Tournament

CASBa Rapier Tourney

This post was about to be titled:

What I Learned From Watching My Fencing in the Tir Righ CASBa Rapier Tourney

But I figured that wouldn’t work well for a link.  If you’re wondering how the A&S portion was it was great.  I had a lot of fun judging a food entry and got to judge a bardic entry for the first time.  Now back to the Rapier.

So this is going to be my reactions as I watch my fighting on Don Godfrey’s videos.  His YouTube account is here: https://www.youtube.com/user/godvonrav.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Water and Combat

I’ve been thinking a lot about hydration and combat recently.  Why do we do what we do?

I’ve found there to be a few main fighters stay hydrated in our area.

  • There’s the fighter who comes to the tourney, fights, has a bit of water from the water bearers if he’s thirsty
  • There’s the fighter who comes with their own water and drinks as needed
  • There’s the fighter who pre-drinks as much as he can and then drinks occasionally
  • There’s the fighter who doesn’t drink until the tournament is over

The way I try to work is to drink as much water as I can the day before, and then day of drink as needed.  It’s a system that has worked well so far, and is heavily influenced by Viscount Savaric’s methods.

If we were to believe the beverage industry we’d drink three different kinds of energy drink or Gatorade throughout the day as much as we can.

I decided I’d like to know more.  So I started reading Waterlogged by Dr. Tim Noakes.  It’s an interesting read.  It focuses on endurance running – marathon primarily – but I think that it can apply to fencing as well.  It may not be as much of an endurance sport as a marathon but it still takes a lot out of us in sweat.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Practice and Eddies

Had a great time at practice.  We did some running and high energy exercises.  There were a number of new fighters there.  I got to do some slow work with Giuame, and that was very good for helping me settle some actions, like fighting close.  Then I got to work Read more…

By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Aquaterra Champions

Had a great tourney on Saturday.  I drove down with my Lady and Theign Oak.  We got through the border without issues and made it to the event just a bit before court, with enough time to get parked and set up and all.  We came forward to kneel and say that we would fulfill the duties of a champion if we succeeded.  After that we had the rest of the morning off, as the tourney was scheduled for one in the afternoon.

The event was outdoors with a few things in small halls.  And it was freezing.  Very freezing.  It tried to snow once.  So we spent most of the morning inside halls either watching the A&S or the Bardic competition and trying to stay warm.  Around noon Oak and I began practicing a little, and trying out the baton and cloak, as both were likely to come up in the competition, and Oak didn’t have much practice with either.

After lunch we armoured up and began practicing.  We got some fights in with some of the local dons and they gave us some good pointers, then we got ready for the procession.  We had the procession and setup for the tourney.  There were six entrants.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Gearing up

I’m off to Aquaterra’s All Champions event this weekend.  It looks like an interesting event.  You had to apply to compete, and you must have heraldry present with you.  It’s a challenge tourney.  Odd format though. One person challenges another to a number of fights.  The challenged party chooses the Read more…

By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Investiture

I got to fight in my first investiture tourney this week.  It was my second tourney since I’ve been back.

I fought well, and placed better than I expected, defeating three people.  One of whom went on to win.

On the Sunday I fought in the Cadet Tourney, sponsored by Oberst Luther Magnus.  I did much better than I expected in this tourney, with 14 victories, which is almost 50/50.  Luther gave me some tips which helped a lot, bringing my dagger lower, and pulling my sword closer to me.

With the dagger lower, it needs to move a bit more to protect my head, but it needs to move less to protect the rest of me, which I found was useful in my parries, and kept me alive much better.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago