The full-size bat should be gripped with one hand, choked up to the point where enough of the tail of the bat extends for an effective counterbalance, but not so far as it would cause you to hit yourself with the butt when slashing before the body.
Grip strong with the bottom three fingers and light with the forefinger and thumb.
Your rest posture should be a shoulder load [belly of bat on shoulder] or hip guard [butt of bat couched against your flank].
Practice forward and reverse figure eights for conditioning.
Practice high to low diagonal redondos, slashing first at the face, then rolling the wrist when it breaks and pull a pass slash towards his torso, hand or knee.
Practice slashing hard to your hip with a forehand, then bouncing the neck of the bat off your hip for a rising back hand as you step away with your rear foot. When the bat reaches the top of the arc, then pull it down in a “t” loop.
Always keep you empty hand high.
When stroking to your mid power point at your elbow try pinning your empty hand elbow with the neck of the bat and then use a wing block to assist the back hand stroke.
When stroking to the empty hand shoulder, catch your bat-hand wrist in the checking hand and use it to assist a back hand thrust with the bat, to a vertical downward back hand, looping back up two rest wrist to wrist [both wrists under your chin, empty hand higher for a check] for a wing-block assist.
When throwing power back hands always bring the bat to shoulder load.
Experiment with bringing the backhand to an extreme shoulder load, where the bat-hand and neck rest on the bat-hand shoulder and the head of the bat is around your lower back, as you deploy the checking hand. The follow up forehand should be synchronized with a shift of either leg, depending whether offense or defense is called for.
On the bag, especially, practice a roof block with the bat to a chopping forehand.
Don’t fan the bag with the full-size bat unless you have gorilla strength.
On the bag try for low pass slashes to a high Redondo, descending diagonally towards the foe’s shoulder, to a hip bounce back hand beat.
Every single stroke of the bat should bring position improvement via a step, shift, shuffle or lunge.
Brian Jewell's Latest Blog Post
Twerps, Goons and Meatshields: The Basics of Full Contact Stick-Fighting
link › jameslafond.blogspot.com
"Apocalypse" is my cue to raise the "fire tornadoes" affecting northern California. Has anyone seen the pyrocumulus clouds and the strangeness of this all, fire fighters included?
youtube.com/watch?v=rBUZpE-8B64