Making efforts to ensure that our fights are as realistic as possible, we broke off in two groups for this weeks training, with Steve looking at core sword movements and the rest of us working on the punch pads. Stepping through a short technique slowly, we built up the movemnt to go as hard and as fast as we could, as though our lives depended upon it and then attempting to keep that sae force of movement we reinterpreted the movements through stage combat. The result was, for a time, much crisper, harder looking movements from those taking part; blowing the cobwebs out from our movements proved difficult and we all had several goes at picking up the speed and illusion of force after prompting from our companions. However, judging from the puffing and the noises involved, everyone enjoyed themselves.

Afterwards John took us through some different knapping techniques. Some of our best video footage from events shows that properly placed knaps get the audience gasping and wincing at the percieved pain. Most recently at Kingston Maurward we would have had the medics out on the field had it not been for one of the members on the side explaining that all was well, all due to a well used knap by two of our members. We examined, self, shared and partner knaps .. all leaving with warm, well slapped hands, shoulders and thighs! 

Then across to McDonalds for a well deserved coffee and ice cream!

Hello all

 A big thankyou to everyone for being flexible this evening and training in the Green Room, we're not sure what happened this evening with the normal venue, we'll do our best to find out and try to make sure we get some warning in future, but thanks you all for being so versitile, especially John, Steve, Alisa and Paul who helped arrange the Green Room at the last minute to ensure training could continue.

We had planned to run through sword drills and the various uses of the weapons today, buut instead ending up trying various Fiore based hand to hand techniques in a round robin format. Thanks to John for coming up with the new plan.

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, especially our quick version of an unarmed vesion of Fiore's Magistro 9, Zogho 8 and some of the other embarrassing locks and counter attacks.

Next week we will continue with the planned sword work to be lead by John.

 In a change from recent weapons training this evenings session was a quick tour through the principles surrounding the application of locks and pulls. So many fights both historically and in stage combat come to a point where the weapons work ends and the hand to hand begins, so the session was designed to help with the principles surrounding the safe application of these techniques rather than simply going through a list of moves, hopefully enabling everyone to do things safely in their own manner during their own fights.

Additionally we took a look at the hip throw and a leg sweep, again helping students understand not only theprinciples of these techniques, but the safety surrounding them to help them use different methods in their own fights.

Next week its weapons time as we break out various swords from different eras and go through the basic stage tecniques surrounding each one as e seek to complete basic movements with them. So remember your gloves and to bring any personal weapons you might like to use in addition to the club's weapons.

Continuing on from last week's dagger drills 1 to 4 we learnt how they can be used equally as well against an opponent armed with a sword. The same drills applied against a sword armed adversary allowed the student with the dagger easily defeat a sword armed master. (Student being the defender and the master the aggresor). After this came our two standard sword drills, based upon elements found within Fiore and Talhoffer everyone grasped the basics of the movements and could see how they could be used in a show.

Finishing on a bit of fun, where we had a stab at some jabolite used to demonstrate the amount of force required, or not requied to actually injure a person. This part of the training is used to inform our acting when fighting at an event to enable us to move more realistically.

Next week, in a change of tact we are looking at locks, grapples, throws and falls before returning to the earlier sword work the week after.

A well attended training saw us revise Walker's Simplified Boxing Methods ending in a short series of paired example sequences made to demonstrate the techniques learnt, all of which were very good and more importantly very different looking.

After a short break it was back to the grindstone, this time moving back through time a further 400 years as we looked at four medieval dagger drills based upon Fiore movements and Fiore's Magistro 3, Zogho 7 when used against another dagger.

Next week we plan on building upon the dagger drills of this week as we introduce a couple more Fiore based techniques and move throug the group's Fiore based dagger vs sword drills.

Training this week was given across to the some basics, examining in quick succession the cross punch, head butt, head lock, various arm locks, kick to the grion and punch to the stomach.

With a reasonable turn out we went through these techniques in their stricest form to help blow out the cobwebs caused by too much Christmas pud and frivolity.

Over the next few weeks there will be a number of small but noticeable changes to the training including its own seperate place on the website, a viewable schedule and some guest sessions. So keep your eyes on the site as these become available.

 The first session of the year saw us pick up where we had left off and the dice came out for one more ill fated go after some basic study of Walkers Simplified Boxing Techniques.

The dice where then used to create a random melee with everyone a potential target. Some inventive diving about by Alisa and Steve's bull like charge through the middle of the group made for some interesting techniques being used by all, however Walker's methods bore us through the strange fight that the random dice had created and left us with something that would have made for a very enjoyable bar room brawl in a 19th Century public house.

Next week is the planned start of our 2010 training revisions after the committee have their meeting on Tuesday to prepare for the next few months eading up to the first show, so watch this blog for the announcements of what is to come. There are some interesting plans afoot!