Rapier training for the next month

Another month, another focus. I've been playing around with a few different ideas in class recently, and I've been very pleased with the results they have been bringing. As I promised at the end of 2009, we're going to be spending a fair amount of time working with feints and the plates of Capoferro during the next two months, after which we'll have a general exam at the beginning of April before Maestro Martinez's seminar on Destreza towards the end of the month. (To which I strongly recommend everyone goes...).

In terms of new drills, there's little new technical material to introduce - we've really covered every useful thing to be done with the unaccompanied sword - so we're moving on to some more tactical-based drills. Specifically, I wanted to examine three scenarios: 1) the patient steps in with the initial guadagnare and thus becomes the agent; 2) the appropriate use of the passing lunge; 3) deviating from the linea retta, i.e. looking at the plates.

Finally, much more fencing. I continue to enjoy the agent/patient drills we've been working on, and now I'd like to move into some more "extreme" scenarios: endurance, having already been struck, Highlander. Let's see how it all works out on Wednesday night!