I'm back ... ish?

I took a long hiatus from writing things because it was absolutely murdering the rest of my time/life.  Writing a post takes anywhere on the order of 45 minutes to about 3 hours depending on the length of the thing.  That includes at the outset just the time to write, proof-read and format each thing.  Posts that involve posting images, especially if I have to first create them can take even more then that.

So, as you might imagine, while I was trying to get any number of things sorted out having that kind of time to just sit down and spew thought wasn't really in the cards.  However, I've volunteered myself to start heading up a try-hard group of Dunedain and rather then try to re-invent the wheel as far as a training regimen and just general theory I think would be helpful I've already leaned rather heavily on the things that I've already written.  However, even as I did that I realized that there's lots of things that are important from the perspective of both individual fighting and the teamwork of small groups that I have from from even touched on, so I might as well go back and do those things.

Which brings me back to my blog which has sat unused and forgotten for all this time as the rest of my life has rolled on.  Rather then build a new thing to contain that knowledge I find myself wanting to write for the sake of writing and build up the missing bits of knowledge I've not yet extracted from my head.  There were some things that I'd meant to write already that have sat as a to-do item on a notepad for something like the last 6 months and since is the first thing you're seeing, you know quite well that I may have never gotten to it.

So, I'm back... sort of.  When I write the things I want to write, I'll see if I still have more energy to keep going.  I may also turn over to doing that florentine manual thing I said I would do ages ago and then started in on poorly.  But with a million other things to do let me end this one here, so I can perhaps write something more useful :-P.

hello again old friends.

Absolutely exhausted

I'm going to kick the post for today into tomorrow.  I'll have the update in the afternoon.

I haven't left I swear.

Been absent for 2 weeks which isn't normally like me.  Two weeks ago I was in the midst of frantically moving everything I owned from one apartment to another and was busy from a Friday through the next week's Sunday.  This was all in preparation for surgery on my leg which then happened the following Thursday.  Drugged up and recovering from anesthesia seemed like not a good time to be trying to write a blog post.  That all having been said I am now moved into the new place, and largely recovered from the surgery on my leg, even though for the time being I'm still in a splint.  Updates will resume this week, I may even get a bit more done now that I'm not really able to leave and do other things :-P.

See you all again soon.

2 points for sickness no points for me

Meant to post stuff last Thursday, but on account of being horrifically ill that wound up not being a thing.  Still sick... have been since wednesday.  I'll post what I had ready probably on Tuesday with the next bit on Thursday.  In the interim I just wanted to let anyone who follows the blog know that I neither forgot nor failed to do the work, I was simply out of commission.

Volley

Whole bunch of posts today.  Finally getting up off the ground again and finding the time for it now that other things have stabilized.  Apologies for my time being off/distracted.  Every now and again life happens after all.  I'm scrapping my last attempt to start the florentine manual and am going to start over by writing it down as actually part of it's own thing.  As I complete sections I'll start to port them over to blog posts.  For now I'm going back to posting random thoughts about random things int he hopes that that is still useful.

I can do better...

I've been super bad the last few weeks about updating on time.  I am inclined to do better.  I'm not sure what exactly was going on that so caused me to lose track of everything but I am not re-committing to keeping the blog up to date.  In an effort to keep it the amount of full it was supposed to be I'm going to be spam posting random updates through the rest of the week to try to catch up with what I actually owe.  After that back to Thursday updates.  Sorry folks...

I think it's finally time

I've got some left over things from the drills section that I was writing out, but that will close out my first addendum to my big old book of the basics.  The plan was to write additional addendum's to add to it in the form of weapon's specific manuals.  Given the recent surge of teaching and activity I've done since I've been in the area I think I'm going to start with the florentine manual first.  I may even write the first post for that tonight.  We'll see how far I get before I get pulled into socializing :-P.  So! I'll be writing things as part of a book and posting partial bits in here.  Depending on my level of effort I may just provide links rather then completely rewrite and reformat the bits and pieces.  I figure that getting the relevant bits down is probably more important then whether or not it looks pretty.  Anyways, comment below if you've got a particular attachment to things being in blog form vs just having access to the information.

I've got the plague...

I'm ditching on my post this week on account of feeling pretty crappy.  When I rebound I'll post a delayed thing.  Sorry folks, them's the breaks.

Battle For The Ring and updates

No post for last week because I was at battle for the ring without use of technology.  I'll write today's post momentarily.  Just wanted to drop a quick shout out for another blog I stumbled on to.  Go check out http://www.leftycombat.com/ if you've got a chance.

Happy New Years

Happy 2016 everyone.  New years threw me off my game so I missed my updates.  So I'm going to make up for that with a veritable deluge of information including the first bits of Addendum 0: Drills.  To that end I'm creating a new data tag "drills" for anything that you can practice yourself in the future.  Anyways.  Short post as an update.  Onward.  Also, for new years, I'm going to start trying to add diagrams.  It may mean fewer posts or less text, but hopefully it makes things easier to read.

