Messer and Dagger course March: booking list in operation.

The London Longsword Academy/Boar's Tooth Fightschool are running a 2 day certification course in dagger and messer/machete combatives towards the end of March, dates are to be confirmed. Nice practical stuff. For more info contact me at londonlongsword@gmail.com or call 0770 9639881 Don't forget to add Boar's Tooth Fightschool to your facebook, because we rock!

Class Update: No Excuses.

A fantastic few days of training, the messer work is getting better and better, moving from the slip cut to a follow on counter against various attacks, very street applicable work not just for medieval tools but for modern machete and long knife too.
The dagger work has been expanding out too, again working through some basic arm and weapon arm destructions and locks. moving gradually into free counter against varied attacks, the latter very important to show how hard it is to not get stabbed, and to show how important the control and limb destruction is.
Why no excuses?
This is for when we come to the free form applications, it's too easy to give way to the "well no one would really do that" they just did, "well really I'd have" you didn't. If you get hit you learn, do not be frustrated with yourself or your partner, do not conceal or avoid your weaknesses, explore them and lose them in the safe environment of the class. 

New Lewisham class and updates...

From this Sunday (22nd Jan) the Hither Green class is moving to Fitness First in Lewisham (click here for map), this class takes the place of the OLF class and will run every week at 6-7.30pm.


As with all the classes over the next month or so, we are going to be concentrating on messer and unarmed work against the dagger in readiness for the up coming assessments. Very pleased with the effort people are putting in guys, keep it up.

Messer and Dagger assessments

Training is has started for the level one messer and dagger certification.
We've chosen to start the new year with this as  it's very practical and has the most modern cross over of the medieval blade work (basically it's good, simple, solid, practical knife and machete fighting).

The certification course is running in class and will be assessed on:
Ability to transmit the full basic syllabus and principles to an unfamiliar class:
Against no opposition (slip and counter).
Against set opposition.
Against varied opposition.  
Ability to explain the reasoning for each variation.
And of course...

Ability to demonstrate practically in combat the principles shown.

 The course will consist of Talhoffer's messer (1467 section) and the use of  unarmed vs knife from the shears.

There will also be a weekend course messer course in March which will offer certification in messer only.
The subject is simple but as most of you can now attest there is a lot to get right and passes will only be awarded for excellence.
Train hard.