Monday Practice

Practice yesterday was okay I guess? I felt good about my pickups against people, but I felt like I didn't fight super well in the tournament. I fought without my glasses on, since they tend to fog up quickly in my new mask. That isn't a workable long-term solution. Depending on lighting conditions, it is just a little bit harder to see and react to people's weapons. I need contact lenses, I need anti-fog glasses, or I need to rip out the padding from my new mask and do something with leather strapping to make it breathe.

If I'm going to fight in the tournament, I need to not half-ass it. I need to focus and bring intent to the tournament, or else I'll be unsatisfied with my fencing. I had several factors working against me in this regard - I am still figuring out my new mask, I am working with a new blade, I got a bruise on my most important knuckle before the tournament, and I spent some time teaching beforehand. Teaching always makes me kind of derpy for the next set of passes, and this time those passes happened to be the weekly practice tournament.

Just to be very clear - everybody else was fighting super-well. I just felt like I was not fighting well, despite not actually doing terribly in the tournament thing.

Looking at it in that way, I guess I'm not surprised that I was unhappy with how I fought in the practice tournament. I think I needed to not do the tournament this week, and instead find someone to get pickups with. I also did something unfortunate to my ankle during the practice tournament, but fortunately I am seeing the foot-and-ankle doctor tomorrow about a long-term issue.

*****

In order to help me stop feeling unhappy about practice, I am going to force myself to do a Plus-Minus-Plus exercise. This is an exercise in which I state one thing I did well, one area for improvement, and then another thing I did well. The positivity sandwich is super important - having something positive at the beginning means that I'm not going to just rant and rail about what I was unsatisfied about. Having something positive at the end leaves me with an at-least-slightly good feeling. Also, narrowing it down to just three important things reduces scope to the point that I can do actual meaningful work.

So, without further ado...

• Thing I Did Well
• I felt pretty good about my usage of the new blade. There were some hand-shots and opposition shots, especially during my pickups, that were really good. I couldn't have pulled them off with my case blade.
• Area for Improvement
• I didn't recognize that my headspace was off for the tournament. I offered to teach a thing, and then I didn't do anything to get rid of the bunch of little things that were in the back of my head bothering me.
• More succinctly: I need to better recognize when I'm going on tilt, so I can take a step back to re-approach the tournament and change the things which are frustrating me.
• Other Thing I Did Well
• I feel like my three primary stances really clicked yesterday. Like, I didn't always win with them, but I felt super comfortable moving from one stance to another. 
• Even so, I need to keep in mind that I shouldn't get complacent - those stances are probably up for another review pretty soon.
• After-the-fact edit to remind myself of a thing:
• I also finally got a technique to work semi-consistently which has been theoretical for a while.
• In my heretical wrist-bent Giganti inside guard, apply opposition. Then, in the tempo of an action, circle your tip around their guard while rolling from fourth to first, raising your hand and moving it slightly right while extending. Lean forward and to the left, such that your body is protected by your hilt. After your hilt is in place, finish the disengage around their wrist/forearm. The target is as close on their chest to their right arm as possible.
• At one point I did this and then just straight-up didn't recover because I haven't thought about how to recover after it is parried, so I just sat there going *click*.

All right everybody. That's it for me today. Keep fencing, keep drilling, and something else.

Interim Post

I'm currently working on a semi-exhaustive categorization of techniques and strategies, and the techniques and strategies which are effective against them. I intend it to serve as a personal reference chart - "Oh man, that person is using super long range sniping shots. How do I deal with them? Well, chart says I should use counter-guards and zone-blocking, so let's try that." It is proving more of an ordeal than originally anticipated, so new posts are happening until I either shelve that other post, or I finish it.

*****

Yule was a good event. Lots of hanging out, lots of swording. Court was long, but that was fine. Lots of hanging out and talking with good people, although I wish I had started to get ready for court earlier.

In the early-ish, I helped to marshal the Bergental Baronial Rapier Championship. I was pretty impressed with the depth of competition there!

Then there was a bear pit tournament. It was good. After a rocky start, I got into a good groove. I got third place, which is pretty good. It felt good to just be able to do some Bear Pit and get into a groove.

I tried to integrate a bunch of new things and old things into my tournament game, but none of it seemed to be working super well. As such, I ended up relying on Distance and Timing Games to win fights. I would fight some holding my sword normally, then switch back to holding my pommel and tap my opponent at the absolute edge of my measure. It's amazing what gaining five inches suddenly can do to other people.

My hand decided that it really wanted to hold my sword in a Thibault-ish grip. It actually worked really well for the fights where I chose to do it. The particular variant of the grip that I was using meant that I had a very long grip on my sword, which let me use leverage from my wrist far more effectively than usual. People would find my blade pretty well, but then I would be able to push through them anyway. It was pretty great.

I then fought a bunch of good pickups. Yaaaaay.

*****

Basically all of my gear has started falling apart at once. My mask has been in questionable condition for a while, my gorget has had to be re-riveted, and my blade broke. For questionable reasons, I've chosen to replace my mask and my blade, rather than my gorget first.

New blade arrived from Darkwood! Yay! Due to some combination of "my blade broke sooner than it should have", "I have bought many things from Darkwood", and "they would like to look at my blade to see what happened with it", they were kindly willing to discount a new blade for me. I wanted to be able to fight my preferred melee form, so I took them up on the offer. I would say that this means you should buy things from them, but if you fight rapier in the SCA you probably have already given them  quite a bit of cash.

Compared to my current blade, it is about 1/4" longer both in the tang and in the blade length. I have cut down the threaded portion such that it fits my rigs - it was originally about 1/4" too long to fit. It is also a bit of a noodle, which I am fine with and was indeed the same as the sword I used before it broke.

It is 14.5 ounces, which is one ounce lighter than my current blade at 15.5 oz, and 0.5 ounces lighter than my old 45" blade. For reference, it is much much lighter than my ~21 oz longsword blade. It also doesn't really *feel* lighter in the tip, which means that most of the reduced weight is probably in the forte. That is fine with me.

When flex-testing, the new blade bends about 3", whereas my current blade bends just shy of 2". For reference, my longsword blade bends somewhere between 1" and 1.5".

From a purely subjective assessment, this blade is pure joy. It feels exactly like my old blade did, and I had thought I would never get my old blade back. It has all the same quirks I expect, and I am so happy about that. My case blade can return to being my case blade, and I can go back to using my whippy fishing-blade.

*****

I hadn't realized how much of what I do is made better by having a whippier blade. I do a lot of disengages which reverse direction toward the flat of my blade. This loads up some bend in the blade, which I then discharge by extending my blade and cutting into my opponent's blade. Lots of my cutting and angled opposition is made better by having a blade that can bend with the opposition, when using the flat.

More to the point - my favorite thing, the hilt-first disengage, is made better by having a bendy blade. The sudden movement creates some force on the tip, which bends the blade downwards and allows me to do subtle disengages around people's hilts. Perhaps this is part of why I have been almost entirely unsuccessful in teaching this technique to other people.