Single Sword Strengthening

Training with a single-handed sword can present some particular challenges for your wrist, forearm, elbow and shoulder. Newer fencers especially may find that their training time and capacity are limited by fatigue or discomfort. And ongoing or recurring complaints of fatigue or discomfort are ordinary. Below are exercises specifically for addressing this issue to improve training capacity, injury resistance and performance. 

I work professionally as an independent physical therapist and strength coach. If you are interested in my services you can email me at: hirsch.sm@gmail.com. Or, if you just want to support my blog you can buy me a KoFi.

This information is specifically for healthy individuals. If you already have pain or injury in the arm you should first seek evaluation from a physical therapist. 

Equipment

These exercises are best done with some basic equipment. 

First is just a simple stick. I recommend 3/4” rattan or hardwood dowel, ideally 39” long. This is a standard length for single-sticks and readily available from my friends at Purpleheart. (No promotional consideration - I like them and their products). But you can also get a hardwood dowel from a home improvement store.

Next is some small dumbbells or hand weights. Most folks can start at 2# tho smaller folks may need to start at 1#. 1 and 2 pounds can usually be done with cans or water bottles instead of buying anything. 1 pound = 16 oz of water or soup = 473 mL. 

Higher weights are better achieved with purpose built equipment to ensure it is convenient and safe to use. These weights are usually available for about $2-3 per pound.

For the shoulder exercises - and just because it is useful for a wide variety of exercises - an adjustable dumbbell set is convenient and a good bang for your buck equipment. 

Programming

Stick Wiggle

This exercise should be done for sets of 10-20, with a focus on speed and not on increasing the number of repetitions. Because this is a speed exercise increasing the weight of stick or switching to your sword or other equipment does not help.

Stick Rotations

Start this exercise with the same singlestick. When you are ready to progress (see below) a saber is likely to be a reasonable step-up tho heavier sabers are a bigger jump than appropriate. As strength improves a broadsword, arming sword or side sword become appropriate. Yes these are generalizations based on sword categories and I know that there is substantial variation within each category. If you need something in between a singlestick and your sword you can use a longer or thicker stick both of which are readily available at a typical home improvement sword.

Longer term this exercise can be phased out and increasing weight beyond your sword is usually not necessary. 

Scaption

Most folks can start this exercise at 5 pounds and adjust initial repetitions appropriately. Progression may be more awkward depending on what specific weights or adjustability you have available. 

Wrist Flexion & Extension

Start at 2 pounds and work your way up based on difficulty. Some folks will progress up to 5 pounds or more quite quickly and others will need to increase more slowly. Longer term you are likely going to be able to use more weight for flexion than extension.

Workout Timing

Between this training and your technical training you should be aiming for 4 to 6 days per week with this workout two or three times. The more technical training time the less of this workout you should do. 

These workouts should not be done on consecutive days and you should avoid doing this workout shortly before technical training. 

Repetitions and Sets

Progress thru the following sequence of number of reps per exercise.

• 8

• 10

• 12

• 15

• 18 - only necessary for large jumps in next weight size up. 

Do the number of reps in a workout for one workout. Next workout try to work up to the next target number. If you can hit the target for all sets then go up in reps next workout. If you cannot then stay at that number of reps for the next workout. When you have hit 15 or 18 reps in a workout then go up in weight and drop the number of reps back down to 8 or 10. 

For instance: if I have 3 and 5 pound weights for wrist flexion and extension then I will progress from 8 thru 18 reps over some number of weeks before I jump from three pounds to five pounds. As a percentage that is a 67% jump. At 5 pounds I will start at 8 reps again.

If instead I have a 4 pound weight I would increase the weight at 15 reps. I may only need to drop down to 10 reps since the jump from 4 to 5 pounds is only 25%.

Number of repetitions and weight should be tracked individually for each exercise. If you would find an app a useful way to do that then I recommend JeFit. Steady and identical progress in all exercises is not typical. 

