This week’s session finished with our first attempt at a Saviolo flow drill that didn’t always,er, flow.
Intended to bed in the techniques from Saviolo’s rapier/sidesword treatise, the continuous flow of counters proved tricky to keep up. In this case, instead of keeping moving at a counter-attacking measure, everyone kept closing in to grappling range (after Fiore), which isn’t necessarily wrong, just not the exercise we aimed for.
Saviolo teaches a distinctive style, apart from his contemporaries, in which off-hand blocks play a major part. We continue next week.