Photo by Joshua Gershon Feldman.
https://vimeo.com/648215731
You can see me running into battle and raining down blows at 0:31 and 1:34.
While a person should always strive towards fitness as a way of life and part of a complete health regimen (not "regime," as I have seen, surprisingly often, written by folks in the fitness industry). It is, however fun to have an activity goal towards which your fitness regimen is pointed. It helps give you focus, choose what exercises to do and fitness principles to follow, and gives you an objective towards which you can measure your success.
For me, medieval armored combat in the Society for Creative Anachronism is my goal this year, returning to it after some years off due to a shoulder injury and the subsequent surgery, which followed some time of from a knee injury (Well, I did do some fighting at practices and the Pennsic War, but that was, as I said, limited).
I had never done a video workout program until I found a cheap copy of BeachBody's "Insanity" Workout with Sean T. As regular readers of this blog know, I have started that program a few times, but never got much past the first level. This time I have made it past the first level and am almost finished with the second, and though I am not doing as well in the individual workouts as I have in the past, (whether my muscles or my cardio giving way, set by set, before the end of some of the workouts, so I fail to do all the reps or last out the entire time).
So this spring and summer, when the SCA fighter practice opened up, I served as marshal, not fighting, but rather keeping an eye on the other fighters' safety and instructing where I could. I let other people borrow what armor of mine fit them, because I wasn't using it.
The reason for this was that I still didn't feel that my shoulder was up to snuff. The strength disparity between my two shoulders is still quite great, and there are some positions towards which my arm just won't get. I can do all the mechanics of sword-swinging that I know, but the right shoulder gets tired before the left one does, and I am still not quite sure if it will hold up to a sudden strain.
So I have been making sure to do extra exercises on my shoulders. I use Indian clubs in the Insanity warmups to give just a little resistance to the arms in things like jumping jacks and the "Heisman" move. This has helped a little. I still feel like there is a ways to go.
So when I finally decided to put the armor on, I fought in the style I had been using before the surgery: Inverted great sword n my right hand, arming sword in my left. It is a style that some people do in the SCA, though I have no idea of its historicity. By holding the great sword by the ricasso (the part just above the cross--guard on the blade), the hilt is high enough to guard my head, while the blade is long enough to protect my leg (if held in the correct location).
I had not worn armor for that long continuously in what felt like years, and certainly had not fought in a melee since Pennsic 2019. But then again, most everyone else had not fought in a melee since the COVID shutdown either. Less than halfway through the battle, my left bicep was sore and tired from holding my greatsword up. I was limited in my hand use because my right-hand gauntlet was locked in a gripped position due to some damage it had taken. I was able to run to and from the resurrection point at the beginning, but towards the end the best I could manage was a brief sprint followed by a quick march.
Being as my greatsword was not as long as a spear nor wide as a shield, my effectiveness in the front line was minimal. Most of what I did, then, was stay behind the lines, direct some traffic (telling spearmen and shieldmen where they were needed based on the calls of the local commander). then, when there was a push from the other side, I would jump in to help out where I could. Sometimes that could mean pounding on someone's head, sometimes pushing against a charging shield wall, sometimes charging against several spearmen to keep them from stabbing other guys.
The battle was on a field longer than it was wide, sloping up from the ends to a crest of a ridge anout one-third of the field away from one end. At that crest there were several picnic tables and a small rock garden that were off limits to fighting. So the top of that ridge, being the narrowest part of the field, was where the battle raged, as the two armies faced each other. They fenced with spears seeking to attrit the other side until an opportunity for a push occurred. But, like the Western Front in WWI, no push made much in the way of territorial gain.
This actually was not much of a strategic problem, as this was a "resurrection" battle, meaning that when a fighter was "killed," they were to go back to their startline, where they would be counted, then "resurrected" and sent back into battle. That is what makes the 100 Minutes War such an endurance test, has a relatively stable front line when in a location like this, and was the perfect sort of battle to break our quarantine from fighting.
There were a few issues with calibration early on, but plenty of expressions of relief and joy at getting back into this mix when it was all done.
https://vimeo.com/648215731
You can see me in the foreground at 1:45.
Some of the best moments for me:
I saw a small line of enemy shield men one rank in front of their main line. I was to their right, and a left-handed shieldman was anchoring that corner. I had decided, going into that day, that I would find an opportunity to charge across the line, knocking through spears and clonking heads as I went. i figured that this would be that time. Charged across the three spearmen to the right iof this forward line, miraculously not getting stabbed, and crashed into that left-handed shieldman. I pushed that entire group off the line.
I saw a shieldman who had joined a charge and there was no one in front of him. I stepped up and started pounding his shield repeatedly so he could not advance or swing his sword (until I got speared by someone else).
I took a spearpoint to my left arm, so I was now stuck holding my greatsword with my right arm. I found a local commander and said "I have a greatsword and one arm. Where do you need me to die?" He pointed out a mass of fighters that he said were about to charge the line, and told me to stop them when they did.
They charged, and I put my sword, body and face into the first shieldman coming at me. I held my sword horizontally at stomach height, and it wound up holding back three of the enemy. I then proceeded to rotate, using my sword to make the line wheel to their back-left. It actually took a while for the shieldman in contact with me to realize that he could simply bop me on the head!
I woudl love to tell more but this has been sitting in my "drafts" folder for a few months now and I have to move on.
But here is the punchline. When I got home that night and looked at myself in the mirros, my body looked cut! Shhredded,! more definedly muscular than I have ever seen it in my life! I guess the Insanity workouts had been helping, and then three hours in armor just really brought it all out!
Unfortunately, an uptick in my workload and increased court activity regarding my old homestead kicked my ass for the next few months and my strength and fitness level went down and weight went up. So now I am starting Insanity from the beginning all over again :(
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