Messerin around, this weeks class updates

Jim from the Sutton class pulls of a disarm against a half sword neck throw

An impressive week around with a couple of stand out performances Fluer and Hakeem in particular, Hakeem was a flying fury this with week the speed and commitment of his assaults taking at least one person very much by surprise, it was great to watch. Pete from the Beckenham spa class also acquitted himself well going staying on for the final four fights of the night (although the re occurring "only ten more seconds" may have been a little mean he did great).

flying winding from last weeks session.

Burn night again was fantastic fun, more bags and bungees, breaking the parry with mutieren and duplieren then grappling with the longsword and simple messer work.

The Bulgarian bags, how we love those bags.

The messer work itself caused a little bit of a stir with suggestions that the way we are practising the Talhoffer set is "not messer", "more like saber or dussack" these misunderstandings come from a lack of familiarity of with the material, some messer systems using a passing step with the blow much like longsword, Talhoffer (1467) however keeps the right foot forward (as I illustrate) only uses a passing step to grapple. I use Talhoffer as an introduction to messer as it is simple (very few moves) and gives you the perfect framework to bolt on the more expansive systems such as  Leckuchner. You can watch the clip here and make your own mind up.

So next week...
We are going to continue with the rapier v/s longsword adding in the longsword change through.

More practice on entering in crook against first ward with the sword and buckler.
More mutieren and duplieren with longsword
More of Talhoffer's messer, with the addition of half sword techniques and counters.
And of course Burn Night.
Train hard.
Dave