Choose your target.

A busy few weeks. In case you aren't up to date the classes are as follows. Monday Barbican: Rapier/Rapier and dagger. Tuesday Beckenham: spear/staff. Wednesday Blackfriars: Sword and buckler/sword & shield. Thursday Clapham: burn night mixed weapons. Friday Highgate: longsword.

"What do you mean you haven't trained with us yet?"

The Monday class is cracking through Meyer's rapier/sidesword, each week building on the previous week's session going over the same material, drilling it more intensively for a shorter span of time before adding the next principle or counter. 

 

Tuesday is a cracking session, short staff leaning heavily towards the spear. For all of those of you who like wild swirly staff work, you are missing the tight brutality that is Mair's spear. Great fun.

Wednesday is the splendid "shield" class. The clip above is a simple exercise taking from di Grassi, finding the sword first and having found it, trapping it and entering. The great thing for me about di Grassi is that his system is consistent throughout and being simple is easy to transfer between weapon sets.

Thursday is of course burn night and being a lot more full on and fluid I haven't had time to take a decent picture. Half and hour of explanation, then drill till you drop.

Friday is the most beautiful hall of all. Jacksons Lane seems to inspire effort from the crew (only a few of them in this picture). While we are generally working on Meyer, the last couple of weeks have seen more emphasis on natural motion, looking at the body's ability to strike and then applying the cuts to those movements and refining them. A lot more free form to start off with but giving good results.