Practice Report?

Hello and welcome to my practice report for Thursday, February 25!

I have been cutting back on caffeine and didn't get enough sleep on Wednesday night, so Thursday practice felt a little derpy, even though I was fencing better than usual for no clear reason.

I went into practice intending to play around with the hanging top-quillon parry and with my standard three guards. I accomplished this pretty well I think. My think-meats aren't doing their job super well, so I'm going to descend into the madness of bulleted lists as a scaffold for thinking.

• General
• I did better with transitioning from guard to guard than usual. This is especially important for small lists, where I'm probably transitioning guard within passing-step measure of my opponent. Transitioning guard while taking a passing step is pretty cool, especially because Fabris 60 and Silver work well with either foot forward.
• I did a lot of moving forward quickly. Fabris 60 and Silver are good for moving forward quickly. Giganti is not bad for it, but it's more difficult to move smoothly and defend if I'm taking passing steps. If my opponent wants to stay out of measure, then running them down is of paramount importance.
• I've been intentionally hyperventilating with deep breaths before the last few fights in a given set. This is because I try to treat the last few as tournament bouts. This makes me stressed. When I am stressed, my body dumps a whole bunch of adrenaline in my system. For me, this means I can't move quickly or naturally - my body freezes, while my mind keeps moving like normal. Hyperventilating a bit before and during the fight if I am nervous seems to increase my smoothness of action. It seems like a good habit to continue.
• Destreza-ish guards
• I continue using this in positions where it behooves me to pretend I'm using single-sword, such as when I have lost my main hand.
• I've developed a new thing to do from the hanging top-quillon parry. Basically, I do a hybrid reverse-moulinet-disengage to end with the false edge of my sword pushing down on their sword. 
• From there, I can either flip my hand and thrust, or I can do a circular envelop. 
• The flip/thrust involves a step forward and away from their sword to place myself past their point before I thrust. Keep in mind to false-edge-cut a little bit more after the cut lands, while taking the step, to make the flip/thrust work better.
• The envelop involves mostly forward movement and perhaps movement toward their sword. Perhaps with an assist with the dagger? More testing is required.
• As a bonus, I can enter this flowchart from an Italian stance, if I perform a cut at their sword with my false edge.
• Swetnam-ish guard
• People have gotten better at dealing with my "I'm gonna throw a shot from a Swetnam-esque stance and hope for a double" thing that I do when I lose my dagger and they have a dagger. I should stop doing it, because people just place their parry at the boundary between the middle and weak of my sword, and then parry. Then there's nothing I can do, and I get stabbed.
• Fabris 60-ish guard
• Works so well moving forward.
• There are four "zones" that people can place their sword in, dictated by where they are in relation to the tip of my dagger - upper-left, upper-right, lower-left, lower-right. Obviously, I can move them to a certain degree by rotating my guard left, right, up, or down.
• Upper-left is the ideal case. I sweep up with my dagger and stab them in the gut by disengaging with my sword. SO GOOD.
• Lower-right is also good. I do a cross-body sweep with my dagger and perform an imbrocatta, which works a decent amount of the time. It isn't as easy to keep moving forward here, so my opponent can likely bail and get out of measure without me stabbing them. This is very useful as a second intent of someone disengages to my lower-right after the upper-left dagger-sweep.
• Lower-left isn't that good. I have to place my dagger slowly, then perform a lunge. It's safe as long as I move slowly at the start. If I move quickly, it feels like my opponent could disengage after I commit to the hard lower-left parry.
• Maybe I should perform a unified sword/dagger action here to bar them to the lower-left? Like maybe anticipate the disengage with my sword, parrying with a false-edge cut to my left and then proceeding as outlined in the Destreza section?
• Upper-right was previously bad, but then I started doing the new thing outlined in the Destreza section.
• Previously my only choice was to try to throw a thrust to the left of their sword and hope they didn't place a thrust toward my left shoulder, because then opposition says that they win.
• Now, I've been performing the false-edge cut leading into a flippy-thrust. This works pretty well, in terms of me not getting stabbed! I need to work on how to make my dagger assist this action, perhaps with a closed guard. Maybe entering something similar to Capoferro's Quinta guard, with both hands unified.
• Remember to take a step after the false-edge cut connects!
• Silver-ish guard
• Oh Silver-ish guard.
• It has happened. People have started consistently landing thrusts on my dagger-hand, which usually doesn't happen.
• I think I need to place my dagger somewhere that they can't just do a straight-in thrust at my hand. Force them to rotate their blade, and take advantage of that tempo. It only requires dropping my hand a tiny bit to force this.
• This guard works better than I would have expected, for walking forward confidently at my opponent and then stabbing them.
• It remains hard to actually land the thrust, because I usually assure myself of my dagger on their sword before I thrust. This triggers the "omg gtfo" reaction in my opponent, which makes me sad.
• Passing lunges suddenly become essential.
• I frequently end up in a situation where I have a dagger on my opponent's sword, but my opponent's dagger is at liberty. This means I end up playing a weird game where I'm trying to fake out my opponent's dagger. It's a game I'm not bad at, but it's still not a clear victory.
• The solution for this is usually to throw thrusts that land close to my opponent's sword-arm, so that dagger-parries become difficult to perform.
• In order to do this, I might need to change the positioning I use for my sword? Like keeping my sword's tip near my left wrist or something? Hmm. Things to think about.
• Maybe throw a cut at their arm, if I have their sword.
• Giganti-ish guard
• This guard continues to be reliable.
• I have to edge forward, rather than using passing steps.
• Sweet, sweet feinting thrusts.
• People tend to be very threatened by this guard. Not sure why.
• Keep working on transitions I guess?
• Takeaways
• Work on the false-edge-cut thing. Contemplate it. Drill it. Work it until it's smooth.
• Work on improving the Silver-ish guard. Drop your dagger a bit if they are straight-on with their blade.
• Keep working on choosing a guard based on your opponent's sword and dagger positions.

My above descriptions of the false-edge-cut thing are not very good or illustrative. Perhaps if I am particularly motivated, over the next few days I'll run through it as a drill and try to transcribe how the thing works. Or maybe not. Who knows.

That's all I've got for now.