The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

Hanging out after the champions fight at Gulf Wars, Letia and I saw two fencers doing drills together to prepare one for his champions fight.   We watched until they noticed us, then they kindly explained what they were doing, and a couple of other drills they have in their repertoire.

Slap Hands/Lunge

The first was old school slap hands with a twist: Agente’s hands are held flat, palms up, Patiente’s hands are flat, palm down, resting lightly on top of Agente’s.  Agente attempts to slap the top of one of Patiente’s hands.  This triggers Patiente’s action: Parry the slap offline while simultaneously lunging to poke Agente in the chest.

This develops an automatic single tempo lunge-and-defend response, rather than just a “move your hands out of the way” response.

Tells Drill

This takes the form of the point control lunge drill: Patiente holds up two fingers, Agente lunges and hits them (if Agente lunges in bad form, Agente will miss).  However, this adds a twist to train both fighters a little better:

Agente’s goal is to lunge and hit the two fingers.  However, Patiente can void his two fingers out of the way of the lunge.  Patiente will know when to do this by observing Agente’s tells.  Discuss after each pass the tells observed.  Agente’s goal is to develop a tell-less lunge, Patiente’s goal is to learn to detect the slightest tells.

Scarf Drill

This is a drill to work closing safely.

Patiente is armed with a sword, but doesn’t need to be in armor otherwise.  He hangs a scarf off of his chest (tucked into his shirt or doublet, for instance).  Agente is in armor, but not armed at all.

Agente’s goal: close range, steal the scarf, exit range, without being wounde

That’s all for now