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.