What I was being asked to do and and it made more sense to me the um and that but that’s a student driven right like whereas really wish should be aiming for Teacher driven um it’s faster more efficient but um I taught you know and and I taught all these techniques in a

Very prescriptive kind of way because that was just sort of the environment of the school and and we did work on improving that over time because we did want better Fighters we do still have competitions and we went to competitions and um in many cases did not do very

Well overall um it’s kind of like when the when the teacher does well but the students don’t it’s the you have an engineer management kind of problem um you’re not necessarily yeah you’re not necessarily looking for somebody who has the teaching or the coaching skills you’re looking for somebody who can do

Well which is not always the best solution to the to the teaching problem um so you know in in that original environment that I started in everybody loved being there you know to to whatever degree the people who stayed love being there which is maybe its own

Problem in a way but um and the people who didn’t stay just said this isn’t for me I was hoping for like actual sword fighting or I was hoping for more sparring or I was hoping for whatever you know or I was hoping for like not a

Bunch of nerds which is is traditional martial arts kind of can sometimes bring in especially sword fighting as you might imagine sword fighting attracts a lot of people who um are maybe on the less athletic side who’ve been left out of a lot of school athletics and stuff

Like that so yeah um or or they’re less fit or they’re or or they’ve been alienated right in to some but they’re looking for something that pequs their interest more than their uncomfortable with the idea of doing the thing they’re they’re prioritizing yeah so we had a lot of these people who

Who who didn’t necessarily know what to expect or had a background also in traditional martial arts and they just kind of accepted what we did many of them and myself all identified that people were staging across the board um they would get to a certain point they

Would understand at least what I was trying to tell them but no more and and a lot of that was because I I wasn’t giving them what they needed to learn better faster more thoroughly within their own context and in their own way that they can kind of invest themselves

In and so they never really built up above a certain point skill-wise um and if you don’t build up a certain above a certain point skill-wise you don’t really have the motivation to build up you know maybe physical attributes to support that increase in skill and so on so I that technical

Limitation actually to some degree even imposed like physical limitations uh from mindset issue the when I left uh the last place that I taught Hima at um I kind of started my own group and they we we I was sort of like tongue and cheek

Hemo still at the time um I I knew deep in my heart that what I was doing is not really heo anymore um I was taking my own interpretation of the thing basically tossing out the sources and saying we’re going to use just this initial interpretation as a base and

It’s going to evolve from here on its own um and I took these techniques and I took these whatever and and I said hey here’s the technique we’re working on this technique is representative of what I believe is the concept that applies and you’re going to try and fit this

Into a slightly harsher environment you’re going to do drills with three examples um of how you might use this concept and then I’m going to say um all right now your drill is going to be your opponent can throw any strike from any angle and if you understand the concept

And they’re going to throw it with intent they’re going to try and hit you in the head right because we have these masks on um if you if they have intent and if you understand the concept you should be able over the course of many reps to try and apply this concept under

Pressure and therefore you started to drill it in context that is more appropriate to sparring and then to competition um but I was still operating on this very technique based um foundation and we ended up with a bunch of students who just it just didn’t click for

Them it just would not and and they were some of them were driving um two hours in traffic from South Austin up to like Hut where our location was initially I mean and you know I felt terrible I I I didn’t want them to show up to not

Improve or to even not to feel like they improve right um and so I I started to reconstruct how the drills in the teaching methodologies were were being utilized and uh what I came up with is all of these people not just the ones who are doing well but the

Ones who aren’t doing well all of these people um learn differently every every time I go to Coach I have to give different cues to everybody and that tells me that I need I don’t need um a thousand different teaching styles I need to go a level up and I need to look

At kind of a more all-encompassing approach that will allow me to be economical my efforts and allow me to produce results across uh a varied audience right um and these are people of all different physical typologies um all different athletic levels and uh so kind of by necessity I just started making more

Games and I and I just said hey here are the games here are the rules um you have to you have to bind which is when the swords connect right when the steel connects you have to bind and then you can hit before you can hit them from the bind before you can

Hit them so I’m creating a situation where people are having to learn how to bind and they’re all going to bind differently right like they’re all they’re all going to come out with different iterations of mechanical leverage or they’re going to fail and if they continuously fail they might ask

For pointers at that time and I’ll kind of give them some examples of how they might do the thing I did notice every time I give an example people would over focus on the examples right because they’re really used to that prescriptive approach um and so the sort of more

Thought-provoking almost arbitrary um arbitrarily feeling um approach is difficult for people well once they relearn it um they progress much faster and and it was a while to Train everybody into that but ultimately everybody kind of learned it they expected it and everybody started improving Leaps and Bounds I mean it was

It was the growth was exponential I was actually not prepared for it um and and that Co hit right as I had started to put that framework into place and everybody started to just like explode skill-wise um and we kind of went down for a little while because everybody

Backed off everybody was kind of scared um we the we lost our space at the time but we managed to keep the business going I was working like 90 hour weeks trying to trying to keep things afloat and doing like two half hour sessions with everybody remotely a week and it

Was it was a huge pain but it was it was totally worth it at the end of the day because once Co um once we kind of learn more about Co and like print training outside was fine and so on and so forth we all came back to it and almost

Everybody came um and I started but I’d had all this time now I’d had three four months that was the pause I needed to realize okay this thing was working really well how do I refine it once we finally do come back to it and um and I

Started experimenting with kind of a lot of different models in that and uh everybody started improving by leaps of bounds there were some things that work better than others you throw out the things that don’t work you keep the things that do and you build off of the

Things that do and extrapolate to replace the things that didn’t right so um all in all uh that’s about where senica came in um the and the the big pointer for success for me was when people who struggled to learn through that prescriptive approach started improving

At the same or better rate as people who were doing fine on the prescriptive approach right and um and and then our our demograph and our audience and our membership kind of started self- selecting in a way and and people who could pick up that approach or could relearn that approach typically did

