Capoferro and a Blog Resurrection

Hello again. The past several months have been rough, both personally and globally, but I haven't forgotten this blog exists. My fencing status for the past few months has been stagnant but not non-existent. I've been regularly attending practices and taking notes, but haven't pushed for new learning or continued my drills and exercises at home. I've felt disheartened and unable to devote the time and energy necessary to do more than tread water in my learning. 

But I've been fighting through most of that, and occasionally going to an SCA event and fighting folks manages to boost my enthusiasm and confidence enough to kick me out of such cycles and ruts. Pennsic did that work this year, and I'm going to build on that momentum as much as I can throughout the fall. So to that end, I'm going to return to taking notes on Capoferro and push forward into the plates. The previous disclaimers all apply: I'm basing my reading off of Tom Leoni's translation, which can be found here, and these notes are personal observations for me to look back on and to hold me accountable, they are not a walk through or interpretation of the text.

I'm skipping the various plates devoted to guards and stance, at least for the purposes of this blog, and moving directly to plays. I may try to add pictures later, but in this draft at least, there will only be text.

Plate 7: "This Illustration and the Following Show Various Ways to Strike to the Outside, After You Have Gained the Opponent's Blade to the Inside and He Performs a Thrusting Attack by Cavazione"

• It's nice to get back to Capoferro's wordiness. 
• It's actually interesting that the first set of plays are titled "ways to strike to the outside," given that that's a particular weakness of mine. I'd missed that on the first read-through, and will pay even more particular attention now.

Sequence A:

1. Fencer A gains B's sword on the inside.
2. Fencer B performs a cavazione to the outside and thrusts to A's chest.
3. Fencer A parries to seconda and counterthrusts.

Sequence B:

1. Fencer A gains B's sword on the inside.
2. Fencer B performs a feint to the outside, but stays withdrawn.
3. Fencer A falls for the feint and performs and counterthrust.
4. Fencer B parries, either mandritto to face or imbroccata to chest, recover in quarta.

• Sequence A is familiar to me, because it's part of a four part hierarchy drill some folks at my practice do, based on these plays. Sequence B goes a step further, obviously, and is already starting the "people will assume you're doing this, so pretend to be and take advantage" chess philosophy that I've heard about.
• I think going through these plays relatively quickly and then assembling them all into the full series of options and responses will currently be more helpful to me than lingering over individual plates.
• The note to recover is important, and something I need to work on.
• On a formatting note: The plates themselves are only so helpful, and the descriptions aren't always easy for me to follow, particularly as I forget the Italian words constantly, but the "Practical Synopsis" portion is immediately helpful and allows the other two to provide insight and detail.

I don't have a lot more to say here, but I wanted to get words moving again. I'll go over another couple of plates later this week, and I'll see if I can make it fully through the text by the end of September.

In the mean time, exercise and practice goals for the week:

 - Morning drills: Single sword lunges and footwork, and trying to suss out the two voids I've been shown.

 - Reading and research: More plate work, and dig up basic duello videos for single sword footwork and guards to be more critical during morning drills.

 - At practice: Focus on the concepts of attacking on the outside if my sword is gained. Single sword only for the time being, with some left-handed practice for balance.

 - Exercise: Running Tuesday and Friday, at home exercises Monday and Wednesday, evaluate over the weekend.

Hiatus Observations

After time away during the holidays and some time spent fighting a nasty chest cold, it's been a few weeks of diminished fencing activity for me. Certainly now is a good time to say that I'm ramping up again and that you should expect another Capoferro post next Tuesday, etc. etc. But more interesting to me right now is to see what I can learn from this hiatus.

Along those lines, some thoughts and observations:
 
Given a few weeks away from fencing, I don't "forget how to fence." My movements get sloppier, and my muscles are weaker, but that's it. This is perhaps a no brainer to some, but it's good for me to know and account for. 2016 was filled with similar hiatuses for me, and every time I returned from them I decided I needed to focus on the basics again, and I stopped learning. Given the previous point, this is a ridiculous thought and I should simply move forward to the next thing. Drilling and exercise will fix the hiatus issues without having to devote all of my time and mental energy to them. This is good, because I enjoy fencing more when I'm moving forward and not constantly stalling or backtracking, and more enjoyment = more momentum = more progress, in general.
 
Fencing helps my posture. I already knew that, but over the past couple weeks I've caught my shoulders clenching up due to stress, anxiety, or habit. For years, I had knots and tense muscles all through my neck and shoulders, and that definitely lessened over 2015/2016, but it's returned full force already. Fencing will bring that back to the front of my mind and make me correct my posture throughout the day, and regular stretching will help as well.

My environment makes a big difference on how often I exercise and/or drill. One day maybe I'll have a devoted space for these sorts of things so that I don't have to wrestle discarded bed frames out of the way to make room for footwork.

Going to practice once a week is not enough to break me out of a hiatus mindset. I need to be Working On A Thing (Or Things). I'm also more likely to drill if I'm doing it to achieve a specific result rather than general habit/improvement. At least when starting back up from zero.