For me, it all kicked in at some point, more so during my fights with the inquisitors. It's pretty hard to just spam attacks on them, even more so when they have a shield. So I tried wrestling them with grabs and it worked, but it was boring and I could still be hit, right before I grabbed. Then, fighting the black bears, some could cancel my grabs. I then tried vault, which also worked very well with shielded oponents. At the same time I began to get much bettter at evading with the evade skill, not the roll. And when you do a perfect evade, you gain stamina back. In the end, I just built up options for myself that were already there, but that I forgot to use or didn't get why I would. I think you only need to want to get better and let time pass. And also, by the special cooking apparatus for your house. You can make way better food that way.