I participatedin the 2018 Best of the Best tournament today. With 14 competitors, it was the largest tournament to date. My personal performance was erratic. I found myself too often falling back on old (bad) habbits, thinking too much, not applying the strategies I have been working out over the past several weeks. Over all, I had compliments on my quality of form and technique, but I ranked only middling, with both my former students Kaiden Sal and Steven doing better than I (which is both good and bad).
I did finally have my new steel helm, though unfortunately this was its inaugural debute,and I had some issues with the chain skirt binding on my neck and/or body armor and the visor binding on the bevor. However, I barely felt the head strikes, the padding work well, as did the four point harness mostly, though I may need to adjust the webbing toward the back of the head to make certain the helmet doesn't fall forward quite so much (which was contributing to the binding on the bevor). I also want to get some help bending the chin of the visor out further as I was only able to make minor improvement, and that would help with the binding, too. Head Kaiden Gad pointed out that I still need metal elbow and knee cops, so I can make that a goal for next year.