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Not Sad Stuff from the weekend.
May. 16th, 2011 01:17 pmGentle Readers,
I've got 2 things to write about after this weekend. This is the not sad one. The head instructor for OCS is away until Wednesday and so he asked me to cover his classes for this weekend. This shouldn't have been a big problem, but the weekend was already booked with the anniversary event of our investiture and the internment of my aunt (more about that later (that's the sad bit)).
Anyway, possibly thankfully, the event did not make it into the Tidings (the group newsletter) and so it was not an official event and we couldn't have an official court. Because of this I decided that I wouldn't try and manage 4 hours of driving to be at the event for less than two after what was already a very full day. This turned out to be an even better idea due to the fact that the Birch trees in Ottawa were exceptionally randy this last week with grains/m3 going back and forth between 250 and 420 (where 80 is considered high). This lead to my body finally giving up on friday evening and blowing a fuse or something because I was unconscious before 9 and slept for almost 11 hours.
Unfortunately this lead to me waking up with low blood sugar and just not coping well. I managed to get my shit together for the class at 9 am but it was close. I was teaching the final classes for the 2 Medieval Longsword classes that Craig was teaching for the Association of Bright Children. I had gone out last weekend to meet them and for the most part they seemed like a good bunch of kids. The first class particularly. The second class, however, was a bit more rambunctious and had one kid in particular who was especially annoying. While I was there he felt it necessary to call out "Boring" every 5 min with regard to the exercises the class was doing. It did make up for it by also having a 13 year old girl who loves swordplay so much that in addition to taking the class a second time, she also convinced her parents to get her fencing lessons. She's really good.
Luckily for me he was one of the kids that didn't show up (probably due to the weather) and (also probably due to the weather) the classes were pretty low energy. This let me spend more time on the class and what we were doing than trying to keep everyone focused. The kids had much more of a tendency to want to sit down and take their masks off instead of acting up and being difficult. In all the classes went fairly well, an at least one of the kids had a good enough time that he called out good bye to me as he drove out of the parking lot.
Here I skip over the sad and draining bits to more fencing.
Since, as I mentioned before, Craig was out of town, the open class space was available so I invited Don Aaron and a couple other people to come and fence, however, he was the only one who was available so we ended up doing a a fair combination of fencing an analysis of style and comparison of historical techniques.
The first and most important point was that I tend to have a very active style and unlike most people, I don't respond to his planting by planting myself. This is good in that I'm not giving him enough time to set up his action or counter action, but it's bad in that I'm not really giving myself a chance to do that either. This was a bit of a revelation as I've been thinking of myself as more of a patient fencer. However, this does explain why my arm has been getting so exhausted when I fence as of late. I spend a lot of the time playing with blade engagement and trying to take the superior position long enough to take advantage of it. My defense is very solid, but it's not followed effectively by offense and no matter how good, a defense will eventually be breached.
When I do find that hole, I can exploit it pretty effectively, but becuase I'm pushing so hard to find it, I think that I don't always wait for a good hole and make an attack that can be more easily countered. What he suggests is that I change my game from the fast thinking reactive game to a slower game where I set up, wait for their response and then counter that. After we talked about this for a bit we tried again, but with Daggers instead of Single. I tried slowing down and it seemed to go better for me. After that we talked a bit about the German 1 and 2 handed styles that I've been doing and the counter actions that come from there. In that situation, I do have a good sense of what to do in response to the opponents reactions to my action. I just need to transfer that over to rapier.
And so, practice.
The afternoon went by uneventfully I did some cleaning and some talking and some watching of knitting and some sword fighting with Lydia then, all of a sudden, it was time for the evening class.
The Sunday evening class has switched from Capo Ferro to Dall'Agocchie and as such from Rapier to cut and thrust. As of the last class, Don Aaron has decided to switch from his old translation to a newer one from Stephen Reich. Because he has moved from the old work to the new one, the class has changed from a student/teacher class to more of a study group where I feel a bit more comfortable contributing to the interpretation. We looked at the defenses against the Dritti Fendenti and then at some of the provokings. Good stuff. There were still a couple of things that didn't quite make sense like how to move into the Coda Lunga e Stretta from a dritti stramatazoni, but I'm sure we will figure that out soon enough.
