Of Angels Anniversary and Primary Secondaries and Secondary Secondaries, and Maybe Even Tertiary Secondaries (and now I'm just being ridiculous)

So yesterday was Angels Anniversary and it was a pretty darn good time. For those of you playing along at home, the Barony of the Angels is (unsurprisingly) most of the modern-day county of Los Angeles, so it's a well populated area and its events usually have pretty good turnout.

Angels is a great midpoint for me and Dylan (coming from Darach to the Northwest) to meet up with a lot of our friends from Lyondemere, Altavia, Angels, Gyldenholt, and Calafia. It was great to see some new faces yesterday on the rapier field as well. The Angels fighters are also sporting very spiffy new tabards.

The tourney format was a Swiss five, which is definitely growing on me--I enjoy getting to fight a lot and having a decreased focus on "I have to win my next fight or I'm out of the tourney" or "If I beat this guy, he's out, which leaves her and her and him and him and him to beat, which means at least five rounds, so I'd better conserve my energy, oh wait, I just drew that guy for this next round, so..." I enjoy the forced breaks in routine that come from having to choose different offhands in each round, and I enjoy getting to fight through a whole tournament up to semi-finals.

That being said, I didn't fight too terribly well yesterday. I had trouble with my dagger and buckler fights, but I did okay with case, cloak, and baton, which was surprising. Having trouble with my old standards seems to have become my new standard in tournies--I've been having trouble concentrating on my fights, as referenced in my last post, and I think mixing it up with some new offhands was good for me. It seemed to ground me and keep me concentrating--with case and baton I got my opponents' blades off-line and managed to get a throat shot (case) and a stomach shot (baton, while we were both on the ground). My cloak fight was fun--I don't remember much of it, but I remember enjoying it. :)

Fast forward to practice this morning, where I worked a lot on cloak with Don Alex K. Between Anniversary yesterday and practice today, something clicked--I was cloakin' it up big time.

It took some minor adjustments ("Sorry! Parried my own sword again!") but the cloak made my parries and the connection between my swordhand and my offhand-hand much more fluid and functional. I'd still been having some trouble with some of the more interesting dagger parries (ie, anything that doesn't make the dagger look like a windshield wiper), but I found myself doing a lot more complicated and bold parries with the cloak for reasons I can't really explain yet.

Anyway, it was a useful bit of data--maybe my problem with my primary secondaries (ahahahahahaha SEE WHAT I DID THERE) is that I fight with them too much. Maybe they're just getting stale.

I'm not sure how much merit is in that line of thinking, because I know there are still hangups in there I need to work through. Switching to a different offhand for a spell isn't going to improve my dagger parries if all they need is more practice. If I'm having a mental block brought on by some fundamental incorrect assumptions about the offhand itself, however, mixing it up with something new might be just the thing. We'll see.

It's Official.

So I have one of these little IsoFlex stress balls at my desk at work. I picked it up today to do my usual round of squeezing, and realized the outside cover is splitting. I'm wearing holes all over the ball, which split open and tear further as I squeeze.

It's official.

I have become the Hulk.

Back on the Horse; Notes on Fencing To and From the Ground.

Phew! It's been awhile!

I've had a busy few months, faithful ZARMers, culminating in a week of suck, a week of awesome!, and now another couple weeks of suck which seem to be receding. Forecast of slightly snarky, chance of showers up to Great Western War.

That's right, kids, it's that time again--time for Great Western War! Until today, I've only been looking towards the war as another Thing I Have To Do (not that I have to do it, but we already paid for it and it's one of those tricky things I know I'd want to do if I wasn't so bogged down with stuff). As of now, we're going, we're camping, and we'll be there Friday night and leave Sunday afternoonish. It's possible we'll have to bail early--among the pail of o nuuuuuuuuuu! the universe dumped on us this month was a heart problem with our two-year-old kitty, which has been hugely stressful, heartbreaking, and expensive. "Chance of showers" has pretty much summed up my entire emotional state for the last two weeks, and I'm just now catching my breath.

