First, a congratulations to Letia on reaching the big 3-0, the day before Thursday practice of this week. Part of her birthday present was 30 passes promised to her, which we’d originally intended to do on her 30th, but life and weather intervened, so we fought them at Thursday practice. More on that later.
Looking at the list from last week:
Feints and Cavazione
These are my primary focus right now, making my own feints believable (because I’m realizing they mostly aren’t), while retaining the capacity for the disengage or the continuation. I did fairly well, locking in my opponents’ guard with a solid feint and then quickly disengaging around. Now, whether or not that will work on opponents of all levels requires some testing, and continued practice.
Lunge Practice
Happened this week. I worked both sides, varied length lunges, building in feints, and working the dagger coverage. I’m still not quite placing my blade, but am instead thumping a little too much.
Separating Feet and Hands
Letia and I practiced this, using Dom’s suggested method (fight with immobilized feet but highly mobile hand, then fight with minimally mobile hand but highly mobile feet). We identified a couple of ways to significantly improve her fight (moving on her toes rather than landing her heel first with each step). The hard part will, as always, be drilling that into her arms and legs.
How do you celebrate 30 years?
With 30 passes. Letia and I wrapped up Thursday’s practice with 15 of single sword and 15 of sword and dagger. She fought very well. We kept pace at roughly 2-1 throughout, and whenever I started to pull ahead of that ratio she picked up her game. Now to get her to pick up her game every pass. We’re going to continue this at each practice for the foreseeable future.
Fitness
Enough kvetching about the heat and humidity. I’m going to get myself added to the gym membership and go use their treadmills.
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