Each exercise should be done for at least 2 sets. Between sets you should either rest 30 seconds or cycle thru different exercises if you want to use the time more efficiently. If you feel like you could do two or three sets without a break then you should increase the weight instead.

I usually do three sets. More sets will help more with endurance but there are diminishing returns. Having lower (2 sets) and higher (3-4 sets) volume days may also be reasonable depending on the rest of your training schedule. 

Wrist Flexibility

If you think that you have a limitation in wrist flexibility please watch this video first.

Basic Strengthening

There are clear advantages in a basic and complete strengthening program. I discuss that here. With a complete program then the exercises can simply serve as a spot supplement as needed. 

Conclusion

A specific or complete strength and conditioning program will improve training capacity, injury resistance and performance.

Agility Ladder Training

I think I promised this post back in October. Well, I'm on Spring Break right now, so I've got time to catch up on things.

 Principles of Agility Ladder Training

Agility ladder drills serve three basic purposes:

• Conditioning
• Elastic response
• Agility & Quickness

From a conditioning standpoint the ladder serves the same basic role as a jump rope, it gets you moving in a basic bouncy activity. As such there's a good reason to keep your ladder drills going for a few minutes. Ladder drills are easier to learn than jump rope for many folks, plus they are more interesting. The basic pattern of a group ladder drill is alternating between waiting your turn and moving quickly through the ladder, which is the kind of energy usage we want to be training.

The conditioning aspect can also serve as a nice warm-up. 

Any kind of bouncy exercise will help develop the elastic properties of our musculature. This is the principle underlying big plyometric exercises like box jumps, hurdles, and depth jumps. However, the ladder drills are much lower intensity. This lower intensity means that they are suitable for just about everyone. This will also benefit quickness in the various smaller reactive actions involved in swordplay.

Agility is primarily change of direction and is determined by the ability to put force into the ground. Ladder drills have a limited ability to improve agility because they do not often use the large, intense actions that are the defining aspect of difficult changes of direction.

Instead agility ladder drills can be thought of as increasing quickness in the sense of reacting to the environment and performing many small changes of direction. The environment is fixed not random but there is tactile feedback from stepping on the ladder.

Overall, the ladder is not the best tool for any single component but serves as a multipurpose tool in the movement prep part of a training session. The body is made more ready for the various kinds of training by doing lower intensity exercises first.

I also like to use the ladder to instill and reinforce the idea of mindful practice. You can always mess up a ladder drill - step on the rungs, kick it out of position and so on. But I demand that my athletes pay attention and do the drill right. This brings me to one of the most common instructions I give in training, both basic physical training and fencing training:

"Correct is more important that fast or number of repetitions"

Alternately, you can call this quality over quantity.

What it Does Not Do

The agility ladder does not improve speed, though they are sometimes called speed ladders. Speed is distance divided by time. Putting a ladder in the way of your feet won't help with that. Only dedicated speed, strength and power training will. However, raw running speed is not directly related to swordfighting (unless you're losing), so it doesn't matter.

Also, ladder drills do not improve your dexterity. Coordination is not a general purpose trait that can be trained. The body and brain's ability to produce smooth, coordinated action requires specific practice, there is no way around this.

Permutational Analysis

One of the ways I conceptualize the value of ladder drills is with the idea of permutational analysis. This is an idea I got from Scott Brown a few years ago, which he applies to handwork drills. The basic idea is that if I get into a new situation I cannot produce a useful action in the moment - whatever I do will be uncoordinated and slow because it is untrained. As such it is useful to dedicate a part of training to a wide variety of arbitrary variations, specifically to make it less likely that your feet will end up in a truly novel position. This is also the reason to switch up the drills every few months.

Categories of Exercises

I will not attempt an exhaustive list of exercises here, nor even much in the way of specifics. Instead I want to look at broad categories to guide decisions about what to include and how to organize the workout.

