This time of year there is always a bit of a lull in fencing activities. After a slow December, I am ready to start an active couple of months. There are 3 upcoming tournaments in the next month that I am excited about. The IU tournament will be fun and I don't have to get up early and travel. It will also be a good opportunity for a lot of club members to participate. The AFA tournament has a team saber event, which Jim, Mark and I will compete in. I am relying on those two to carry my dead weight as I counterattack my way through this event.

I missed a few weeks of writng about class. We have several new fencers this past month, and they are taking to it well. A lot of the focus this past month has been on getting a better sense of how far away we can be and still launch a simple attack. Part of this is gettin gthe arm fully extended during the attack, and the other is getting the transition from one movement to the next to be smooth and continuous. Yesterday, we worked on a ballestra. This is a jump forward followed immediately with a lunge. First we worked on getting both feet to land at the same time on the jump.

This week we started working on presses. The emphasis was on executing a press based on feel rather than sight. We started by practicing maintaining engagement of the blades with movement. Then we progressed to executing a press with no reaction from the opponent. Then we did the press and the opponent pushed back. If the opponent does not react, then the attacker does a direct attack. If the defender pushes back the attacker disenagages and then attacks.

In class this week and last week, we worked on feints followed by a disengage. The focus is on making the feints believable as attacks to your opponent, and waiting for your opponent to react to the feint before disengaging. We ended with a decision making drill, where the person being attacked could choose to parry or not, and the attacker had to finish a straight attack or disengage. This is a really difficult step to take, but everyone did well.

Midway through day 6, I hit a mental and physical wall. This is probably fairly common since they scheduled the afternoon off for everyone. I spent the afternoon sitting in the shade and shooting the breeze about fencing and directing.

The next day I resumed the regular schedule. I finally started to really get a feel for the movement and flow of saber. We got into more complicated lessons and sequences. I have also gotten a lot better at "coach walking."

Yesterday was an exciting day, because I finally started to get the feeling for the arm movements. The rhythm is very different than epee, and the movements of the coach are even more so. Sunday, I was finally able to really work on the drills, and put together a simple, but coherent lesson that lasted about 5 minutes. I am going to give the same lesson this morning to try and smooth it out. I have been trying to work at least a little bit with each person here, so I will find someone that I have not worked with yet to try it out.