Lord Rapine, this is your homework for today:
(side note, there are a million variations on this theme. this is just one)
Get your lightsaber and: pick it up in your left hand and hold it like you would a hammer. the thumb and first finger should be doing most of the holding, and the pinky most of the controlling. middle and third fingers pretty much relaxed. This is called the hammer grip. it is the strongest but least nimble of the one handed grips. Try to make sure all your knuckles are in a line. Wherever the knuckles point is there are are strongest. The tighter you hold it the less nimble you will be due to being tense, your hand should only tense up at the moment of impact.
Now, stand up. stand up straighter. stomach in, chest out. now relax. bring your heels together and both feet are pointing straight ahead. turn your head to the left so that you are looking over your shoulder. turn your left foot and leg to the left to that your toes are pointing in the direction you are looking (henceforth "forward"). your feet should be making an "L" make sure that your feet and knees are both pointing the same way. now, move your left foot out (to your left, the direction you are looking)
about a distance twice that of the length of your foot. a little bit less or more doesn't matter all too much. Now lower your knees a little bit, as if you were going to push something from this position. basically to the point that you feel stable. your weight should be evenly distributed between feet and more on the balls of your feel than the heels. This is one of the basic body positions for what is called an "enguarde" (on guard) stance. the idea is to profile your body to present the smallest target you can.
The hand position has even more variations, but for now we will keep it very simple. saber is vertical, in the middle of your body, your elbow is about one fist width from your body and the forearm goes straight out horizontally. This is called a medium guard, as the saber is neither to the left or the right. I tend to refer to it as a "high medium" to differentiate it from the other medium guard given by Hutton. To form this other medium guard, tilt your wrist down until the tip of your saber blade is at throat or eye level. you can practice this in front of a mirror pointing at yourself. I tend to prefer throat level. your off hand can be tucked behind your back, placed on the hip (my favorite) or anything else that gets it out of the way.
You are now in a very basic fighting stance. from now on I will refer to it as an engaging guard. it is usually classified by the hand position, so this would be a medium engaging guard. but how do we move?
From your evenly weighted stance, raise your left foot as little as you can to clear the ground. move it forward about the length of your foot and return it to the earth. Now bring your right foot up a distance as equal to the distance your left foot moved as you can. you should find yourself in the exact same stance, one foot length forward. this is called an
advanceto move backwards, or
retreat you do the exact same thing but backwards, starting with the right foot going backwards and then the left.
do each of these a few times.
Lesson 2: from your engaging guard, lean forward and backwards from the waist without moving the legs. If you need to move the sword to accomplish this, go ahead. do this for a little bit. Now, move your body forward and backward by shifting your weight between legs and bending/extending your knees. do this for a while. Now attempt to combine the two movements. The purpose of these movements is to quickly make small adjustments to your
distance.
Lesson 3: If you feel like you can do it, we will now attempt a
lunge. a lunge covers the distance of 2 advances with one quick movement. put the sword down for the first couple. From your engaging guard, mark the spot that the back of your rear foot is at with something. now take 2 advances and mark the spot that the tip of your front foot ended up at. now, return to your engaging guard with your back foot at the spot marked for it. advance your left foot as in an advance, but now take it to the point that you marked. You need to be careful of a few things here: first, that your toes and knee point in the same direction. second, that your knee does not go in front of your foot. I prefer a straight up and down lower leg. third, do not let the rear foot roll or come off the ground. The foot should be flat on the ground, leg extended out and bent at the ankle to facilitate the movement. the movement is propelled by the back leg, but your weight ends up on your front leg, this is why you need to be careful. do this a few times, and then practice getting back up to your engaging guard quickly.
Lesson 4: we will now return to simple advances and retreats. From your engaging guard, I want you to do a couple of the ones you practiced before, then I want you to reverse the order of foot movement for the action. so move the back foot up to the position of the front then move the front out for an advance, so on so forth. I don't remember what these are called, but they can sometimes fool your opponent for a half of split second and can sometimes be a little faster than the conventional advance. The downside is that for a split second your feet are together, hence you are unstable. I don't use these too often, honestly.
And finally Lesson 5: From your engaging guard, move your back foot up to in front of your lead foot, keeping it turned 90 degrees outward. your legs should be crossed. then advance the other foot, returning to your engaging guard. this is called a
passing step. you may also pass backwards by reversing the foot order and going backwards.
BUT WAIT! what bout turning or going sideways?!? all in good time...
HEY! I didn't get to play with my lightsaber!!! ugh fine...
Lesson 6: from your medium engaging guard, extend your arm straight forward at shoulder level as far as you can, the blade should end up as an extension of your arm, straight out. This is called a
straight thrust in medium and is usually combined with a lunge to make a
simple attack. Practice this with all the different forms of movement here, but always remember to lead with your sword, doing the hand and arm motions before the body motions, and reversing that as you withdraw. your sword should be the first and last thing you move in this movement cycle. Remember to, at the point of impact, grip the saber tighter, then go back to a normal grip as you withdraw. this is easier with some other ways of holding the sword, but all in good time.
Lesson 7: the
direct cut or
push cut is don't my extending the arm, and swinging the sword with just the wrist directly to the target, tightening those loose bottom fingers just before the moment of impact to add some snap. This isn't a great attack, and is what is used most of the time in sport fencing. it is very situational. For now, I just want you to do it straight out, imagining a forehead blow, and turning the wrist 90 degrees left or right to come in from the left or right, imagining hitting the cheeks/jaw or hand/fingers. there is more but we will get to that later. remember to lead with your sword! do this with with all the forms of movement above.
Bonus: since you now know these simple attacks, you can now do a
stop cut or
stop thrust with the latter being the more deadly. from your engaging guard, quickly withdraw your lead leg all the way back to the heels touching position, performing a straight thrust as you do so.
Do your homework and report back on how it went and how it felt!
God Bless,
~Joe