Old Stuff - 9-21-06 Recap
This week was pretty basic. The topic of the day was, dramatic pause, Blocking! Ah blocking, nothing else keeps you in the fight like using your sword to move your opponent’s sword away from striking your body. Although there are other ways to avoid your opponent’s attack, (off hand, footwork, sci-powers) blocking remains an important aspect of any fight.
Topics covered include sticky blocks, elbow blocks, punch blocks, and rapid blocks against 2 opponents. The idea behind a sticky block is to hold your sword on your opponent’s and control where they go with your block. We practiced this by blocking an attack and taking a step forward while holding the block. Miraculously our opponent’s sword was wedged out of the way leaving the path forward safe. This is bead and butter for shorter fighters (Juliana pay attention!) but also good for the rest of us.
An elbow block is one of a group I like to call Oh Shit Blocks. It is not an ideal situation, however it will save you when you are in an oh shit moment. When you are out of position, in a lunge, with your sword out in an attack, and your opponent attacks you under your extended arm, is the best time for an elbow block. The idea is that by lunging you have negated your other options for blocking. You can’t parry because you are extended. You can’t move your feet because you just lunged. So settle for good enough and just bring your elbow, forearm, and or furniture down on your opponent’s sword and push it out of the way. I personally use this one all the time when my three shot combination doesn’t work out. My opponent cleverly negates my last attack and begins a counter attack. Having been fooled into thinking my shot was open I have committed to the line I am on. I am not able to parry or move off the line. My opponent has been clever enough to attack me in six so I can’t block with my off hand. The only option for staying alive is the elbow block.
Another Oh Shit Block that we covered was the punch block. These are ideal for when we are in a middle guard, and our opponent has attacked us around our waist line (right where we are holding our sword). The position of this attack makes it nearly impossible to parry normally. Often in this case I resort to a pivot, skip, retreat, or slope step (footwork). But, baring footwork, a punch block is all you can do. To perform a punch block simply strike at your opponents sword the last part of your forte. I like to hit it with the last couple of inches, and a bit of the bell. Also the pommel will work if you want. Just move your arm at the elbow downward and outward in a rapid beat like striking motion. After you have punched your opponent’s sword spring back online just like if you did a beat. Try to avoid dropping your weight or using the shoulder as this will slow your down and leave you unable to move. This takes some practice. Think about doing a snap punch with your furniture against your opponent’s sword.
Finally, we put people into the box. We had a line of two fencer approach together and fire out two shots each for a total of four shots which the person in the box had to block using only his/her sword. The person in the box is not allowed to back up, or parry with the off hand, just the sword. We did this at slow speed. Later after we cover off hand weapons we will try this again at higher speed and maybe with 3 people instead of two.