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robyngraves (robyngraves) wrote in utr_logs,

"No problem." She smiled underneath the hood, but it should show in her eyes. This is what she loves doing, and she's excited to share it with him. More emotions she doesn't normally feel.

"Okay. So we'll start out exactly the way I start everybody out. What the longsword class is based off of is an Italian master from the 1400's named Fiore, and his book, translated as 'The Flower of Battle.'" She kept this part of the lecture to a minimum, knowing full well Skwisgaar would probably get bored real fast if she started getting into the details of the manuscript. "Basically he taught everybody how to fight with the longsword, and his techniques were so perfect that nobody's been able to improve on them. There are a certain number of 'guards' from which you can move your sword efficiently to defend yourself." She got into the correct stance and demonstrated, moving her sword from two different guards, telling him that the first, where her sword was held over her right shoulder, was called "guard of the woman," and that the second, where she swung it over her shoulder and down to her left side, hands near her hips, was called "boar's tooth." "Each strike of the sword is a movement from one guard to the other. So what I'm going to do today is just show you the footwork first- I'll start you off in one guard, get used to moving back and forth in that guard and in that stance. It's going to burn, a lot, in your arms and legs. After that, if you're up to it, I'll show you the different guards and we'll work on form. Eventually you'll be doing drills, memorizing different combinations of guards."

There, that was fairly simple. She checked his stance, found it to need some work. "Legs shoulder-width apart please, move your left foot back a bit, angle it like this," she turned her back to him and mimicked the stance, then turned back around to make sure he got it. "And knees slightly bent, back straight." Now the sword. She positioned the sword loosely in front of him, point angled downwards, and moved his fingers in minor adjustment. "You need your pinky this way to give yourself better control when you swing." It felt really wrong correcting Skwisgaar, but she couldn't hesitate to do it, otherwise he'd never learn this right.