Anyway, one of the things I am looking forward to about the war is getting to fence my squirrely little heart out. I haven't been giving fencing as much love as it needs this summer, and it's showing in my game, but I'm still stoked to get out there and shake my groove thang for a couple days. I really want to give fencing more time in my schedule... I just need to figure out how to make said time! :)

The substance of this post is supposed to be all about fighting on the ground. Last Saturday at Caid Rapier Open, Laertes noticed I was having some issues fighting both against someone who's on the ground and when grounded myself, and that's some of what we worked on on Monday night at Altavia practice.

Basically, my problem is that I revert to some basic no-nos of fencing technique when I'm on the ground that I totally know better than to do when standing. For example, I tend to present a flat surface to my opponent by facing them head-on (in as much as my torso ever gets flat... bow chicka wow wow!). This could be solved by fencing like I'm standing up, which is to say with my right shoulder behind my left and offhand held farther forward and a bit higher than I'm usually accustomed. It's a fine line between protecting my head and protecting my stomach, but it's mostly a psychological line--anyone attacking me while I'm sitting down is going to have a substantially easier time hitting my head and chest than my stomach.

Problem number two, obviously, is the position of my offhand. It needs to be higher. Better. Stronger. Cheaper. Well, higher anyway. I have a natural aversion to raising it too high because it uses some underdeveloped muscles and tires my arm out more quickly (gosh, I wonder how I could fix that problem). It also feels safer to keep it low, because my parry up (ie, raising the blade of the dagger from a nine-o'clock to a twelve-o'clock position and returning it to nine) is much faster than my parry down (dropping the blade from nine to six and raising it back up). The parry down is also less controlled and uses more of my arm, so I hesitate to use it any more than I have to. More things to work on. Or, as Laertes said so very succinctly, "PARRY DRILLS."

Fighting a legged fighter from a standing position will take a similar attitude adjustment. I have a pretty good foot void that keeps my forward leg from getting taken most of the time, but I still tend to stand facing the legged opponent most of the time anyway. My main strategy fighting a legged person is to take crappy little potshots in the hope of getting a good hit on the hand, arm, or head, which doesn't really work for me too well. For some reason, fighting like I was fighting a, you know, standing fighter, hadn't occurred to me. You know, all that basic stuff about engagement? Line closing? Constraint? Dagger use? All that? Yeah, no, none of that. Potshots, though. Heeeeeey.

There's nothing really ground-breaking in this post, discovery-wise, just little bits of technique I feel like it's worth commemorating (in part because I feel silly for not realizing them before).

Triumph! Or, how I made friends with my brachioradialis.

A Day in the Life of the Elbow

When last we left our intrepid (insipid?) blogger, Enid was mourning the death of her left arm.

Well, boys and girls, Enid learned a new word this month:

Brachioradialis.

It all goes like this:

After the last post, I got a lot of commentary and feedback (usually in person, rather than in type, which is why it isn't too crowded down there in the archives) from other fencers. Fencers I respect, fencers with years more experience than I have, fencers who I want to be like when I grow up. Almost universally, their response was "Take time off now, before it gets any worse." So I put my feelings on the matter aside, carefully considered their advice, inserted my fingers into my ears, and went LA LA LA LA LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

But I did everything else they told me to do. :) Namely, I went out and got a pressure-point brace, started an anti-inflammatory regimen, made sure to ice it every night, and had it massaged twice a day by kindly Tibetan monks. Well, not really with the monks. But that would have been awesome. And let me tell ya, I wore that brace every damn day. I wore it driving, wore it when while I cooked, wore it playing video games, wore it sewing, and wore it at work (especially when typing. Talk about tendon isolation, wow. Typing was a pain in the butt. Well, arm. You know what I mean). The only times I didn't wear it was when I was in bed or when I'd been wearing it long enough that it started to chafe.

