Second of the lessons.

Ok it's still going to take a while to get used to the fact that I'm teaching and that despite my feelings of being unprepared and all of that, I certainly have a long-term vision and structure to enable that. It's not quite how I envisioned using bits of my degree, but even in these two short hours I can see that it's working. Little and regular is a demanding structure to work with, arguably it's one of the better ways to help things but it requires a particular type of repetition. At the moment I'm trying to drill in principles, how and why certain things happen. Distance, distance, distance... controlling the blade. Then a space for free assimilation at the end of the session. It's a Piaget type thingy, works on a building block idea and basically goes "introduce new idea, relate it to old ideas, look for and reinforce complimentary points between them, let person find a way to slot it into their knowledge" I would like to bring in some muscle reading soon- a drill to show exactly how much information you give when your blade is in contact with your opponent's. I'm going to have to play with that idea to find a solid demonstration, the stuff I know is all based around finding a hidden object in a theatre. Something will work and can be tied into telegraphing. There are other things that you notice while teaching.. my esteemed and honourable maestro is... well... not that good at capitalising on his stingere and since we usually spar in the park and I only get to react to the attacks rather than analyse them, I haven't been able to see his exact problem. Well. There's these little things you pick up and I probably got this concept from someone else, I don't claim it for my own. (I consider my hotch-potch learning and attempts at vague familiarity with any school/style I can encounter to be historically and culturally accurate. And I am willing to deconstruct the London based texts to explain why that is the case)... Right, first of all, I'll have to explain the stringere- it's the method of safely stepping into distance and controlling their blade. It's a subtle thing where you "engage" the top third of their sword with the middle third of yours, more or less. Your thrust from this position should always put a stronger part of your blade against a weaker part of theirs...(unless they go really high, then you can disengage and cut to the leg, step in and do stuff... or thingies- just watch for the cut to your head. But I digress.) So, my esteemed and honourable maestro was positioning the blade right, but somehow never actually managing to keep control through the thrust. His blade was basically seeking the strong of his opponents... which is a bad move. The best and shortest way for a thrust from this position is to turn around the axis of your stringere and plough forwards. Thinking of it in that way and having you dragged forward by that point seems to produce the natural body mechanics for a 'perfect' lunge. From there, driving the point around the locus of the stringere then builds on the point control (another weakness) because subtle wrist movements are what's needed to change the direction of the point. (knuckles up, knuckles down, inward and so-on) As for myself, I'm aware that I'm teaching rapier to longsworders. Again- historically and culturally accurate- there are certain gaps in my knowledge about techniques recommended by Swetnam which are aimed at longsworders and due to their typical mistakes (finding themselves on the wrong foot, for example) I really want to understand halfswording and how it applies to the rapier. It's a good way to make myself distinct from non-HEMA stuff while we sort out the issues with daggers. I think there's a load of beautiful techniques and concepts in there which are barely explained and need to be felt to be understood. I think it's also got a place within Swetnam's anti-staff ward (a crossed guard, with the dagger side adding extra strength to resist the blows) And.. well, I'd love to see it turn up in competition. This ties back into my schema based concept for the lessons, describing a kind of conceptual lego set then seeing what people make from that. I'm also aware that I want to get on to teaching the rapier and dagger stuff for no other reason than I find it very, very fun. It's a marvellous fight and it brings in so many questions. Possibly too many, which is why I wonder if the books suggesting that rapier and dagger is for the beginner and single rapier for the experts were written by people in a hurry to create safe opponents.