Intensity 

Intensity levels are roughly as follows:

1. Stepping - one leg moves at a time and one leg is on the ground. This starts with simple exercises like Quickfeet and moves up through a wide variety of exercises like In-In-Out-Out. More complex patterns include Ickey Shuffle and Carioca. Also includes the fencing actions of Advance and Retreat, as well as Doubles etc.
2. Double-leg actions - both legs move at the same time. The prime example is Scissors. Hopscotch can be roughly put in this category as well.
3. Double-leg hop - basic is both feet in the same box. Alternatives can include Skiers and variations on direction of movement etc.
4. Single-leg hop - one leg bouncing from square to square, same leg throughout

Skipping squares - in general, exercises can be made more intense by skipping squares of the ladder. This is most useful for double-leg hops but can be applied to a wide variety of exercises. It would be a bit much for single-leg hops for all but the highest level athletes.

Direction of Movement

Ladder drills can also be characterized by direction of movement.

1. Linear - forwards and backwards. The amount of linear you need depends on the type fencing you train.
2. Lateral - side to side
3. Medial - this distinction only matter for single leg actions, lateral is to the outside of the leg but medial is towards the inside. That is, if I am standing on my right leg then medial is a jump to my left.
4. Diagonal - a mix of linear and lateral while facing down the ladder. For a lot of fencing training this is more relevant than lateral.
5. Rotational - changing the direction you face from one action to the next. Easiest is 90°, 180°+ can be done as well.
6. Crossover - one foot crosses over the other. Most often part of drills that are otherwise diagonal
7. Backwards - any of the above categories can also be done backwards; presenting a higher coordination requirement.

Some exercises don't fit well into any of these categories, so this is only a rough guide to get you started. For instance the Shuffle Wide and Stick goes: two feet in the box, one foot out - leaping as far as you can, stick that landing and leap back to two feet in the next box.

Designing the Workout

Start at low intensity and work up progressively. With athletes new to the drills do not incorporate the most intense drills to start with. In particular single-leg hops are very intense for anyone unused to such actions. Even double-leg hops may not be a good starting exercise depending on the population you are working with or what the rest of the day's training will be like.

Include all directions of movement in a given routine, with an emphasis on those most relevant to the style. This goes back to the permutational analysis idea from earlier.

The number of exercises to include will depend in part on the objective of the workout. As a quick warm-up before fighting, maybe just four exercises. As part of a conditioning routine, do 8 or 10. For general movement prep before a class I usually do 6.

Examples

	Beginner	Intermediate	Advanced
1	Quickfeet*	Double-leg Hop*	Single-leg Hop* (incl. Medial)
2	Double Advance-Retreat**	same with Sword	Command drill
3	In-In-Out-Out	Hopscotch	Carioca
4	Front Crossover	same with Reverse	Rear Crossover
5	Scissors	Skiers	Skiers with Rotation
6	Snake	same with Reverse	Snake Skipping boxes

* Forward, Backward and Lateral
** Each leg leading

Progression in Agility Ladder Training

There are two basic modes of progression in agility ladder training. First is intensity and the other is complexity.

Intensity is easy, and the intensity guide above directs that type of progression. Increases can also be made in the number of drills or the speed demands of the drills.

Complexity increases are part of making this more directly applicable to fencing training. First, insist that the athletes not look down. When they start they have to look just to avoid stepping on the ladder but they should be pushed to keep their eyes up early and often.

Another method of increasing complexity is to hold your sword while doing the drills, and specifically to hold the sword in a well-formed guard.

Additional complexity can also come in the form of actions after or in-between the ladders.

• Set-up two ladders in a row about 5m apart. Sprint from one ladder to the next with a smooth transition from the run into the ladder drill. 
• Set-up two ladders side-by-side at least 3m apart. Side shuffle from one ladder to the next while facing the same way and then do the next ladder backwards.
• Have a coach stand at the end of the ladder with a focus mitt or target and execute an attack at the end of the ladder.