Better um and stay and and then people who really just wanted to do the tech they wanted to feel like they were sword fighting as opposed to they wanted to be fighting right yeah the people who just wanted to kind of play act at the thing or or live

Out their their idea of what the thing was rather than the reality of it th those people generally didn’t stick around very long and and we we kind of had to make a decision at that point that we were functionally a competition school as opposed to a um you know a a

Sword Club so um but yeah that that’s about where senica comes in and kind of be interested in hearing you know that perspective from him yeah so um I uh had a kind of contentious relationship with with Filipino martial arts um you know I

Did it for a really long time I I still at some point need to go back so that I can formally say that I have instructor ranked because I’m like very shy of it uh but I I trained with Leslie Buck um who uh is one of the people who um

Rolled out the the defensive tactics and Edge weapon counter measures um program for the Philippine Force Recon Marines um and then later for for their police force and so this um kind of tended towards some prescriptive stuff although there’s contradictions um there were a lot of constraint spased games in pikiti um but

They were always taught as an extension of the flow drills uh so you had to go through the flow drill to get to to the constraints based game usually um and so there were things that we brought like uh we would do this thing called footwork sparring

Um which was basically you know starting off in a neutral position with like various side stepping and then trying to Juke around the other person to get to where you are facing you know their shoulders or behind um and that had been like a consistent part of my warm-up for

Eight years um knife tapping which is starts off as a flow drill but then turns into constraints based game where you um try to make contact with the other person’s wrist so on um and so this was mixed with this prescriptive approach um and I it kind of jelled for me a

Little bit because I when I started Jiu-Jitsu I started getting really into like the straight Blast Gym stuff right so I very familiar with like the the you the the three eyes model the M Matt Thorn yep yeah although I now think that they teach too prescriptively U yeah yeah

Yep uh because like yeah now every time I look at at something Matt does now he’s like this is why you have to do it exactly like Henry does it or like Hixon does it um but uh and so those things kind of come together you know because of covid and because I

Like you know I live with a nearly 60-year old woman U my girlfriend’s um mother lives with us um I was not [ __ ] around when it came to like you know exposure a prevaccine and so I wanted to do a physical activity but I wanted to do it outdoors and the only

Things you could do outdoors were were this and um were this or or colie and um basically nobody was masking up I didn’t you know we didn’t know about how safe Outdoors was at the time uh and frankly the the people who were still coming were all like the people that uh bring

Off their knife collection whenever they come to class and like talk about scenarios where they want to use them in real life and I’m like yeah [ __ ] down this my hobby so um when I came to Bryant’s class first thing was I sandbagged super hard and I was like what’s a sword um

And then you know as we were going on um I noticed that he’s basically doing the same thing every class it was the same three games um you know for for the class um and you know when he was making adjustments to some of these games you was basically um asymmetrical um evasion

Asymmetrical guarding and then asymmetrical suppression um suppression being like you know pressing out stopping it from coming rather than than you catching here I was like oh there’s a name for what you’re doing it’s called a constraint spased approach and I I had some familiarity with that one because

Of the stra blast stuff but two uh because I had helped coach um a kettlebell sport team before and so I I knew more academic stuff about motor learning from the Russian coaches who would come out and like all those coaches when they would come out like

All of them had Masters or phds in something related to sports science uh and that was like my first exposure to like really really worldclass um training as an adult um was when I was doing kettleball Sports so I was like oh yeah this is the thing you’re doing and

Blah blah blah and so here are the suggestions I would make to to change it right and so um I think the first thing I did was like printed out um your your cheat sheet because I didn’t want to have to write one myself um and you know

We we kind of did more of that stuff over the course of the pandemic and uh you know Bryant had to to get back into doing a job full-time for a little while so I um basically took over um head coaching which is really weird because I

Was the only person on the coaching staff who hadn’t done heo um I knew how the the the co how basically the training methodology worked yeah and so you know basically we have an onboarding class um and you know the hardest things were were making sure that we eliminated

Um block training um and then the overemphasis on internal postural cues because in The Beginner’s training we do a lot of action capacity Improvement right like um improving people’s ability to hold a hinge and things like this yeah and so when you do all of this like physical training that’s you know okay

Here take these steps and learn how to stay in The Stance and stuff like that um it’s really easy to cue towards that stuff right because we are trying to develop the capability to be able to get in these postures that’re going to be useful later U but we also don’t want to

Just tell you to do the posture in the middle of the drill right so you know we we moved increasingly towards game based warm-ups um uh you know the the Diamond game uh is like one of our our kind of prototypal ones we can teach somebody with no skill whatsoever which is that

We draw the diamond right that’s that Filipino martial arts footwork uh and then we have you stand at opposite points of the diamond and we say okay the only rules are you can’t step inside of the diamond uh and you have to touch either the shoulders or the knees right yeah at

Least one foot has to be on a point at all times right so you have to like stay on this footwork Paradigm um but what you do within it is up you um and so that is usually how we start teaching for work now um is we just have people you know maneuver

Around and you know as as there level changes and stuff coming and people start figuring out leg slips and things like this that’ll then be applicable um and then you know the the basis of of what he’d already put became um our Core Curriculum which are our asymmetrical or

10 count um defensive drills where we basically uh have somebody launch an attack from from any angle um and then you perform an appropriate defense right we will specify a category of Defense right so I want you to try and make him Miss You by

As little as possible uh I want you to make sure that you just stop it in some way by holding the weapon close to you uh or you stop it by preventing his weapon from leaving him right um and then figure it out and then you know

Then we started to experiment with more constraint so like with the suppression or the guard okay do this but the other person’s only going to feed with thrust okay they’re going to feed with thrust or with any other angle but the constraint is your defense is only cons

Considered successful if you have the point on the target at the end of the defense right um you know you’re doing evasion make the Miss but not just miss but miss by as little as possible Right knowing that missing little as possible you’re going to get hit in the process