I also picked up some fish oil supplements and have been taking them 1-2 times per day, but that's more incidental--they're supposed to help with your joints and other things longer-term, and I'd been meaning to start on that for awhile, so it seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

The esteemed and extremely spiffy Cap'n Lot also took me out in his backyard and schooled me... in how to hold my sword more effectively. He worked with me for about an hour? ish? on getting the sword better balanced in my hand, and maintaining a more correct grip and balance through the lunge, so I'm gripping it less tightly and letting the weight of the sword counterbalance properly in my hand. It's interesting to note that it was much easier to do a "proper" Italian lunge (first the arm, then the body, then the foot at the very end... when do you move your head, anyway? with the body?) with the "proper" grip on the sword, but other than noticing the improvement, I'm not really well-educated enough to observe much about that.

I was a little apprehensive about working with the arm when I planned on going to Altavia practice two days later (fencing two days in a row is what first made it start hurting), but when I was holding it right it didn't hurt at all. It actually relieved some of the pain in my arm by using different muscles, which forced the tight ones to relax so the others could contract. It was great.

Even better was the fact that it didn't hurt any worse at all the next day, and had even improved. I'd been noticing incremental improvements over the course of the week, usually first thing in the morning, with increasing soreness as I used the left arm during the day, so I expected to feel sore again on Sunday, or at least the same level of pain and weakness, but it had actually improved. It was very encouraging. I'll have to keep working on holding my sword the way he said to, because it was very comfortable, but very different from what I'm used to, and as I concentrated on lunging properly, I found myself sliding back into my old grip.

The trend continued at Lyondemere Anniversary last weekend, where by the end of the day my entire arm was exhausted, but the elbow wasn't making a peep. I pretty much danced and sang.

I woke up Sunday morning really sore, but in a bunch of new places and no old ones. My shoulder ached a little, my left lat was sore, and my bicep and tricep were both sore, but my elbow felt good. It ached a little bit, and felt warm like it had been working hard, but it didn't have that persistent, stinging throb that it's had in the last few weeks. It was really nice. It had felt good the week before, but the fact that I could go out and fence all day and have minimal side effects the next day was really reassuring.

I feel like I'm doing the right stuff to take care of it, and that's excellent news. Now the trick will be remembering to continue taking care of it as it keeps feeling better. I think I might keep wearing the brace at work, because typing really does isolate the poor bugger.

Fun at Lyondemere and New Drills

In other news, Lyondemere Anniversary was a lot of fun. I got to hang out with good folks (and adorable babies) and fence some new folks (and adorable babies) and generally have a lovely day (also, there were babies. They were pretty cute).

Laertes and I got to hang a bit, which was good. He gave me a new parry drill because I'm still having trouble synchronizing my right and left hands. I can parry fine with the sword or with the dagger, and I can attack fine with the sword, but I can hardly parry with the dagger and attack with the sword simultaneously. Well, correction--I can do it great when I think about it, but that kind of defeats the purpose. I need to get the counterattack into an instinctive, fluid motion, and specifically one This drill starts nice and slow, then gets progressively faster as it gets more comfortable. The drill is a shot to the hip, shortly followed by a low parry, then a shot to the shoulder and a high parry. The idea is that your opponent is doing the same thing in mirror, so when you attack them, they're parrying, and as they attack you parry.

I definitely need to concentrate on doing the first few rounds of this drill slowly, getting my parries locked without overcommitting them and really working on lunging with a good turn of the hip for distance, not snapping the arm out to full extension (that way lies tendon strain).

I'm having a different issue with the sword parry--I tend to take my point dramatically off-line while I'm parrying because I'm parrying with my whole arm, rather than just by adjusting the angle of my elbow and shoulder. Rather than lifting or dropping my hand, I swipe with the whole arm from one side to another, which is effective, but slow, and only works defensively. I can't counterattack effectively when my guard is off to the side, and if my opponent is fast enough to counter my parry, I'm pretty much hosed.