The variations are endless - just make sure you understand how the exercise you design helps the people you are training.

Conclusion

Ladder drills are fun and serve a variety of purposes from warm-up to movement prep to footwork quickness. They are also cheap and easy to use. You can use them to reinforce mindful practice and hone proprioception and kinesthetic awareness.

Geeking Out about Heart Rate

Late last year I got a new heart rate monitor watch. And it let's me geek about my exercise even more. The watch I got was the Polar FT7. Like my last one it uses a strap around the chest to measure heart rate (but this one is cleanable). The chest strap is a good, accurate way to track pulse.

But this watch does more; it tracks pulse throughout the workout and calculates calories burned. I've been using this to track just about all my training and exercise for a few months now. And there are some clear patterns.

What does this mean for HEMA?

Now, I'm not going to pretend that my personal experience and numbers are data. That would contradict some key points that I've made previously. Instead I'll point out that my results show generalizability of other research. A reasonable amount of research has been done on the cardiovascular aspects of martial arts. So far, I have just assumed that our martial art is similar to others in regards to metabolic demand, like here.

My own numbers have been in line with other martial arts studies. This makes sense to me because a 3lb. sword is not going to add much to moving my full bodyweight around.

Heart Rate

It takes time for the body to react to intense exercise and raise the heart rate - this process is mediated by hormonal factors that have to be made, enter the bloodstream and then reach the heart. As such short bursts of high intensity activity will produce only a limited increase in pulse. The muscles being used are therefore primarily acting anaerobically and using their stored glucose (glycogen) and creatine-phosphate for energy.

My heart rate got up to about 155-160 at most. Which is 82-87% of my max. Hitting 90%+ of my max requires much more intense training, like interval sprints.

Most of the time my heart rate hovered around the 125-130 mark. Around 65-70% of my max. But this was only when I bothered to look at my watch, which was usually after doing some particular drill, to see what effect that drill had on my heart rate. One of the great things about the watch is that it gives me a breakdown of how much time I spent above or below 65% of max. And in reality I spend about half or more of my time below that threshold.

The 65% threshold is based on the silly notion of the 'Fat Burning Zone' versus the 'Cardiovascular Fitness Zone'. However, and importantly for exercise planning, these two zones do correspond reasonably well to the definitions of moderate versus vigorous exercise, which I've discussed before. And I'll cover this in more detail for the next post in this series.

So don't expect to get your heart rate up all that high with HEMA training.

Furthermore a quick recovery to baseline is a good trait to watch for. It indicates good cardiovascular fitness and will benefit your ability to do repeated bouts and training. If my pulse was over the line when I looked at my watch, but averaged below that line then I must have been recovering quickly. This is encouraging.

On the flip side, while your pulse doesn't get that high while training it will stay elevated for a long time after you finish. I've continued wearing the strap for a couple hours after exercising a few times specifically to observe this phenomenon. This is when the body goes through the aerobic process of replenishing the resources used while at high intensity - a phenomenon known as Excess Post-exercise Oxgyen Consumption (EPOC). Additionally, this is when the body is literally burning fat as a result of your exercise - the fat is metabolized to fuel the replenishment of your muscles.

Calories

I burned about 10 calories per minute for a typical training session. Some parts of training were higher, and some parts were lower. On the days where I was mostly coaching the rate was about half that. I weigh 85 kg (190 lbs) so your personal expenditures will be different based on your own bodyweight.  I will go into more detail about calculating that (using METs) in another post.

This is in line with the previous research I linked to above about calorie expenditures. Of note is the fact that high-intensity sparring is a higher demand than actual competition.

Overall the calorie demand for HEMA training is comparable to many other common modes of exercise.

How does this inform training?

Make training harder than fighting and fighting will be easier.

