It was the final week of our 6 week beginners’ course this week who’ve made such excellent progress since they started.
Lorcan continued with his Bolognese stream on counter attacks and Stewart ran his second week of the basics of Giganti Rapier.
Our regular Sunday sparring got swapped to a Saturday this week due to another school’s event on Sunday. Students from both our Godalming and Reading Salles came together to spar and practise for upcoming competitions and tournaments.
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.
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.
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
Students gathered in Reading on Monday night for three streams of training. Fran and Adrian took the beginner’s through Marozzo’s first play for sword and buckler, Stewart finished off his teaching block on Marozzo sword & dagger and Matt completed his block of teaching on Manciolino sword & buckler.
It’s bank holiday next week so we won’t be training, but when we come back the following week, our post safety test students will have a choice of two new blocks of teaching.
The International Rapier Seminar might only have been last week but on Sunday afternoon a number of our students came together to engage in some free-sparring / tournament practise.
There was a lot of intense practise before a well-earned refreshment break at the local pub.
Less than 24 hours after the end of the International Rapier Seminar our students were back training at Reading on Monday.
The senior students decided to use the session to share knowledge with each other that they gained from attending various workshops over the weekend. The beginners, meanwhile, progressed onto stepping whilst cutting to a target.
