Thursday, August 02, 2012

Drills

I am not very good at staying motivated. I can get really excited and start something, but it is tough to keep going. This blog may be an example of gaining and losing interest. Do an inverse on the number of days between posts divided by the average number and you will see a not so good trend. So let's try this:

Tuesday Mike Aiao and a few fencers came out from Oahu. Mike started us out on the footwork for about 10 minutes, I would like to comment on how late everyone started fencing, but let's keep to the subject at hand.

Mike drilled us on Basic footwork, then handed it over to another experienced fencer, whose name completely escapes me. He is a coach too. He took us through footwork, correcting people with too wide of a stance and getting us to move and work for it. Here are a few of the exercises:


  • Advance-Retreat - of course, really simple and basic, but many people don't focus on this after they think they have "mastered" it.
  • Double advance-Double retreat - Again, but getting moving a bit faster and not pausing between the movement, sort of as a smoothing exercise.
  • Check-check - basically just picking up the back foot and then picking up the front foot. Checks to see if you are balanced and not too spread out.
  • Half advance-Half retreat - Again checks to see balance and gets the body used to moving with the correct leg first. The half advance is basically just lifting the front foot and putting the heel where the toe was, then bringing it back to on guard. The retreat is the same, just the other direction.
  • Then add the check-check  in between advances and retreats, that is, on the change of direction.
That was all on the really basic stuff. We also did quite a bit of lunging, he was definitely against over-lunging, which of course is not good for you.

Enough for now, I will write more tomorrow after another evening of fencing.

No comments:

Featured Post

Allergy

John studied himself in the mirror as best he could through tears. Red, puffy eyes stared back at him, a running nose already leaked just a ...