10,000 hours

So you are a beginner and trying to master fighting with armour on.  You love SCA combat but in the back of your head wonder how long it will take to get better.  Heck the guys who seem to destroy your defense with ease have had the same thing done to them in tournaments they go to….so where does that leave you?

An idea developed by psychologist Anders Ericsson According suggests it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert.

So fighting practice is 3 hours long but you spend one hour of that chatting with friends and slowly putting your armour on. Then there is some standing around time… we’ll give you 1.5 hours of practice a week. And then an event every weekend where you fight for 2.5 hours total (only to drive home bruised). So you are looking at 4hours/week – needing 2500 weeks to make up 10,000 hours – or roughly 48 years….

Holy Crap!  I don’t have that long.  And I started at age 30 (or 20, or 40, it doesn’t matter).  What do I do?

The short answer is fight more. Every week, every day, every hour – it doesn’t matter. If you want to get better then find a way to fight more.  Put a pel in the yard and hit it until it breaks. Hit an old tree. Practice throwing shots and shield work every night.

Or you could be like the other people in the SCA and walk around talking about it instead of doing it.

Choice is yours. 

The be all and end all of SCA combat....

This comes from an incident at a recent tournament........

The number one rule of SCA combat, whether you are brand new or a seasoned veteran, is that it is up to the slain person to declare that they are dead.  Or in other words - it is up to the person being struck to acknowledge any blow as good.

This rule is not in SCA Corpora - in AnTir it falls under Section III - Conventions of Combat, rule V - Judging blows

You need to implant it in your head as an SCA fighter that sometimes blows you land that may feel good to you are not good to your opponent.  You need to realize that you have to fight for yourself and at the fights end be content that you did everything you could to win and that is good enough. 

Because there will come a time when you are sure that you won but you didn't.

And when that time comes - you keep your mouth shut.  You put a smile on your face and you walk away and you leave it on the field where it remains dead just like you were 10 seconds ago.

You can only control your actions and not those of your opponent. 

Their Chivalry is on them and your Chivalry is on you.  So take care of yourself.  Die when struck.  And never ever openly question your opponents Chivalry (especially on the field).  Never tell someone a blow you landed was good.  Never tell someone they are dead unless they ask.

If that seems hard realize that if your "special shot that you worked so hard to land" already worked once so just do it again.

Be the best opponent you can be.  Be the kind of person people want to fight.  Be gracious and keep learning and apply yourself and one day the end result will be the one you want.  That is all in your control.

Intro

My name is Vik Vikingsson.  I started in the SCA in 1987 at 17 years of age - solely with the express interest of fighting in armour.  At that time in the SCA people who had no other interest in anything medieval and who only wanted to fight were labeled "Stick Jocks".  Hence the title of the blog.

Since that time we've come a long way baby.  I was Squired in 1993, Knighted in 1996, made a Laurel in 2003, and a Pelican in 2008.  I have been Prince of Avacal 5 times and was the first person in the Principality to win AnTir's Crown tourney - King of AnTir in 2009.

My goal is to jot down some of my thoughts/ideas about SCA combat.  It may take on a stream of consciousness like look as I try to write it down.  But hopefully there will be some nuggets of truth to what gets put in this blog.

 If you participate in the SCA then we have at least one thing in common.  Hopefully you will find more as you read. In the end I hope it is fun. If it isn't fun it isn't worth doing.

I am the only Vik I have ever met in the SCA – so if you are at an event and you hear someone talking to a Canadian and calling him Vik then it’s good odds it’s me.  Come over and say “hi”.