Tag: rasp

My last day at RASP was bittersweet. I learned a lot, but I hated for the weekend to end. I think I took three pages of notes that day alone, and Nik took plenty too. Then we made the long drive back to Florida.

This morning I got up early to meet Tiny Nick and Emmers at the gym. Here’s my “set list.”

I’m trying to vary my workouts, so I’m working out with different people instead of sticking to Nik’s routine.

Tonight we returned to fencing. We showed our club new warm-ups and games. Then we debriefed about our weekend, and Nik showed them the format he wants to use for future classes. I’m excited to get started!

Today I didn’t feel like a competent human being because at lunchtime, I realized my pants were on backwards.

Despite that, I learned about the progression of skills when teaching rapier, and I found that learning, translating (for a leftie), and teaching sabre, while difficult, is not as scary as I thought.

Again, I took a lot of notes. Tonight was more revel and less scholarship, but that’s still pretty cool.

I was dressed and ready to fence Wednesday night, but I had a sinus headache, and I was afraid I was getting sick, so I skipped. Thursday was a travel day, so I didn’t work out, but I did get the ball rolling on my personal fitness assessment. I’m excited.

Today was Day 1 of the Rapier and Sabre Pedagogy (RASP) Retreat. We got here with enough time to introduce ourselves before warm-ups. We warmed up with footwork and spent the morning practicing teaching rapier techniques. We started by teaching a simple lunge and worked up to covering cavaciones and other complex short-tempo actions.

After lunch, we got out the sabres. I felt like I was learning how to use a sabre as much as I was learning how to teach someone else how to use one. My partner and I helped each other through the drills without necessarily doing the calls like we did during the rapier portion, and I felt like that worked pretty well.

I got a lot of feedback and took a lot of notes. I hope that sleeping on it will help me process and retain it.