Basic stance and stability concepts

• Guy’s standing drill
• Stance with feet apart. Where are the hips? Where are the feet pointed?
• Stance with weight forward, find stability
• Stance with weight back, find stability
• The importance of self-monitoring balance when working out
• The power line – hips and shoulders alignment – strong and weak. What do you need to do to get your hips squared?
• Exerting forward pressure utilizing large muscles in legs, not the back or the arms
• Pointing the rear knee and toe towards the opponent to optimize strength and balance
• How to do a balance check
• Problem areas
• Leaning too heavily on front or back
• Pitching forward due to lost balance
• Breaking the upper body posture backward when the check is applied
• A feeling of losing footing and scrambling to recover
• A feeling of stress on the back
• Joint pains

Drills

• On wall individually, with releases
• With partner, pressure variants
• Gradual application and release of pressure
• More sudden application and/or release of pressure
• Feeder fakes check
• Various angles of pressure
• Go from a standing position (natural standing stance) to a front-weighted position, then have partner do a balance check. Then do all of the above variants of balance checks. Land with one clean step, plant the advancing foot, be balanced instantly. (Mindful placement of the moving foot)
• Same as above, but reverse: feeder lightly pushes you from behind and you land securely
• Hold a waster in both hands as in half-swording. From a natural standing position, step one foot into a front-weighted stance. Have partner do various balance check on the sword. Take care not to use the arms to absorb pressure too much — keep the elbows down and in front of the body.

Sword in hand

• Holding the sword
• Posta di donna
• Posta di donna sinestre
• Full iron gate
• Boars tooth
• Problem areas
• Holding tension in the shoulders and arms
• Preliminary / gathering moves before striking

Drills

• Transitions – start in PDD / left forward. Swing through to BT with step. Draw up to PDD-S. Swing through to FIG with step. Rinse/repeat.
• Learn the names of the guards

Striking (stationary)

• Hit into the crossing
• Follow with:
  • Stab
  • Twirl and hit around
  • Second hit with push-pull
  • Butt strike (upward)
  • Butt strike (lateral)

Drills

• Hand travel from guard position to crossing
• Fendentes from PDD, PDDs, FIG
• Thrusts from all four stances
• Sottano’s (rising blows) from PDD, FIG, BT

Striking (with pass)

• 4) Passing
• forward
• backward
• with fendente
• with thrust
• from both sides

• 5) Volta stabile (stable shift from forward to back weighted stance)
• with pressure
• stay on balls of foot
• there should be a hip shift
• keep vision forward
• fendente’s, do a fendente while passing from back to front
• follow the back to front shift with an immediate passing step, working for smooth blend to pass

• 6) Accressare
• front leg moves to outside
• forward shuffle (lift front leg and push off back leg)
• backward shuffle (push off front leg while lifting back leg)
• All of the above with partner applying pressure

• 4) oblique pass
• - accressare plus pass
• - pass diagonally from back foot then re-adjust (as in the beat-aside play of ZL)
• falling practice
• - sitting down from stand
• - rolling back from seat
• - sitting back up from prone
• - to kneel from prone
• strength
• - wall pushups
• - pushups
• - abdominal stuff