Fencing Practice.
Gentle Readers,
I'm running a merge so I get to take a moment and type out some stuff about last night's fencing mostly for my own recollection. I've been reading through Meyer's Rapier. It's pretty clear, but practicing is hard because most of his sequences involve lots of stepping and I'm much more practiced at a more static rapier game.
We had done a few of the actions in class on Tuesday. Specifically we did the groin thrust and the neck cut. I managed to get both of these to work exactly once at practice last night. There were a couple of reasons for this I think. The first was that I hadn't brought my sword and so I was using one of the loaner schlagers. Like Cortejo's Frankie, they are just so light they move with almost no effort at all. Unlike Frankie, they are terribly put together with some effectiveness, I think I was fighting the weapon just as much as my poor form.
Things worked slightly differently when Wilhelm graciously let me use his longer blade and I was able to work on some of the Capo Ferro blade work with Lars. Unfortunately, I was still getting nailed in the face. I know I'm engaged with the blade when it happens and I know I've got forte on foible so it's got to be something in how I'm aligning my blade that is either allowing it to be forced offline or I'm just not in the right spot to begin with. I did do a much better job of making sure to not push to the outside in 4th but I am rising out of guard too much and so need to keep resetting. I'm also starting too close to my opponent to be able to adjust my position as I move in more optimally.
I'm running a merge so I get to take a moment and type out some stuff about last night's fencing mostly for my own recollection. I've been reading through Meyer's Rapier. It's pretty clear, but practicing is hard because most of his sequences involve lots of stepping and I'm much more practiced at a more static rapier game.
We had done a few of the actions in class on Tuesday. Specifically we did the groin thrust and the neck cut. I managed to get both of these to work exactly once at practice last night. There were a couple of reasons for this I think. The first was that I hadn't brought my sword and so I was using one of the loaner schlagers. Like Cortejo's Frankie, they are just so light they move with almost no effort at all. Unlike Frankie, they are terribly put together with some effectiveness, I think I was fighting the weapon just as much as my poor form.
Things worked slightly differently when Wilhelm graciously let me use his longer blade and I was able to work on some of the Capo Ferro blade work with Lars. Unfortunately, I was still getting nailed in the face. I know I'm engaged with the blade when it happens and I know I've got forte on foible so it's got to be something in how I'm aligning my blade that is either allowing it to be forced offline or I'm just not in the right spot to begin with. I did do a much better job of making sure to not push to the outside in 4th but I am rising out of guard too much and so need to keep resetting. I'm also starting too close to my opponent to be able to adjust my position as I move in more optimally.