Class started on the evening of Monday, Sept. 16. Out of the nearly dozen who’d signed up/expressed an interest in joining the class there were only six of us who showed up, and the majority of us are women! Two others who have been through this before are also auditing the class. It’s rather cool for the class to be majority women (who says we don’t like to play with swords).
We were given plastic wasters (training swords) to use for our 100 level class, which will last for the next two-and-a-half months or so. We won’t start using live steel until we reach the 200 level. This first class focused on proper stance, footwork, and the primary attacks and their respective defenses. It sounds like a lot, but the movement and footwork you practice while practicing each attack or its defense lay the foundation for more advanced techniques, including those involving Medieval Sword types.
I’d forgotten how much such swordwork uses muscles that a lot of modern people don’t use in particular ways (if much at all) and so it also is making for some good exercise. For grins and giggles I pulled down my live steel, blunt edged sword from when I did WMA/HEMA* some 15 years ago. Can you tell which is which?
For those who are wondering how much like WMA/HEMA this is, it’s quite a bit different. The WMA/HEMA stuff I did years ago was learning a historic form of European armed combat, the German Longsword. While some of the moves are similar it’s not the same, but I’m finding this is far more agreeable to me. One thing that is pretty much the same is the footwork and movement; how you stand and move your feet as you move through an attack or defense. The attacks and defenses are very different, but how you move your feet and stand is pretty much the same.
Do I have homework? You bet I do. Each day I do at least 30 minutes of practice going through what I learned in class so I can work on my timing, movement, form, committing the movements to muscle memory, and what not.
For a bit of fun, I’ll see if I can dig up some photos taken from back when I did the German Longsword.
Do you have any questions? Anything you’re curious about? Please ask either by commenting to this post, using the contact form on the left side of the screen, or if you prefer to remain anonymous, the Ask Me Anything box over on the right.
* WMA = Western Martial Arts, HEMA = Historical European Martial Arts