(The above is intended to be read in the voice of Willem Dafoe's character from Boondock Saints.)
First fencing practice in about a month. I felt pretty good. In pre-practice diagnostic drilling, I found that my point control is better than it was while I was practicing regularly, so that's pretty cool. Turns out, resting yourself can lead to better athletic performance in the short-term.
I was also super-tired. Spring has sprung, with a vengeance. I am allergic to something in the air, and it took a cocktail of azelastine, sudafed, afrin, and zyrtec to make me functional for fencing practice. Mostly the afrin, but I'm sure the rest helped.
In terms of the violences, things were good. I did very well with stabbing people, but I wasn't as good about keeping-myself-alive when unexpected things happened. I was pleasantly surprised on a number of counts, from people who apparently learned a lot from the Devon Boorman Fencing Seminar. Unsurprisingly, it seemed to be the newer fencers who benefited the most, but it was interesting to see everybody implementing new things in their game.
My walk-forward-and-stab-in-middle-stance game had some problems. In particular, people kept escaping from my hard upwards dagger-bind. I think I was trying to bind with dagger when their tip was too far in my upper-right quadrant, where I really need to do Sword Actions™, as previously discussed. (Did I really discuss that? I don't remember. Oh well.)
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One fencer bears particular note - he continues to be a very, very difficult fight. He fights in something similar to my middle stance, except that his dagger covers more of his body, his elbow is in a very wide position 6 according to Rada, his hand is in position 1 relative to his elbow, and his tip is in a wide position 2. This places his tip far enough back that I can't get good opposition without giving my tip to his dagger.
(Quick note: This positioning notation is from the Romagnan manual. This is for dictating where things are positioned. Imagine a cone - the line down the center is position 1, the line along the top of the cone is 2, the upper-right is 3, right is 4, down is 6, left is 8, and upper-left is 9. There are three widenesses to the cone, which aren't necessarily explicitly mentioned when describing a position - shallow, wider, and widest. In Romagnan's book, he usually just specifies hand and tip position, but when adapting this to specify Italian positioning, I have found it useful to specify elbow position.)
Up until now, the best I can figure out to do is adopt my Back/Silver stance and hope I can sweep with my dagger and then stab him. This has grown less and less effective over time, but it's still not a bad choice. It just seems like a choice that will gradually get worse and worse. My other choice is to try to snipe his dagger-hand and dagger-arm, since his stance leaves them a bit exposed, but committing to that requires me to leave myself more open than I tend to like.
However, I had an insight! Probably from seeing other people do it and subconsciously filing it away. But an insight nonetheless!
If I place my hand at a wide 7 relative to my shoulder, and my tip at a 2 relative to my hand, I can gain inside opposition and defend myself effectively, preventing the counter-shot that this particular fencer is very, very good at. I would need to develop a game-plan from that sword position, and it would probably result in a new stance, but it seems like a legitimate thing to do.
While thinking about it today, I realized that this positioning is very similar to Meyer's Left Plow guard. Success! So, this weekend's homework is going to be to read through Meyer and look at his devices from Left Plow, searching for ideas.
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One additional insight I had was about righty-versus-lefty positioning. When fighting righty-versus-righty, it is generally safest to pull the left shoulder back when thrusting on the inside line, and to lean the left shoulder forward when thrusting on the outside line. This is because it places your body on the other side of your strong, relative to their tip.
When fighting a lefty, I think that I should attempt always profiling my body when thrusting. So, when I thrust, I always pull my left shoulder back. This is because, when my sword is to the left of their sword, a left-handed person has a line over my sword and into my left shoulder. Right-handed people just don't have that line, because of positioning. That's a cop-out explanation, but it seems correct.
When my sword is to the right of their sword, then I want to void my left shoulder for obvious reasons.
This is something I have yet to extensively try, but I am excited to try it. It is also possible that the Left Plow position might be useful too, but I am unsure as yet.
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That's all for the moment - I'll see everybody around.
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