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.