So in comes drill number two, some basic parries with my point resting lightly on something. I'm a little worried that I'll end up really resting the point on whatever it is (a tree, a wall, a kitten, whatever) and defeat the purpose of the drill, but I'll give it my best shot. I think if I do this one before my arm gets tired and with good concentration, I'll be okay.

Both of these drills are designed to be done with someone else, but I think I can do them at home. That inside wall of my patio is looking awfully inviting. Not to mention I have this boyfriend...

Darach Anniversary/Altavia Equestrian (05/15/10)

This past weekend was Darach Anny/Altavia Equestrian (also the debut of the boyfriend's new haircut, the advent of which was the cause of much bemoaning and suffering on my facebook wall by the female population of my flist... poor ladies. I still love him, though).

First of all, I have new drills! The Angry Druids drill now has part two, which resolves my off-balance problem (although it introduces some new footwork complications). And lo, there were also large coasters. That one should be fun, once I figure it out.

Secondly, fencing was not terribly productive, but still satisfying and fun! Died a lot courtesy of Don Eogan and Edward, but I knew why I died and that was all good. Laertes mentioned that I was much more aggressive than usual against Edward, and I knew it was because I'd fought him a lot in the past, was more comfortable, and knew that I wouldn't have a prayer if I didn't take the initiative on him.

Thirdly, I think children under 6 should be banned from SCA events entirely and forever! If there hadn't been so damn many ADORABLE BABIES at Darach, I totally would have been more productive. Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Fighter Practice, 05/05/10

Did a bit of fencing at fighter practice last week. I went up against Alke, who hasn't been around recently but is always a fun fight, and Zhivana.

I wasn't really in the analytical headspace while fighting, but I did do some musing on drills, which I'll share and expound on below:

The Angry Druids Drill

This drill involves an attack in 2nd/3rd and small forward motion, much like the standard Italian lunge. The key difference is that instead of going straight forward, I pop my foot out to the side and let the motion carry me laterally, essentially moving my body in a 45 degree angle toward my opponent, rather than straight at them.

I've practiced this drill a fair amount over the last few weeks, and am slowly getting it into the autopilot section of my brain, where my first reaction to a forward attack from a right-handed person is to wait for them to withdraw and counterattack by popping out to the side, or engage an incoming attack with an off-hand parry and simultaneous counter in the lateral position.

So far, the results have been good. I have yet to pop out into an oncoming blade, or do one of the spectacular blade-bending pratfalls that elicits sympathetic "OOH!"s from the audience in my head. I've even, like, killed people with this shit. Bene, si?

Well, it still doesn't feel quite right. The problem is, I feel like it takes significantly more effort to get out of the lunged position than it does to get into it. It could be a couple things, and I'm not sure which one it is:

1. My weight is too far over on my left leg when I land, or
2. I'm leaning forward too far and throwing my butt out behind me to compensate, or
3. My foot isn't correct, which makes my knee not right, which throws my hips out of alignment, or
4. My foot isn't right and because of that, I'm losing my center and getting too much weight over on my left side, or
5. Some combination of 3 and 4 (I think it might be this one).

Whatever the issue is, I don't feel like I can recover from this position fast enough to protect myself--it's about as fast as a regular lunge, but because my weight gets redistributed oddly, I feel stuck in it and have trouble drawing back up to my regular position.

I appreciate that the proper execution of this drill is made and broken by the position of the hips during and immediately after the forward foot (for my purposes, my left foot) hits the ground. At first I really wasn't moving my weight enough, or I'd move it too much--I'd either end with my left leg sort of pointing off in the distance somewhere with no significant change in my torso compared to a standard lunge, or I'd end up with 80% of my weight on my left foot, my knee bent just absurdly far, my right foot almost coming off the ground behind me, and way lower to the ground than I usually am when I lunge. I imagine I looked extremely silly.

In short, I feel like I'm doing much better with this drill than I was, and I find it really effective and useful--but something about the execution just hasn't quite clicked yet. Ponder ponder.

