Practice Report

Standard disclaimer: This stuff is experimental. I will likely say things which sound right, but are not, because I'm trying to figure out how to make them work and why they do or do not work.

Trying to understand and implement New Spanishish Thing continues to vex me.

I had some dumbbells set up such that I could perform opposition on them. It worked great! I was able to slide down the blade to perform versions of the various Spanish generals on my practice dummy. It taught me a lot about how blades interact. However, when I got to practice, the thing didn't work super well.

I'm reaching directly toward my opponent's hilt with my hilt, using a straight arm. Then, reaching toward the part of their sword that is as far away from their quillons as my tip is. So, if I'm using a 37" sword, I'm reaching 37" down their blade. With a 45" sword, I'm reaching toward a point past their tip.

After that, I'm just moving forward and, when I reach the medio of proporcion (the point at which, at full extension, their tip would be just past my quillons), then I am performing an action. These actions which I am making up terms just now for are:

1. Scoop their sword over their body as per previous work with New Spanishish Thing
1. "attack by engagement"
2. Slide up the line inside of their sword relative to their shoulder and detach to stab, defending with the middle of my blade
1. "attack by detachment"
3. Slide up the line their sword could occupy, placing my blade to block as many of their possible lines in and then detaching to cut their arm and/or body, when my hilt gets near theirs.
1. "attack by barring"
4. Push their sword off the center and stab them, as per actual real Destreza.
1. "attack by crossing"

1 and 2 should work if their arm is not pointing toward your leading shoulder but their sword is, 2 and 3 should work if both their arm and their sword are not pointing toward your shoulder, and 1 and 4 are kind of the same thing and thus should work if their arm is pointing toward your shoulder. There's some squishy room, and which you should do depends on body positioning, but that is the gist of what I was trying yesterday.

Performing all of these actions should happen as I enter the medio. The positioning I have specified means that my opponent is limited to going to one side or trying to extend their arm and push through their blade. After that, all of their actions will be in the time of the body and the foot, which should be slow enough that I can react to them given that I know what to anticipate.

I had a hard time getting appropriate angulation. The last iteration of New Spanishish thing worked super well, but

• I was working it from way out of measure, which allowed me to choose a way weaker part of their blade to act on.
• The "wrapping" motion I did allowed me to grab blades that were farther off-line than what I'm trying right now.
• The "wrapping" motion also meant that my opponent frequently didn't expect the push, which allowed me to act without direct opposition for a tempo.

I think that for action 1, I need to integrate a wrap as I enter the medio.

My angulation was wrong, too. Frequently my opponent would either change blade position after entering measure, or wouldn't allow me to extract myself to the measure needed to calculate the blade position I wanted. As such, I wasn't strong as I needed to be. It's also possible that active pushes against my sword would mean that I need a yet stronger position, in order to do the thing appropriately.

Perhaps I should just go with the Romagnan 45º or 30º angle for taking an atajo, for performing these actions. A 45º atajo would ensure that my opponent could not gain strength on my sword by bending their wrist, and pointing my arm straight at their hilt means I almost always have the inside line. This gets complex when my opponent's sword is way offline, but complexity can be worked out later.

I should do some math to see if my intuition about pointing at the 37" mark with a 37" sword is completely off-base or not. Like, actual modern geometry to see how that ends up working out. I can already tell that if I get in that position against someone in an Italian stance, that sort of leaves me open to a straight-in thrust. But again, I shouldn't be allowing them in their thrust range without acting on their sword.

I did like how the new positioning meant that I could go anywhere with my sword, and wasn't limited to the four directions I was working on previously. 

Lastly, it really felt like this was all more effective with my 37" sword than with my 45" sword. I'm not sure if it's just because I've been drilling more at home with my 37", or if it's actually just a better set of principles with a shorter sword. Maybe I need to begin the actions as I enter my opponent's medio? Or whoever's medio is farthest away? Ugh. Viedma says I should act at my medio, but the Spanish also favor shorter swords, so his book might be more suited to the fighter with the shorter sword.

*****

I've also been working on the principle that the thing in my left hand should defend against the thing in my opponent's right hand. I'm not sure how good an idea that is in practice against people fighting sword and dagger. Against case fighters who I don't outrange, I think it's a good idea, and perhaps the only effective idea. The entire point of New Spanishish Thing is to figure out a more universal set of principles so that I can apply them to (for example) case fighters. Against case, I can't do my textbook "apply two items to one item in order to win" actions. So I need different and better ones.

*****

I fought my standard game a little bit? It worked decently. I actually felt better in my Giganti stance than I did in my Fabris-60-knockoff stance, which is unusual because I was fighting against a very blade-forward stance and usually I consider Fabris-knockoff to rock-paper-scissors against blade-forward stances pretty hard. It makes sense though, because my Giganti-esque stance was able to take advantage of the New Spanishish Things I have been studying.

I also think that I have discovered that my yield-under disengage is actually not good unless my opponent is very far off-line. This makes sense - it's basically a giarata, and that's when a giarata is used in Giganti. But it's disappointing, since that means I need to find better things to do when I am blocked out on the outside line, but not super hard. Maybe just reverting to my old false-edge-beat-through would be a good idea.

*****

That was a practice. As a summary:

• Keep trying this variation of New Spanishish Thing, but think through the problem of angle of atajo.
• Keep working the problem of dagger-versus-sword. Maybe read Viedma more?
• Do the good things in My Stances. I'm getting lazy and letting things slip.

That's all for now.