Progress report 2

REHAB:
My arm hurts a lot still. It is intermittent. It didn't bother me at all yesterday. Now it stings. I have done my rehab every day. It says not to do the strengthening exercises until the stretching "barely hurts". I planned to be doing strengthening exercises by now, but the stretching still hurts a lot. I suspect now that I won't be able to fight at 12th Night.

WORKOUTS:
My workouts are going well. Yoga on Monday was great. I felt drained but rejuvenated at the end of it. Wednesday's gym workout went much like the week before: I did 20 minutes on the elliptical, about 30 minutes of yoga, and abs. I was again planning to go hunting on Friday, so I was skipping he afternoon gym session. Thankfully Vitus was teaching an un-armored class on Thursday night, which I took. (I did about half the work with a left hand grip, which was less stressful) It wasn't a very strenuous workout, but it was a good one. (see below). Also, I got a pretty good workout dragging a deer out of the woods on Saturday.

FIGHTING
Like i said, I haven't been fighting and likely won't for months. But I went to Vitus' bastard sword class, which as excellent.

Vitus uses some techniques adapted from Fiore, but not really. He uses a true bastard sword length sword, not the slightly longer version Marc uses. His sword is weighted with a metal pommel and has a thrusting tip. It can easily be used one handed. As mentioned before, Vitus is very interested in creating a period impression of a 12th Century knights, and the way he fights bastard sword reflects that.

He taught us a cool kata. He holds his sword low and behind him in a right-hand grip, with his left foot forward, as though inviting a thrust. When the thrust comes he voids by passing off-line to the right. Then he does the standard fiore move of driving his opponent's sword down and then striking with the back edge. He comes out of this into the True Window guard. From here he incresares and thrusts. Then he passes back on the right and brings his sword down to a long point that originates at the hip (don't know where this comes from). He passes on the right and thrusts, then passes on the left and cuts stotatti reverso, then does the same on the right.

At least, that's how I remember it.

Next he showed us his version of vom tag. It is the same as Paul's high guard. He passes on the right and strikes a horizontal cut to the head with the back edge (I know of know period description of this) then passes on the left with a for edge strike.

He likes to half sword against pole arms, but since he can't use pommel strikes he will block with the point down and then let go, starting a cut to the head and grabbing the pommel for added power.

Like Marc, he strikes Dritto passing with his right-foot forward and reverso with his left foot forward.

The main elements of his style seem to be high attacks (he never really strikes downward, always horizontal or upward, and says downward strikes are a mistake), voiding, and striking out of window parries (or the King's guard and the Queen's Guard). He seems to prefer the back edge when striking Dritto. It is a neat looking style, and he fights it well against either sword and shield or two weapon.

None of this makes much sense when I describe it, and I'm probably describing it wrong. I'm working of four day old memory and am unsure if I remembered all the steps of his kata. If the video comes out I will post it. Regardless, he is a fun and interesting knight, with a lot of knowledge and a well developed and effective style which looks more period than most. It was a great class.