thegirlsclub

[SuGyong]

Do you fight both light and heavy list? Do you think it helps you out skill-wise?

How? Would you encourage others to do so?

My husband does all three- archery, fencing, fighting. His biuggest gripe is that heavy usually happens first at an event, making him tired and more shaky, followed by fencing and finally archery when he's completely wiped out. He keeps hoping for an event that starts with the finer motor skills and works down.. archery, fencing, heavy.
_________________
Opinions? Great! Flames? Oh well. I probably deserve it.

[Isabella E]

I have found that all the focus on footwork early in my fencing career has made me fast on my feet and surefooted. And the point control stuff helps with spear work.

[A.N.Shimofuri]

hullo all!

i like to compete in target archery and rapier.
so please tell me why the gods have every marshal and autocrat schedule those two at the same time??
the last event i tried to participate in both i had to have the kings pardon to leave the archery tourney early and to enter the rapier tourney lyst as it began! thanks to my friends who got my swords inspected.

-)-------

[Kishwar]

The biggest fight for me has been in the department of assembling my armor!! I purchased all the pieces of my heavy kit at Gulf Wars, March, 2007. Then spent all summer trying to get help putting it together.

But in all fairness, I must elucidate: I purposely purchased aluminum Bokalo pauldrons, couters, and poleyns (shoulders, elbows, and knees - I'm trying to teach myself the real names for the armor pieces), to go onto "Egg" plastic armor rerebraces, vambraces, (upper and lower arms) and... okay, what is the appropriate name for the upper and lower leg segments?

Anyway, I needed some experienced armorer help and it turned out to be very, very hard to find. It wasn't a matter of discrimination, just that Mistress Mundania was being very cruel to many of my armoring friends. (I live in "Katrina Land" where we still have people who are trying to rebuild their houses.)

So the end result is that here I am, coming up on Gulf Wars, 2008, and I *still* do not have all of my armor together. But I'm SO CLOSE!!!

I thought I would have ALL of it completed by Mardi Gras Day (tomorrow). But as the months have rolled along and I've gotten a smattering of help here and there, I have been learning - and I finally learned enough to drill my own holes, attach my own straps, etc. [At the beginning I was concerned about drilling holes in my stuff because I didn't want to screw it up.] But now I've learned enough to do my own work. And yesterday, I realized that I had "crossed the line" - I knew I was in trouble when I realized I am now taking pride in my riveting - lol!

So yesterday I was diligently working away on my stuff, coming down to the end of it - all I have left is assembling one aluminum knee into the plastic. . . . And then I discover that I apparently left one of my poleyns in my Duke's car! (And he had to fly to Virginia for a week, so guess where my poleyn is - yep, you guessed it - it's parked somewhere out at the airport. *sigh*)

Unfortunately, that is fairly typical of the kind of luck I tend to have.

BUT.... eventually I will get it all together and be able to start learning. And since said Duke is as sweet as he can be and lives less than 5 miles from my house, it appears that the bulk of my teaching will be done by him.

So I am hoping to be running back and forth between the rapier war point battles and the heavy war point battles at Gulf Wars 2009.

And I will have my stuff together before this year's Gulf Wars - so I can bring it and at least participate in some classes.

But I love rapier and won't give it up, and I think I will also love heavy fighting. One of my friends who helped, Gellis (he's the Knight's Marshal for one of our Baronies), told me that my kit looks so good that I could always sell it and make a profit on it if I decided I didn't like heavy. But then he looked at me with his typical evil grin and said, "But I can already tell - you're gonna LOVE it!" I hope he's right, but I suspect he is. So far, he's the only one who has 'struck' me wearing heavy gear - he helped me pad out my helm (a Knotwolf Armories custom helm - very pretty) and of course, at the end of it we needed to do the 'strike' test to make certain everything was as it needed to be. He might have been basing his assessment on how I took the 3 test blows - or he might have just been basing it on the fact that he knows how crazy I am.

Ultimately, I am looking for my rapier experience to help with my footwork and balance in heavy; I'm looking for the heavy fighting to help me with my stamina/endurance. And I really dig the camaraderie with both fighting styles - rapier and heavy. The rapier fighters in my Shire are one crazy and very assorted group of alpha males - I love running in the middle of their 'pack.' Likewise, I've been gathering up many new friends who fight heavy (male and female) and I know that I will love fighting beside them as well.

- Kishwar Banu'habshi

[Hakon]

Cuisses and greaves

[TemairFhaelchon]

I'm a pretty new fighter, and the guys in my group were discussing what approach i should take with my heavy fighting.
Our Baron, suggested I work with him to learn fencing footwork so I can move better out on the Atlantian heavy field.
The point was to incorporate the speed of the footwork to get in close with a shorter stick to stand up to the big guys that like to plant their feet and swing.

[Isabella E]

Fencing footwork translates really well into heavy fighting. It will make you agile and stable on your feet, and fencing overall translates to spear pretty well too.
_________________
It's not the most powerful animal that survives. It's the most efficient. -Georges St-Pierre
http://windyvalleybanners.blogspot.com/