Feint
Gentle Readers,
As promised last week, we worked on the finda or feint last night. Given that people seem unwilling to commit to sword contact, I think that working the feint to the stringer is important. From there we moved to looking at countering attacks in the outside line. Working with this book more is helping me understand better why he does things and what his goals are.
For example:
Hold thy Rapier with a Tertz, so that the point of thy Rapier stands upwards a little, and let thy right arm be something bended that thou be open without over thy right arm, then only stretch thy bended arm, and his thrust will be deluded; when thou hast parered his thrust, then turn thy hand into a Secunde and thrust him over his right Arm at his right breast.
Questions which come up: why is the tip up? Why parry then thrust? Why parry with just an arm extension?
The tip is up to force a higher line attack, if the attack is low just counter and face thrust. Because the tip is up, you don't start with enough leverage to deflect their blade so you need to gain it with the parry first. Parrying to the side provides opportunity for an outside winding.
It's great to have my students getting to the point where we have enough knowledge to be able to play with this.
In other martial arts news, I've been being some great advice at kickboxing. My basic motions are ok but my weight is shifting forward so I'm sticking. So I need to focus on not leaning when I punch and stepping with the lead foot if I need to gain distance. The other thing I need to do is work on my quarter turns.
To do a quarter turn, I need to step out in the direction I want to go with the foot on that side, then turn by swinging the remaining foot around. Note that when stepping with the rear leg, you end up in a reverse stance.
Anyway, Craig and I also talked about how to competitively drill the feint. We did it with the defender driving a decision drill but in order to make it more realistic, we need to make the defender more involved. So, the defender's goal becomes make the attacker commit enough to follow through instead of feinting AND still successfully parry. The attacker just needs to successfully complete the attack (primary or secondary). The attacker does have the advantage.
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.
As promised last week, we worked on the finda or feint last night. Given that people seem unwilling to commit to sword contact, I think that working the feint to the stringer is important. From there we moved to looking at countering attacks in the outside line. Working with this book more is helping me understand better why he does things and what his goals are.
For example:
Hold thy Rapier with a Tertz, so that the point of thy Rapier stands upwards a little, and let thy right arm be something bended that thou be open without over thy right arm, then only stretch thy bended arm, and his thrust will be deluded; when thou hast parered his thrust, then turn thy hand into a Secunde and thrust him over his right Arm at his right breast.
Questions which come up: why is the tip up? Why parry then thrust? Why parry with just an arm extension?
The tip is up to force a higher line attack, if the attack is low just counter and face thrust. Because the tip is up, you don't start with enough leverage to deflect their blade so you need to gain it with the parry first. Parrying to the side provides opportunity for an outside winding.
It's great to have my students getting to the point where we have enough knowledge to be able to play with this.
In other martial arts news, I've been being some great advice at kickboxing. My basic motions are ok but my weight is shifting forward so I'm sticking. So I need to focus on not leaning when I punch and stepping with the lead foot if I need to gain distance. The other thing I need to do is work on my quarter turns.
To do a quarter turn, I need to step out in the direction I want to go with the foot on that side, then turn by swinging the remaining foot around. Note that when stepping with the rear leg, you end up in a reverse stance.
Anyway, Craig and I also talked about how to competitively drill the feint. We did it with the defender driving a decision drill but in order to make it more realistic, we need to make the defender more involved. So, the defender's goal becomes make the attacker commit enough to follow through instead of feinting AND still successfully parry. The attacker just needs to successfully complete the attack (primary or secondary). The attacker does have the advantage.
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.