Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Settmour Swamp

Today I had 90 minutes available to fight and I fought for 30 minutes. Practice today was really good and I feel I fought really well.

First I fought Johnathan with single rapier. He has long arms and strength on his side but I was frequently able to parry and counter attack by voiding and using different angles to my advantage. He was able to take my sword arm a few times which means I need to work on how and where I hold my sword and I also need to work on being able to parry a sword coming in at an odd angle, like a downward angle.

Next I fought Owynn and I used sword and cloak and he had sword and dagger. I feel I did well parrying his blade with the cloak and I was able to parry multiple times beore having to step out of range to reset. He was able to take my off hand a few times but for most of the time  I think I did well with that. A few time I als wrapped the cloak around my sword but it didn't really effect my fighting in a horrible way but it is still something to work on. Stamina is something I'll need to work on as well if I want to use this form in a tournament. Earlier I had expressed my want to auth in non-rigid parry and when he challenged me i thought this would just be practice but it turns out Orlando was watching and I got my auth. Because I thought this was practice I felt no pressure and I didn't freeze up or overthink too much, which is a good thing.

Lastly I fought Malcolm and we both had sword and dagger. I failed to keep much control of his blade with my dagger and I frequently failed to attack with the dagger. Malcolm ended up having me up down my sword and just fight with the dagger to get used to attacking and parrying with it. Not using this form for a few months is showing badly and I really just need to start practicing with it more often and focus on what I already know until I'm reminded of how to use a dagger.

Something that made me smile tonight was while I was filling out my auth paperwork I had to check off all the auths I currently have and it felt weird only leaving two of the heavy rapier boxes empty (two-hander and cut and thurst) but it felt especiallyweird to check off the marshal box. It made me smile to realize how far I've come in about a year and a half. I'vegrown so much as a fighter and as a person.  Only started this all to have something to do with all my spare time and now it's so much more than that.