If You Build it, They Will Come or The New Adventures of Old Agrippa

When I started with my Agrippa rapier project, I was concerned that I would have to do this entirely on my own.

For one thing, no one at practice wanted to drill, and my only partner in crime (namely Alric) has not had much of a chance to show up at our particular practice lately.

Now, to be fair my sweetie, ballistabob, had been very supportive. However, having a busy practice like ours has ensured that most of his non-sparring time has been spent teaching other folks (as it should be), and not drilling and practicing with me.

Add to that the fact that winter was not kind to us in the health department (bronchitis, etc), and there you go. Not a very pretty picture.

To make a long story short, I ended up spending many hours doing solo drills in a corner for weeks at a time while the rest of the practice gave me puzzled looks. Why wasn't I sparring? And why the heck was I wasting my time in this silliness?

Worse, whenever I tried to show anyone anything about the system, folks sort of politely declined -- often with phrases like "That doesn't make any sense."

That was then.

This is now.

As I kept going at it, and perfecting the first two drills and applying them to my sparring, folks started to ask me "What the heck are you doing and how did you land that shot?"

"Okay," I told them. "Do you want to know how this is done?"

Little by little I have been teaching them these basic little moves, one fighter at a time.

And little by little some enthusiasm has been creeping in. In fact, last night I had the chance to work with almost every fighter that showed up.

Some of them really want to learn more and follow through.

I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am.

This is a great motivation for me to keep decoding the ins and outs of the Agrippa technique. The more I learn, the more I can teach. The more I can teach, the better I can understand the system and eventually, the quality of our collective fighting will go up. Much higher up.

Or at least, that is the plan.

So yes, maybe my dream of having an Agrippa core of fighters at our practice is not as farfetched as I once thought.

Apparently, there is a Santa Claus.

And he likes swords...