Heeee’s Baaack

First day back to fencing after the Thanksgiving holiday. My plan was to just do footwork until after the new year, but I’m pretty willing to jump into anything. We did some more great footwork again. A lot of squat jumps again and some different advance/retreat exercises. One drill, in which you tap your partner on the front, back or both shoulders to induce a particular action was really useful as it made you focus on the present. A tap on the front shoulder meant to retreat, on the back shoulder to advance and a tap on both shoulders to lunge. This really echoes what I recently learned from yoga pertaining to being in the present, not thinking ahead or dwelling on the past. Then I had some small group time with Gary that worked on precision hits. Basically just extend advance distance from the wall for a touch. Then extend lunch distance. Then Gary got really cocky and did some parry 4 and 6 drills and then some quick disengage exorcises. Finished off the drills with the infamous “touche the falling glove” drill. Spent about 20 minutes fencing a fellow named Richard. I believe he’s fairly new, but seems to have good “present” responses, meaning that he seems to be responding to what is actually happening, rather than what he thinks will happen…which happens to be my problem. He had a lot of very simple, but aggressive attacks, particularly seemed to like flushing (where you extend and then run toward your opponent). But I started to focus and got better at the “present” fencing so that by the end of our bout, I was scoring most of the touches. For not planning on doing any fencing for a while, I was pleased with my fencing. Next step is to start with epee lessons. I also need to start my fencing journal to keep track of opponents for the long run.