edit: especially when you consider the reasons why brad forced it on her instead of just making her learn the armstrong style and what buddy needed to go through in order to have that skillset

"just run at your opponent in a straight line and thrust really, really hard" says brad, then buddy runs at her opponent in a straight line and thrusts really, really hard, then she misses and now she's perfectly open for a counterattack

actually, that wording's too generous, because it implies buddy is *only* vulnerable if she misses rather than all the way throughout the process

if you're fighting on unstable ground or someone's just scattered shit all over the surface, i'd assume the chances of slipping and falling on to the same longass blade you're holding in your hands is fairly high

even if buddy lands, what is she going to do if it works *too* well and the blade just gets jammed in jimmy's chest in the middle of a fight and jimmy's friends are still there to kick the shit out of her while she's busy trying to free her blade? that signature move of hers is completely choreographed and incredibly predictable once you get the hang of it

so that leaves surprise attacks as the only option (practically any fighting style works when you have the surprise advantage, so not impressive), *or* buddy could use it as a counter instead of a bloody opener, because if the only thing you've got going for yourself combat-wise is your momentum, you're begging to have that same momentum turned against you, that's the basics of anime kung fu

but i guess that's what happens if you get a bare-handed ex-martial artist teacher to "train" you in the art of using weapons, and by "train" i mean "locked into repeated death matches inside a basement"

i'll give buddy credit for being able to run and leap around unhindered by a blade that's straight-up taller than her like a discount guts, that takes the kind of fitness you won't expect a young teenager to have, so maybe brad did give buddy some actual conditioning