1) A sword blade is both a lever and a ramp – strong leverage but a bad ramp will quickly turn into weak leverage.

2) If your opponent parries you weakly, stay strong and hit them. If they parry you strongly, yield to their parry and either do a conclusion or hit them with a stramazzone.

3) There are at least three strengths one blade can have against another: using a part of your blade closer to your hilt against a part of their blade closer to the tip (Destreza authors called this “greater degrees of strength”); from above (in Aristotelian terms: natural motion against violent motion), that is to say, pushing down while they are pushing up; and using the true edge instead of the flats or the false edge.