At our Friday night open sparring sessions I enjoy getting in and doing a few passes, just like everyone else. During this time, it’s not uncommon for one of my students (after we’ve fenced for a bit) to ask me for some feedback on their fencing. I’m glad to be asked this question, and I’m pleased in general that…
Read More... from Ask for Sparring Feedback Up Front -- Not Afterward
You know the expression about teaching a man to fish instead of giving a man a fish. In the case of self protection, sometimes it’s a matter of teaching someone to fish compared to giving them a picture of a fish. Indian Vodafone Initiative Tony Wolf posted this video on the Bartitsu.org blog, along with some commentary: The…
Our annual mounted combat symposium has come and gone, and what a wonderful weekend it was! The sun smiled kindly on us for the Friday and Saturday of Mounted Combat, Horseback Archery, Classical Riding, Ballet and Mounted Games, and by Sunday those of us competing in the tournament were grateful for some cooler, cloudy skies!…
A specialist martial artist, at their most focused, tunes their training toward a single discipline and a single context. This type of specialization is something that perhaps came first to us in the Western Martial Arts with duels. For these one-on-one conflicts, individuals would train to fight within a fixed set of rules and conventions,…
Read More... from Specialization versus Generalization in Martial Arts
Carosella is almost here! To allow for the long weekend we've held over online registration for another day. Hurry though -- after midnight tonight you'll need to register by phone or in person! Join us at Red Colt farm from Friday through Sunday, 11 - 13 September for three full days of mounted magic. There…
Read More... from Carosella 2015: Online Registration Extended
When you think of Shakespeare, you might first conjure up Romeo & Juliet and remember "The Bard" for his poetry. You might have had a bad experience in high school and remember how boring Shakespeare is with so many Histories and discuss why it's important or not to know the King's names in the Wars…
The work that George Silver was best known for was his 1599 Paradoxes of Defence, in which he conducts a vehement denunciation of the Italian teaching of the civilian dueling rapier within his England and its subsequent use by a heretofore doughty race of backsword wielders. Paradoxes was not so much a fight book as…
Setting out to do something and then failing at it is painful. No matter how much you may try to prepare yourself for that eventuality, if you really care about something, and are truly striving for it, falling short is going to hurt. The question is: is the pain worth it? I’d say that pain…
With Carosella 2015 less than two weeks away, it's time to answer some of those frequently asked questions. Q: How can I sign up for Carosella? A: You can register online here for full and one-day passes. To register for individual workshops contact the front desk at 604 568 9907. Regular entries close Monday September…
Welcome to the first Historical European Martial Arts Video blog post on the Academie Duello blog! Our new weekly Monday post will feature awesome video content from our school and the broader community. Look forward to sparring videos, performances, great educational content, and more. This Week In Sparring To kick things off with a bang we're…
Read More... from This Week in HEMA Video - 360 Degrees of Awesome
In my last post I wrote about some of the things that Bruce Lee’s martial art of Jeet Kune Do has to offer practitioners of Bartitsu. To be clear, I am not suggesting that Bruce Lee had any knowledge of the articles published by E. W. Barton-Wright, the founder of what we call “canonical Bartitsu”.…
The study and appreciation of WMA continues to enjoy a renaissance in Europe and North America; and we are now uniquely fortunate in having a large variety of salles from which to choose to train. The salles differ in the sword technique favoured, the "olde master" which is followed, how they present their program… and…
Read More... from Collective Sword Press: News for August 2015
'Dressage' simply means 'training'. The modern sport of dressage consists of tests, which are judged patterns designed to demonstrate a horse's level of training on the flat. Sport dressage evolved from classical dressage, which in turn evolved from military training exercises. As practioners of mounted combat, it is often useful for us to look to…