Hard sparring sessions can be a component of training max cardiovascular output and recovery. But this must be done intentionally. It is much easier to slowly dial down the intensity of training than to push all out and stay there. And you will do this unconsciously.

Instead I suggest doing flow drills or parry-riposte drills at high intensity for conditioning purposes. Training to exhaustion is bad for technique and strategy so such training should be done with the simplest actions.

And the really intense cardio training needs to be non-HEMA stuff. This is one of the reasons why running is used so extensively in many sports - it can be done with very high intensity and form doesn't break down, and you are not training bad motor patterns for technique.

Really though, we want to keep most training below the threshold for vigorous training because this will facilitate good motor learning. The primary objective of the HEMA class time should be focused around motor learning. The cardio training should be separate - that way each can be done well.

How hard are you training?

This isn't a competition and I'm not saying this to brag or anything. I have visited plenty of schools and talked to plenty more folks about how they train in their classes. And the conclusion is this:

I run the most physically demanding HEMA classes.

I will amend that statement by saying that I believe there are numerous European clubs at a similar level and that I'm comparing myself primarily to US clubs.

This has to do with my objectives for HEMA training. If your club's or your personal objectives are different then do what matches your goals. And I hope that my blog helps you meet your goals.

I'm not saying that my way is only 'good' way or the best way or any other such BS. It meets my goals, though, so it's what I do and how I run my classes.

But this does mean that almost all of a typical groups class time is going to be moderate intensity, as far as cardiovascular response goes. And that just means that the conditioning for performance improvement has to be done separately.

Conclusion

I'm a geek. I obsess about these things. I got one degree in the field and I'm working on another. You don't need to do any of this kind of tracking if you don't want to.

But if you find it helps you meet fitness or performance goals, then by all means, go for it.

Class at Iron Gate Exhibition

Recently, I ran a class at Iron Gate Exhibition (IGX) on the topic of Speed & Agility. I co-taught the class with Dakao Do of Schwert am Schwert of Houston, Texas. Below is the class description and the outline of the class. 

I'm going to flesh out the outline a bit, but I actually ran the class with just a sketch. Not only that but the first time that Dakao and I got to talk in-person about the material was just Thursday night, for a Saturday morning class. And in-between we were both very busy with running IGX. We had talked on the phone about a month before, but this is all movement related stuff, so there's a limit to what you can make clear over the phone.

Additionally, there was some stuff that I'd planned to discuss but did not get to (there's never enough time).

Suffice it to say it was a bit of an adventure. But the whole weekend was, so that's par for the course.

Structure and Motion

Fast, maneuverable footwork is an essential component of historical fencing and martial arts. Correct skeletal alignment is the structural foundation on which safe, strong, fast fencing and fighting are based. Structure is present in all guard stances, movements, and strikes. This class will teach some fundamental principles of leverage for control, power, and safety in the fight. Building on that foundation, we will cover a variety of drills designed to improve footwork through the principles of overload, permutational analysis, and body awareness (proprioception). Simple (and cheap) tools such as ladders and cones will be demonstrated to provide drills to bring home to your club. High-intensity interval training for speed and cardio conditioning will also be covered.

Class Outline

Key Principles

• Overload
• Specificity
• Progression
• Intensity
• Task complexity

• Training Power - appropriate reps and rest are required to train power
• Permutational Analysis - underlying theory for highly varied footwork training
• Proprioception - many training tools and methods described here are intended to provide proprioceptive feedback

Tools

• Space - sometimes that's all you need
• Ladders
• Rings
• Dots/Cones - I prefer dots over cones for many drills since you can step on dots, and thereby use them to require precise footwork and this is a mechanism of proprioceptive feedback

The class was organized like an extended training session.

