New Year, New Fails

So, let's get back to it.

Fencing last night.

I struggle with fencing sometimes.  It has a lot to do with my brain and depression.  However, I made it to practice and I did more fencing than I expected.  I did get frustrated with myself over one match because I just didn't seem to be able to deal with an off-hand weapon.  I let it distract me too much.  I should spend more time on that in the future.  I should also bring my own non-dagger off hand to practice and play with it some more. 

My focuses recently have been on my stance and my breathing.  I find when I attack, I hold my breath.  It really hard to remember to breath in the middle of all the other things I am thinking about.  Also, focusing on breathing makes it harder to get into the "zone" where I let my body do things instead of having to tell it to do things.  I mean, if you have to tell yourself to breath, you also find yourself telling your body to parry and riposte.  It makes for inefficient fighting.  It also also keeps me from moving on past my first or second intentions.

Still, I need to breath.  So I will keep working on it until it works.

My stance is getting better.  I have been working on a deeper stance that seems to make the rest of my body move better.  I must have been doing it right yesterday because I was getting good aches while drilling foot work.  I do need to remember to drill my lunges after I lead foot work since I don't do lunges with everyone else.  I think I haven't adjusted my lunge to my new stance so I need to do some more work on that.

To sum up:

Working on - Stance and breathing
Good: occasionally remembering to breath through the whole match, better at keeping stance through whole match
Bad: occasionally forgetting to breath through the whole match, need to work on lunges from new stance.

Lastly, I need to start getting out more.  Sometime this month, I need to go to another practice and just force myself to be bad in front of other people.  I need to work on just working at fencing and letting my ego about it go.  I am not good and that is okay.  I don't need to be good to have fun.