We went through the stances and basic postas again and I felt myself getting confused at some of the stances. Each posta or guard, can be done on either side of the body, so left posta's are done with the right foot forward, left posta's are done with the right foot forward and I kept screwing them up. I found this a bit surprising, as I usually have no problem distinguishing left from right.
Marx was on the left. Jerry Falwell is on the right. See, I know this ...
Then our instructor started to take us through the various cuts with the sword, each cut coming from a posta and then returning it. I did well with the cuts, edge straight and stopping it right on the mark.
The posta's then began to make some kind of sense to me. Instead of being absract stances, they were for something.
Standing and holding the sword with the tip down and in front of you (boar's tooth) then opening your wrist to hold it to one side (left or right tail) or laying the edge of the sword across your shoulder, tip pointed back (women's guard) began to make sense when moving the sword up through all the points, so I was swinging it up around my head to guard or turn into an attack
Some directional confusion aside, I like the precision of it, the control you must exact on the blade. This isn't Hollywood fencing with its big fast sweeping movements that look so cool on the screen. This is all based on reality, interpreted from the l'arte dell'armizare, not a fanciful work of fiction, but a training manual for fighting. Not fencing, not sport, but fighting
The instructors are very good at always explaining the real life application of everything that we're doing. And I see the benefit of learning all these elements, the guards and thrusts and cuts, and learning them precisely; it can be a very fine thing, your grip on the hilt, the position of the "true" or cutting edge of the sword always being aware of your feet and where the sword is pointed and where you are holding the balance of your body
That balance, of course, is a bit of an issue with me and my not so bionic ankle. The instructor kept questioning why I was having trouble shifting weight from the rear foot to the front foot and I had to explain my situation; I sometimes felt that if I shifted the weight the way she wanted, Vic would be more Weeble than D'Artagnan. But let's face it, I could never pull off a Musketeer, my French accent is really really stinky
I have four sessions left and I know we will continue to work on our stances, guards, cuts etc. I don't expect any sparring, I don't believe that's covered in the course. I've earned a month of free formal lessons at the academy which covers grappling, dagger, sword etc. I'm hoping by the time I reach the end of this course that I'll be able to evaluate whether or not I have the physical capacity to continue
Gee, imagine me learning bare hand and dagger and sword ...
Be afraid. Be very afraid (Oh, that advise wasn't for people on the street, it was for the EMT's and ER wards of Toronto, they should really just clear their calendars)
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