There was not quite enough last week to both with a full entry, for various reasons which I’ll get in to later.
Later having arrived:
Drills on Wednesday
Wednesday of last week was the first of what should be a weekly occurrence of drills in the driveway. Caelia and I used to do this, and I was realizing that I always felt like those were more productive teaching sessions than anything done at practice, so I’ve started running them again with a few of the Kbergians. Gawin and Rory showed up, and I put them through footwork, lunge drills, Priest Drill, and advance-lunge glove drill, which led to a discussion on staying at the edge of range rather than far outside of range, to exploit your opponent’s over-commitment to an action, almost reducing the “advance-lunge” drill to a “lunge-recover” drill. And then this week, that was basically the reading from Giganti. Such is synchronicity.
Also this week, I was floored by a stomach bug so there was no drilling, but there will be next week, where we may see the appearance of The Other Glove Drills, Hell Drills, The Drill of 5 Things, and the Parry 6 Drill. I think I had another idea somewhere, but I lost that piece of paper. Oops.
The Thursday of No Fighting
Well, almost no fighting. Letia had let(ia’d) her marshal class lapse, so Dame Roz came to practice to teach it. Then, having polled the group to see who else wanted to take the class, basically everybody did (except me, since I was going to Unevent that weekend and had no need). That left Rachel and me out in the cold, but as she had expressed some dismay about not getting an invite to Drill Wednesday, I put her through those drills, also. But not before she asked about HMA and period manuals and we had a good long chat about what’s out there. She has unplumbed depths of thirst for this game.
After the class (which took two hours for various reasons), we ran a long double bearpit and called it a night.
Also, Gawin, Rory: Bring your paperwork to practice next week so you can actually get it filled out and get started.
This Thursday:
So, all of that was last week.
This week, as mentioned, no Drill Wednesday, but there was Heavy Tuesday, in which I wussed out and didn’t fight nearly as much as I should have. Bah. And then came Thursday.
Daggers, Because… well, Daggers.
Because it was cold enough that my testicles were scurrying for cover behind my pancreas, Letia and I decided to warm up with brutal dagger gacking of each other. It was, well, a dagger fight. I played around with an idea (basically from I.33 and found in a couple of dagger manuals), and didn’t really pull it until the very last pass when I figured out the key I was missing. I’d been trying to close to her outside, wrap up her dagger, and either disarm or throw her (um… well, it was a dagger fight), but she would bring the dagger back and nail me in the face (the pinwheel motion worked for her). The last pass I feinted hard to her inside to draw her arm across her body, which opened her up and got her arm out of position for the pinwheel. Too bad it took getting stabbed in the face ten times for that to work.
Footwork videos
Along the way in practice I noticed a couple of repeated bits of crappy footwork, and figured that rather than calling the fencers out and working through it with them, I’d just sit on my ass with a video camera and create permanent evidence they could watch in all its excruciating glory over and over and over again. Look for those on Youtube soon.
Of course, not being one to inflict pain on others without enduring it myself, I had Rory record me in a fight with Jauma. I am less confident, now, in the utility of recordings. I became immediately self-conscious, thinking more about my feet than I was about the fight (instead of “kill a punk” mode, I was in “oh noes my beautiful feets!” mode, which doesn’t reflect accurately my footwork in “kill a punk” mode). Still, I’ll suffer the five minutes of watching myself, and then watch the recording of Jauma (which probably shows me actually fighting him, and my true footwork).
And, yeah, they’ll probably be posted up here for all to see.
Sadly, there’s to be no Fight Club this weekend, so next month… next month.
ETA: Found the list of other drills to do:
Voids: Stand at measure, have Agente lunge, Patiente voids
Advance-lunge drill with rapiers, progress to a no-advance (as above). Agente advances and lunges, Patiente lunges as Agente advances into measure while Agente attempts to cover
And, also, Drill of the Week
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