How to Tell If You Suck at Cutting and What You Can Do to Fix It

This blog post is an attempt to solve a problem by giving you two tools that can aid in self-diagnosis and improvement. But before you can correct a problem, you have to know that it exists. In order to keep your attention on something I consider important, I will approach this topic with a bit of levity. This is not meant to be insulting, just fun, so keep an open mind and bring your sense of humor.

One of the problems I see in HEMA cutting today is people who focus on performing tricky and difficult cuts without building the foundation required to do so correctly. And the result is that a lot of people are pulling off these cuts, but doing so with very bad form. One colleague described a particular example as, “This guy looks like a rhino with six tranq darts in his ass on level 7 of Dance Dance Revolution.”

Since the demise of Longpoint and an end to HEMA’s most prestigious cutting competition, I have lost whatever control I had over the progress of cutting in HEMA, which was admittedly not very much to begin with. But it does mean that rather than there being little I can do to influence how people train (such as my attempt to get people to focus more on form by deploying a drastically different rule set at Longpoint 2019), there is now nothing I can do except stand back and watch, hoping for the best. And maybe nudging things along just a teeny bit by offering suggestions, such as the ones here.

It pains me to say that cutting in HEMA in 2012, 2014 and maybe 2015 was significantly better than cutting in HEMA today overall (but not 2013—we don’t talk about 2013). Not in terms of what fancy trick cuts people could do (people today can do many more fancy trick cuts), but in the quality of their form and the applicability of what they were doing to historical fencing. Cutting for the sake of cutting is without value except as a form of entertainment, such as watching television or playing video games. Cutting only has value to the practice of fencing if it is done in accordance with sound martial (and even competitive) practices. Try walking up to an opponent in a tournament, measuring distance with your sword, shuffling your feet and then overswinging wildly and see what happens. And you don’t have to do all of those things—try just one of them. After your face stops hurting, come back and keep reading.

At the start, I promised you a solution, or rather two tools that you can use on your way towards a solution. The first of these tools is your finger combined with a small phone or tablet screen. Find a video of yourself (or someone else, if you want to go that route) in which you pulled off what you feel is a tricky and difficult cut. Now, use your fingers to cover yourself but leave the mat (or mats) uncovered. Watch the video. You will no doubt see what you remember seeing as you lived through the experience—a really cool tricky cut that made you feel good about yourself. Enjoy this brief moment of satisfaction.

Now that you have done the above, do the opposite. Use your finger to cover the mat, and only the mat. Make sure that you cannot see the mat at all, just yourself. Now watch yourself cut.

Do you look like an immobile stump with fat arms that barely move?

Or maybe a wildly swinging sack of rotten potatoes that bobbles about as though it were full of enraged skunks spraying each other with weaponized ass juices?

If you saw someone training, swinging the sword in the air, and they were moving like you, would you run over, slap them in the face and take away their sharp sword and replace it with a nerf toy so that they wouldn’t kill themselves and everyone around them?

If so, you have a serious problem. Your ambitions have far outweighed your skill. But that’s okay. You can fix it.

When people cut in the absence of qualified instruction, they tend to focus on the target and on the results rather on their form. And a lot of people today can achieve some spectacular results. And watching it is very impressive, if you make it a point of not actually looking at them, just at their target. Now, obviously, there are a few people around today who cut very well and do so with good form. These are the people I can watch without wanting to set my eyes on fire. There are also a great deal more who cut well. Not spectacularly—you won’t be seeing them pulling off fancy cuts that make the crowds go “oooh”—but they can do basic cuts well and with good form and good technique. I enjoy watching these people cut quite a bit. So this rant is not about everyone. But if you suspect that it applies to you, it probably does. And it doesn’t come from malice. I want to help you.

Now that that’s out of the way, after you come to terms with your disastrous form (if in fact this applies to you), find someone who actually cuts well. You don’t even need to find videos of Sang Kim or some other Japanese sword arts prodigy. Find Tristan Zukowski, or some of my old cutting videos. Cover the mat with your finger. Tristan will look pretty much perfect. Good posture, perfect control, no shuffling, cocking back or overswinging. No dancing around like a ferret that just fell into a bag of itching powder. I’d like to think that my own videos will be the same, but I’m afraid to look. Regardless of which of us you look at, mistakes will be made, form elements will occasionally be compromised. But overall, if you saw someone moving like us who was swinging the sword in the air as a form of training, you would nod and say, “Yeah, that’s pretty good.”

Now before you run off and use this tool to save the world, keep in mind that you will need to be able to judge yourself harshly for this to have any benefit. And even then, you will need to know what you can do to fix yourself once you realize how grotesquely you actually move when cutting tatami. But, one thing at a time. As they used to say in the old GI Joe cartoons from the 80s, “knowing is half the battle.”

At the start, I promised you two tools. The second one is just as easy as the first. Stop doing “trick” cuts, or advanced cuts, or whatever you want to call them. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. Do only basic cuts (diagonal cuts from above and below, and horizontal cuts) until you can cover the mat with your finger and be proud of what you see. Then go ask someone to teach you how to do the advanced stuff without compromising your form to the point where you look like a bag of stale donuts rolling down a cobblestone hill.  If you can’t, that’s okay. Start small, and use that finger. Add one slightly more difficult cut/pattern. If you maintain your good form, practice that small step until its perfect, then add another. Then another. When in doubt, go back to the videos of whoever you found that has good cutting from (Tristan is always a safe bet), and compare the way you move to the way he moves. If the comparison sucks, take a step or two back and keep at it.

Above all, keep working. We are all constantly striving to improve ourselves at the things we want to get good at. It’s what makes us martial artists (or just artists, or just people who do anything that takes skill). If you got this far and you’re not angry, I’m glad. I hope this helps you, and if you’re still reading, it probably will.