Quick Pre-Practice Post

I haven't written in my swordblog in over two weeks. SADNESS!

This post is gonna jump around a bit, because I've been having several different swordthoughts and haven't had as much time to try them out as usual.

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So, the current thing I'm working is related to the previous post. Last post, I talked about high guards which defend the high line, and low guards which defend the low line. Then, I went into excruciating detail about why it is important to flip back and forth between high and low guards. The summary is that doing this "automatically catches" your opponent's attempts to disengage. This is a vast over-simplification, but the complex version is in the damn post.

So, over the past few weeks, I've been working on something that I wanted to be the "next step" in that process. You see, when you have less range, and you're fighting against someone with more range, you generally need to close 3 or 4 steps, rather than one step of covering and a second step of attack. As such, I tried to develop a third type of atajo.

First, we have the "weak" atajos, in which we put our tip near their hilt. These are "near the tip of our blade".

Then, we have the "strong" atajos, in which we cross the middle of our blade over the middle of their blade. These are "near the middle of our blade".

I then wanted to create something that was "near the tip of our opponent's blade", as a third sort of atajo. Sadly, every attempt I have made at this has failed miserably. It's possible that I am just not doing it correctly, but it seems mostly like covering your opponent's tip just isn't a viable tactic.

In theory, you would need to have a wider "angle" - weak atajos have almost no angle, and strong atajos have a 45º angle, so following that progression means that we would have something like a 90º angle with our opponent's sword, to cover more space.

When I was trying this out last Monday, I was not doing the 90º angle, so perhaps that is wrong.

In terms of historical sources, Romagnan's Rada treatise talks about "virtual" atajos, in which you place an atajo on a sword which is far away from you. It seems like this might be similar to the concept of "covering their tip", just because of how far away you are. But I'm unsure.

Oh well. Further work is required.

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Another possible solution here would be to just go for the strong atajo, then switch to a weak atajo and then the opposing weak atajo. Switching between strong atajos takes far too long, but switching between weak atajos is a tiny action. This worked pretty well against Thomas's longsword, in as much as it allowed me to take that third step while closing lines, but I'm not sure how it would work against other opponents.

This solution vexes me because it forces me into a weak atajo. If someone is using case, I need to be able to switch between strong atajos in order to take advantage of the relatively narrow opportunities that they allow me.

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A possible solution to the "switching strong atajos takes too long" problem is a possible alternate way to do strong atajos. In the traditional Narrowing/Line in Cross, we block the high line with Line in Cross and the low line with Narrowing. In theory, if we lower or raise our sword more, we could block the low line with Line in Cross, or the high line with Narrowing.

The idea behind this is the "sword-punch" thing that Sorcha used to do far more often. Basically, she applies Line in Cross while stepping in a circle, then pushes hard downwards with her hilt in order to switch from blocking the high line to blocking the low line. This, exacerbated by the truly brutal quillons that her old sword has, prevented the disengage that would normally be the correct response to the high-line-defending Line in Cross that she, in her Italian-esque way, performed.

The drawback to this is that you are no longer actually protecting the high line - by the principles of opposition, your opponent should be able to push through your sword to get at your high line, if they anticipate your action. However, it does still provide some small protection for the high line if your opponent is not trained in the art of Opposition, and it also creates the illusion that you are, in fact, protected.

Similarly, you could take Narrowing and "punch upwards" with it to cover your high line.

The "punch downwards" is something I reflexively do already as part of my Line in Cross, if I feel my opponent gaining a tempo-based advantage. I lean over and punch downwards to catch their disengage. If I integrated a switch from that atajo to a weak atajo, I could possibly continue forwards?

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Hmm hmm hmm. Vexing questions.

Next time, I'll probably try to write about "Directions of Stepping And The Attacks You Should Apply While Stepping In Them". Until then, fence well!