tourney prep

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

Sep 8&9 practice

Had a great two practices this week.  I’m sore and a bit bruised, but none the worse for wear.

The first practice was Lionsdale’s Wednesday practice.  It went really well.  It was our first day indoors, the hard packed dirt is amazing on the knees.  It lets you practice a bit harder without the knee pain that I get occasionally from lunging too much on concrete.  We started out with a bear-pit to warm up, as we’re all getting ready for the fall tournament season and shaking off the dust from war fighting.  I haven’t fought in a tourney since Sir Eddies, and I”m planning on fighting this weekend, so I needed the practice.

With the bear-pit I started working on the semi-refuse guard that we were taught a few weeks ago.  It seems to work well for defence and fits in perfectly with my current style.  It’s very aggressive while allowing me to defend quickly.  I was still having some issues with controlling my opponents blade, but not too much.

After warming up with just the three of us (Sebastian, Alejandro, and myself) a fourth person got there, Cion.  He’s working on getting authorized, so we decided to test him out on the basics.  We had him teach us how to stand, how to lunge, cut, and Parry.  He taught us how to use a dagger, a shield, and a baton.  We didn’t work on cloak, as we didn’t have one with us that day.  He’s doing pretty good.  Then we quizzed him about the rules for different things like engagement, holds, melee, and weapon requirements.  He’s got most of those down too.  That just left combat.  So we started a four man bear-pit to test him out.  He seems safe, though we haven’t tried unsafe activities against him yet, which is a major portion of the auth test, dealing with others mistakes.

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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

January 14, 2010

Note to self, taking three weeks off is a little too long.  I had a rather punishing practice on the 14th.  I did my 50 lunges, and then worked on my dagger parries, we were practicing moving sword and dagger as one.  Then I started practicing with Don Godfrey.  It Read more…

By Tomas de Courcy, ago