1. Warm-up
1. Lateral lunge
2. T-spine spiderman
3. Lateral shuffle
4. Grapevine
2. Ladder - Ladder drills should include 5-6 activities
   

   More on ladder drills will be included in later posts
3. Lateral & Diagonal
1. Explosive
1. The hip, knee and ankle should be in a straight line for efficient transmission plus joint safety
2. Dinosaur Walk
3. Lateral Bound
2. Agility Rings
1. 1-2 Stick
2. 1-2 Bound
1. Increase distance
2. Assisted/Resisted
3. Diagonal
3. Change of Direction (cones/dots)
1. Forward W
2. Lateral W
3. Lateral W and Sprint
4. L and +
4. longsword circle drill, with 10 variables
5. Z-ball
4. Speed & Acceleration
1. 30-yard shuttle
1. Simple
2. Varied
3. Alternatives
2. Split-squat start
3. Lean-fall-run
4. 60m suicide sprint
5. Conditioning
1. Metabolic power
2. Recovery
   
   This is just a taste of what was in the full-class and many of these topics will be filled out later.

Doing Each Thing Well

I was once again thinking about how to explain why I don't like kettlebells. But don't worry, this isn't just a rant against kettlebells.

This has do to with making sure that each component of our Strength & Conditioning program is done well. By doing each component well we will get the best results. I think this is obvious, once I write it down, but if you want me to explain further just mention it in the comments.

This idea is present throughout my approach to training, not just the S&C part. I'm going to use a few examples below and draw the examples towards HEMA training to illustrate the general idea.

Basically, I don't like exercises that mix different components, like power and stability. At least not as the primary part of my program. And for a person new to strength training, the primary exercises are their only exercises. (I recently argued with someone about kettlebells for strength training; only to realize that he was an advanced lifter and using them as assistance exercises. He just didn't think of them as assistance exercises.)

A kettlebell snatch mixes several different components, while a dumbbell snatch focuses on power development. The dumbbell snatch is unilateral and asymmetric, so it's a bit of stability and core work, but it's mostly about the power. An exercise that is mostly one component (e.g. power or strength or conditioning) and a bit of another is a good thing. It's a good thing for the secondary exercises in a program. The primary exercises should each focus on one component and maximize that piece.

The kettlebell snatch has an off-center weight thereby increasing the stability demand of the exercise - limiting the weight. Limiting the weight I can move limits my power development - so it's not a good snatch. Limiting power development limits the acceleration training of the exercise; and acceleration is how the snatch is relevant to martial arts and combat sports.

Additionally, the KB snatch is technically demanding, because otherwise you break your arm. This means you have to progress slowly and develop the technical skill for this lift. And that is time taken away from technical training for HEMA. A KB jerk eliminates the risk of breaking your, but still has the above problem of limiting weight, and therefore power development.

Lots of Lunges

Whew, now I'm done talking about kettlebells. Why not do lots of lunges, like a hundred? It's a good conditioning workout, right? Sure, but it's crappy technical training for lunges. Out of 100 lunges I'll get good, explosive power out of the first 10-15. After that it'll be lower intensity lunges. Lunges that won't hit in  fight because they aren't fast enough.

But if I do 100 lunges for conditioning purposes then I'll have crappy lunge form. To get a good conditioning stimulus, I have to do lunges at such a tempo and intensity that making them technically excellent is impossible. This is why conditioning exercises are normally limited to those that can be done at huge volumes and remain sound, like running.

I can't do both. I can't have technically excellent lunges and good conditioning. I can't do explosive power and conditioning. Pick one, work on it. Then the next day, pick the other and work on that.

Cyclical/Flow/Parry-Riposte Drills

This same reasoning applies to this kind of drilling. These drills have different names, but they usually involve a technically simple pairing of an attack and defense. They are partner drill where the roles constantly reverse. I attack - you defend. You attack - I defend. And the attack and defense don't change.

The advantage of such a drill is primarily that you can get large numbers of repetitions out of it. And this leads some to approach these drills as a way to involve a conditioning component into the drilling part of class.

But I disagree. As we push the drill to a level that it's conditioning then we lose technical form. And that's a problem. The drill then begins to lose it's relevance to martial arts training. Either by being sloppy or by decreasing the intensity below that which is used in fighting just to get more time or reps done.

Some coaches do this because they want to make a class that does everything. A one-stop approach to strength, conditioning and technical training. But this means that there are limits on how well each component can be done.

I prefer to set a high bar. I am up front with students that if they want to reach their personal best then they need to be putting the time in outside of class to do the strength work; to do the conditioning work. Class is for technical development.

What Instead?

I will tell students to push these drills at high-intensity until their form breaks a little bit, and then they step back. Ideally, each week your students can do a few more reps than last week before they break down - but that's not always possible where power is relevant. However, that's going to come mostly from outside conditioning work and growing technical skill - it is a marker not the cause.

Conclusion

The basic take away piece is that I will always encourage excellence. And that means each component needs to be done well. I can do a kettlebell workout that is part strength and part conditioning and a little bit of power. But it won't do any of those things well. And that does not satisfy me.

Fighting Is Not the Best Conditioning

This is another one of those persistent, old-school martial artist myths - that fighting is the best conditioning for fighting. Usually people mean it is the best cardiovascular conditioning, but some folks will claim it's the best for strength as well. The suggestion that training with the sword is the best strength training for swordplay is just silly, but I won't go into detail in this post.

Let's look at conditioning for fighting.

If it were true fighting is the best conditioning then the best conditioning for any sport would be playing that sport. But decades of research and experience have conclusively shown that to be false. A large body of published research demonstrates that simply playing/fighting is not the best conditioning. Furthermore countless athletic teams have implemented specific conditioning programs and seen performance improve. Teams with these kinds of conditioning programs normally do better than those without.

When you are familiar with the evidence on the topic there is no doubt that simply playing is not the best conditioning.

Should we conclude that martial arts are the only human physical activity where this rule is broken?

The Evidence

A well-developed and effective program always has three characteristics:

• Overload
• Progression
• Specificity

Applying these principles to training programs has been used by strength coaches for decades to produce the best athletes in the world in a wide variety of disciplines.

Overload

Cardiovascular overload is not common in free sparring for most people. It happens. Of course. But it's not happening much. And not to the degree seen in actual cardio training. If I do several matches during my groups free fencing period I may be quite winded by the end of the last one. But that's not the same as doing intervals.

In interval training I may sprint 100 yards in 20-25 seconds. I am far more winded at that point then I am after 3 minutes of fighting. I have achieved a higher level of overload.

And since I am interval training I do another 100 yard sprint as soon as I get back to the finish line. And I repeat this for several cycles. This is far more intense than just doing some fighting training. Or I'll do 1 minute at 10.5 mph (16.9 kph) on the treadmill. This is alternated with 4 minutes of walking. After 5 blocks like this (only 20 minutes) I am far more winded than 45 minutes of free-fencing with my students.

Some of you are probably quite fatigued by the end of a session of free-fencing. Some of you know people in your group who just don't last as long in free-fencing. If fighting was really working so well for conditioning would this still be happening? If it worked the problem would just go away after a couple of months of training like that.

When we free-fence at my school we fight until I have exhausted all the students. I can keep fighting at this point. I normally feel energized and awake at the end of class.

Besides, do we want fighting to the point of total fatigue to be our norm for training? Sure, training under stress conditions should be done periodically, to acclimate our body and mind. But as we fatigue we lose our ability to implement strategy, tactics and fine motor skills. Should we be regularly training to this level of fatigue? No, because doing so impairs the progress and development of those attributes.

And if you only fight to fatigue sometimes, then you are not doing it often enough to get a meaningful cardiovascular training response. For a good adaptive response it is necessary to train to overload several times per week.

Progression

Progression is increasing the difficulty variables of training over time. Without it there is no long-term progress. With fighting as our sole conditioning what will you use as progression? You can increase the number and duration of fights. But can you force each fight to be equally intense? Or will you slow down as the number of fights mount up?

