Techniques? We don’t need no stinking techniques! Do we?
Warning: Written in a fit of inspiration, and probably wrong as well as unfinished.
There’s a typically inane FaceBook non-conversation happening in the usual places about “do techniques really matter?” - naturalisch, the person posing the question has a conveniently shifting definition of technique. Ho hum.
On the other hand, Jack Slack has done some nice analyses of Stipe Miocic given his UFC title defence this weekend.
“Stipe Miocic uses the same four or five techniques or “moves” over and over again to best everyone they put in front of him, it’s the tactics that make the difference.“ - Jack Slack - Stipe Miocic: King of the Heavyweights
Fighting is, as I will endlessly quote Danaher, a problem solving activity. It’s a conversation where you are being asked questions, you are giving answers, and you are posing your own trick questions in return. Where do techniques fit into this?
I think of a technique as synonymous with a “move” - it’s a movement (or set of them) with a particular timing. Where it gets interesting is when you look beyond the movement itself (say, a cut) to the context it’s used in. You can throw the cut as an initial attack (Vorschlag), as a follow up from a bind (Nachschlag), as an intercepting attack as the opponent attacks themselves. You don’t just have the simple goal of “I want to cut them”, you have the tactical goal the cut is looking to achieve.
With good tactics, you can solve multiple problems with the same solution. This involves looking at what the opponent is doing too, but also what you intend to do and expect them to do, and vice versa.
While good movement details aren’t unimportant, the fastest, crispest attack in the world is useless if it’s done at the wrong time and distance, and against a prepared opponent. You can’t just shout an answer loudly if you were asked a different question. Conversations don’t work that way. I can’t remember who I need to credit for the phrase:
“You can’t just throw any meisterhau any time and have Papa Liechtenauer sprinkle his Zettel dust to make it work.”
For example, using a Zorn-ort to regain the attack from an incoming Oberhau is a tactic as well as a technique. The same motions of the sword and body can have a different tactical function if you pre-empt your opponent.
Just knowing the techniques is nothing if you can’t use them at the appropriate time. Which, to repeat myself, is not just a matter of recognizing opportunities and taking them quickly, but creating them.
There is another layer to the puzzle, both in the hypothetical “deadly street sword duel” we all think we’re training for and in the fencing tournaments we use to test out skills: how do we fit our tactics together?
There’s a difference between having a few good techniques and a sense of when to time them, and having a gameplan. How your tactics and the techniques to use in them are going to fit together is what I sometimes (mistakenly?) call either strategy or system.