In other news, a different drill is working great for me. I can't practice it by myself, but it's incredibly easy to use against an opponent (although that same ease of use makes it difficult to use in all the guards, because I'm only using it for the guards my opponents attack me in). It's a simple flick of the tip as an attack is coming towards you--effectively, it's a small parry with the false edge of your blade that becomes an attack with the strong through a quick turn of the wrist.

It's difficult to describe in text, but incredibly easy to use in real life, and works much better with my brain than the classic Italian "parry that is also attack" style. I don't often trust myself or my skills enough to parry-attack correctly, and I think the self-doubt and hesitation results in me getting killed a lot more than improper technique... :) The simultaneous parry-attack is one of the first things I learned in fencing, and I know I do it right--I just don't believe it when I do it, if that makes sense.

So, pluses and minuses. I know I'm making progress, although it feels much slower than I'd like. :) Onward and upward.

Fighter Practice, 04/28/10

So this week I actually made it to fighter practice! O frabjous day!

Isles practice is not as satisfying as it once was--people who go there tend to show up later, because many of them live within 5-10 minutes away from the practice site and when I have an hourlong commute to consider and work to get to the next morning, fencing from 8 to 11 really isn't an option. The time between me (and Nate) getting there and everyone else getting there, however, is long enough for me to do all the solo footwork and pointwork drills Laertes gave me.

I also spend too much time socializing, and not enough fencing, but that's my fault, not anyone else's. :)

So I spent some time fencing with Vernon. Specifically, we did the box drill, which I had done a few weeks earlier with Juanica. I've pretty much gotten to the point where I can do the cone footwork drills backwards, forwards, and in my sleep at top speed without feeling like I'm losing my center, so I usually do them for warmups (or I'll take a newbie through who's having trouble with their footwork). Here's a hint for footwork, kids: If you feel like you're walking like a duck, you're doing it wrong.

Anyway, the box drill. The box is made of four cones and is rectangular--two long sides, two short sides. The only rule of the box drill is you can't leave the box. Sounds easy, right? Well, when you're me, Chief Warlord and Supreme Ruler of Going Backward to Get Out of Trouble, no, it's not easy. That box is also small. Like, probably two feet on a narrow end and three on a wide. It's basically big enough for me to do a tiny advance and retreat when I'm standing in the center facing a narrow edge, and a tiny right or left step when I'm facing a wide edge.

The goal of the box drill is to improve defense by removing the ability to move. If you can't move, you've gotta have good hand and sword parries, fast reflexes, and good balance. The balance thing isn't really important until you don't have it--then that great big head void becomes you falling on your ass and feeling, in a word, dum. No, you don't even get a B on the end of that. That's exactly how dum you feel.

So all was fine and dandy in Boxland until Vernon offered to let me come back into the center of the box. I hadn't even noticed, but I'd stolen a couple tiny retreats until my back heel was planted happily between the two back cones. I knew I couldn't go backwards anymore, so I didn't. This said some nice stuff about my ability to gauge distance when I'm not looking... but I was still trying to go backwards. Just less.

So I moved into the center of the box, resolving not to move again. Instantly, everything fell apart. I was getting hit right, left, and center. I was so hung up on NOT GOING BACKWARDS that my reaction time slowed, my reflexes shorted out, and my brain totally shut off. In short, I was thinking too loud. My Zen was gone.

I realize it's a ridiculous thing to have happen, especially since I was fencing fine without going backwards before it was called to my attention. I think part of the reason I moved backwards in the first place is because I do place a lot of trust in my ability to maintain balance, so I wanted to get back to a more comfortable engagement where I felt like I actually had room to void and move a little.

The brain-fartery carried on when we changed positions and I was facing a wide end of the box. I started including my right hand in parries, rather than just my sword hand, and ended up grabbing Vernon's sword like an absolute newbie, or perhaps a bad Highlander reenactor. At that point, I lost my temper a little, kicked a wall, and forgave myself for not being perfect all the time, even if I wanted to be.

