When watching someone mess up a cut you will often hear someone remark “the edge alignment was off”. Now, this is technically correct. But I propose that it is a very unhelpful way to think about things.
Trying to fix the edge alignment is what I would call an End of Pipe Solution. In engineering this is trying to capture some sort of undesired outcome (like pollution) at the very end of the process, after it has already been generated. If you imagine a pipe belching out contaminated water into the river, the simple solution seems to be installing a filter – hence the term End of Pipe. This is attractive for people because it allows you to ignore everything that is happening upstream in the process which generates the contamination. And it may not shock you to learn that End of Pipe is considered one of the least effective methods out there.
This problem of ignoring the root cause has a direct parallel to how people think of edge alignment in cutting mechanics. “I’m swinging correctly, I just need to throw a filter on the pipe tweak the edge alignment.”. However it is usually something that is happening upstream of the sword contacting the target, and telling yourself the edge alignment is off will not help you improve it.
Not Generating a Cutting Plane
When you “have bad edge alignment” what are you trying to align your edge with? If you never created a good cutting plane then you have to hope. A good cutting plane will have:
- A plane that the blade is aligned to before impact.
- A center that the blade is rotating around.
These are simple, in theory. In order to maximize the rotation and body structure you typically want the center to be in the center of your body. The cutting plane is an extension of the line you are looking to move through on your target. But these simple requirements are rarely met.
If you watch the motion of a sword approaching a cutting target you will frequently see that it isn’t following a definite plane, it is wobbling and curving all over. In such a scenario, how could one ever hope to achieve edge alignment if there is nothing to align to?
More on cutting planes: SwordSTEM – There is no horizontal zwerchau cutting plane!
“But in sparring we can’t use big swings to get good planes”, one might say. Which is very true. Which makes it all the more important that we get good at generating a good cutting plane. If someone can not guide their sword down a consistent cutting plane from a high guard, what are the odds that they can create and follow a cutting plane when doing a quick moulinet?
Not Having Joints in Alignment
The actual control of your edge is done subconsciously, there is no way you can keep track of something so fine and quick. And depending on what you do with your body you can make that job range from easy to impossible.
The elbows are a prime candidate for analysis. If your elbows are not in line with your cutting plane your wrists will have to fight against them to try and get the blade onto the cutting plane – assuming you generated one in the first place. While this is theoretically possible, it is a much, much more demanding task. This is also known as ‘chicken winging’ in a cut.
This is one reason that horizontal cuts are so much harder to execute than we think. If you hold your arms extended the most natural position is elbows down. Which corresponds to a vertical cutting plane. When performing a horizontal cut, unless you turn the elbows you will have to make all the compensation from the wrists. Which never happens – watch a tournament and you will set that just about all horizontal cuts land flat.
It is easy for people to say “just need better edge alignment” in this case, as they can put it in a bin to work on at some point in the future and assume that everything outside of it is peachy. But it wasn’t just ‘edge alignment’ that was the issue. It was a fundamental aspect of how you move! That is not just some minor detail to be tweaked when you are standing in front of a cutting target.
The horizontal cut also suffers from not generating a cutting plane before impact…
Not Having a Stable Platform
“when one makes the arm descend with the body without any movement of its own; even though the body leans, the arm remains free to accommodate itself to all situations in the same instance, either to raise and advance, or to descend, or to do something else.”
This is a quote from Thubault which has nothing to do with describing a cut. But it is a great demonstration of the next principle. If you have a joint engaged in a task like providing power it is not able to perform a task like edge control. I describe this in the SwordSTEM article Will It Zwerch? Landmarking in Video Analysis. If you’re not going to read it, I’ll summarize:
“Fill a cup all the way to the brim with water and pick it up. See how quickly you can move the cup side to side without spilling anything. You will very quickly find that moving the body, and having the arm stabilize, is the best strategy.“
Cutting is similar. If you can get the movement from the core, the arm joints can be engaged in stabilization. If you are engaging from the elbow then you leave the stabilization all on the wrist. If you are actuating through the wrist, then the results are going to become fairly random.
It All Builds
The three common failures I listed are in this order for a reason, they all build on each other. If you don’t generate a cutting plane then getting your joints in line is meaningless. If you don’t get the joints in line then you can’t have them stabilized.
But what you will find is that your body is a lot better at getting that edge in line than you give it credit for, if you give it a chance. Low level, subconscious, self correction is happening in every single movement you do. But it can only do so much. Set up your cutting motion correctly and you give your body’s self correction mechanisms a chance to do their job. It works much better than assuming you don’t have to change anything else about your fundamental movements, and it is just some magic ‘edge alignment’ that eludes you.
Actionable Items
Next time you find yourself saying “bad edge alignment”, stop yourself and think of something more productive to say. The three I have listed here are a good start and there are many others. As you develop as an instructor you will start to figure out what cues you can develop to help correct.