Super Productive Practice!

Practice this week ended up being short, because I spent the first part of it working with a new person. They seem to be our sort of people. So, yay.

The practice portion of practice went well. I spent time doing my Italianized Destreza, which operates on a diamond rather than on an octagon. It seemed to go well. The main Destreza-esque thing I am doing is getting in one of the four things-I-call-atajos (Line in Cross, Narrowing, Weak Under Strong, Weak Over Strong) and then transitioning to the corresponding atajo-like-thrust for the attack (In order of the previous parenthesized list: Weak Under Strong, Weak Over Strong, Line in Cross, Narrowing).

So, this means that I go from having my tip under their sword into thrusting through their sword, while pushing down from the top, in the case of Weak Under Strong => Line in Cross.

I continued operating in a very profiled Italian stance, while thinking in terms of body angle when attacking. This seems to have increased the number of times people just miss and can't bring something into a good attack. This is a nice thing.

I also returned to thinking about opposition in terms of strike point. So, the strike point can be determined by gripping a sword, then wiggling it back and forth. The point about which the sword rotates is the strike point. This is the point that is best to push with for opposition, I think. This is different from my previous thoughts about opposition, which were in terms of the strong, weak, and middle of the blade.

The strike point of my weapon is farther back than I expected it to be. When attacking and performing opposition with it, I was more able to push through people's weapons than usual. That was nice!

I also succeeded at adjusting the strike point. So, if you grip farther down the blade but behind the point of balance and then wiggle the blade, that will show where the strike point is if you make the weapon rotate around that point, when striking something. This is accomplished by "whipping" the sword, so that it rotates around a point past the hand but before the center of balance. This is most easily demonstrated in-person or in a video, but lazy.

This has improved my ability to do a glisé. What I do is land with the strike point initially, then "whip" the sword so that the strike point moves with my opponent's sword, pushing it harder than a straight-up cut. This was very effective, and allowed me to cut into my opponent's blade and then detach and thrust a few times. This will also allow me to actually do a subset of opposition with my 45" rapier, which is super exciting.

I need to study this, to see if manipulating the strike point will allow me to perform opposition on "stronger" places, if my opponent doesn't counter with strike-point-manipulation of their own.

This also explains why some of my whipping-shots have been landing harder than expected - if I whip my thrust in a particular way, that puts the strike point right at the tip, meaning that the full force of the rapier will be there. This means if I want to land a face shot, I shouldn't whip it in. I should whip near, and then push it in.

Things to work on for next practice:

• Further strike point manipulation! Experiment at home!
• Maintain the highly-profiled Giganti stance.
• Continue adapting Spanish principles to an Italian game.
• People might grow familiar with where I am attacking. This means that either 
• my attack needs to be un-parry-able due to positioning
• or I need to vary things sometimes. Possibly transferring from between the Weak Under/Over atajos? Possibly also transferring from Line in Cross to Narrowing and back by cutting over their tip?