Fencing last night was great. I had the opportunity to fight vs longsword. Very interesting. I had a speed advantage, but that was balanced by his strength. When I was using dagger we were very much equals, but when I was fighting open hand I was definatly strugling. My guard Read more…
Things I have been working on up to now.
Don Godfrey has been helping me work with the shorter blade that I use rather than trying to imitate those with longer blades. Makes sense. Instead of trying to mimic the strengths of the stronger blade focus on your own strengths and find your opponents weaknesses.
One new thing on this is that I’m now only using sword and dagger. The reason behind this is that with the shorter blade I have two choices: I can stand further out beyond my opponent’s reach (and much beyond my own) and counter punch what they throw, which may be sometimes effective, but I can’t parry everything all of the time; and the second is to close to where I am within a comfortable distance and my opponent is having troubles because I”m too close for them. What this means is that I”m at a range where I can use a sword, but my opponent will be using his dagger. In order to combat that I will need to use a dagger myself. That way I will equalize their advantage, and surpass it. I will have two blades which I can easily wield at that range, and my opponent will only have one.
I figured that it would be a good idea to have a rapier journal again. So here we begin. I decided on using WP because I didn’t feel like carrying around a book this time, and this way I can’t lose it.