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.
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!
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.
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.
This week, our Swindon students were rewarded for getting to the end of the form they have been learning by holding a Boffer King of the Hill tournament. Some great progress by everyone in just six weeks.
To finish their latest block of training tonight, Godalming students had a mini rapier tournament in the hall, some supervised exchanges in Sword and buckler in the studio, and some single sword Melee in the field.
Week 5 of our beginner’s course at Swindon and students are making excellent progress. We focused on improving the quality of our cuts, working around a couple of injuries students had. It was great to see everyone actively jumping in to help others with learning the form. As a reward, the students all got a chance to hit a live target when the instructor geared up and they got to hit him (which they all seemed to relish for some reason!)
Eight members attended FightCamp Skirmish at Ripley in Surrey, this weekend. It was very hot but I think we all had fun and learned new things. It is always good to meet up with fencers from other clubs, two guys even came from Sweden just for the event.
Godalming Senior Instructor, Fran Lacuata, also taught a class on Bolognese Sword & Buckler
Week 4 of our beginner’s course and this week the students were starting to pull everything from previous weeks together. Despite the hot weather the hall was thankfully cool as we went through a number of drills to step while cutting as well as learn the next part of the form.
Our Oxford student’s braved the heat today to get in some much appreciated sparring practise.
Sparring sessions give students the chance to practise techniques they have learnt in class and work on incorporating them into their personal arsenal of moves, tricks and tactics.
