Review???

I need to review my blog.

My shoulder has been a touch unhappy with me when I fight Spanish, lately. This is likely because I drilled too much a few weekends ago. Fortunately, fighting Italian doesn't seem to bother it at all, so it appears that I'm taking a break from Spanish.

As well, I've been so focused on my shorter-rapier game that I've lost sight, somewhat, of how to correctly fight with my "standard" load-out.

I fought seriously with my 45-inch rapier and my dagger for the first time in a long while, at that regional. It was good, but I kept starting off sets of passes doing badly, then remembering little bits of guiding principles over the course of passes which improved my game.

Such principles included:

-Use counter-guards. Rock < Paper < Scissors exists, and it is defined in terms of dagger position. Sword-forward-dagger-back is paper < Dagger-middle-sword-middle is scissors < dagger-forward-sword-back is rock.

-The primary driving goal should be to "create openings", rather than to try to figure out how to strike my opponent. This is easiest to apply against less-skilled fencers. The more skilled a fencer is, the smaller the "openings" one can create, to the point that an "opening" might just be the ability to create a slightly larger and larger "opening", and so forth.

-Tip-middle-hilt principle of sword-contact. Which is to say - usually the safest way to engage with a sword is by switching sides that one engages with. So if I engage with the false edge of their tip, I should engage with the true edge of the middle of their blade, and then with the false edge next to the hilt. This confuses opponents, and all of those positions are good for both offense and attack. As well, it creates more obvious "lines" to use to attack through an opponent's sword. In general, the middle of the sword or the hilt are the only safe places to attack through, for various reasons.

-Old-style off-line fighting is very nice, if my opponent doesn't wish to make contact with my blade. It's a different way of doing Scissors, which relies on misdirection more than my dagger to do things. Sweep / tap / through is still a good strategy. However, if they make contact with my blade, my ability to deceive is greatly reduced.

In all, I'm pretty happy with how my fencing was. I just need to get the essentials back into my working memory, and perhaps make some sort of mnemonic phrase to remind myself of the essentials.