That’s fine and then you know once they kind of learned that distance then we would add in all right the constraint for this round is they’re gonna you’re gonna make them Miss You by as little as possible and I want you to try and find a way to hit his limb

Um when that does right we’re teaching the the distance at which single time counters are available um you know right now um one of the constraint DRS we have is um attack and maintain threat presence right so don’t attempt to wound but just keep the point on them as long

As possible they’re going to try and displace your weapon you know defend against it and you’re just going to evade that and find a way to put the point back on right and that teaches a real specific distance right that’s different from what would happen if the constraint was to try to

Wound um and so that we’ve been working really hard on trying to develop these sets of games uh but also to to figure out how to to teach some of the stuff that you know frankly better schools than us are are teaching through prescriptive models in the game context

Right so like the the core thing we’re trying to do is all right s brogi which is a school in Oklahoma is going to show up at a competition and everybody at that school wrestled in high school like near a 100% of those people wrestled in

High school and two of the best guys in the world are sparring with them right and that’s part of the environment right part of the constraints are that you are fighting Derek Nash and we don’t have Derek Nash uh so we have to figure out ways right like the thing you talked

About earlier like one of the things we have to to make sure that our environment is making up for is the fact that you know from having split off we don’t have access to Anthony and Anthony’s [ __ ] badass right but unfortunately the badassness doesn’t always roll downhill and so we have to

Make sure that like our smaller portion of badassness does roll downhill uh yeah and so that that comes primarily through through drill Construction And then trying to find a tactical game right that either in the sources or in in just observation of competitions and figuring how to zero in on that particular

Tactical game um and we’ve done pretty well so um the the return to competition um last year well I guess that was [ __ ] that was still this year wasn’t it was weird um which is an awesome competition and we took three out of four gold medals nice um we you know

We next competition we went to we had I think three people making an out rounds and that was a competition that Sim brogi did show up to right so that was the best guy in the United States was at that competition um and then um I forget how

Did we do at the at the dagger Messer competition Bryant yeah at knife fight we had um we had again another top fighter showed up and show us out of some rounds who’s who’s just had years and years more to prepare in a much higher intensity environment but um we we achieved

Placement in every event I think that that our Fighters were in um so we achieved top three or um every single fighter who went got into eliminations um so they made it past pools and got into eliminations and most of them did very well they didn’t necessarily do like get wiped in the

First round of eliminations for example um I think I think the lowest that one of our top guys did was like fourth place so I mean he’s they’re not getting knocked out early and and we’re a really young school by by comparison to some of these other guys so yeah what’s really

Interesting is one of our top performers both at weird um so like he didn’t get touched a single time in prelims and then took second um the Stagger um Isaiah only has one eye wow and he’s got some other background as well but yeah we’re definitely finding that people coming in almost

Like regardless of their background because we have a dude who has done nothing no physical activity no nothing um and he regularly gives uh experienced uh competitors trouble so um we’re we’re finding that you know my sort of shift into these models out of necessity not not knowing any of the science or

Anything behind it per say but through experiential shift um and senica’s um you know more formal education around these things and use thereof um we’re producing Fighters that are coming in with little or no background relative to our Sport and and we’re making you know intermediate uh level Fighters or even

Fighters who can challenge other what we what is currently considered the standard of advanced in less than a year easily um yeah six months like yeah I I think our our best like Colin um one of our Fighters you know his first competition snagle Fon he basically was one point away from

Beating one of the finalists um who is from sroi um and you know he had not been training that long he’s one of our coaches now um the other example so Sean started right after we stopped using prescriptive um approaches entirely and Sean is very frustrating because he is not the most

Athletic person in our gr by by a long shot ‘s he’s my zero background reference that I used a moment ago yeah and he like yeah he was like in the Summers was like showing up in jeans and a bomber jacket and and practicing in

Austin Texas uh like what uh but the big thing about Sean which is super interesting is that unlike people who had previous done sword fighting previously is he will not bite on faints it’s like it completely nonresponsive he is aware of the distance and will just tell you to

Go [ __ ] yourself if you or do any provocation from outside and so like he frustrates much more experienced people because they’re used to like using these opening gambits to provoke a reaction that they then capitalize on and he has no reaction unless the threat is 100%

Real and you know we attribute that to the fact that he was basically getting hit live from the very first session and like yeah his awareness of the of the range is is the specifying information that he’s using whereas people who have a more mixed background in how they’ve

Been instructed they’re looking at yeah yeah so they’re not maybe not as cognizant of the range and they’re more worried about the the movement itself the fame yeah and so we’ve started um and actually Brian we need to we need to renew because I switched off for my

Credit card um we do the the monthly meetings with um with Rob um and so one thing that we’ve really started using a lot more is the errorless learning approach um is you know where we’re we’re making it more lopsided um the one thing that is a

Little bit of problem there is that like when you’re doing asymmetric drills if you remember from from Rob’s recent episode about errorist learning yeah is that um errorless plus interleaving is like super effective um but error full um and interleaving is super ineffective and so when you’re doing these

Asymmetric drills the person doing the aess learning you’re like oh you’re getting the thing but the person who’s on the other side of the drill is doing the error full learning because you’ve stacked the deck against them um so trying to figure out you know what the

What the effects of that are right in terms of retention and stuff like that yeah I think I think the funny thing about that is whenever I hear like errorful and errorless learning those are usually or errorless learning is usually like something that you do with like golfing where you you don’t

Necessarily you don’t need another person on the other end that’s getting the the the tough end of the stick so yeah that there is some some some thought to put into that I I am interested so you talked about your onboarding class um I’m assuming you have like an

Intermediate like an advanced class or a class that you come out of the onboarding class into how do you approach practice design for each session do you have like kind of a a set curriculum that you just kind of modify or are you doing something different or custom or individualized every session

