Practices Report

So I didn't really do a Monday practice report? Ah well.

Monday was pretty good. I entered the tournament late and fought longsword, a form that naturally works well with how I fight. I also got utterly and ruthlessly curb-stomped by Anastasia in pickups both Monday and today, but that's how things go.

I didn't really enter the practice intending to do anything except for have fun. I did. Yay!

*****

Today I entered practice intending specifically to fight a couple of specific forms. I wanted to focus on a very pared-down interpretation of Giganti, Capoferro, and Fabris. As well, I had three swords I used - the first is "The Standard", a 45" front-weighted hilt-heavy sword. The second was "The Heavy", 45" front-weighted tip-heavy sword which actually used a dagger guard rather than a standard rapier guard. The third was "The Original", a 37" hilt-heavy slightly front-weighted sword which is overall very light.

The three pared-down flowcharts were as follows:

• Giganti
• Attempt to assume his bastard guards.
• Draw my opponent offline by adopting strongly outside or inside guards.
• Single-tempo disengage-thrust
• Compound thrust
• I performed the disengage by moving and rotating my hand, and then performed the thrust by flicking in with my wrist.
• Hand starts farther back, then extends.
• Tighter grip on the sword than Capoferro.
• Use actions depicted by plates on reaction if they seem applicable.
• Capoferro
• Loose grip, with the cross resting on the pad of the index finger and the pommel resting on the bottom of the wrist. This is taken from plate 4, in which he describes his guard in third.
• Only thrust in the ways outlined in the chapter titled "Explanation of some Practical Fencing Terms" paragraph 17 - "The Thrust"
• imbrocatta
• Thrust in first targeting the line between your opponent's left shoulder and knee
• Outside line mostly?
• stocatta
• Thrust in third toward your opponent's right shoulder
• Both inside and outside line?
• punta riversa
• Thrust in fourth toward "the outside of their right shoulder"
• ????
• Didn't really use this one
• Primarily counter-punch in the way outlined in the above chapter, paragraph 15, "Strikes"
• Falso Manco
• False-edge cut to your right as a parry with your weak, then extend into an appropriate thrust as described above.
• Mostly performed by clenching the hand and rotating the wrist slightly.
• Falso Dritto
• Didn't actually parry with this.
• Instead, rotate to fourth and extend, parrying with the strong of my sword. Then hit with a thrust in fourth???
• Hand starts more extended, then when disengaging moves back, as per (can't find the reference. Maybe I imagined this?)
• Fabris
• More extended guards
• Fabris plate 60???
• Mostly trying to steal from Donovan's blog
• Wait for opponent to try to take my sword near the tip, then disengage by moving my hand, and then thrust by moving my wrist.

I'm beginning to study Capoferro, so obviously that flowchart is more detailed. And again, this is drawing almost completely from that one particular chapter, because I find it useful to focus on particular parts of a text to try to discern what it means.

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I want to preface this next section by saying that I walked in expecting The Heavy to work for Giganti and Fabris, and The Standard to work for Capoferro. Because I have particular heresies that I have come to believe, and they are

For Giganti, I liked using The Heavy quite a bit. I wasn't able to get my opposition to click well enough tonight using any of the others. This is probably because I was focusing on the new and shiny configuration of things, but regardless, it was much much easier to gain opposition with it. Giganti worked pretty well with any configuration, though. Or at least, Giganti prevented me from dying, which is almost like working.

For Capoferro, I liked The Original most when counterpunching, and The Standard most when being more offensive. The imbrocatta is even better as a starting action than I thought it would be, especially when aimed correctly. As well, with The Original, I was able to respond so very, very quickly to attacks. I want to pay attention to how length of blade effects things when I eventually go through the Capoferro plates, but I feel like it mostly changed how I wanted to fence, not my overall mechanics.

For my knockoff Fabris, I liked The Standard the best. Extending your blade way out there can allow people to do horrible things to your sword. With The Standard, I could get out of the way, dance, and taunt in-measure much more easily. With The Heavy, when I got past their guard, I was totally in and wasn't going to be dislodged before landing my thrust. It was a much more subtle game, but I felt like when my opponent knew where to oppose my blade with The Heavy, it was harder to perform effective actions than with The Standard. I forgot to try this one with The Original. Oh well.

I guess I was wrong about that one. Educational!

Perhaps if I knew more of How To Fabris, I would have been more effective. As it stands, trying to Fabris with The Heavy was a far more subtle game, but not one that plays to my strengths. Very educational though. I will do this thing more often, because I feel like I have learned from it.

Lastly, there is one particular last-ditch maneuver I have become accustomed to. When my sword is pushed far to my right, either up or down, I tend to flip my sword back in a circle over my head and step back with my right foot, ending in position for a thrust in first from very high. With The Heavy, the mechanics were different enough that this movement just turned into a cut toward my opponent's head. That would be great if we were doing Cut and Thrust, but I had to stop myself from completing that motion twice. My lizard-brain really wanted to get in position for that thrust in first both of those times, but it was not happening.

*****

Presently, I remain in an experimentation phase. Perhaps I will add a shallow version of Meyer's rapier to my repertoire, since The Heavy resembles a Meyer style rapier more than anything else. I have learned that tip-heavy blades do help for straight-on opposition, but as far as I can tell they don't improve things for motions such as Destreza-style enveloping thrusts, as described by Puck on his blog. (Line in Cross, etc) I will continue using The Heavy, and perhaps I will gain more insight. It will be fun times regardless.