AAR 06SEPT-23SEPT

Holidays, work, etc have wrecked havoc on my practice schedule lately. Somewhere in there I got in two good sparring nights with F, a rapier night with D, some time to compare counter-dagger techniques with Bob C, and gave S a lesson in Longsword. I need to devote some more time to rapier at home in order to progress. Bob C and I made plans to randori next time we're both up at Kelly Drive, unfortunately it looks like that will be at least two weeks, and maybe more.

New Old thing to work on: I'm noticing that I'm holding my breath during extended exchanges. I need to break that habit... don't know where I picked that up :/

RMSG East AAR - 26AUG and 31AUG2010

Thursday:
F came by my place for an extended sparring session. We started out with some slow work, and then tried to move into some focus work for him to work on second-intention attacks and getting off the line. This wasn't working very well so we went to a format when we would spar until something interesting came up and then stop to discuss it. A few topics that came up:
Linking footwork to technique, esp when engaging in point work. He's picked up a lot of hand technique from working with foilists, bit it's not linked to any footwork and it's obvious in retrospect.
Breaking Ochs/Breve

Missed Monday practice for more pressing concerns.

Tuesday:
Finished my discussion with RM re: footwork and attacking. It's something of an interesting problem because the local skillset is considerably different in that most of these guys, who have never before sparred at longsword, already have a really good handle on tactics, counter-punching, and second-intention. Passive play dominates, and when people do attack there's still a lot of stuttering. Finished discussing with him the rest of some of the guard-changing ideas I picked up from Jorg's class. (who I need to email with questions, one of these days). Everyone else was pretty focused on their bouting, so I dug out my hickory singlestick and did 2 sets x 50 reps hanging parry/cuts on each side.

RMSG East AAR - 23AUG and 24AUG2010

Monday:
RM did a history presentation on Henry III, no physical practice tonight.

Tuesday:
Spent about 30 min discussing footwork and attacking with RM. He's seeing a lot of people in the local group and the other guys he works with that are fighting too close, but resist opening up because they don't feel comfortable attacking from a wider distance. We discussed some of the tactics I have used, mostly a) a passive mindset and b)actually closing distance and attacking as a fluid motion without stopping. We parked on this one a bit so I could show him what I meant and to pontificate on how this seems to be a common problem in WMA and that I feel that people default to one of these two modes because of how we teach students. I wanted to talk about some of the concepts I'm wrestling with from Jorg's Combination Cutting class, but we ran out of time. Hopefully we'll come back to it.

Gave a 1 hour counter-dagger lesson to JMT. She picked up all of the basics really quickly and was interested in discussing the more conceptual parts of what I teach, so we blew through the basics and one play from the first and third master so that we could get to conceptual work: three joints, centerline, triangle points, wave motion, and the lizard brain were all discussed.

RMSG East AAR - 16AUG and 17AUG2010

Monday Night:

Sparring night. Multiple sessions between F, S, and myself, all about 10 - 15 minutes. Personally had three sets with F and 1 Set with S. Afterward tried to work through a problem position I've been seeing in all our fencing, where we are fighting for the bind off to the L side of a overbinding fencer. Some of the Cross-wrist or falso winds were working well at speed, but people were not seeing the difference or seizing the timing. S has come a long way working with F during my time away from the group.

Tuesday night:

Talked through the problem position from last night with RM. Primarily it seems to be a position where both fencers are failing in the initial action. There are some good movements from here, but they almost need to be second-intention.

Gave RM ~40 minute lesson on some of the basics of counter-dagger (stance, three-joint concept, pedagogical philosophy, disrupting the leg/hip) and drilled one play from the First and Third master. This is an interesting challenge since he has an excellent ability to move (depth of steps, etc) and self-correct on stance but less familiarity with CQB contact than I'm used to.

RMSG East AAR - 09AUG and 10AUG2010

Monday night: Went up to SGY and observed a little bit of the classical lessons. No other historical fencers were up to work out, so I did some solo practice.

- Worked through the Fiore Dance about 10 times. Started out doing it very slowly, focusing on my movements and weight shifting, worked up to doing it fairly quickly, then back down to the slow speed.

- 50 reps Fendente cuts

- 25 reps of the "ABBA" drill Jorg used at CW, using varying types of cuts to see if I could make them all smooth.

- I noticed that one of the rust spots I've developed is a return to my old "bobbing" footwork habits. I did many reps where I would assume a guard, passare/retarne across the room, then accressare/decressare across the room, the repeat with a different guard.

- 100 half-rolls, trying to get my back and neck back into shape for full-scale rolling drills.

Tuesday night: Everyone got in a little late. Discussed some interpretation stuff with RM, then took a ~40 minute lesson from DD in Fabris rapier. He focused on assuming the guard, inoculating me against some mistakes he's made with other students, and a bit of lunging (I'm just not up for too much of that yet).

Need to follow up with RS on the alignment of the feet.

RMSG East AAR - 18JULY2010

Went over to F's for about two hours today. Hot enough that we decided not to suit up, and my Alu Waster is still in sorry shape from CW. Showed him the basic spear curriculum for the first half or so and did some basic parrying drills. Left him one of the trainers so he could practice the guards and parries. After that we did some slow lose play to strategize on some options for problem positions he kept running into during my couple month long spazz-fest.

Nothing too structured or strenuous, but it was good to get out and stretch and sweat a bit.