The members of of our Godalming salle were treated to a special guest tonight in the form of Tristan Zukowski, a HEMA longsword instructor from New York, who is over to run a seminar at the weekend.
In the single rapier group students worked on finding the sword and its application to the lunge. The sword & buckler group continued their work on tempe in what was described as a “sweaty fighty session”.
It was the start of a couple of new training streams in Reading on Monday night. Stewart took the rapier group through the basics of Giganti single rapier, whilst Lorcan lead the bolognese stream through some Manciolino counter attacks.
Meanwhile the beginners worked with Adrian and Matt on bringing various elements together with some drills cutting to a live target.
With tournament season soon upon us, the School of the Sword has increased the regularity of our sparring sessions. They’re a great chance to practise what we’ve been learning in our classes, re-familiarise ourselves with weapons we’ve maybe not been training with recently, as well as try out various tournament scenarios.
There was a good turnout on Sunday with a good mix of weapons and a lot of really useful feedback shared between fencers. As always, we ended the session with a trip to the local pub.
Are you interested in what we do but not sure if historical fencing is for you? If so, then you’ll want to keep Sunday 12th June free, as The School of the Sword is having a FREE Have-A-Go Day!
Drop in to Broadwater school between 10am and 12noon for a glimpse of our weekly training in historical fencing. Join in and have a go for yourself; learn some basic swordfighting, hold steel weapons, see the sources we use to train Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA). Or just have a chat and ask us anything you like.
“I wasn’t very fit or active and wasn’t sure it would be my kind of thing… How wrong could I have been! Four years later and sword fighting has given me the motivation to improve my fitness and strength as well as being a mentally stimulating activity. I am forever grateful to the friend who dragged me along to that first session!”
– Lizzie, Instructor at The School of the Sword“I enjoy the history of it, the people involved and the fitness. Best workout I have ever had.”
– Leslie“Sword fighting has given me confidence, power and the pursuit of post-apocalyptic skills! But truly the confidence one gains by fighting people bigger and stronger than you is amazing. You feel like nothing is impossible”
– Callie“I do this to keep my body healthy while challenging my mind. I love how it’s an entire chess game played in a matter of seconds.”
– Amy
This is open to anyone 18 and over (15 and over with an attending guardian). People of all ages, sexes and fitness levels train with us at our classes.
With two classes a week as well as regular sparring sessions and seminars, you are hard pushed to find a day when something isn’t going on in the School of the Sword. However, for a number of our students, they decided that it wasn’t enough and organised a fitness session in a local park.
They battled against the midges to work on multiple areas of their training and fitness. They started with some low intensity sparring to warm up, before working on form. The second half of the session was filled with agility, footwork, explosive movement and conditioning drills, ending with some strength exercises.
It was the start of some new training blocks on Wednesday night with a couple of students from our Reading Salle deciding to come and join us.
Fran took the sword & buckler class looking at tempe, whilst Lizzie started a block on single rapier foundations. Pim worked with the beginners who are working toward their safety test.
There was a lot of energy and hard work in all our training streams.
Our Godalming salle saw another of our candidati pass their safety test on Wednesday night.
In order to pass the safety test students must demonstrate control, efficacy and knowledge of the cuts and guards of bolognese swordplay.
Congratulations to Charlie who rises to the rank of Studente and will now be able to progress to taking part in many of our other training streams as well as full sparring.
Our events team has been incredibly busy of late. Aside from our two training classes a week, we’re increasing the number of sparring sessions and seminars for our members.
However, we’ve got a number of events coming up that will be open to wider than just school members!
The first of these will be the Grappling Workshop on the afternoon of the 12th June 2016 at our Godalming (and International Rapier Seminar) venue. Peter Smallridge will be joining us for a 2 hour grappling workshop after which we’ll have 3 hours of sparring.
We’re taking registrations and payment for this event through our attendance system and booking is now open to members of other HEMA schools to come and join us! It would be great to see you.
For further details and booking:
https://manager.dojoexpert.com/student/register.aspx?g=f921d074-ae46-443f-aa86-762b854da87b&j=en-GB
It was the final lessons in the current teaching blocks on Wednesday evening in Godalming. Our senior students will be starting new streams next week. In Lizzie’s Montante group, students put together everything they’ve learned over the past few weeks to do some half-speed sparring. Meanwhile, in Pim’s rapier & dagger stream, he worked on giving some individual feedback whilst the rest of the students played with a variety of weapon combinations. Fran worked on getting the beginners group ready for their safety tests.
We were also joined by Jessica who is visiting the country from Holland, where she studies HEMA
Always a leader in HEMA sartorial fashion*, the School of the Sword have declared cloaks back in fashion as they recently took delivery of their new school cloaks ahead of a future training block on rapier & cloak. There is no truth to the rumour that one SOTS member and champion fencer wore his whilst going to the cash machine on his way to a recent sparring day!
*Well not really, unless you count wearing black