That you’re going into um so the coaches so for the the for the novice class I guess we’ll get to Bryant in a second because he’s doing all of those um for the intermediate class um what we do is we get the coaches together and we talk through our observations and what

We think people suck at basically Sor ourselves um filtered through the lens as well of like what competition is coming up yeah and what the rule sets for those competitions are and and the types of Fighters we expect to be there yeah so um we pick probably two or three

Things that we’d like to see improved um or like maybe a a tactic um that we would like people to be able to employ some more and then we go okay what games could express that tactic so like right now um there’s a thing that we observe

The sroi guys doing um which uses a tortured analogy Brian can you explain the speaking window in like under a minute um I I don’t know that I can do justice to their interpretation of this idea but functionally um uh I use my own words for

This imagine that you have a pointed uh long stick right in your hands and I’m going to point it at you so generally when I pointed at you I’m going to have um a selection of targets that could range from the foot is illegal right um calf to head um speaking window is

Functionally going to say that if there is an opportunity especially when uh there’s the potential for a bind I’m going to uh kind of supersede that bind I’m going to roll over it and I’m going to Point High and I’m essentially removing my hands from the equation of

The Target in addition I am aiming for the mouth um somewhere in the vicinity of the mouth um is going to give me the head to the chest as a Target area for for potential wounding and scoring a point and um I’m going to shoot the point in from

This forward press position that I’m kind of already in right um so I’m I’m taking the end of a previous action and then shooting straight in towards a relatively High Target um and that does a number of things both defensively and offensively um it’s a clearly a highly

Pressuring action um as long as you do it at the right time you’re generally relatively safe when you do this so um speaking window is just kind of like you go to knock on the door and when they open the window when your opening presents itself you shoot through the

Speaking window right in in that old like chamber door kind of like who’s there kind of yeah so the idea is using that forward threat um to one simplify your Tactical responses right so like whatever they do you’re using kind of a long a long extended position as a

Response to the thing um and then using the threat to cause them to to withdraw right um so the some broky guys have been working really hard on this and Jeremy Pace who’s their coach teaches this through like a two-hour long lecture um and I’m like well I don’t

Have time for the two hour long lecture our classes are only an hour and a half um so um you know the last block we started on the first H first part of this which was um how do we teach AB zeton which is like putting aside um an

Incoming thrust with your own um and so those we started working on okay your defense only counts if your point is on the target at the end of it right so if you defend their strike but your point is off you lost the exchange right um or um you’re going to attack you’re

Going to defend I want you to contest for whose point is on who uh in in variations of this right so that was during the last clock and so into this one we’ve we’ve switched towards uh more proactive right so um how long and how many intentions or changes can you

Continue to keep the point on the person um and what we found and we didn’t anticipate is this is uniquely exhausting uh for the opponent um because the Motions you’re making are very small they’re the equivalent of like the four four to six disengage in um Olympic fencing uh and they are in

Response to that having to take a step and shift their torso entirely from left to right right they’re having to do this you know several times over the course of like five to 10 seconds and so it starts to get really really tiring um and so this is you know we’re training

This a couple of ways um you know basically so we’ll decide on the outcome right the the the constraint or what we want the constraints to model towards the behavior for um and then basically on Monday um Stephen and one of our other coaches will come up with some

Games that he thinks we’ll get there and on Wednesday I’ll try and come up with variations right something looks different from whatever games um Stephen did on Monday um around the same behavior and then we observe and see like what behaviors did the game produce so for example Sean the guy who doesn’t

Um bite on faints when we said put the threat on and switch sides right do do it by whenever there’s whenever there’s a response we want you to get away from the weapon switch sides instead of doing the four to six disengage which is what most people um

Intuitively do is doing this ver motion was like this kind of like helicopter swing um twisting motion like this um and to switch sides and so in the process of putting the point on the target when he switches sides he’s taking a handshot in going in and we

Didn’t teach him that right um and so that’s really interesting like huh okay let’s take a look at that because in some other exchanges when he’s doing this Sean is suicidally putting himself onto the point this this seems unique is there a way we can reproduce this um or

That particular solution um and so you know we typically will progress over the course of the session from the most generic drills right so the warmup is usually something like light sparring or um one of the 10 count defense drills or something like that and then we add constraints to um to

Model towards a specific um behavior and then typically would end either with free sparring or with a game that is meant to bias towards the tactics that that you may have been working on right so um one of the games when we were trying to work on specifically buying presence was

Called sticky icky um which is very silly uh but basically the rules were um one person is the sticker is the ier um the one who is sticking can only score while he is maintaining buying presence on his opponent and the other person can only score if there is no buying

Presence NE that’s cool of the blade and and there is like a so over the course of several sessions right like people start to develop solutions to these environments um what we’re ultimately what what our job is as coaches right is to present environments where that they think are

Going to frustrate them when they go to the next competition for example or that that we know already frustrate them based on their current skill sets U them being the members so um when they come up with their Solutions usually within the first couple of practices that they attend um

In a given say quotequote block uh they they then spend the rest of that block refining those solutions to some degree and and by the end of the block alone they tend to be very very competent at whatever solution they’ve come up with and is it’s not our job to

Produce a specific solution it’s our job to in to to um Force the member Force the training person into a situation where there solution is viable Under Pressure um and and the pressure of the drills is another variable that like we increase over time and if at some point

We increase it and their solution starts to fa fail they tend to find another solution right um but now they’ve got the gist of the problem and they find more solutions faster and some people will actually um we had we had one individual who rarely used the same solution across

Sessions consistently almost every it was almost like they were just exploring like they um I I’m very very very uh guilty of this though I do compete um I’m not a particularly competitive person by my nature I’m more interested in the exploration of movement and the art and

Um like the does it actually work or does it not work and so from a given session to a given session my tactics will change entirely and or sometimes I will go out of my way to replicate the the Tactical preferences like of another school um and so i’ I’ve gotten a

