Class review: 4th of November

Last night's class, for one reason or another, did not turn out the way I had planned. I had written down a number of things to accomplish - getting through all of the attribute building drills, practicing and perfecting the spirals, beginning the cuts - but we only managed to get through the incomplete spiral drill, with a very brief introduction to cutting.

Since I have already discussed in previous posts the drills that we do in class, I won't repeat them here, but I will make a comment on a little something I realized last night; an extremely obvious little something, but it bears mentioning it for the newer people.

1) Guadagnare: placing my guard opposite my opponent's threat, thereby closing that line of attack. Does not imply an offensive action at all.

2) Stringere: directing my point at the appropriate target (i.e. front shoulder in quarta, rear shoulder in seconda), all while having guadagnare. In this way, my offense is backed up by my defense, and my defense is more effective because an offense is attached to it.

Interestingly enough, each guard offends the opposite target it defends: seconda threatens the rear shoulder while defending the near shoulder, and conversely, quarta threatens the near shoulder while defending the rear shoulder. For whatever reason, people are still under the impression that the near shoulder can be defended in quarta; yeah, not going to happen, because there is no opposition.

More to follow on this after tonight's class at UT.