The School of the Sword held a special rapier and dagger seminar in Godalming on Saturday with founding instructor Phil Marshall.
Phil took students through an afternoon filled with a number of drills and tactics designed to improve their fencing.
The School of the Sword was in Romania when instructors Piermarco Terminiello and Adrian Faulkner attended Optimus – Bucharest HEMA Open 2017.
This new HEMA event, organised by HEMA – Societas Milites Getae, was held in the ground of a Romanian Palace and saw our instructors not only give a couple of seminars on the use of the sidesword & rapier, but also help judge the longsword competition.
With an amazing location, good attendance from across Europe, great weather and excellent organisation this proved to be an event to be remembered and we’d like to thank both organisers and participants for making us feel so royally welcome.
The School of the Sword was proud to host Luke Ireland of The Exiles for a one day seminar on the Iberian montante on Saturday.
The aim was to provide an introduction to Dom Diogo Gomes de Figueiredo’s Memorial Da Prattica do Montante. Over the course of the day, students worked on many of the simple rules included in Figueiredo’s treatise, as well as expanding upon their use beyond the confines of the rules.
It was a great day and everyone really enjoyed having Luke instruct us.
Students from both our Godalming and Reading salles gathered on Sunday for a special training seminar with School of the Sword senior instructor and former Swordfish champion, Phil Marshall. Phil looked at single rapier and covered a number of fundamentals and micro improvements that benefited both students new to the weapon and those more experienced. Everyone agreed it was a hugely beneficial day that will improve their use of the weapon.
Swordfish is one of the premiere tournaments in the HEMA competition and is one that historically, the School of the Sword has done very well at.
This year we are sending eight of our students to Sweden for Swordfish, many for their first time. On Sunday they gathered for a pre-tournament bootcamp. The event was attended by senior instructor Phil Marshall and school founder Caroline Stewart who offered constructive advice and micro adjustments aimed at helping our team.
One of the advantages of training with The School of the Sword is that we are large enough for it to be economically viable for us to fly in world-class instructors for day-long seminars.
You’ve probably seen Ilkka Hartikainen’s incredible videos on Marozzo.com and we were very pleased when he agreed to come to the UK to teach our students some Bolognese single sidesword. Knowing how popular this seminar would be we opened up a limited number of spaces to people from other schools, only for the event to fill incredibly quickly.
The day was a massive success. Starting with some warm up exercises and moving into footwork, Ilkka had the students building up drills into multiple intention attacks. Students came away buzzing and excited to put what they had learnt into use.
Training forms a very large part of the School of the Sword. With multiple streams of training at two locations, this involves an ever growing number of instructors.
To ensure a consistent level of training, the senior instructors of School of the Sword ran the first of their Instructor seminars covering such things as health and safety, school curriculum, lesson planning and drill design. Those who attended found it incredibly useful and came away feeling better prepared for upcoming teaching blocks.
We’re pleased to announce that booking is now live for the Ilkka Hartikainen Seminar – On the Bolognese Single Sidesword.
Saturday 27th August 11am-5pm, Godalming.
Price: £25
The School of the Sword is proud to announce this one day seminar, delivered by Ilkka on the Bolognese single sidesword, drawn from several sources with a particular focus on the Anonimo Bolognese. Ilkka is recognised as a world-leading exponent of Bolognese fencing, and will be presenting his work for the first time ever in the UK.
This event is open to students from HEMA schools other than the School of the Sword,
Ilkka Hartikainen began studying historical European martial arts in 2001 and discovered the rich early renaissance fencing tradition of Bologna in 2007. The Bolognese sidesword soon became his main focus and since 2010 he has taught regular classes in Helsinki, where he is the head instructor at the Espoo Association for Historical Fencing. Every year Ilkka travels around the world to speak and teach on 16th century Italian martial arts.
Currently multiple groups in Finland follow Ilkka’s method and he is working together with other enthusiasts of Bolognese tradition to bring the style back to life. Recently he has concentrated on creating an accessible core system for the sidesword based on the works of Achille Marozzo, Giovanni dall’Agocchie and the Anonimo Bolognese. From here his focus will shift to the other weapons and disciplines in the texts, looking at the tradition as a unified, complete martial art. Ilkka is the founder of Marozzo.com, a website project dedicated to sharing information on Bolognese fencing, and works as a user interface specialist when not training or teaching swordsmanship.
To book and pay (via Paypal) please visit:
BOOKING NOW FULL
Places are limited so act fast as this is expected to sell out quickly!
The School of the Sword played host to a special seminar on grappling this past Sunday. Guest instructor, Peter Smallridge, gave members from School of the Sword and other surrounding HEMA schools a quick introduction to the basics of grappling.
After a hot, sweaty session, we broke into free sparring for the rest of the afternoon.
Obviously, for practical reasons, we don’t fight with sharpened blades. The bladesmiths that we use are renowned for making their weapons feel and handle as close to the real thing as to be almost indistinguishable. However, there really is no better way to test your cutting than by cutting with a sharp.
On Sunday a number of our students attended a seminar hosted by our good friends at Waterloo Sparring Group. The Cutting Clinic was lead by Tristan Zukowski, a HEMA longsword instructor from New York who had students from a number of local schools testing their cutting against tatami mats.
Thanks to WSG for a great event!
