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.

Baby Got Back (Problems)

So, it's been awhile since I've posted, in large part because it's been awhile since I fenced. :(

After a couple weeks of practice being rained out or me incorrectly assuming it would be rained out, and therefore not going, my back went out in a major way the Sunday of Collegium, which resulted in me taking two weeks off practice.

I don't have a chronically bad back, per se, but I do have chronic low-grade chiropractic problems and hypermobile joints. I inherited them from my mother (although hers seem to have gotten a lot better in the last 10 years, and I'm hoping I'll experience similar recovery later in life). These have caused various problems over the years--I dislocated something in my thigh when I was 10 or 12 and tripped on the stairs (it can't have been the whole thing, because I put it back in myself, but wow, it was painful), tore cartilage in my ribcage on a backpacking trip in high school because a rib went out of alignment while I was wearing a big heavy pack, and I'm fairly sure they're why I tore the ligaments in the arch of my right foot last winter.

One of the nice things about having hypermobile joints is that once they go out, they're fairly easy to put back in by myself, and provided I get enough exercise and keep up a certain baseline of muscle mass, I don't suffer from major chiropractic injuries or displacements very often. One of the bad things about having hypermobile joints is that when they go out badly, they tend to go out again after they've been fixed, especially once they've been out for awhile already and all the wrong muscles are swollen. In those cases, swelling essentially makes the path of least resistance the "out" position the joint was in earlier.

All of this foolishness can be almost completely overcome by a few simple luxuries--Advil and/or Tiger Balm to relax muscles when necessary, lots of stretching and some light weight-bearing exercise (like, say, fencing), one of those orthopedic neck pillows (not memory foam--those eventually compress under the weight of my -enormous- head and give no more support than any regular pillow), fish oil supplements, and so on. I don't deserve any particular sympathy or comfort here, because I know how to take care of myself and 95 percent of my joint issues can be handled non-medically and with regular self-care. There are people out there with real medical issues that they can't heal themselves--they deserve sympathy and support. The point of this post is to illustrate, not to host a pity party. :)

Anyway, my back went out on Sunday morning, I got it fixed Monday afternoon, and skipped practice Wednesday. I was experiencing warm pain, weakness, tingling, and extremely limited range of motion until the Sunday after, so I decided to skip practice again the Wednesday following, just to be safe.

This also meant skipping a couple weeks of my wrist and arm strengthening exercises. The offending vertebra was in the center of my upper back (somewhere in the T-1 to T-3 region), so doing any exercises that involved extending my arms straight forward was extremely painful and resulted in spasms (I was driving with my left hand exclusively for awhile, because my right side hurt more than my left).

This was a really frustrating couple of weeks. I'd honestly thought joint flare-ups this bad were a thing of the past. The fact that I could still be incapacitated by back pain even though I was getting enough exercise and taking good enough care of myself (I thought!) really tanked my enthusiasm and self-esteem for a couple days there. I consider myself both lazy and self-indulgent, so the fact that I could throw my back out just sitting in the car dealt a huge blow to what was never a great body image or opinion of my own athleticism to begin with.

So, when I complain about my back or neck hurting, that's why--I have chronic chiropractic problems, and they're why I've been off the horse for the last few weeks. Onward and upward!

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.