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 Fencer B performs a feint to the outside, but stays withdrawn.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.