Take up your stick and assume your guard.
Stroke a hard Number 1.
Your stick hand should travel either to your far hip, or to your oblique, just below your far elbow.
What to do now?
The rising diagonal stroke is not part of stick fighting fundamentals, at least not as a blow.
The rising backhand stroke from the far hip is theoretically effective with a long blade.
This stroke is also safer than the rising forehand, which risks the thumb to a plunging smash, and will stress the weak thumb-side of the risk if it scores.
However, if one tries the rising backhand from the far hip against the bag you will find, that if kept on a diagonal path, it will merely graze and deflect, as it is a round stick and not a bade. The only way to get some bite into the stroke is to take it lateral across the body, which means you have committed the cardinal sin of leaving your head unprotected by your stick for two full beats.
The rising diagonal stroke from the far hip has one overt function for the stick-fighter, as a beat to knock away his weapon, threaten his hand, and perhaps make him blink or worry for his chin.
More importantly is the covert function of the rising, diagonal backhand, as a means to get to the high line and smash his head or shoulder.
Stroke with a hard Number 1 to the hip.
Stroke back up with the rising backhand beat at his countering stick or stick hand.
As he reacts to this, step off obliquely in either direction, stop that stick when your hand is higher than his shoulder and the tip is higher than his head, and bring it down in a smash or slash to the side of the head, neck, collarbone area.
Now, return to your guard and execute a rising beat by turning your stick in and doing an upward looping back hand at his face—which he will avoid if he is any kind of fighter—and then arresting your rising stick above his face and ripping downward and crossways into his face.
Try this with various steps and shifts, against the bag, in the mirror, and with a sparring partner. This is the only blow that I consistently score on younger, faster fighters that are at my level. If you are a forehand-heavy fighter, you must have the rising backhand beat in your defensive arsenal, where it will be available as a feint to setup your bread and butter stroke.
