Finally found some time to go for Open Sessions after a long break, and it was tiring, but fun. I’m not looking forward to doing it winter jackets for conditioning, but them’s the breaks, especially if I want to go full period kit of Gambeson, maille and plates.

Anthony was right, the Open Sessions of stress training and sparring really helped me to improve my swordsmanship in leaps and bounds. Some take-aways from last night’s session was:

1) I have a “tell“. I can supress it if I concentrate, but right now, it comes out about 75% of the time.

2) I tend to speed up as I get tired or winded. Dunno why, but when doing the stress drills with Joel & Page I found my self hyperventilating and going faster and faster in my defence and counter, to the point of missing the deflection or yield.

3) My foot work suffers when I speed up. I don’t side-step off the line enough and I end up crossing my back leg.

4) I’ll need to work more on my muscle memory. Sparring with Greg and watching others spar made me realise that stopping to think means giving my opponent that much more time to attack me with. And defences have to happen on an instinctive level, and not “see-attack-coming and select-appropriate-defence”. This is not Final Fantasy with a menu-driven combat round!

Everybody’s got a plan until they get hit.
- Mike Tyson

Attack! Attack! Attack!
- General Patton

Hope my schedule settles down enough to attend more Open Sessions. Anyhoo, Seng Kian mentioned last night that our steels from Hanwei will be arriving in two weeks’ time.

w00t!