Category Archives: Training

Fiore 12 Feb. 2012

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After warming up with some dagger work we moved through a planned curriculum of drills geared toward thrust defense.

  1. Worker holds sword out horizontally in front of him between both hands. Feeder applies pressure to the middle of the sword, then shoves. Worker’s job is to move laterally, deflecting the shove while remaining square to the feeder (and, of course, while using correct footwork). Worker is backed up against a wall so that he can’t step backwards.
  2. Worker stands backed up against a wall with no weapon. Feeder stands facing him with a long staff and makes “pool cue” style thrusts to worker’s midsection. Worker’s job is to move laterally and dodge the thrust.
  3. Feeder and worker both have swords. They move around, freely adopting different postes, and feeder makes occasional thrusting attacks. Worker needs to both collect the incoming thrust with his blade (exchange or break), and move laterally.
  4. Same as previous except that if the worker notices errors in feeder’s footwork (e.g. crossing the legs) he should attack.

After that, more discussion of the right fenestra stance in Fiore’s spear system, which Fiore seems to think very highly of but which we find awkward and strange.

Fiore 10 Feb. 2012

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Five in attendance for this early bird session. We spread out into a larger space and worked on spear drills: moving out of right fenestra to counter attacks from all six canonical spear positions. This led to a discussion of tactics against the thrust in general, which we went on to practice using longswords.

Fiore 8 Feb. 2012

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A discussion of the unnamed posta, frequently depicted in Fiore when both combatants are in the incrosada. Why it’s not the same thing as posta longa. Why it’s a good idea to strike into that position (i.e. with hands lower and closer to the body) than to strike all the way out into posta longa. Most of the session was then devoted to the sottano parry up out of boar’s tooth, its footwork and its variations.

BWAHAHAHA, 7 Feb. 2012

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Five in attendance, including a special guest from far away. We did most of the basic workout, skimping a bit on the heavy Indian club phase because of time constraints, and then worked cutlass for over an hour, focusing on some of the basic blocks and parries up out of low guard. Emphasis was on relaxation and economy of motion, maintaining an upright posture, and adjusting footwork so as to remain square to the adversary. These moves flow directly into Silver’s grips and as such are squarely in Hutton’s “Defence against Uncivilised Enemies” curriculum.

Week of 30 Jan.-4 Feb.

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Anomalous week with three coaches simultaneously out of town or unavailable. Members stepped up to fill the gap for Monday and Wednesday Fiore group sessions. Tuesday evening Victorian and Friday early bird sessions were cancelled.

Fiore 25 Jan 2012

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Eight in attendance including two completely new. Focused work on the footwork, beginning with the volta stabile and developing it into thrusting attacks from rear-weighted stances. After practicing thrusts against hand-held targets (bucklers) we moved on to consider thrust defenses.

Fiore 13-Jan 2012

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Moving forward with the zogho largo sets, we reviewed the basic six variants and added the two thrust defenses (counter-thrust, and breaking the thrust) for a total of eight canonical largo variants. In the thrust defenses, we were reminded of the necessity of parrying in the middle of the blade. We did many rounds of this series including randomly. This is solid material to practice.

We also reviewed the situation of defending a mandritto fendente from posta di donna, when in left posta di donna. The problem encountered is that if you just do the fendente from the left without offlining, you don’t get a suitable angle of deflection and thus are vulnerable to a double-kill. The Sunday group had worked on this and we took their findings and moved on.

Our findings were as follows (I take the liberty of summarizing for the three of us present):

  • Just standing there and issuing a fendente from the left creates the double-kill.
  • The option to hit around from the left side, in an attempt to get behind the opponent’s blade (the method depicted in the second photo from the Sunday workout) suffers from serious timing risks and is therefore unsuitable.
  • The Germanic zwerchhau method works well (lifting the blade over the head and doing a false-edge horizontal windmilling parry from right to left).
  • Taking a steep sloping step to the right and cutting down strongly into the attacker’s blade with a reverso fendente from the left also works well. You follow up by stabbing or by transitioning to stretto plays.

BWAHAHAHA, 10 Jan. 2012

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We have been working with a wide range of different physical culture exercises, which is fine except for the fact that the transitions take up a lot of time and don’t leave much room in the practice for study of specific martial arts techniques. This evening for the first time we used the new round timer supplied by Mr. Beard to run through a timed and programmed series of exercises, beginning with la canne-style stick swinging and then moving through a series of single and paired body weight exercises to light Indian clubs and heavy Indian clubs. This provided a vigorous half-hour workout hitting most of the major muscle groups. In the future we will transition from that into punching and kicking drills, but this evening we were somewhat limited by a lack of equipment.

With five participants in attendance, we did have enough combined muscle power to move the base of our Wavemaster bag up the stairs, and so our freestanding heavy bag is finally online in one corner of the loft. After a medicine ball session we launched into an hour of cutlass/dusack training under the capable and patient tutelage of Mr. Barnett. Since we are still bringing some new swordfighters up to speed, this evening’s lesson concentrated on the basics of stance, movement, and distance.

The gada was tested and found to be in need of further work. Its handle is very thin and very hard and tough on collarbones.

During a break we admired a Christmas gift from Mr. Wolf:

This will be hung in a place of honor when the loft reaches a more finished and civilized state.