Better this week, I hope.

King's Hunt, 2010

Have refrained from ZARMing (that's what these posts have become in my head, ZARM posts) in the last few weeks because there hasn't been a lot of action at Isles practice (read also, I skipped Isles practice because it was finals week and spring break and figured there wouldn't be much going on there). I was having some trouble with the Angry Druids drill, but Laertes and I worked it out on Saturday at King's Hunt and I've got some more tools to improve.

King's Hunt left me with some additional drills which I will list here for no one's benefit but my own. :)

Angry Druids 2, now with more pointwork!
ZZ Top Lightening Bolt (parry drill)
Trapped in a Cone Box (narrow side)
Trapped in a Cone Box (long side)

This adds to the original drills:

Angry Druids
Figure-8 Cones (footwork drill)
Figure-8 Cones (footwork drill, backwards)
Arm and Wrist Strengthening (weights)

Fencing at King's Hunt was okay, pretty good, meh, and not great by turns. :)

On Friday night I sucked allllll over the field. I was stressed out about running the event, a little annoyed for reasons unrelated to this post, not concentrating or in the headspace at all, and had too much on my mind. I had fun, don't get me wrong, but I got killed like 3 times in the exact same way and eventually stopped before I was to disgusted with myself. :)

I asked Raphael how he killed me twice in the same place and he (to my eternal gratitude) was not at all condescending when he reminded me to move my offhand into a defensive position when I lunge. Doh. This was a good indicator that I was just plain not in the fencing headspace, and I'm glad I stopped while I was still serene enough to learn something from getting beaten so badly, rather than giving it another couple shots and getting really frustrated with myself.

Saturday was a bit better. I faced Cassandre and Edward (AKA Lord Pinky) in the Unscarved list and was out in two. That wasn't disappointing--they're both better and more experienced fencers than I am and I was neither one-shotted, nor tunnel-visioned, nor deer-in-the-headlighted at any point during the fights.

Cassandre said she'd waited for me to get a rhythm in my baton swings and sniped me in counter-time. What does this say to me? Well, better defense, so snipes don't connect, but also to fight more with single. The less I rely on my offhand, the more likely I am to be able to parry an unexpected attack, even if I have an established rhythm the opponent is trying to exploit. I think I just said the same thing twice. :)
As I've said before, one of the reasons I like to fight baton is that it makes me more confident and aggressive--and, unfortunately, one of the reasons it makes me more confident and aggressive is because it covers a lot of important flaws in my defense that simply can't be saved by dagger or buckler. Ergo, less baton, more single, and eventually more dagger. Fortunately, I have plenty of shiny new parry drills and a "Do not move ha ha" defense drill which should help with that.

Pinky even came up afterward and said I'd done much better than the last time we'd fought, which was a lovely unsolicited compliment that had me smiling and happy every time I thought about it. That, combined with the willingness of my opponents to tell me exactly how they had kicked my ass and how to make it more challenging for them next time, combined with some new tricks from the big L (and Don Alex B. as he watched us), made me feel very good about how the whole weekend turned out, fencing-wise. It was, as they say, a "learning experience," and not one of those nasty painful ones that culminates in a huge hangover.

On Saturday Laertes mentioned that this part (colloquially known as "the beginning") of the studentship can be extremely frustrating because people tend to learn a bunch of new stuff but not feel like they're improving. I have yet to reach that part of the experience--I'm still stoked to have the opportunity to learn more and do more, still stoked to be getting some tools which are geared to help me improve some of my specific weaknesses, and absolutely bomb-tastic thrilled to have been given this opportunity and the chance to exploit it in such a friendly, supportive community.

Crown Tourney, Spring 2010

Crown this weekend was really fun. It's always nice to camp for a weekend without having to pack the truck to bursting and drive 5+ hours--that's one of the (many, many) things I like about GWW, King's Hunt, and Crown (when we have it).