Reputation as kind of like the mimic of the group um and also as a teacher that is a tremendously valuable skill cuz I how many different kinds of you know problem environments can I create Alone um being able to do that sort of thing so um it’s something that I’ve never

Really let go of because it’s useful to the rest of my group but um you know this individual would would es skew performance over Discovery um and they would still toss out options if they didn’t work and so they ended up having this almost like catalog in their

Head of solutions that other people would never have ever thought of because they went through the obvious lons just threw them out um not because or if I should say not threw them filed them away because they were almost too obvious right what are other Solutions Within These constraints and they would

Get really creative within the Box um and that definitely while they were here had had a big influence on um you know everyone else because they would they would see these Creative Solutions and they would think themselves my solution is good my solution is working but my solution is really plain and really

Easily anticipated in many cases and so they would look at these other Creative Solutions and say this is just as efficient but is way less predictable um and and every time that we get a fighter in with or an athlete in with a different background especially martial arts but different background in general

Even even football players like yeah move differently right compared to like an Olympic vener so um they to find different solutions and that that influences the rest of our membership into um you know being more creative or more efficient or dealing with different pressures and higher variability absolutely yeah so

Definitely a lot of like everyone in the school has in their head what are they going to do when Colin draws you on a forehand strike steps to the outside steps in and presses your hand down right um you know Colin is able to pretty reliably land this on everybody

At every level of competition right um and no two people in the school try to stop him from doing that in the same way um similarly you know like we have you know people who who only do the same thing sometimes they’re frustrating level so one of our our more consistent

Competitors Bo has what like 15 years of of uh EP experience prior to doing this it’s at least a decade yeah um and he does very well in competition because he’s very disciplined he only sticks to his aame but it’s sometimes very difficult because we’ve been trying to get him to develop a

Bame uh and so some of that has been like setting aside entire sessions to coach one of our other Fighters usually it’s Colin on how to frustrate his aame as hard as possible so that we just like make him do something else any anything else I don’t give a [ __ ] what but

Whatever the main thing he’s doing make it not work absolutely I’m I’m curious um what was your injuries what do they look like before you started using like a constraint space approach versus after has it changed has it gotten better has it stayed the same what how did that

Change uh yeah I’ll take that one because I have one I have the background and two I have the injuries um so uh I found even minor injuries so we’re going to include even minor injuries and and kind of what I bring up so like um split thumbs right or like or

Fingernails or like fingernails fall off or stuff like that little things all the way up to like we’re tearing muscles right um or we’re breaking we’re breaking bones um concussions uh I have there is a dramatic difference between the prescriptive approach and the constraints that approach uh injury

Wise as a top level statement like which just an astronomical difference um we and of course knock on wood but um we have not had a significant injury that was was I’m that was not self-induced um I think the most significant injury that we’ve had at

Practice in the last since I started the school honestly um has been somebody pulled their hamstring because they lunged too far on dirt where they slipped also so it’s like think about your environment what is appropriate in your environment to some degree but also you know and then

We addressed that as coaches later with that individual but that’s the worst thing that’s happened um we we’ve had some good knocks to thumbs um or fingers uh I think one we might have had one broken finger to maybe over the course in in in structured practices in practices in the

Last three years and WAFF that’s about it yeah so we have this go waffling which is like when you get hit in the mask and the there’s a the mask is a dome um and unless the hit comes in a certain way the Dome will kind of pop

Back out and uh if the Dome gets bent in so sometimes the thrust comes in so hard with a with a inflexible weapon that the Dome will kind of Bend IN and the mesh of the Dome will leave a hatchmark wherever it is it will pop back out and you like

There’s a little bit of a disorienting moment and and you know there’s a some people would say you’ve been hit too hard if that happens what we have found is that most of the time it happens like in competition you’ve been hit too hard yeah but many times especially in

Training it will happen um when that Force collides at like a very specific angle yeah um and it’s just the structural Integrity of the thing as it relates to the shape right so um that’s but that’s just that’s the equivalent of getting a scratch on your arm um you

Know through the through the mask so um we’ve prepared two women for for dog Brothers do you know what dog Brothers is oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so the two wom that that compete regularly and dog Brothers come to us to do sparring preparation because none of the FMA

Groups locally Spar hard enough for them so they travel to San Antonio usually for their yeah for their training that’s cool and so but they they train with us when they’re getting ready for for dog brothers and no one got injured during the prep cycle for dog

Brothers where you know we are you we don’t hit ter hard when we’re training for he competition because you only need enough contact for the judge to call it right right um whereas when we’re training them we need to to train with some level of authority right because no one’s no

Judge is going to stop it you have to hit them hard enough that they want want to stop uh but yeah not a single injury during when when we’ve trained them for events yeah so I mean we we regularly Spar at kind of dog brother level intensity especially as we’re

Approaching tournaments before we kind of back off for Recovery um pre-event and that’s been true for a long time um I I one of the reasons that I kind of started my own group was that I was really unimpressed with the injury rate um within like traditional hea and

Uh we were having everything from um really common like broken thumbs over the course of I think two or two or three years when I was teaching IMA I think I saw like five or six broken thumbs um I saw sprained muscles all the time I saw like impin issues show up

Regularly um we had somebody who who you know pulled muscles in their calf um it was it was frequent that somebody was out with something and if you’re out you can’t train and if you can’t train you don’t improve so um it was a it was a

Resolution on my part to reduce the injury rate um and when I shifted that semi- prescript model it went down but we were still having issues because people were trying to replicate the examples when we shifted to the constraint sled and I just said find a solution that works here’s the problem

Situation find a solution that works people found Solutions uh that were largely adapted to their own body types their own their own you know physical properties and the only Corrections that I need to make or senica needs to make or one of our coaches need to make from from a

From a mechanical standpoint is is your body actually designed to move in the way you’re trying to present the solution let’s just like adjust the position slightly like you don’t want to over henge because then you can’t recover your balance is too forward you might hit in the back of the head or

