Hey Joseph,
You may find the OFF-ROAD course useful. Particularly chapter 4 rigging the springs and chapter 5 which covers just about everything else including rigging suspension and ground detection.
The advice you ask on workflow and best practices will get a boost from Wayne in the course for sure, but they are things you will develop over time.
I highly recommend OFF-ROAD, but you will need to adapt it to your needs.
Have you done the Animation Bootcamp? Everything is like a bouncing ball. Think bouncing ball with squash and stretch for the blade.
The blade could just be a section of a bouncing ball, right? Do you need to use bendy bones?
If you haven’t done either course, go for the bootcamp first.
If you still require help after watching these, try jumping on the CG Cookie Discord. The community over there is awesome, as it is here, but the facility to screen share and livestream is a great help to get troubleshooting advice and tips.
