Interesting thrusting excercise.

[Corey Roberts]

Recently i've been doing this thrusting excercise which I've come to call "the 20 foot thrust" basically I stand roughly 20 feet away from my thrusting target in either Pflug or Ochs. Then, I take an explosive springing step (lead false forward rear foot against lead foot and spring from the back foot) followed immediately by a passing step and a lunge to strike the target all in one continuous movement, the goal being to make this as explosive and fast as possible. I've found that I can cross roughly 20 feet of space in pretty close to a second. What do you all think of this excercise. I thought it was a good one for just developing the ability to suddenly and explosively cros a relatively large distance and deliver a powerful thrust as quickly as possible, any comments?

[Jake_Norwood]

We've done something very similar to that for a few years now (ballestro?) where you gather the feet, spring out with a "cock steppe", then another cocking step, ending in a lunge. The same foot stays forward the entire time. Works great with single-handed weapons in particular, and the thrust that comes from it is, IME, wicked-accurate.

I'll play with your version this weekend. Maybe it will work better for two-handers than mine does.

Jake

[Mike Cartier]

We've done something very similar to that for a few years now (ballestro?) where you gather the feet, spring out with a "cock steppe", then another cocking step, ending in a lunge. The same foot stays forward the entire time. Works great with single-handed weapons in particular, and the thrust that comes from it is, IME, wicked-accurate.

I'll play with your version this weekend. Maybe it will work better for two-handers than mine does.

Jake

We sometimes do longsword sparring with only Thrusts as valid attacks, this helps to get us in Thrusting mode with the longsword.

I personally like to use all 5 of Meyer's thrusting guards and transition through them using both sides of the body and plenty of 360 footwork back and forth.

[Byron Doyle]

As you study thrusting like this you'll realize why an experienced knife/dagger fighter will say that the safest distance to stand from a person you think may have a knife is around 30 feet. That said, I would suggest that you try it with dagger/knife as well. It's lots of fun, especially if you try to close the same distance with short footwork in a comparable time. When you go back to longsword you'll be a lot faster. It's something I do in my copious free time (haha) now that I'm home away from school and the study group in Provo, always good for a workout.