I am not as frazzled today as in the first lesson, though I didn't get much sleep last night. The funny thing is I spent most of the night watching footage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Men's Foil competition. I guess you could call it homework?
Managed to make it on time to this lesson, which works because I figure show up late twice in a row and your coach starts noticing a pattern. Next thing you know you are unreliable and not suited to compete; the whole reason I'm in this thing to begin with--well, I guess to have fun, too.
I walk into an empty studio and ten minutes later a new prospect, Rich, walks through the door. Great, I've been fencing for two days and now I've got to try and help Leslie, the coach, sell the club.
Rich and I shoot the shit for a little while; he's a good guy, never much of an athlete and looking to add a sport to his life. Like me, he spent the last week or so absorbed in Olympic bouts on YouTube.
But Olympic fencers are, well, Olympic fencers, and exciting. With zero skills and a half-hour regimen of plain old footwork drills to show, I wonder how long before Rich gets bored and decides the sport isn't what he thought.
The pressure builds as another prospect, an entire family, shows up to watch. Mainly they want to sign their eight-year-old son up for a lesson, but will he still want one? Eight-year-old kids don't much care for footwork drills; they come for the hacking and slashing. Sorry to disappoint you, kid.
To begin the lesson, Leslie and I salute. Basically, the lesson repeats the exercises from lesson one. I'm not mad. It makes sense to reinforce perform form in the beginning. Besides, every thing I do until five minutes before finishing ends up dead fucking wrong! Thank God, the mask makes it easier to block out the fact I'm being watched.
We start simple. I stand in En Guarde, lift my arm and stab a target. Except I practiced some loopy, twisted version of the En Guarde. It took the first half of the lesson to get it corrected. Now I know why studios use mirrors.
Besides the my healing knee acting up, the advance and retreat drills go well enough. Then the lunge gets thrown in. I get overeager with my lunge and forget to bring my back foot up on the advance, which sucks all of the the umph out the move. Actually, I'm twice overeager; I pull the sword directly back to En Guarde, leaving myself open to a counter-attack. The most important lesson learned this time around: keep your sword arm extended so your opponent might run the blade.
I keep trying to work the drills fast. Fast and fencing practice don't mesh. Leslie encourages me to slow down. Form over Fast. Then it all starts to click. I end the lesson with an almost seamless lunge. Leslie managed to fix my dozens of fuck-ups in only thirty minutes. Looks like I found a good coach.
The bonus of the day, another two students show up. One fences Epee and the other Sabre. I welcome the opportunity to see, early on, if I'm right for choosing Foil. The Epee lesson seems fairly interesting. Epee involves using parries to create angles for the touch. The Sabre lesson played like a fight scene from a pirate movie. Whack! Clank! Bang! You hack and slash in Sabre.
For now I'll stick with the Foil. I'm only encouraged when I meet one of the club's other Foil fencers on my way out. Yes, someone to bout with!
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