Alan, I have a Tai Chi tip. If your lower back bothers you after the warm ups, you may be leaning forward too much. Try imagining a golden cord from the top of your head to the ceiling or sky. Keep your back straight and it should go well for your back. (Can you tell I made it to class today?) :-)
Imagine you're fencing! (Hey, it works for me! About the only time one abandons the upright posture in fencing--advancing, retreating, parrying etc., is when one does a fleche--throws oneself completely off balance forward so that s/he must extend the forward leg well beyond its normal reach in order to avoid falling flat on the face--which means a tremendous extension. If done well, one has scored and is BEHIND one's opponent before s/he can react.) No problems here with lower back pain; maybe a little muscle pain here and there, but not much, and tremendous increase in freedom of motion, due to the stretching exercises. Increased repetitions from five of each to seven of each this morning; maybe to ten come Monday. I have to un-learn moving as I did when I was all tightened up and hurt because of it. The Lam DVD's have excellent pedagogy and production values; Faye Yip's don't come close in those respects, but her routines look a lot more interesting... hard to decide. But who says I must decide? HA!
Making me miss fencing, you are. At the U of U. you paid for 18 hours a quarter. Most classes were five hours. I was too damn cheap to pay for and not use those three extra hours, so got a lot of extra P.E. classes. Fencing was one. Finally got thrown out because all my partners had quit. We didn't have a team, so just classes. Also had hella lot of swimming and diving classes.
I was looking for a video of a fleche in sabre (my old weapon), and someone said it is no longer permitted in sabre! To judge from what he said, it was because of untrained idiots who didn't know the basics. PAH!
Well, all is not lost: The term flèche is a French term meaning "arrow," referring to the surprising style of the attack. Under FIE rules it is illegal for a sabreur to cross his or her legs, making the flèche illegal. Sabreurs can instead use a flunge - a portmanteau of flying and lunge - where a lunge (generally cutting to head) is made with a leap to give speed and close the extra distance.
But I expect you're right about the training--most of my classmates wanted to be in pirate movies, lol! They were *very* bored with the work of fencing.
My fencing master's master wouldn't let students even hold a weapon for a year--or maybe it was two, I forget. They had to learn how to hold their bodies, how to move, right of way, etc. My master thought that was excessive, and I think we were allowed to pick up a weapon after a month or so. The only reason I can see for forbidding the fleche would be that the students have not learned right of way. If one cannot cross one's legs, that also rules out the crossover retreat as well. In the face of a good lunge, to respond with a crossover retreat-check-fleche + moulinet and a parry protecting one's back worked very well. (I felt almost guilty using on one nice fellow and accomplished fencer who remained a sucker for it; it REALLY frustrated him when I let him have it, because he knew I used it regularly and tried to anticipate it. I continued to get ever more tricky about it...) Going instantly from a crossover retreat to a fleche is probably one of the most physically demanding movements in fencing--I injured my knees that way because I didn't run or use weights. But if one can't move the way the weapon is designed for, why not just sit on stools and whack at one another? (Of course that's what many nitwits who start with sabre actually want to do.) It's the mind game that's the heart of fencing--a really good fencer reaches out with bodily motions, seizes the opponent's mind and bends it to hiis/her will. People may think that is romantic hyperbole, but I have been on the receiving end and personally vouch for it. With a moderately well trained opponent, say a college undergraduate, maintaining a distance of twelve or fifteen feet is/was fairly safe in sabre. Against someone who is really good, there is NO safe distance. One of the most gratifying things to witness is a woman who has concentrated on learning foil technique cut to ribbons a powerful young man who has won up to then by simple speed and brute force. Women's foil is the best spectator sport because it is slow enough to see; sabre is/was the poorest because the weapons often move too fast to see; watchers must be able to tell where the weapons are by watching the bodies of the fencers. I don't know if such things really exist, but when I was fencing there was talk of developing an electric sabre for automatic scoring, as in foil and epee. But the cables they used for the point-only weapons would have made the long attacks and retreats of sabre either impossible or dangerous, I think. Rather than abandon Hungarian sabre for Bunny sabre, why not go back to Italian sabre? Oh, well. BTW, I saw a fellow, supposedly a teacher I think, demonstrating the bunny-hop fleche, and he didn't even know where to keep his off hand; he was holding it out from his waist and a little in front of the hip, right in the way of a belly cut. Good way to earn a trip to the hospital. HARRUMPH! KIDS THESE DAYS!
Favorite niece stood in line for hours on Tuesday to get tickets to President Obama's speech in Boise yesterday. Got her boy's to cut school to go, too! Every once in a while I see my parents genes surfacing in the grands, lol!
Howard Dean is First!
