If there is one word that has been misused in the martial arts community, it’s truly the word « fencing ». From a term originally related to « defence », it came to be used as a catch all term for anything that seemed relatively sporty, abstract, low impact and disconnected from the reality of self defense.
You will hear it as: « This looks like fencing! », « These guys are doing fancy stick fencing, not rough-housing-stick-struggle! », or my favorite: « They are wearing too much padding. Remove that equipment and it won’t look like fencing! » Fun fact : many fencers probably have worst bruises after a practice than many people practicing stick fighting; certainly so if sparring is never practiced by the stick fighters.
While there are a lot of valid criticisms to be made towards modern fencing- obviously if one was to somehow look at it from the point of view of modern self defense- the word is often used to discredit or poison the well when discussing the topic of sparring. It is usually put in opposition to other types of training, like fighting multiple opponents, fighting in tight spaces, or against different weapons, etc. These training drills are usually lauded as being more realistic, or more representative of what one could encounter in real life.
I have several problems with this stance. The first is that it ignores a big part of the reality of fighting with a stick: that to become a competent stick fighter, no matter the intended context, you first need to fight with a stick; meaning sparring against other stick fighters. If you can’t fight someone armed with a stick, you certainly can’t fight someone with a knife, a baseball bat or even their own fists, let alone many all at once. Because in order to do this successfully, you first need to become competent with concepts like distance and timing, for which no one has yet to find a better alternative than sparring. You will also never learn to read an opponent from drilling only, even if your training partner has the acting skills of Daniel Day Lewis.
The other problem is that this stance is also often used to constantly move the figurative goalpost of training. « Well, sure sparring is good, but it won’t teach you how to fight in (insert random Jack Ryan fight setting) » Now, there are some particularities that may come useful in very precise scenarios, but your opponent will still be obligated to follow the basic principles of physics, of which timing and distance are part of.
Before jumping into training against multiple opponents, you have to become a very good stick fighter, and depending on your commitment you may never really get to that point. The whole » You need to do something for 10 years before becoming great »- the theory made famous by Malcolm Gladwell- has been debated quite a lot in past years, but it does raise some good points, and can give a general idea of the amount of training you need to pull off to reach a desired level of skill.
If all you do is train an hour a week, or even a month, your time will be much better spent training the basic skills of stick fighting and sparring. If your club only offers one weekly practice session, my opinion is that they would be doing you a disservice by trying to teach you all these very niche skills, for which you will never have the time to become even close to competent at. In such a scenario, the training should really be focused on acquiring solid stick fighting skills, and to retain that level over time, which demands constant practice. At less than 3 hours a week, anything else will be lost on the student, especially in time of need.
Look at it another way. If you were to take classes on how to fly a commercial plane, would you want to skip the basic practice, and instead learn how to fly through a blizzard, handle an hostage situation, or an engine failure? Would you feel prepared enough to bring that plane from New York to Paris? Probably not. You would need a lot of fly time before you were ever given the chance to do so ( at least lets hope so!) and if it was not possible to practice on a real commercial airliner, you would probably want to spend some time in the simulator before hands, or even to regularly pilot a small aircraft, to at least get the closest kind of experience.
Yet, somehow, our opinions change when dealing with martial arts, and especially with weapons, possibly because we have very little concept of their use from our culture and daily lives. Even for people whose jobs involve dealing with violence, being attacked or witnessing an attack with a weapon can be extremely rare.
Now, you may also simply enjoy learning all sorts of different skills, and don’t really mind becoming good at them. Some – who I am sure probably represent the vast majority of practitioners – just like fighting with sticks as a quirky hobby and never really worry about having to use that skillset in a dark alley encounter. And you know what? Those paths are great, and should be encouraged. Life is too short to do things we don’t like, and there is enough space for everyone to enjoy their own aspects of stick fighting.
Thirdly, it is very hard to compare modern fencing to most instance of sparring with sticks, and if you believe otherwise I would strongly suspect you have never done fencing and/or never sparred with sticks.
There is a reason why modern fencers don’t usually wear much padding, because the weapons used have almost no potential to injure or cause pain (as long as they do not break, which is why equipment is newton rated). It is quite different when a rattan stick is used, which could break bones or cause concussions rather easily if one was wearing the same equipment as Olympic fencers. Sparring with minimal equipment à la Dog Brothers can be a very painful experience that has no resemblance to a fencing bout with foils, and is definitely not for everyone, nor should it need to be. Even with more gear, you won’t escape that reality entirely. I know from experience.
