Our Oxford students met up again today for their regular weekend sparring. These sessions give students the chance to get in extra practice, as well as work to incorporate new techniques they’ve learned in class.
Students at Godalming got to enjoy the start of a new stream tonight, looking at sword and dagger. They looked at the principles of dall’Agocchie – matching the guards between the weapons; parrying with the True Edge of the dagger on the outside, and with the flats or true edge to the inside.
Our Swindon students had to pull all the skills they’ve learned over the past 8 weeks together tonight, as we looked at counters. After starting with a revision on thrusts to the mask, students had to mask up and counter against a thrust made against them. Despite the complexity of the drill, students performed brilliantly.
It was the start of new streams in Reading tonight. Josh and Simon took students through some single rapier, whilst Dan took his students through some single sidesword, looking at Dall’agocchie.
They also held an equipment bring and buy sale.
It was a special night in Godalming tonight, as the school saw two students rise to the rank of Laureando.
Laureando is the second exam students at the School can take after their initial safety test (which makes sure they are safe to spar). The laureando typically after 200 hours of study and some experience of teaching others.
April and John untook a number of bouts with a variety of weapons ending in an exchange against a weapon they hadn’t encountered before. They had each submitted a written piece prior to tonight.
Congrats to both. It’s taken a lot of hard work but is well deserved.
Our Swindon students got to learn about thrusts on Wednesday with a number of drills on footwork and body mechanics. It was satisfying to see and hear the reaction when the thrust was properly executed. We finished off the evening with some supervised boffer exchanges.
Sunday saw our Oxford students gather for a bit out outdoor freeplay. These sessions are always helpful. There’s only so much time during a lesson to learn a new technique and often the best way to practise it is to incorporate it into sparring.
