Back to training

Was back at training tonight and it was a lot of fun. We went through fairly basic stuff such as the unarmed flow drill, which is always good to practice. I've described this before in my blog but it always surprises me just how versatile this drill actually is. The concept of tempo and how to break the other's timing, using power derived from the hips and volta stabile rather than the hands and arms leaves the latter more relaxed to better feel what the partner is doing. Finally, pushing elbows and arms by driving the power through the back leg as the passing step is made. One thing we noticed tonight though is that the roles of the right and left hand are reversed in the ligadura soprano, which we normally practice against a dagger strike from the right, with the left hand making the initial block to the wrist and the right hand threading the figure-4 lock. It still works! Neat!

Sling training yesterday wasn't so good. I finally got around to bringing a tarp which I set up about 25 metres away. The golfballs made a lovely sound when they hit it too. The operative word in the last sentence though is "when". They went over, under left and right of a nearly 3 m2 surface. Pathetic! Oh well. Just a bad day, I guess. Next time will be better!

Although I've been making slings, mainly ones with a woven pouch, I thought to start collecting others as well. This week, 4 new slings arrived from a very nice chap from the US called Glen Moore. His sling design is wonderful and is particularly suited for round projectiles like golf, tennis or baseballs. Glen's blog is here. And here's a short vid of the man in action, with eggs!


Man, he uses long slings! All of the available literature I've read says to start with a short sling and a short distance and go longer with time. I've also found myself that a short sling is more accurate. I guess it's something like if your hand-eye coordination is good when you throw a stone accurately, the compensation involved when extending your coordination beyond the reach of you fingertips is commensurate to the length of the sling. So it's a trade off initially between accuracy and added power to the projectile.

Ah what the hell, it's just loads of fun!