Had a semi-serious challenge happen this week.  I lost – badly.

Watching the fight, and as Randy pointed out, I was holding back.  Significantly.

Personally, I’ve realised I have major issues in the mental department for sparring / duels.  Especially when it comes to sparring with swords.  Basically, they break down to:

1) Inability to take sword-fighting seriously.  It’s a general thing, but it really shows when sparring in tournaments.  I don’t necessarily take the entire tournament thing seriously, so I don’t fight to win or go in thinking ‘I will win’.

2) Inability to warm-up fast.  I really, really need to work on that – I warm up to fights real slow -it generally takes at least 4 to 5 passes before I’m ready to fight, often 4 to 5 minutes of pre-sparring at full speed with a good opponent before I feel ‘ready’ to fight.  I cool down from that mental mode fast too.

3) Not caring – or caring too much.  I don’t have a lot of in-between gears, so I’m deathly afraid of making this a ‘serious’ sport – because then I’ll want to take it seriously.  It’s better (or so I tell myself) to not care…

Something for me to think about and figure out.  It’s definitely something I have to work on if I ever want to get really good at this sport.