(Untitled)

[druminmychest]

Had an excellent weekend. Vicki and I Wound up going to Springfield to hang out with Melissa and Brad. We stayed at their house so we could head to Indiana early enough in the morning to be at Duke Felix’s practice.

Saturday night was tremendous fun. They took us to an amazing Indian restaurant. We had six different dishes. Everyone agreed the Fish

Comments

[jamey1138]

I've had a similar problem (under-performing against people I perceived as less than top talent) in the past, though more on the rapier field than the rattan (I think I got a lot of my psychology sorted out on the rapier field, and it didn't take me nearly as long to get comfortable with it in rattan).

One of the things that helped me improve on it was my first stint as the Kingdom rapier champion: that was enough to spur me into thinking consistently about giving my best fight to every opponent. Something about wearing the Kingdom colors, and being an explicit representative and symbol of the Kingdom-- something about having more on the line than my own glory-- helped me to recognize the *need* to give my best fight, every time. Having thus decided, I came up with a little mnemonic, to insert as part of my pre-fight checklist, as it were. For me, it was this phrase:

Today, nobody rides for free. *Nobody*.

[norfacoflandra]

Honest critique. The biggest lesson it teaches aren't the details you're critiquing. You should already be aware of what people so painfully point out - that's it's purpose, to reinforce what you've observed, or to point out that you're not observing yourself as well as you should. Everything else is gravy, because if you learn self-analysis, you're set

[aztecknight]

Fighting down is also caused by the fact that in our martial art, we let our master compete with our rank novices. You will find few other martial arts that do that. The reason I have been given in why they do not, is that they want each "tournament" bout to be competitive. If they are not people do not stay and learn to get better. In the SCA, we often fight down instead of only facing our equals and going all out.

I have bad plenty of issues with finding third gear at all because I win so much while in second. I need to get this kind of practice as well. Where I have to find third gear all day long.

Rob, I know you have it in you. I know you can find it. See you Saturday.

[moonflake1978]

The other problem is that since we are a volunteer based organization we take what we can get in the volunteer department and that usually means good people are stuck in the role of teacher far longer than they should. I see first and second gear as the same thing. Teacher mode. Which is different from fighter mode. As always, I am willing to help any way I can.