Tonight at our Swindon Chapter, students continued looking at the various attacks and counters from Guardia di testa as per Manciolino. Despite some complex counters, students showed a good degree of insight and analysis. Brilliant work by all.
Our Oxford students had their own BBQ / Cutting party this weekend with longswords being taken to milk bottles. A lot of fun was had by all. Thanks to Kristian for being a BBQ master and Mick and Sarah for hosting.
Students from our Godalming chapter as well as some from other chapters gathered for an afternoon of cutting things with swords. Whilst we don’t use sharps in our training for obvious safety reasons, it’s a useful part of our training to get the experience of cutting at inanimate objects to see just how good our blade alignment really is. And so sideswords, sickles, spears and more were set to task against objects such as milk bottles, fruit, clay and even a birthday cake. A lot of fun was had by all.
Tonight at our Oxford Chapter, students got to learn about fighting with sword & cape and sword & lantern – Rapiers in the Dark!
It was a fun and interesting lesson to teach and the students also seemed happy.
Tonight at our Swindon Chapter, we introduced our students to Meyer’s Square, for the intention of improving their sword work and providing conditioning for good cuts.
We also started looking at the attacks and corresponding counters from Guardia Di Testa. Great level of discussion and analysis by all students.
A thoroughly sweaty and hard working session in Godalming tonight as we continued the Sword and dagger course and began the longsword block.
Our beginner stream continued as well: look out for our next enrollment coming soon for September intake.
Our Oxford students were in fighting force today, e fighting at the Midsummer Fight’s Dream competition in Oxford (organised by our friends from Oxford Sword and Staff Club).
Everybody did brilliantly with four students attending and all of them getting out to eliminations – and even one bronze match. We’re all extremely proud of them.
Godalming head instructor, Fran Lacuata was at Imperial College London today to give a HEMA taster lesson to a bunch of students.
They were introduced to sabre, sidesword and spadone and were , in Fran’s words. “all absolute champs!”
It was the end of our beginners course tonight, and we celebrate by bringing the infamous Haribo League to Swindon. Students each selected an envelope at random containing a joker and a number of cut, parry and counter cards. Students could play these across a number of rounds testing their knowledge and skill. The cards altered the points scoring, ranging from bonuses, as a method to detriment other players’ scores, and as a defence against cards played against them. A lot of fun was had and certainly a lot of people owe others “payback”. Congrats to Chris, who walked away the ultimate winner!
Students also got to see a real thousand year old Viking sword that was brought in!