Anyway, I suppose I should talk about the elephant in the room...

On Sunday morning, Don Laertes officially accepted me as his student. We've been working on various fencing things at every event for the last 6 months or so (since Altavia Anniversary and Investiture and except for Estrella, which he didn’t go to), and I’m really excited to be working with him. It sounds silly, but it’s very flattering to feel like somebody is taking a personal interest in helping me improve something I care a lot about.

It was funny—as soon as he first mentioned the studenting thing to me as a possibility, Laertes stressed that becoming his student wasn’t an accomplishment per se, so much as it was an acknowledgement of the relationship we already had and a commitment to stick to it and continue to work together. So when he made his little speech Sunday morning, a bunch of people came up to me and started hugging me, shaking my hand, and congratulating me, and I was very surprised! Not that I mind all the praise and petting, of course—my ego loved it. :) I was just in the headspace that I was becoming someone’s student precisely because I have so much more to learn and so little experience, having people come up to me and congratulate me about it was completely unexpected.

It kind of threw some stuff into perspective for me. Possibly more on that later, we’ll see.

Anyway, right after that we went off and worked on some stuff. One of the first things he had me do was stand with him in the middle of the eric, in engagement range, and back up to within 3 feet of the eric ropes without looking at them. I stopped about 4 feet away, which was okay with me—I was worried I wouldn’t stop in time and would go over them! Then he had me do it with my eyes closed. Stopped about 3 feet away—good stuff!

Then he told me to stay at the edge of the eric, close my eyes, and advance to engagement range without looking at him. I did it, but I opened my eyes on the last step to make sure I wouldn’t impale him (never mind that he’s a grown up and could probably have moved out of the way in time…). Did it again. At that point I’d gone the same distance enough times that I didn’t feel like I was really feeling it anymore per se—I caught myself counting steps, so when I’d successfully completed the exercise I went back to the ropes and asked him to move back a bit so I wouldn’t be able to tell the distance from memory. He did, and I stopped exactly in engagement range. Maybe a little close, but dude.

Laertes said something along the lines of “see, your body already has really good judge of distance,” and I wanted to yell “Yeah, did you see that? Did you see me walk right there? I walked all OVER this eric! I’m a fucking NINJA!” And it’s true. I felt like a fucking ninja. Or possibly a tiger. Or a shark. Something really cool that can kill you really fast. Anyway. It was very exciting.

Then there were cones. And footwork drills. Footwork drills that had me going around the cones a lot. Then backwards. It’s sort of hard to describe, but I’ll be doing them tonight at fighter practice if anyone wants to watch or play. :)

Last but not least, I was presented with my very own inaugural 7 pound hand weight. At Great Western, Laertes taught me some wrist and arm strengthening exercises (I think he saw how much I was suffering because I hadn’t fenced in like a month before that), and suggested I do them with a small weight. When I saw him on Sunday he gave me a 7 pounder and told me that it was my goal.

I’m supposed to work up to being able to do 4 sets of 20 of each type of exercise (there are 5) with the 7 pound weight. Yesterday I decided my little 1-pounder was too boring and went to Big 5. After about 10 minutes of (probably very silly looking) waffling between the 2 and 3 pound weights, I went for a 3 pounder in a lovely shade of Kelly green. The 2 pounders just didn’t feel big enough to challenge me (and they were hot pink, which had absolutely nothing to do with my choice). I’ve been doing the exercises on the drive to work, and this morning I could do 1 warm-up with with 1 pounder and 3 sets with the 3 pounder before my arms got all warm and were like “No more!” I was very proud of myself.

Let’s see, this post has gotten significantly longer than I’d first imagined. I guess I’m just very excited to be taking some concrete steps in my fencing career. Hopefully I’ll have something more interesting to say in these posts than “Good pointwork today” from now on!

Oh, and thanks again for all the support, y’all. Either from the comments or the congratulations at Crown, it means a lot to me, and I really appreciate it. <3