Something like that you’re presenting targets it’s a safety issue or you you want to try this inverted thrust but your shoulder binding up right and it’s because you’re not rotating around your thoracic spine enough to open up this angle effectively um so you know we make like minor mechanical adjustments but

For the most part people are finding solutions that just fit their bodies better um that are still tactically in competitively viable the the other thing I think as far as as and I think this is especially noticed to be true in Striking Arts um if you’re in an art rear a recession

Right or pretty regularly um but all the training is done compliantly or or prescriptively um you do not have an index for what 0% effort five and so on right you’ve only experienced compliant and Wrecking you right and so making adjustments to intensity on the fly as

Appropriate to your level of fatigue and stuff like this is so it’s not just that you’re doing different physical things right but like the volume intensity at which you perform a physical activity is a strong indicator of the likelihood of injury um and somebody who is doing purely prescriptive

Training cannot Auto regulate that they don’t know how hard they’re going um whereas you know because the drill structure right now is graded exposure to non-compliance everybody realizes okay the drill just got a little bit harder right the different feels are um and so they’re able to scale down their

Intensity or go hey I’m a little bit tired I need to stop they don’t they don’t know when their performance is about to nose dive if they haven’t had that graded exposure right yeah yeah you know and I’ve noticed definitely the same thing when I was boxing and stuff like this right uh

Because if the only thing you’ve done is hitting the MS well you hit the MS as hard as you can right um and then you’re like okay well now do the same thing but do it to that guy’s skull um and there’s been nothing in between uh and it’s even worse because

All that time on the bag in the mths has been improving your your action capacities right so all we’ve been doing every session is learning how to hit harder uh and now like I’m going to hit a Target that I don’t know how to adjust appropriately to

Um so you know those are definitely things we noticed in terms of of training because we go to other schools or other places sometimes where they don’t do as much sparring as us and like they’re [ __ ] each other up right like hitting each other with really bad intentions

Yeah yeah this the what what floored me when I first got into the ecological Dynamic space and the constraints SL approach was when probably a few quite a few years ago now probably four years Rob gray was going over Dr Gray was going over some research in like

Practice design and like safety and injuries and stuff and he he’s like yeah more more more unstable variable practice is actually safer and it makes you more injury proof in the future which that is against everything I had ever been taught in martial arts uh I never ever ever heard

That before and now that I understand how things work on more of a mechanical level it does make sense but that was a it was a totally for before I heard that it was a limiting belief to me that I couldn’t get into live training for beginners immediately to get them starting

Immediately um the caveat being that you want to use task simplification and you want to make sure that they’re not literally trying to kill them eles day one but um with most people that’s not a problem you know you get a young kid that’s played Sports his whole life that

Might be a problem but um but most people it’s like it’s not a problem they’re not trying to kill each other and they don’t want to be killed but yeah that that’s something that um it was a significant is it it’s one piece in the the in the broad

Ecological space but it’s was a significant piece for me because it’s like well if it’s gonna help with build better skill there also gonna make them safer that’s like a win-win situation why would I do it the other way right yeah we we’ve definitely um the fact that we can train

People up to higher skill levels faster with fewer injuries overall like across the board these these things are just facts for us um with this approach right um speaks to may maybe a necessity for the education of this across across applied martial arts in general um yeah and and I will

I’ll add I’ll add something um there is a between the uh Force education right uh functionally it’s education around the amount of force that’s being output or the amount of effort that’s being put in um and the pressured environment that that we consistently train within because we basically don’t do compliant

Drills we don’t ever um I will display the thing and I’ll ask for people to use less Force initially and then shift up to like light sparring levels of force and then go to this thing but at nope just allow somebody to hit them that’s just not part of our game that’s

Not how we do it because that’s not realistic yeah we have found I have found in in the course that I’ve been doing this and uh as as somebody running the beginner practices people that especially people come in for sword stuff but people come in for martial

Arts um there are two big red flag kind of personas one of which is somebody who has developed a fantasy of what the thing is and they’re trying to live up to the fantasy of it yeah rather than open their mind to the reality of it and and work within that framework

Or um and and I call that like protagonist syndrome right they’re they’re the character and they’re uh I think it’s an actual syndrome but um they’re they’re the main character in their martial arts Journey which excuse their Partners they’re they may escalate Force trying to fulfill their fantasy

Right right um this goes hand inand with the kind of person who is like um well that’s not what a real fight is like you know the the come in not not quite the I only see Red Bro guys but um but those guys sometimes come in too swords

Doesn’t attract those people as much because they tend to think it’s too nerdy but um you know and maybe there’s a third type which is the well ACC kind of guys the anime guy yeah well and that fits under the fantasy dudes as well um yeah

So you know we do get some anime guys but uh what I have found is that we and our method uh you know in our local area is uniquely suited to taking people who um attempt to create fantasies for themselves or or who uh just try to go too hard right for

Whatever reason a real fight I’d go all out or um you know in my fantasy I’m like super strong or whatever any or or anyone even who’s just trying to go too fast like faster than their body cons sport or faster than a safe in the drill

Um that gritty and of force they they burn themselves out in the first 30 minutes of class of practice and then they spend the next hour getting stabbed in the face over and over and over and over and it really disabuses them very very quickly of whatever notion they

Have about you know what we do and their place in it um if they just wanted to show up and swing a sword because they felt like it looked cool or because they wanted to hit somebody with a sword um they’re gonna find within within minutes

That that’s not going to work out for very well for them in the long term and those people tend to self- select out yeah um you know once you once you break their fantasy they leave and um my Fighters safety and Improvement and growth is more important than those

Other people’s money so I’m not going to try and keep them right um we but the ones who do stay who say wait I had this fantasy I tried to go to our it didn’t work so clearly something is wrong with my idea of this thing

