What I'm taking away from these bouts is:
1) I'm constantly getting caught out when I lead with a massive advance. It's a huge signal to my opponent that I'm about to attack, and it brings me into a distance where it's easy to get hit and pretty difficult to parry. When I don't do it, I'm usually able to at least get in an exchange of parries and potentially a riposte, which brings me to my second point.
2) I'm not disengaging or using broken time near enough. I keep trying to get by my opponent's parries with speed rather than getting around them, which rarely works.
3) My false retreats always need to be followed up with lunges. There are several spots where my leg goes back, and I just fence from a weird lunge position without actually going forward, which really accomplishes nothing.
4) I should probably edit these videos down to some sort of theme, such as a specific action or problem I'm having, this is kind of a 6 minute mess of a video. Plus, I should set it to music, but the only appropriate song I can think of tends to make people laugh out loud after about 30 seconds.
In other news, this past weekend was San Diego's premier fencing tournament, UCSD's Bladerunner, in which I actually did not do half bad. I place 13th out of 48 overall, losing out by a touch to Ben Dorn, who went on to place 3rd. While I'm somewhat frustrated with myself for the loss, I'm mostly really enthused about how well I did overall, especially since this was the first tournament of the season for me, and the highest I've ever placed at this particular event. It's a good start!
This week, I'm hoping to do a better job of incorporating disengages into my game, and also to eliminate my half-retreat problem. Stay tuned!
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