Free play with steel

Aside from the expected scrapes and bruises, bouting was exceedingly fun. I was a bit gun shy at first, so one of my main goals is to keep pushing forward.. or at least not retreat so much. It's a strange phenomenon, where once I found myself in a bouting situation, I was either thinking too much (and getting hit in the rather large tempos I was providing), or not thinking at all, and reacting with ineffective "oh sh!t" parries. Here are some mental notes I took away from the experience:

• Acquire a gambeson. While the fear of pain is good to help self-correct against "suicide attacks" or other stupid actions, too much pain/fear of pain will cause me to hesitate too much, and lose that forward movement.

• According to Mike: "When in doubt, wind to Ochs."

• Moving in is good, but being able to get out again before I get thrown onto the ground is good too.

I do see the value in free play, and how it teaches in a very different way than the highly-controlled intensity drills. However, I think what would be very valuable (and I seem to recall us—or at least the more advanced students—doing this at some point) would be a healthy medium: intensity drills wherein the agent has a limited variety of attacks to use (say, 2 or 3), and the patient must react appropriately.