Against a canny opponent will you attack with great ferocity to train metabolic power? No. You will fight smarter. And the conditioning stimuli of each fight will depend on the opponent. You can't develop a clear program to stress specific variables.

As I've described previously there are a couple of different attributes to train with conditioning: recovery and power. Achieving progression with these components is easily done by manipulating simple variables like recovery time and duration. Variables that you can control completely. This leads too . . .

Specificity

The kind of programming that I describe in the link above allows you to make your program specific. Are you training metabolic power or recovery? If I just fight for conditioning how will I achieve a specific result? The stimuli will be all over the place depending on the nature of each particular fight. And while this may sound useful because it is "like a real fight", it does not allow us to apply overload to specific characteristics. Without that overload we will not improve in each dimension that we wish to improve.

Conclusion

In short, your conditioning program should make the fighting easy. Don't make the fighting hard on your conditioning.

Different Types of Intervals

This isn't the post I was planning on writing today, but I've been thinking about the topic, since it's part of the workout I'm doing right now. As I'm sure you know if you've been reading this blog I advocate for intervals for conditioning. But their are different kinds of approaches to intervals depending on your objective.

Interval training can usefully help develop two different traits: maximum power and recovery. Both of these are relevant to HEMA in different ways. Training at and above our aerobic max (VO₂max) will increase the body's ability to generate energy at such high intensities. This facilitates the brief bursts of power in a fight. The outcome we are looking for is to increase our maximum power output. Go faster, jump higher, put out more calories per minute.

For optimum power development we need each interval to begin reasonably refreshed. This means taking relatively long rest periods.

We define our intervals by how long the high-intensity portion lasts and the work to rest ratio. The table below lays out the basic programming numbers.

Intervals for Power and Energy System Development

% of Maximum Power*	Typical Exercise Time	Work:Rest ratios
90-100	5-10 seconds	1:12 to 1:20
75-90	15-30 seconds	1:3 to 1:5
30-75	1-3 minutes	1:3 to 1:4
20-30	>3 minutes	1:1 to 1:3

* Percent of maximum is not VO₂max, which is the maximum aerobic power. When we push into anaerobic training is possible to hit 170% plus of VO₂max.

Starting up again shortly after these bursts helps develop the ability to recover quickly and do it again and again over the course of the fight. This is also an important characteristic to develop. This kind of conditioning will also increase your training capacity.

When intervals are restarted again after insufficient rest then your body starts tapping into additional energy systems. Metabolic waste starts to build up and performance decreases from interval to interval. Over time this type of training will shrink the performance decrement - which ultimately is the objective.

When training for recovery and capacity use work:rest ratios of 2:1, 1:1, 2:1. This is the kind of protocol that Tabata made famous and which typically characterize high-intensity interval training (HIIT) programs. In fighting we frequently have the opportunity to pull back and take a breather, because of this it is not always necessary to train in this mode.

Programming

There are lots of possibilities for using the above to write a program. This is what I'm currently doing:
Sunday: Ten 15-yard sprints, these take about 3 seconds and I have an interval timer running to give me 30 seconds between sprints. ~5 minutes
This is followed by four 1-minute runs with 4-minute walks in-between. I do this on the treadmill which makes keeping track of time easy. The runs are at 10.5 mph currently, which leaves me almost stumbling after a minute. The walk is only 3 mph since it's for recovery.

Wednesday: 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off, for 16 intervals. I alternate between sled pulls and swings for these intervals. The swings are easier than the sled pulls allowing me to dial back the intensity a bit and up the training volume. ~ 16 minutes

Friday: This is my steady state day - 20 minutes on the treadmill. I'm working to increase the speed of the run, not the time.

Conclusion

Pick your interval training to achieve your training objective. A mixed approach works well for HEMA since our energy demands are varied.

Credits
The table is adapted from Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, 3rd edition by Baechle and Earle.