“I’m the elephant, who carries a castle as freight. I never kneel or lose my stride.” Tom Leoni translation - Fior di Battaglia, Getty Museum To harness the ideals of the elephant in your martial form you must consider: Structural Alignment Placing your body in optimal positions to apply and resist force. Finding the ground…
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This week, we take a short look at successful people and activities within the HEMA/WMA community. But what is “success” for a HEMA/WMA ‘guild’ or swordplay salle? Is it represented by numbers …. the number of students that show up consistently for class? The number that are ‘on the books’? The number of students that…
Horsemanship 3 - Stall & Pasture The first thing you will be asked on the Level 3 practical test is to Describe good and bad features of a horse’s pasture & stall. You can read chapters 14 and 15 of the Manual of Horsemanship for an in depth look at desirable aspects of stables and…
One of the fears among city-dwellers in 1890’s London was being strangled by an unseen attacker from behind. And why not? That’s a pretty dangerous situation, and one that seems difficult to escape. That particular fear drove the development of Bartitsu. The neck feels particularly vulnerable, and for good reason. There are 3 types of…
Here at Academie Duello you will often hear us talk about the True Fight and the Adaptive Fight. Both are important to learn so one can transition and flow between the two of them using both to paint a full combative picture. In the True Fight the attacker and defender are in a dance of…
This post is the third in a series on Fiore's four animals and their relation to required traits in martial arts training and execution. “I, the tiger, am so quick at running and turning that I can’t even be overtaken by a lightning bolt." Tom Leoni translation - Fior di Battaglia, Getty Museum Though I…
We’re about halfway in our walk through the Blue Spur curriculum, and now it’s time to turn our attention back to Horsemanship. For the next couple of months the blog will look at the requirements for Horsemanship Level 3. Whereas Level 2 was simply a more in-depth version of the Level 1 topics, in Level…
As many of you know I recently attended the Rossfechten Symposium in Zwiebrücken, Germany. This four-day event brought together Mounted Combat practitioners and aspirants from all over Europe and even North America. Attendees hailed from Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, the USA, and Canada. The event was held at the…
Here, read this, I’ll try to drop by later to chat … &^%$#@!! international situation! Unless stupid things explode overseas (or significantly more so than usual), We’ll be in Vancouver next week attending the 10th Anniversary ‘Duello Days’ and will not be updating the Press. 30 Shades of (registered) Swordplay JUNKEE (Sydney, Australia) 22 July…
This post is part of a series on martial development through the metaphor of Fiore's Four Animals. "No creature can see better than I, the lynx. And this virtue puts everything in its right place and its measure." Tom Leoni translation - Fior di Battaglia, Getty Museum A technique could be mechanically correct in its…
The script will inform the actor and the audience why two characters want to kill each other. However, even with the clearest scenes, as peaceful people it can be difficult to emotionally understand a fight to the death. So as a performer, how do we interpret and justify the stakes of a fight scene with…
Within his 1409 manual Fior di Batagglia, Fiore dei Liberi provides us with an effective guide for reviewing our successful execution of martial technique: surrounding his diagram of blows are a series of 4 animals, each representing an essential quality of successful execution in the art: The Lynx - Positioned above the figure’s head represents…
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Luck: Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions. (Oxford dictionary) And how lucky we are as HEMA/WMA students: Swords of iron and steel survive ‘centuries’ of abuse, neglect, climatic conditions causing near total structural decay, ‘resource recycling’, etc … and we still have many examples of what medieval and…