All,

While the last 2 months have been rather "busy" and/or "interesting" for me, and have cut into my "online time", my weekly Walking Stick classes, and my solo training have still been occurring pretty much regularly. I won't try to make up the back-log but thought I might try to post an "after action report" today as I have a little more time than anticipated.

Last week with the group I touched on some material from AC Cunningham and have decided to put some emphasis on his system for the coming weeks. I read one of my favorite blurbs from Cunningham's "Sabre and Bayonet", where Cunningham talks about "fencing-hall fencing" versus "real world fencing" (my quotes). Basically Cunningham points out that getting run-through by someone is a bad thing whether the attacker  was "in the system" or using "atrociously bad form".

Today we went over basic snap cuts as lead-offs or direct attacks. We did some partner work where one person held their stick vertically as a target and the other worked mid-level left and right snap cuts. Emphasis was on not pulling the stick back to strike forward, but on extending forward into the strike/cut. I teach sort of a "drop step" mechanic where the cut should hit in close time with the foot landing on the floor. Right after I explained that these attacks weren't power shots, but were useful for creating openings or disarms (hand hitting), I accidentally broke one of the participants sticks in the target practice drill. :)

More drilling followed on the parries from "The Cane as a Weapon" (CAAW). I discussed Cunningham's "conical defense" from "Sabre and Bayonet" (S&B) and how the parries in CAAW are conical defenses. I did a quick compare and contrast between "evade and return" and "parry and return". I translated Cunningham's emphasis on "parries having the nature of a strike" to mean parries are to be elastic collisions with the attack. For the drill one side delivers simple attacks, and the other parries the attacks, with upward conical motions. I was happy to note that folks were "jumping ahead" and implementing counter parries in the drill at times.

Finally we worked the Vigny *tactic* of feinting/attacking and closing on the opponent with Cunningham *mechanics*. The basic set play was: snap cut right with extension, change guard forward with parry/push using left hand on opponents weapon limb and finishing with close combat. At the end folks were encouraged to be creative with "finishes".

I then did a round of hand-only sparring with each of my three regulars. My big treat today was that noted Historical European Martial Artist Scott Brown was in attendance, and I was able to spar/fence with him for a round. Scott is one heck of a Martial Artist, and sparring him is always an education for me. I am still working on the lessons learned from our last meeting months ago. It was a good round, I wanted more, but we had to relinquish the floor. Anyway I got some interesting lessons from the German school today at Scotts' hand.

On other fronts, my "Sherlock Holmes" presentation has suffered a set-back- one of my "interesting" events of late was a hard-drive crash, from which I was not able to recover my power-point file, and some related files. I did have a hard copy of an early draft, and when I can get my motivation back for that work I'll resume my efforts.


All the Best,

-Chris Amendola