Expanding Other things

After much delay I'm going to restart the project that I had initially kicked off as a one shot attempt to get a training manual built of all the things I knew.  As it turns out, that's way too damn much to write down in one go.  I got as far as a bunch of basics, some intermediate skills, a few weapon specific advanced things... and then I was something like 60 pages in.  I decided at that point to cut myself off so that I could actually finish.  The idea was to then start adding additional bits and pieces as addendums.  The first one was going to be a list of drills that I've used over the past 10 years to teach people different bits and pieces of body mechanics.  So that will be coming soon.  I'll set it up as one or more posts and also load it into the google doc for the book of rift which you can get to here.  Next up I'm going to start in on the florentine manual since several people have been asking me to teach them and I've been spread a bit too thin to really do a good job of that.

I'll note, now that I have a blog to do so, that if there are any people out there who are some kind of artist or can process text well to proof read, all of the stuff I've written so far is in bad need of visuals and proof-reading.  I suspect by the time I get done with the the next two addendums that will remain the case.  So... if you are one of those people and you would like to help please get in touch.

I've spent some thought on possibly also making video recordings of the stuff I've developed for training so far.  I've got a volunteer for helping me with that... I just have to find the time to actually invest in it.  So perhaps that will be coming sometime in February since this and next month will be kind of frantic for me.

Finally, Merry Christmas (to anyone who celebrates).

Serious foam fighters

If you are reading this blog to become a better fighter and you have facebook... then you should join this group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/248802771912296/.  Lots of good random theory on stuff.  Going to do a few quick posts in response to questions that were on there where I didn't feel like writing it into a comment.

Updates Friday / Happy Thanksgiving

I have a few things to write, but was otherwise distracted by thanksgiving today.  I'll post updates tomorrow.  In the meantime, happy thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates the holiday.

Tags

I'm going to start adding tags to entries (and I've started to re-tag old things).

Here are the tags I'm going to use so far:

[Get better]
solo - how to improve as a fighter when fighting by yourself
fieldwork - how to either move around on a field or how to fight better with teammates

[Independently irrelevant]
meta - big picture ideas that I think are important but won't necessarily help you improve
fundamentals - technical definitions of things so that I can talk about them in future without having
to re-explain my terminology

[Structure/Formatting]
updates - something about the blog or it's structure.

If it isn't tagged with anything it's either my own random opinion about things or ruminations on the meta of the sport as a whole.  Since those things are often harder to distinguish I'm just going to leave them untagged.

Updates weekly

I've decided that in an effort to make this into a real thing I'm going to try and make myself post on a schedule so that I guarantee at least one post a week.  I'll make that Thursday's going forward.  Today however I'm suffering from being sick so I'll hold off on posting the thing that's in my head until tomorrow when at least theoretically I'll be feeling better.

Introduction / Qualifications

Someone will inevitably find their way here who has no idea who I am.

So, hi, I'm Rift.  I'm a Belegrim that's been at it for 12 years now.  Started fighting back in fall 2003 out in Iowa as part of a now dead realm which was then called Chamonix which was part of the Grinnell College campus.

When I started, I was pretty fucking terrible.  Over the course of the 4 years I spent there though most of the really bad habits got beaten out of me, like blocking with my face or blocking polearms down (right into the nuts).

I've fought a little bit of everything.  While I tend to main florentine and sword and board, simply because I tend to be able to keep that gear alive the longest there isn't a weapon set I'm not at least proficient in.  There are even some weapon sets that aren't normally things that, having simply used them enough, I'm alright with, like dual javelin or spear and blue.

I've come a long way since when I first started and I've learned a lot in the interim.  I made a blog to unload my thoughts so that some of those 12 years of learning can be transmitted to you, dear reader, in the hopes that you don't have to make all the mistakes that I have made in getting to be the fighter I am now.

This is just my own 2 cents about whatever random bit of theory was floating through my head.  I am by no means perfect.  I'm still human, I still make plenty of mistakes but hopefully now they're better ones.  In the end it's up to you to sort out which way is up and use this information in whichever way is best for you.  As always read with a critical mind and take everything with a grain of salt.  What has worked for me over the years may not work for you after all.

That having been said, if you read something and think I'm attacking another fighter... take a moment to reconsider.  While I think that using myself and other high profile fighters as good examples for styles of fighting or ways of doing things is useful it's not with the intention of trying to insult or take someone down a notch if I happen to disagree with some way they do some thing.  

I'm sure that if I start poking this blog will generate heat, so if you find yourselves in the comments... at least try to be civil to me, and to each other, as part of a foam sword fighting sport we're all a certain kind of family.

....alright.  Enough rambling.  Onward.