It doesn’t have anything to do with that. All you do is complete training with bernard, perform perfect parries by just mashing Q when the green shield prompts/you feel the time is right in hardcore, then you clonk somebody on the head and possibly one shot them. Even now with the nerfs and in hardcore it’s still pretty easy in combat unless you purposefully force yourself into bad situations while only using a longsword with no shield/not using an axe or mace instead.
Granted I have over a hundred hours logged in the game (multiple playthroughs), so I’ve gotten used to experimenting and know what works and doesn’t. And if things ever get squirrely for me I just whistle for my horse and beat them to death with a cavalry hammer.