Practice Report

Since I haven't had time to turn the draft Fabris post into a real post, I'm going to do another practice report while I can still remember what I did and talked about last night!

• Warmup fights with Anastasia went well. Decent energy, and I was rotating through guards pretty well.
• Fighting Lupold went less well; it felt like I was stuck in an "I'm working on stuff" rut but I wasn't really working on anything in particular? Lower energy, disengaging mentally, and I think it showed hard. Also, my offline steps and dynamic body movements were basically nonexistent, and I had zero transition from an upright stance into a lean. Ugh.
• Worked some with Meggie; I felt like this went really well for both of us. I kept trying to work on good disengages, cavaziones, or just turning over into a good crossing, but my debole just kept falling into her forte, and my crossing was nonexistent. Boo.
• I picked back up a lot when fighting Malocchio; it's hard to stay low energy there, and I was going off-book a lot there too, but generally in ways that had to happen? Still, I felt a lot better mentally after those.
• The night ended with some bouts against Wil Deth, and I got my clock cleaned. Fortunately, I got some great feedback after! He felt that while my steps might have been really clean, they were also very deliberate, big, and obvious. He's sure not wrong; gotta tighten that up a lot. Smaller, smoother steps. Also, I need to work on my passing steps more; they're fine in drills, but I never use them in practice.

Not sure what to do about general energy levels. Stay hydrated, eat a bit more before practice, and do some jumping jacks to wake the hell up between bouts? No idea, but I'll take what I can get there.

Most of my technical issues I'll be working on with drills. Remy and I were doing opposition work and the Capo Ferro hierarchy last week, and I think that'll help with the bladework issues. Going to focus more on my feet while I do solo drills, too. I'm thinking my usual set of precise lunges, steps, and passes should be followed by ones done at speed to get that moving in my head, and finish with slower ones to double-check technique. Also voids still, because I want more dynamic body movement, along with doing upright extension-lean-lunge both slowly and at speed, similar to footwork.

So a solid night of practice, and a good selection of items to work on for next week. Good deal!