Right and then they get curious and they stay or we have people with a track record of issues maybe um and they come to us when nowhere else will take them because they love doing the thing maybe they’re Force output is too high right um they come to us largely as a

Everywhere everywhere else is just like hired of maybe um in some cases or or has issue or like they think they’re a safety concern right for us we’re used to a higher intensity of training they’re not immediately safety issue until they prove that they’re a safety

Issue um we know as coaches that going in we’re paying special attention ATT to them if get a sword too hard from the beginning we’re going to be honest with them like you need to di that [ __ ] down or you need to [ __ ] off um but that Force education that is built

Into all of our training um and the way that we don’t we don’t we try not to give just verbal cues in the middle of training um that that doesn’t do a lot of good right instead we create environments where those people have to solve the force problem as part of the

Solution like it’s part of part of completing the drill that’s the win condition not hitting the other person hitting the other person ends the rep but it doesn’t win the drill um people will say don’t try to win the drill no I want you to win the

Drill I want you to win the drill because but I’m G to tell you what the win condition is and it it’s going to be I want you to tap that dude in the head I want that guy to know it could have been a hell of a lot worse right so um

We take people who honestly have had issues in the past um or people who have these fantasies around what what we do is and and we effectively break those things um those habits or that muscle memory or those fantasies and then people who maybe were less suitable for

What we do before actually become suitable for what we do um and it’s just part of the methodology so we though we’ve had to kind of Select people who are interested in like a competitive level of training and we lose a lot of people who

Want to do it casually um degree we also have broadened our audience to people who would do it competitively but who might be problem students in other places um and and we effectively just train them out of the problem behaviors within the constraints of like how we operate excellent awesome so um

What are you you met you showed me a book earlier I that I also have um what were the biggest influences on how you guys have approached training from when you first started games based approaches down to today what are your what are your biggest influences son you want to start with

That one yeah so I would say the the earliest the games based approaches um before I came on I think the biggest influence is probably s brogi um who are like not academic right but just they’re the best competitive school in the United States right yeah they have a

Very like um hit and don’t get hit mentality because at the end of the day every martial arts and winning all the rules all the variations of rules in every competition come down to if you never get hit they never get points if you hit them you get points so if you

Don’t get hit and you hit the other dude right um so all of their training even though it is it it can be prescriptive or semi- preses of comes down to that point so that was that was a huge influence on us early on um and then

You know Rob’s book um the straight Blast Gym um uh early materials not not the current stuff then um train ugly um has a big influence because it it is a version of the model that can be taught to a non-academic person uh because like I you know one of

Our coaches Stephen just had a kid I’m not expecting him to read three books right um on how to coach um while he’s coaching uh and raising his child uh and so being able to boil down the basic things like make it as game like as

Possible or make it as much like the game that we’re trying to play as possible uh make it as many reps of that as possible Right with as many different looks as possible um inter leave you know just as like the you know enough a small enough number of things that you

Can put it onto a note card um has been really important for us us um I think that um yeah the the train ugly stuff has been a really big influence um continuing to talk to Rob has been in terms of experimentation one of the things that we want to play with

Is some of the visual blurring stuff next time we meet with them I’m gonna try and dig a little bit into we’re gonna do some goofy [ __ ] you know put people in goggles and see what happens nice because that’s the other thing sh because two so two of our people with

The best reading Sean has a visual impairment and Isaiah has one eye uh and after you know listening a little bit to Rob like oh this maybe makes sense because they’re they’re having to pay attention to secondary visual cues instead of just like fixating quiet eye on a single

Spot yeah uh yeah I think those have been really big influences and also just ass whoopings um like whenever us get just roundly like Jeremy Pace who’s the who’s the the coach at srogi is the only person in in swordsmanship who has made me feel the way I feel when I’m on the

Bottom of like a a a good competitive Jiu-Jitsu black belts right yeah um most most other people even like Derek Nash who’s like top 10 in the world World um feels like just a dude a normal dude who’s making better decisions than you’re making right but

Like I don’t feel like he’s stronger or faster than me right um he’s just has a better better sense of what he’s supposed to do yeah uh Jeremy makes me feel like I don’t know how to F how to fight at all uh and then I think for um

For Bryant I always forget how to say a guy’s name uh the the Spaniard yeah Tom pu yeah he’s a he’s a um he’s from he’s from Spain he is a uh raparist and and he studies something like a Spanish style of swordsmanship called theum um

And uh it’s a shorten name for it but he I can I know what he’s doing we sparred once ever and um I even against I haven’t really sparred Jeremy Pace but even even in the kind of play stuff that I’ve done with Jeremy Pace I I would

Venture to say that I I did not feel as helpless against Jeremy um as I did against Tom pu I’ve also never done long sword with Jeremy so I’m sure I’m sure I would feel the same way long sword um he’s been doing that longer but I I was just on every level

Outmatched um I could tell what was happening I could sometimes present a threat but it was never a it was almost like uh ethereal to him like he could just move through threats he always knew where to go he always know how to get out he always knew how to take

Mechanical advantage of the situation um yeah and and I felt played with and senica has kind of described playing with Jeremy Pace as you know um a cat with a ball of yarn and you’re the ball of yarn and yeah and that’s very much how I felt with ton so uh yeah yeah

I one of the things that I for me at least has been a huge influencer um and and Si largely spoke to a lot of it um is because I came to this from a experience based position not not from an education based perspective Um keeping an open mind with the priority of student growth first and just being willing to question what you’re doing don’t say I need them to do this thing I need them to succeed and these this is the environment I want them to succeed in if I want them to be

Able to spar well without constraints because that’s the fun part right like stop putting rules in and get to just [ __ ] around um if I want them to be able to spar well without constraints then I have to admit that sparring is an entirely different animal than drilling um

And I need to drill or play like I want to play so um again you know bringing bringing your training closer to what you’re actually going to be doing but um that means that if I have a technique and I’m not seeing that technique manifest stop don’t narrow your sights don’t put

