A New Year, Same Old Quest

The new year has broken! I've not written in this blog since Crown, but I hope to post more often this year. I've only been in armor three times since Crown, it being first hunting season, and then the holidays. I will not fight much in January because I'm rehearsing a play, and don't want to risk injury.

TRAINING
The 1-6 drill is the core of my training. I don't do it every day--although I do do pell work every day--but I do do it at least three times a week. The rest of the time I work on other pell drills. I have not missed a day of push ups since my surgery, or squats since I added them to my workout over the summer. I've also been doing indian club drills a couple of times a week (this dovetails into my pell work--on those days I use the Indian Clubs for my pell drills, and work on two-stick drills).

FIGHTING
I fought at Nutley right before Xmas, but only against three or four opponents. I was mostly their to train my squire Padriag, and he took upmost of my time. But I did get fights in with Arn and Jan as well, and was fighting pretty good. When I train Padraig we have settled into a system. First we warm up using the saber drill (the hanging guard/cut drill, where we alternate quickly, like its a schlager fight). Then we do some slow work. Then we do Sagan's trigger drill. This is where we both come on guard, and I make a move of some kind--take a step, move my shield, shift my weight--and he is supposed to recognize what opening this creates and tap it lightly. The advanced version of this is to throw a combination and have him recognize the opening after two or three blows, incorporating his own blocks). Then we work on one or two specific techniques. Then we do Paul's offense/defense drill. Usually, not always, in that order. At some point we will fight one or two passes. This seems to be working for him. He's got a lot of years into Karate, and he still competes, so drills and Kata he responds well to.

I went up to Middle Town for their holiday tourney. Gui and I took a day and drove up early, had dinner, hung out till practice. Padraig wasn't there, but they were having a silly tourney with santa-hat crest fights and so on. I did not have a shield with me, so I mostly fought sword and buckler. There was no real training involved. Here's me doing some sword and buckler. I'm really slow.



part two:



Here's Hassan kickingmy ass:



Me and Matt:



and, finally the silliness:



You don't practice that much.

I don't know if I will be attending Birka or not. My next time in armor will hopefully be Saturday Night at West Kingdom 12th Night.