Friday, August 17, 2012

Practice Report - 8/16/2012

 First practice since Pennsic and my rediscovery of my joy for the duel.  It was a good turnout last night especially for being the week after Pennsic.  People wanted to fence, which was nice.  We started the night outside reinspecting weapons and making slight modifications to new gear.  People showed off Pennsic purchases, Antonio with his new Darkwood blade, me with the new dagger, etc...

So onto the fencing, as that is what I'm blogging about.  I had some trouble establishing my distance with the new blade.  5" doesn't really sound that much in the grand scheme of life.  It is a little more than half the length of my foot.  But finding my distance was what I was working on last night and will need to continue to work on.  I felt like I was setting up way too close in most of my bouts.  I fought Malcolm and was unable to keep him from closing the distance in the later fights, which resulted in fun but ugly kills both ways.  Against Orlando, I felt better, but still coming up shorter than I wanted to and setting up too close.  I need to take half a step back and relearn how to close the distance.  Antonio had me me wishing for the 43" blade just to keep him at bay a little longer.  I was in that space where no one wants to be, where he could reach me and I could not reach him.  I tried to work the cross parry with the dagger against him to keep my blade free.   Eventually he wound up hitting me with an un-tippedl blade in the left arm, as his tip had gotten caught in the guard of my rapier.  OUCH...

With that I called it a night.  I iced the arm, and this morning, thankfully there is only a small bruise.  

Monday evening a few of us are getting together to work on core strength, balance, stretching, and stamina.  Anyone have suggestions for exercises?

3 comments:

  1. " I was in that space where no one wants to be, where he could reach me and I could not reach him." Sounds like how most of bouts typically are with me being short and using a 36ish" blade. Keeps life interesting that way. :-)

    As for exercises, oh man... so many ideas. Depending on how crazy you guys want to get with it. I train at a boxing gym and those guys are nuts when it comes to workouts. Here's what comes to mind. Stuff to get your mind churning anyways.

    Core:
    Planks
    Side planks
    Crunches
    Six inches
    V-roll ups

    Strength: (kinda depends what you guys have for weights if any)
    Incline and decline pushups
    Clap pushups
    Dips
    Shoulder presses
    Shoulder raises
    One legged squats
    Jump squats
    Wall squats
    Bent over rows
    Pull ups

    Stamina: Doing the above will help with that, especially if you don't give yourself much of a break between sets and exercises. Jumping jacks and jump rope is also good. Three rounds for three minutes with a minute break for jump rope. As may jumping jacks as you can for that. Hoping back and forth on one leg will help with balance, leg strength and some stamina.

    Soooo yea... lots of things. :)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the suggestions on exercises.

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    2. No problem. Let me know if you run into any issues or have Qs with any of them.

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