Blinders on don’t get obsessed with the technique say why is this not showing up maybe it’s actually not viable or maybe I’m not teaching it in a reasonable way um break down the barriers between you and your students growth those barriers are generally in internal to yourself as a coach right um

They’re generally limitations in your perspective so really decide what matters most to you is it teaching is it the technique is it the cultural preservation it is the culture preservation you’re not going to see these things in sparring just be honest about it you’re not going to see them as

Much you sometimes huh then unless you’re demand and then you’ll do whatever the [ __ ] you want right yeah and then there are fighters of course who who are just so experienced that they’re going to be able to reproduce anything in any situation just from experience right um they know all the

Timing they know all the Rhythm they know all the distance but um in the average student you just may not see these techniques when they’re sparring and that’s okay remember that what you’re you’re doing is you’re preserving the culture um you’re not necessarily trying to create a fighting art um if you are

Fighting is dynamic and fighting is highly variable and fighting is a high stress situation and what comes out is going to be influenced by adrenaline and um the other the the there’s all the set of variables that entails one person and then all the set of variables that

Entails another too many right combined by each other it’s infinite so just be honest with yourself about what you’re doing and your goals are um the the knowing that a huge influence on me as a as a teacher as a coach is watching their growth watching my students growth

Watching the members growth they as they improve that tells me I’m doing something right as they improve against the the priorities that I have right and that the school has so um don’t discount the the influence of your your members performance as you know some something

That is is going to lead you to in the right direction for what your goals are excellent another big influence for me has been um the barbell medicine folks do you listen to their podcast by any chance I I do listen to barbell medicine and um I follow the everyone around kind

Of starting strength and like I I’ve the last five weeks I’ve actually spent uh investing in barbell training because I’ve and it’s been resolving in I mean this is tangential but it’s actually been resolving longstanding enturies so I’m really pumped about that but yeah what what um go ahead on that yeah so

I’m a big influence there two portions there um first has been um although we don’t I haven’t spelled it out for the coaches partially because of the way we move towards constraint space model is that um the the biocycle social approach to pain is kind of

Embedded in how we coach too right so we don’t tell you if you move like that your shoulders gonna explode um tell you that like you you can do anything if you train for it and you should know whether or not you’re trained for the thing

You’re doing right um you know it’s not that if you move like that your shoulder’s going to explode but like if you move like that really fast explosive and you have moved like that before then maybe you should move at a greated intensity right so it’s it’s opened up a lot of degrees

Of freedom and like basically we’re not using psychology to put our students in in pain anymore which right they’re they kind of tell their students that they’re fragile um absolutely the other thing is um even though we’re a competition school right like getting the metal is not the whole

Purpose of the school right for most people the biggest threat to their life is being sedentary and not having a community right and so um for a lot of our students right who may have just been anime nerds or whatever before um as the training gets more competitive it

Becomes the reason that they start lifting weights you know the reason they start going jogging and so on right um and producing those changes right is is more important right because that like literally you know some may live five 10 years longer because they found a community that encouraged them to regard

Themselves as an athlete right in a healthy uh and that like you know as much as you know may ragon participation peries keep in mind that like for the vast majority of the population participation in these activities is vastly more more important the whether or not you get the medal we we’re going

To get you to the medal too but like you should have a physical hobby that’s appropriately dosed to you and that’s like super have that Community um like something that I’m very proud of we didn’t mention before one of our students who’s able to competively spar and give other people problems is a

68-year old man with a pacemaker wow yeah right and like he stabs people in the throat when they are not letting him do it that’s awesome that’s a big Testament that’s a big Testament to the methodology um that’s awesome well you guys this has been this has been really really awesome I think

We’ve covered a lot here if we keep I mean we could keep going I could keep going um but I’ve got to get worked on the day too but I think the the listeners might it’d be hard for them to follow if we get go any longer but um

Where can the listeners find you guys they want to reach out or or consume any of Medias are yours yeah um if people want to find us honestly hop on to Google and just search Arena weapon Arts I could give you the URL I could give you the

Facebook give you whatever Google Arena weapon arts and all those things will show up in the list um so uh check us out go check the Facebook page there’s a bunch of sparring videos on there um you can also ask a questions through there if you want to uh hit up the website

Through the search um I think the the URL might show up is something a little different but searching Arena weapon Arts will get us and then um you know shoot shoot me a message if you’re in Austin come train with us I’ll let you drop in happy to spar with you I’ll stab

You in the face so awesome well guys thank you again for coming on um and I hope that we can actually uh I think we have more to talk about we we need to do this again all right all right thank you thank you Josh thanks so much for listening to the

Combat learning podcast if you enjoyed this episode remember to leave us a review on Apple podcast or Google podcast or your podcatcher of choice it really helps us out finally this episode including the intro music is produced by Micah peacock thanks in advance and I’ll see you on the next Episode Oh

Today I’m joined by Bryant Coston and Seneca Savoie, Historical European Martial Artists who specialize in coaching the sword at their club, Arena Weapon Arts.

In this episode, Bryant and Seneca recount their journey from a traditional technique and drill-based sword coaching, to games-based practice, and finally arriving at a full-bore constraints-led approach. They go into detail about how they approach practice design, curriculum development, as well as coaching and correction.

We also talk at length about representativeness and how previous experience in other skills can form “attractor states” that influence the way you move when acquiring and developing a newer skill. Of note also is their account of how training with more aliveness actually lowered their injury rates instead of making it worse.

So if you’re excited to jump in, hit the subscribe button on your podcatcher and enjoy the show.

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Join the email list now: combatlearning.com/newsletter (http://combatlearning.com/newsletter)

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Find Bryant & Seneca:

Website: https://www.academyofwma.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArenaWeaponArts/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arenaweaponarts/

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Produced by Micah Peacock

Intro Theme by Micah Peacock

Outro Music is Synergy by Juche