Thibault comes home.

A longer report coming soon, but I wanted to say thank you to all the students who attended my seminar on the Dutch fencing master Girard Thibault in Delft at the weekend.

. Thank you also, to the School for Historical Fencing Arts (Netherlands) for their hospitality. Everybody involved worked extremely hard and well. A pleasure to come and teach.

More soon...

In an emergency apply the break... dagger days.

This week it's mainly sparring and dagger work, with some footwork and slip drills thrown in.
Please be aware the following is for research purposes, please do not try it without professional tuition.

Here's a few recap basics as we go through.

Firstly as the overhand thrust comes in, I slip back to bring myself out of distance, checking the blade with my own, and grasping Tim's wrist.

I return an over thrust of my own to Tim's belly or groin, of course at the check earlier I could have gone for a hand or limb destruction, or aimed the thrust elsewhere, however this is the set up for the following.

Tim checks my attack slapping the move in a down slightly to protect his body.

I hook in and up with my forearm, pushing his knife away and down with my left.

you must take care to push pull twist and step in one motion as to prevent a hand swap by the opponent.

The hook accomplished I pull his blade to the outside of my thigh securing it, but keeping it away from the more vulnerable inside. 

I then proceed to the floor to apply the break.

 If you have any questions, we can go over them in class. 

Approved

Recently I posted a review of the mark 1 messer synthetic from the Knight Shop. I said that overall I found it clunky (all though handling better with a steel pommel), rigid and unsuitable for sparring.

Today I received the mark 2 and had a chance to compare and spar with it. So, is it any better?

Appearance.
Outwardly it looks identical, as the moulds used are the same.

Weight.
Mark 1 720g
Mark 2 600g
If you add the steel pommel (needed to balance the mark 1 in my opinion) the difference is even greater.

Handling.
A vast improvement, every position, technique, cut and thrust is easy to perform, the tool moving well and lightly. Blade on blade was fine.
As far as winding is concerned, it is not steel, but it is a hell of a lot better than a dussack.

Sparring.
Again a great deal better, the mark 2 moves well and doesn't hit like a club, and as my student said after running bodily onto a thrust, in that respect also... "approved".

Overall.
This is a much better tool than the mark one in every way (with the possible exception of winding, but we are talking a minute loss here). I can't wait to train with it on the occasions when steel is not available or impractical. And will whole heartedly recommend it to my students. A massive improvement, Very much Rawlings approved.

Assessments, insurance and certificates

Happy new year all.

There is already much to look froward to, the longsword assessment is ready for those of you who feel you are, it has several revisions which I feel will help. Please not you are only expectged to know 3 of the master cuts for the basic test. You can view the PDF below, but if you need a hard copy please feel free to ask. 
Longsword basic assessment pdf

Insurance:
All insurance payments are expected to be made week commencing 8th of Feb. These will now be processed at the same time each year, so if you pay late you will get less than a year before you have to pay again.

Certificates:
as you may know I took an age to get the 2 Days of the Blade certificates done, thank you to all of you who took part and completed the weekend, you showed great patience in waiting for them. They are now ready.