Some Rambling, and a Short Practice Report

So I'm sitting on having only the last entry for Mair's Third Sickle Plate; I don't really want to dig farther until Doroga and I get a chance to run that in person; we're just behind on that because life got in the way. I'm hoping to get a chance tomorrow at practice, though! If by next Monday's practice we don't get a chance to work through stuff I'll just forge ahead and we can backfill with information from trying them out as it happens.

Still, I want to get something up here, just to keep my momentum rolling. Tomorrow I may do something on Fabris, but tonight I want to get out a quick practice report just to keep myself honest.

Monday night I noticed a big difference working smaller, tighter steps against Dr. Deth. He still rocked me, but it was clear from the fighting and from talking after that I need to work on a few things:

• Measure awareness. Linger just outside, and use that to put pressure on my opponent.
• I'm still working on being able to bring the fight to people and not just be reactive (primarily by taking a tempo from them by claiming the initiative). I could just revert to trying to flush a movement (ie, making my opponent give me a tempo and capitalizing on that) but I'm trying to work a much more proactive fight against him.
• When I want to move, I need to explode. Work a better explosive attack from Fabris.
• When I parry with the dagger, I should be extending my blade, if not outright lunging into a committed attack. This can (and should) be drilled.
• Lateral movement. Voids. Rolling off of Agrippa's ball. Stuff like that.
• Dropping from an upright posture, through a lean, into an attack. Nothing new here.

(Anything I can work solo will be easier once I can do more regular work in the backyard and not the basement, too.)

Deth continues to force me outside my comfort zone while at the same time letting me work a lot of core fundamentals, and I'm really happy that he's regularly there on Mondays.

I fell off my five minutes a day minimum, and I damn sure need to get back on that train, no matter what or where I am during any day. Frankly, I've been feeling a little disengaged from fencing mentally and physically in general, which isn't good at all. I've had a lot of bad crap taking up space in my head for a little bit, so I'm hoping to get that flushed and then take up the free space with more swords. Get back to re-reading me some Fabris, writing about it more, and just doing more visualization throughout the day. Couple weeks of that and I'll be right back to normal.

That's that!