ReplyDeleteAlan, I have a Tai Chi tip. If your lower back bothers you after the warm ups, you may be leaning forward too much. Try imagining a golden cord from the top of your head to the ceiling or sky. Keep your back straight and it should go well for your back. (Can you tell I made it to class today?) :-)
ReplyDeletePS: Bought the Lam DVD!
DeleteImagine you're fencing! (Hey, it works for me! About the only time one abandons the upright posture in fencing--advancing, retreating, parrying etc., is when one does a fleche--throws oneself completely off balance forward so that s/he must extend the forward leg well beyond its normal reach in order to avoid falling flat on the face--which means a tremendous extension. If done well, one has scored and is BEHIND one's opponent before s/he can react.) No problems here with lower back pain; maybe a little muscle pain here and there, but not much, and tremendous increase in freedom of motion, due to the stretching exercises. Increased repetitions from five of each to seven of each this morning; maybe to ten come Monday. I have to un-learn moving as I did when I was all tightened up and hurt because of it. The Lam DVD's have excellent pedagogy and production values; Faye Yip's don't come close in those respects, but her routines look a lot more interesting... hard to decide. But who says I must decide? HA!
Delete--Alan
Making me miss fencing, you are. At the U of U. you paid for 18 hours a quarter. Most classes were five hours. I was too damn cheap to pay for and not use those three extra hours, so got a lot of extra P.E. classes. Fencing was one. Finally got thrown out because all my partners had quit. We didn't have a team, so just classes. Also had hella lot of swimming and diving classes.
DeleteI was looking for a video of a fleche in sabre (my old weapon), and someone said it is no longer permitted in sabre! To judge from what he said, it was because of untrained idiots who didn't know the basics. PAH!
Delete--Alan
Well, all is not lost: The term flèche is a French term meaning "arrow," referring to the surprising style of the attack. Under FIE rules it is illegal for a sabreur to cross his or her legs, making the flèche illegal. Sabreurs can instead use a flunge - a portmanteau of flying and lunge - where a lunge (generally cutting to head) is made with a leap to give speed and close the extra distance.
DeleteBut I expect you're right about the training--most of my classmates wanted to be in pirate movies, lol! They were *very* bored with the work of fencing.
My fencing master's master wouldn't let students even hold a weapon for a year--or maybe it was two, I forget. They had to learn how to hold their bodies, how to move, right of way, etc. My master thought that was excessive, and I think we were allowed to pick up a weapon after a month or so. The only reason I can see for forbidding the fleche would be that the students have not learned right of way. If one cannot cross one's legs, that also rules out the crossover retreat as well. In the face of a good lunge, to respond with a crossover retreat-check-fleche + moulinet and a parry protecting one's back worked very well. (I felt almost guilty using on one nice fellow and accomplished fencer who remained a sucker for it; it REALLY frustrated him when I let him have it, because he knew I used it regularly and tried to anticipate it. I continued to get ever more tricky about it...) Going instantly from a crossover retreat to a fleche is probably one of the most physically demanding movements in fencing--I injured my knees that way because I didn't run or use weights. But if one can't move the way the weapon is designed for, why not just sit on stools and whack at one another? (Of course that's what many nitwits who start with sabre actually want to do.) It's the mind game that's the heart of fencing--a really good fencer reaches out with bodily motions, seizes the opponent's mind and bends it to hiis/her will. People may think that is romantic hyperbole, but I have been on the receiving end and personally vouch for it. With a moderately well trained opponent, say a college undergraduate, maintaining a distance of twelve or fifteen feet is/was fairly safe in sabre. Against someone who is really good, there is NO safe distance. One of the most gratifying things to witness is a woman who has concentrated on learning foil technique cut to ribbons a powerful young man who has won up to then by simple speed and brute force. Women's foil is the best spectator sport because it is slow enough to see; sabre is/was the poorest because the weapons often move too fast to see; watchers must be able to tell where the weapons are by watching the bodies of the fencers. I don't know if such things really exist, but when I was fencing there was talk of developing an electric sabre for automatic scoring, as in foil and epee. But the cables they used for the point-only weapons would have made the long attacks and retreats of sabre either impossible or dangerous, I think. Rather than abandon Hungarian sabre for Bunny sabre, why not go back to Italian sabre? Oh, well. BTW, I saw a fellow, supposedly a teacher I think, demonstrating the bunny-hop fleche, and he didn't even know where to keep his off hand; he was holding it out from his waist and a little in front of the hip, right in the way of a belly cut. Good way to earn a trip to the hospital. HARRUMPH! KIDS THESE DAYS!
Delete--Alan
Favorite niece stood in line for hours on Tuesday to get tickets to President Obama's speech in Boise yesterday. Got her boy's to cut school to go, too! Every once in a while I see my parents genes surfacing in the grands, lol!
ReplyDeleteMove that apostrophe from boys and put it after parents. . . .
DeleteFavourite niece has my vote! :-)
Delete