I've got 2 things to write about after this weekend. This is the not sad one. The head instructor for OCS is away until Wednesday and so he asked me to cover his classes for this weekend. This shouldn't have been a big problem, but the weekend was already booked with the anniversary event of our investiture and the internment of my aunt (more about that later (that's the sad bit)).
Anyway, possibly thankfully, the event did not make it into the Tidings (the group newsletter) and so it was not an official event and we couldn't have an official court. Because of this I decided that I wouldn't try and manage 4 hours of driving to be at the event for less than two after what was already a very full day. This turned out to be an even better idea due to the fact that the Birch trees in Ottawa were exceptionally randy this last week with grains/m3 going back and forth between 250 and 420 (where 80 is considered high). This lead to my body finally giving up on friday evening and blowing a fuse or something because I was unconscious before 9 and slept for almost 11 hours.
Unfortunately this lead to me waking up with low blood sugar and just not coping well. I managed to get my shit together for the class at 9 am but it was close. I was teaching the final classes for the 2 Medieval Longsword classes that Craig was teaching for the Association of Bright Children. I had gone out last weekend to meet them and for the most part they seemed like a good bunch of kids. The first class particularly. The second class, however, was a bit more rambunctious and had one kid in particular who was especially annoying. While I was there he felt it necessary to call out "Boring" every 5 min with regard to the exercises the class was doing. It did make up for it by also having a 13 year old girl who loves swordplay so much that in addition to taking the class a second time, she also convinced her parents to get her fencing lessons. She's really good.
Luckily for me he was one of the kids that didn't show up (probably due to the weather) and (also probably due to the weather) the classes were pretty low energy. This let me spend more time on the class and what we were doing than trying to keep everyone focused. The kids had much more of a tendency to want to sit down and take their masks off instead of acting up and being difficult. In all the classes went fairly well, an at least one of the kids had a good enough time that he called out good bye to me as he drove out of the parking lot.
Here I skip over the sad and draining bits to more fencing.
Since, as I mentioned before, Craig was out of town, the open class space was available so I invited Don Aaron and a couple other people to come and fence, however, he was the only one who was available so we ended up doing a a fair combination of fencing an analysis of style and comparison of historical techniques.
The first and most important point was that I tend to have a very active style and unlike most people, I don't respond to his planting by planting myself. This is good in that I'm not giving him enough time to set up his action or counter action, but it's bad in that I'm not really giving myself a chance to do that either. This was a bit of a revelation as I've been thinking of myself as more of a patient fencer. However, this does explain why my arm has been getting so exhausted when I fence as of late. I spend a lot of the time playing with blade engagement and trying to take the superior position long enough to take advantage of it. My defense is very solid, but it's not followed effectively by offense and no matter how good, a defense will eventually be breached.
When I do find that hole, I can exploit it pretty effectively, but becuase I'm pushing so hard to find it, I think that I don't always wait for a good hole and make an attack that can be more easily countered. What he suggests is that I change my game from the fast thinking reactive game to a slower game where I set up, wait for their response and then counter that. After we talked about this for a bit we tried again, but with Daggers instead of Single. I tried slowing down and it seemed to go better for me. After that we talked a bit about the German 1 and 2 handed styles that I've been doing and the counter actions that come from there. In that situation, I do have a good sense of what to do in response to the opponents reactions to my action. I just need to transfer that over to rapier.
And so, practice.
The afternoon went by uneventfully I did some cleaning and some talking and some watching of knitting and some sword fighting with Lydia then, all of a sudden, it was time for the evening class.
The Sunday evening class has switched from Capo Ferro to Dall'Agocchie and as such from Rapier to cut and thrust. As of the last class, Don Aaron has decided to switch from his old translation to a newer one from Stephen Reich. Because he has moved from the old work to the new one, the class has changed from a student/teacher class to more of a study group where I feel a bit more comfortable contributing to the interpretation. We looked at the defenses against the Dritti Fendenti and then at some of the provokings. Good stuff. There were still a couple of things that didn't quite make sense like how to move into the Coda Lunga e Stretta from a dritti stramatazoni, but I'm sure we will figure that out soon enough.
