learn to fight with a sword

My current life isn’t going to give much room for further swordwork for a while. Looking back though, I’d consider this goal completed though. I’m an adequate fighter with a Longsword, know a few skills with a Rapier, and have had the honour of learning from and fighting some of BC’s finest swordsmen. Many thanks to Fecht Club (Shane & Ben), Academy Duello’s tournaments (SO many skilled, gracious and knowledgeable fighters there willing to help, teach and share their passion for the craft.

Some day I hope to work on my Spanish Rapier and Longsword more, but for now I’ll put down my blade and bring my focus to other goals.

Today we worked exclusively with Mortuary sword and no Buckler. We developed a good drill for practicing Silver’s 6 basic attacks and defenses for the open fight, and did them for a while.

We then bouted for the remainder of the time, still sans Buckler. A very different feel, and it felt like our defenses were all getting better.

At one point I realized that a major weakness of mine was failing to return to the default stance in open fight, and with that fixed, my sequences sped up a little bit – at least until I tired out.

I also experimented with the defenses from a lowered sword position (I enjoy Alber in the Lichtenauer techniques), and had some successes.

I believe next week we’re back to Longsword, which should be interesting!

Last time we had fun bouting around with Buckler & Mortuary Sword.

This time, after a bit of fun, we settled into technique.

We focused on George Silver’s technique (without Buckler), and I learned the basic terminology for:

- The Fights (Open, Gardant, Variable, Close)

- The Wards for each Fight (inclluding: Open, Gardant, Bastard Gardant, Outside, Inside, Stocata, Imbrocata, Pasant)

- The four True and four False Times.

- The four Regulators

We then tried to put them into practice. It’s funny, my bouting technique felt smoother before learning anything of Mortuary sword, as I kept getting hung up on the myriad things I as doing wrong once I knew the rudiments, but I’ll be interested to see how it affects my swordsmanship once I’ve had a week to digest it.

We then moved over into 1.33, and worked on Arming Sword & Buckler, in which I was introduced to a few of the basic strikes & defenses.

I’ll try to hit the books to get a bit more theory before next week’s lesson!

Last Tuesday got to check out Shane’s new arsenal.

We spent hours bouting with his new mortuary swords and bucklers.

Pure Joy. Bruises, and Joy.

A good friend and fellow member of “Fecht Club” had an amazing Camelot-themed wedding.

We did a quick demonstration of the variations of Zornhau, and answered several questions about German Longsword. Great fun!

I also had the honour of presenting our friend with a Longsword which his wife had gotten him.

As of tomorrow I’m off to Cascadia North!(http://www.cascadianorth.com/links/) which should be amazing (it certainly was last year).

I’m sad to see that both Spanish and Italian rapier are booked for the same time slot, as I had hoped to take both workshops, but that’s a small drop of pity in a sea of awesome!

It’ll be great to see folks again, and I look forward to seeing what I can learn this time around.

We finally got in a few pictures of our first attempt at creating the Spanish circle. Here’s us in first position.

So – at our most recent trip, we got to messing around with Rapiers and daggers. Both the other folks involved seemed to think little of the daggers, except as a distraction from the rapier (fair enough, this is what the author of one of our Fecht Buchs also feels). I decided to monkey with the daggers.

At one point, I approached them with daggers akimbo, and offered a daggers vs. rapier fight. Quickly one by the sword. After several other attempts, I hit upon a new strategy.

With some practice, I got things working fairly well – with two daggers, I could win about 50-60% of the fights, even managing to win one against both swordsmen at once. Granted, they were fighting with unfamiliar swords (we’re still much more heavily longsword focused), but hey… I’m unfamiliar with dagger as well! It felt exhilarating to not only be trying something new, but developing a fighting style from scratch.

Over the last 2 weeks, we’ve had a nice increase in arms, and the beginnings of some new techniques.

2 new loaner Longswords (the newer Hanwei), 2 Rapier, and 2 daggers makes for all sorts of new possibilities, and just in time, as we’ve got a few new people who are starting to study Longsword with us. They’re still going through the basics, but I’m looking forward to getting to the point where we have more sparring partners.

And I was thrilled when last week Shane showed up with rubber mats, chalk, and carpenter’s line, and we made Thibault’s first Spanish Circle. It’s going to take a while before we’re proficient at making it quickly, but even just from a first glance and a tiny bit of work, I can see how it’s going to be a great way to learn the inner workings of Rapier.

I’ll post pictures when I get them off of my friend’s camera.

The weekend at Garibaldi was fantastic, and included:

*An amazing knife fighting workshop by Braun McAsh (Vietnam Veteran and fight choreographer for the Highlander series)

• A beginner’s Rapier tournament (I was pleased to win 4 or 5 fights, even though I’d never fought with one before)

• An excellent workshop on Fabris

• An opportunity for some team battles in the forest (Sidesword, Buckler & Longsword)

• An absolutely amazing bunch of folks, with impressive skills, strong honour, and great attitudes.

Fecht Club made a decent showing, and we’re seriously considering adding Rapier to our repertoire now. Thibault is calling.