Bunch of New Footage from New Orleans
This is ultimately going to include several clips from from three fencing days, Oct 30, Nov 6, and Nov 11.
http://www.iregames.com/jr/slum3.htm
So far though it is just 8 clips of Longsword vs Longsword all dating from Oct 30, with about 20 bouts total.
These are fairly small for easier download though much larger than than the real tiny mavica clips I used to post. Dont forget when you are viewing these you can maximize the image for full screen, it's a bit blurry but you can see more of what is going on IMO.
October 30 was a really wierd day for us. The weather hadn't broken yet, the heat and humidity this late in the season (Halloween!) was making everybody a little crazy.
It was a day of a lot of very intense sparring, and some bizarre outcomes.
We seem to have come to this point in our training where we are suddenly getting into a lot of binds, which never, ever used to happen. Some very long binds too in at least three occasions. Some fights are getting very long as well, though that depends on the combattants (some fights are the one or two strike, six second bouts they used to always be, but at least one lasted over a minute!)
With all the binding going on, we also had some grappling break out, including a successful throw, even though we haven't studied grappling, and one marginally successful half-sword rush. Fighting was HARD, and there were also several bell-ringing blows landed, and assorted other oddities. All in all, a good fighting day, and I think, entertaining footage.
November 6 was even more interesting in some ways, we were visited by a trained rapier fighter named Dave who lives a few hours drive away and can't normally make it to our practices. He fought several bouts with our own resident rapier fighter, Lenny, using steel schlager blades and some del tin steel sparring rapiers.
Later, Dave tried his hand at the padded weapons, which he had little experience with, and did very well, fighting briefly with longsword against Jean, then sword and buckler and sword and dagger against Jean, Skip, and Chris, and Jean again, followed by more sparring with Lenny using the steel rapiers.
Dave was the master of the thrust with any weapon he used, and forced me for one to adapt my tactics. He was so effective at curtailing my normal charge with painful, jarring stop-thrusts that I largely abandoned that approach and relied instead on distance fighting and cuts to the arm and hand, including some one handed sling cuts similar to the technique Lance Chan uses a lot. Dave, in spite of his "advanced years" (compared to us spring chickens!) is faster than most of us, but he doesn't yet have a lot of experience dealing with cuts of the type delivered by longsword or arming sword. This was the only reason I was able to pull off my modified tactic with some success.
Nov 11 was a less intense day though we did have some good matches, including some more binds and another throw, of sorts.
I'll be adding files through the next few days, meanwhile I'll be very interested and appreciative to hear any feedback of course! How does our form look, our speed, our accuracy, how true does it appear to be to 'genuine' WMA? We have been studying Lichtenaur / Ringeck primarily for longsword, with a smattering of Meyer thrown in. We are just starting to look at Tallhoffer and I.33 for sword and buckler. Marrozzo for rapier, though that is primarily Lenny's area of expertise, the rest of us being novices with that weapon.
Please, let us know what you think, and what we are doing right and wrong!
Jeanry
