Praaaaactice

Sunday practice was good. We did melee things. I've spoken about it elsewhere.

Monday practice was good. I am cutting back on caffeine, so I ended up going in without enough motivation to work on anything other than just going out and fighting people. As such, I spent the whole practice mostly fighting my fight, which was good.

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I've noticed that many people approach to what they think is the edge of my distance, and sort of sit there. It's not just one or two - it's lots. Given that my distance is deceitful, this is almost always good for me. It gives me the chance to sleaze my way into measure with ugly tricks like moving my feet but keeping my hands at the same distance, and other things like that. The only unfortunate thing is that when I sleaze my way into leaning-thrust measure, my opponent frequently lunges and one or the other of us ends up eating a hard shot.

The answer, of course, is to use better form to lock them more consistently out of that simultaneous lunge. That, or bait the lunge and out-distance my opponent. The former is something that I, with my longer blade, will have an innate disadvantage at doing. The latter doesn't feel "safe", but it is something I am good at.

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I also got a chance to fight an out-of-kingdom dude, which was great. He pointed out something I had thought about previously, but never had seen someone execute. (The particular thing is for when performing a top-quillon parry when your sword is under theirs. Your opponent can pull back a bit and cut through the middle of your sword, resulting in a shot to your leg. The responses are to either angle through around their blade, or to step through into a moulinet.) Now that I have seen someone doing it, I need to drill against it.

I also worked on single rapier more. I had a hard time performing good giaratas which actually protect me. This is a problem, because that particular maneuver is a large part of my single rapier game. I think my opponent was anticipating my final location, which meant that I couldn't rely on the void to actually defend me. I need to brain through that and figure out what I can do if my opponent anticipates the giarata. Or if there's a way I can do it differently which automagically defends against shots thrown at my final location. Maybe it's time for me to review my Giganti?

I also started doing a weird false-edge "pulling" thing to pull my opponent's tip offline to the right. It's weird and I need to experiment with it more.

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I'm coming to trust more in my rock-paper-scissors sword-and-dagger stances, to the point that I am confident switching stance as soon as I see how my opponent takes their guard. This is exciting, because the stance I am most comfortable in by far is Giganti's seconda-terza.

Paper: Giganti's seconda-terza is a good place to start, given that even the stances which beat it aren't *that* much stronger against it. This stance is good against stances in which the off-hand is extended, because it's super easy to feint through whatever my opponent wants to do against what I'm doing. Or take pot-shots at the hands.

Scissors: Fabris 60 is good against Capoferro's terza, Destreza, and other blade-extended stances because you can bring your off-hand into play easily and take away their sword. Goodbye sword!

Rock: Silver is good against Fabris 60, because Silver's guard sort of profiles you along your dagger, meaning you just have to parry up or down while advancing when they attack with their sword. This works when they have to extend their sword-arm to attack, because then it's harder for them to feint a final target.

I need to figure out how to drill Fabris 60 and Silver better at home. Giganti is easy to drill - usually victory from that stance involves relatively simple, single-step blade opposition. For inspiration on Silver, I should probably re-read Silver. Additionally, I can read the part of Viedma's book that covers how to oppose a sword with a dagger.

Improving my Fabris 60 probably means reading... Saviolo? Maybe di Grassi? Who knows. So much reading to do.

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In any case, learning is happening, though slowly. I need to focus some, but periodic unfocused practices are a good thing as well.