Ellen Kuhfeld wrote:I wasn't terrible with a sword, but I never could get the hang of a shield. Perhaps I should have tried an early kite shield. As it was - I won one fight, decided "okay, I've done that" and gave away the armor. It wasn't for me. I am a one-thing-at-a-time person, and operating both sword and shield at the same time was beyond me.
Well then, one more reason to try something singular but twohanded instead!
And well, "sword and shield" did die out in favour of twohanded or sword and dagger, which then in turn ended up morphing into lighter fencing swords...
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Watching this lets you *feel* what *the sword is extension of one's body* means.
Could be used in battle as intimidation tactic.
Yup, getting that feel down solid is why you "play around" like that. I do the same with a bo staff, and have done it with guandao and naginata. You don't really notice it the first 50, maybe 100 or even 200 times you do it for a while, but then at some point you realise you're doing everything at 2-3 times the speed you started out at, and missing something 1/10th as often.
That's when you know it works.
And yeah, it CAN be used for actual fighting, it's just not very good for it most of the time, but sometimes, especially if opponent(s) is inferior enough in skill(and either can tell by how much better you're handling the sword, or is bad enough that they can't tell that it's more showmanship than anything else), it can be very intimidating for sure.