This is why I am often perplexed when hearing people dismiss sparring with protective equipment as « too safe and removed from the pain and danger of a real fight ». I think you need a lot of mental gymnastics to consider that completely evacuating any approximation of that reality would somehow make things more « real ».
Now, why spar against someone that is also armed with a stick? That’s pretty unlikely to happen in real life, right? Well, here are a couple of reasons:
1- A stick is a good « middle ground »
By learning how to defend against a stick, while armed with the same, you learn skills that can also be applied to different weapons. The stick can strike from relatively far, but also from close range. It can be used in conjunction with the off hand to grapple and seize, or the feet to kick and trip. A lot of what you learn will be directly applicable to most melee type weapons, or only necessitate small modifications.
For example, I should know how an unarmed opponent is likely to engage. That, if they are smart, they will likely try to close in very rapidly, and/or try to seize my stick. As long as I can keep them in my own range, they have little attacking or defensive options. They won’t be able to do much that a well rounded stick fighter cannot already do. If I know how to keep a shorter opponent at bay, or how to close in myself, or how to manage agressive fighters prone to infighting and attempting disarms, the unarmed opponent shouldn’t be much of a different challenge, and in many respects will be a lot easier to deal with.
Arguably, things would be harder against a knife, as the consequences of letting the opponent move close could be deadly. Still, I will be able to count on my feeling of distance and timing I built while stick fighting, and my strategies and tactics I honed to keep an opponent in my striking range.
The tables might be reversed when dealing with a longer or heavier weapon, like a baseball bat, or a steel rod. Here, I will again fall back on timing and distance management, to keep a distance that makes defending possible, as well as when and how to break it. My time training will also inform me of my own personal limitations. I should be able to understand what I can block and how, or what I should rather slip and void.
2- You are both spending time training with your weapon
I come back again to the idea that practice makes perfect, but you need to put in the time to develop your skills. When you are sparring, you usually do so with someone from your own group, who is also spending that time to train their skills with a stick. Were one of you to use another weapon, you would first need to learn how to use it, and spend time honing that skill in various ways. This may be interesting, but only depending on what you are trying to achieve. If you both need to work on using the stick, then you should both spar with one and get good at it before trying to branch out.
The key here is really to vary your experience. Spar with other groups, and other styles when you can, as well as different people with different builds and abilities. But in all those instances, you will always need to be keenly aware of two things: distance and timing. You will need to focus on different things depending if you are taller or shorter, faster or slower, prone to be defensive or agressive, or if you have certain limitations or challenges. As with most things in life, there is no one size fits all approach to stick fighting.
3- With weapons, the room for mistake is small
I wrote about this before, but many people enter into weapon based martial arts coming from a background in unarmed martial arts. They try to apply the same concepts, without necessarily realizing all the important distinctions that make someone use a weapon in a certain way. Things that would seem very obvious to a stick fighter may not be for a boxer for example. One big example of this is the ability to « tank », or take a blow.
In boxing, I can- maybe- take a few shots to the head, as long as it does not connect with too much energy, and keep fighting. Especially if I am quite a lot larger than my opponent. It is quite different when dealing with a shillelagh or a knife, where one hit may be all that is needed to end the encounter. I also cannot simply retreat into a defensive posture while staying in place as I could, to some degree, in boxing. There are too many openings for me to possibly cover them all.
As a result, I need to make sure that I maintain a safe distance. That does not mean that I never want to close in, or that I don’t train to close in, I should definitely know what to do at such a range, but I should be very much conscious of where I need to be when fighting with a stick, and of my options at different ranges.
4- You develop a strategic mind
A great asset you develop when sparring is the ability to, in the blink of an eye, analyze a situation strategically. Instead of only relying on reflexes, you can understand what is going on and create a strategy that gets you – and the opponent – where you need to be. The term « awareness » gets thrown a lot in self defense circles, but this is a good way to build awareness and the ability to pull from it even under great pressure. By facing different opponents with different styles and weapons, you learn to become flexible in your approach, and adapt your strategies to the situation at hand. You also learn how to analyze what is going on quickly, and strategies to keep your calmness under stress.
To conclude
I hope my article made some sense and made you think about your own training. It’s useful to restate that there is not one unique right way to train stick fighting. If you are happy with what you are doing, and it brings you a sense of joy and growth, then that’s awesome. Just make sure you try other approaches from time to time, as there are always more things to learn and horizons to expand.
Irish Stick Fighting 