PacMac Review

As usual, PacMac this year was awesome!

For the Northwest Fencing Academy's demo we did our dagger flow drill - essentially playing from 1st Master, 3rd Master and 9th Master. What is great is that two of the previous classes did most of our work for us! They dealt with a straight or round punch by either blocking to the inside (1st Master) or from the outside (3rd Master). We had the usual questions about disarms ("Wait!- are you grabbing the blade of the knife? Won't you cut yourself?") and there were some technique issues with people who used their own knife trainers which were too floppy for proper disarms, etc. Afterwards there were lots of comments about how cool our demo was, so I'd say mission accomplished!

It is always exciting to work with practitioners of other arts and realize that a lot of what we do is similar to a lot of what they do (we're dealing with the same basic tool -the human body- after all). I had a lot of fun and learned a lot as well. Like the fact that:

Joint locks aimed at the thumbs + 2 year old tendon injury to thumb = Pain. Lots of pain.