SG-7 Hull

[Paul B]

he is already over in Hull, but will be laden with SG6 goodies next time

[Matt T]

Had a good time last night, even if I do ache. Looking forward to next week already.

Will have to look into the various bits of kit I should get my hands on.

Matt

[The Guardsman]

Thanks goes to Colin for demo purposes and looking at some of the similarities/differences between Fiore and Liechtenaur.

The lesson started with another newcomer Matt, so we are officially growing as a chapter now.

After a quick but tiring warmup and boxercise curcuit we settlid into Gioco Largo techniques. These were peppered with quick chats on pos/neg blade contact/pressure, Tempo and intent.

I even started a bit of 'monkey see, monkey do' tai chi style movements, which isn't as flaky as it sounds and leans toward a mini kata. Those of you who understand the unwinding motion will know how to do it instinctively, but it was easier to train multiple beginners this way a couple of times before doing the drill proper, and it worked.

We mananged to cover most plays and started on breaking thrusts before time crept up on us to call it a night.

Next week we start where we left off, do some more cutting drills, go over guard posta and recap.

Home work. Look at the guards(I'll send you the materials to study), look at the lesson plan and just read over it a few times at your leisure.

Aim towards jogging/walking continuously for 40mins at least once.

Aim to complete 3 sets of 10 reps push ups, sit ups, squats and lunges.

You won't be tested on any of the home work its just there as a basic guideline for you to follow.

[Colin F.]

Cheers! It was a good lesson, I'm picking up ideas from lots of different people all over so if I ever teach properly then I've got a good repertoire of methods to use.

Sorry if I jabbered on about the German stuff too much...

[The Guardsman]

No probs Colin! It was good to have you there for the demos on similar techniques.

Something which I love about HEMA in general is the willingness of groups and instructors to feel at ease when comparing different styles.

*To my students, sorry but the scanner in the library has packed in, so I cant give you any lesson sheets until Thursday.

[Matt T]

Home work. Look at the guards(I'll send you the materials to study), look at the lesson plan and just read over it a few times at your leisure.

Hey Neil,

Haven't received an email! Would really like to have a look at the material.

Taking my first trip (in several months) back to the gym tonight. Need to start getting back into a routine, getting my muscles working again and building my stamina back up. (This buying and moving house stuff really gets in the way of things).

Matt

[Matt T]

*To my students, sorry but the scanner in the library has packed in, so I cant give you any lesson sheets until Thursday.

No probs.
Timed that well, as I just posted asking about the sheets.

Matt

[The Guardsman]

Matt have a look at this

http://www.the-exiles.org.uk/fioreproje ... ranslation).pdf

Pages 42 to 46

It shows the cuts and explains them as well as the guard posta.

Any questions just ask.

[Matt T]

Awesome, thanks Neil.

Matt

[Matt T]

I mentioned the SG class to a couple of wargamers I know and I may have piqued the interest of one or two. They said they are busy at the moment, but after Christmas they should be free enough to come along.

Just spreading the word.

Matt

[The Guardsman]

Cheers Matt!

[The Guardsman]

Dagger lesson on thursday night chaps. We will also look at fending off grabs to the body and collar with one and two hands.

[Andy O]

Can't wait as per usual , Ash should be with us. So we should have a full compliment.

[The Guardsman]

Another new recruit on Thursday night, so classes are growing slowly.

Boxercise cardio circuit to start off

Lots of dagger drills, joint manipulation, and getting fingers into places that cause arms to do funny things.

Finished off with anti grab drills and techniques, much fun.

Well done to everyone, it was obvious to me that some of the longer serving novices have picked up on a few things and they have clicked into place.

Back to Gioco Largo on Thursday so bring your shinai chaps.

[The Guardsman]

I haven't posted here for a week or so, busy at work and all that!

Anyway I'm settling in to a routine now

Week 1 Gioco Largo
Week 2 Gioco stretto
Week 3 Dagger

etc

Each week there will be little titbits of info to assimilate as well as the techniques themselves, so good posta and movement, footwork, body mechanics, maintaining cover, leading with the tip etc, etc

Last night was a week 1 lesson and most of lesson dealt with breaking thrusts.

To begin with, we concentrated on the mindset of an unexperienced fighter who wanted to reach a target slightly out of distance. This made the thrust breaking a little easier to both teach and apply in compliant drilling and geared the class up for dealing with someone who was prepared for the tip redirection.

As you often find while in class, and I always welcome and advocate the use of improvisation, people naturally fight the illogical nature of being an attacking zombie and come up with a quick risk assessment of the situation and adapt to it. This naturally led on to the following covers and counters following thrusts and within a couple of minutes people had started to volta and elbow push with little or no prompting from me at all.

We finished off with some end of technique war cry bellowing, just to emphasise driving the point into the opponant.

Very enjoyable.

[admin]

Sounds good, I was thinking about getting some more shouting in to next week's lesson.

[The Guardsman]

I threw the syllabus out of the window this week, reason being all work and no play etc

So after a brief warm up we did some coached sparring and then had a mini tourney.

I was very pleased to see some good technique coming from everyone in the class, people soon cottoned on to sniping, and there were a few good thrust breaking techniques used from last weeks lesson.

Sparring is undoubtedly the best tool for teaching and learning, without it everything is just text book perfection. Sparring teaches you your weak points, sparring undoes your overconfidence; and only through trial and error from repeated sparring can students build their swordsmanship skills.

Next week we will spar again, using dagger first then longsword. This time i'll try and get my chaps to start stepping offline a bit more.

Well done to my group last night, see you next week!

[admin]

General notice: If you are a regular Schola student, or know of one, who is not on our mailing list, then please drop me a line at schola-gladiatoria@hotmail.co.uk and I will add you to it.

[Matt T]

The sparring was good fun and definitely got the heart pumping. Very difficult to remember things when someone is actually trying to hit you, but that will come with practice.

Matt

[The Guardsman]

More sparring last night, this time with dagger, and then longsword.

Coached sparring involved rules of target areas, so hands, head etc.

Very good night and very physical, next week we will cover some cutting techniques as blade alignment was a bit iffy sometimes, but generally not bad at all for novices.

Well done chaps.