Our next round of Beginner's Courses are just around the corner! Celebrate the start of Spring by swinging swords and pulling punches. We offer three different courses which cover different avenues of Western Martial Arts: Fight Like Sherlock Holmes Bartitsu is a complex martial art with many interlocking skills. Our four-week Fight Like Sherlock Holmes course…
Read More... from Start at the Beginning: April Courses at Academie Duello
If you want to imagine your ability to fence as a rating out of 100, it would be impossible to pinpoint an exact score in any kind of meaningful way. To be able to say I’m a 75 and they’re a 70, thus I should be able to defeat them isn’t relevant because its impossible…
Swordplay from the Ground: Armed Grapples and Disarms Sometimes, despite having a yard of steel in hand, the best option is not to "stick'em with the pointy end." Whether its because you are too close for blade play, or because you're worried that slicing your opponent open will devalue him on the ransom market, the…
Everybody is talking about season 2 of Vikings which premiered on History Channel just a few weeks ago. Loosely based on the famous Norse saga known as the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, which was a sequel to the Völsung Saga, the series has gathered quite a following and various blogs and social media sites are a buzz…
Read More... from Facts and Foibles from History Channel's Series "Vikings"
Have you ever experienced a supreme frustration with learning? The feeling that you’re just not getting something; that a concept or technique is just beyond your reach and challengingly so or perhaps just not coming fast enough? This state of frustration is a core and natural part of the learning process. I don’t know that…
In the media summer is the silly season, but in the northern hemisphere of the equine world, March is prime time for goofy, bizarre, and downright alarming horse behaviour. So this week we'll take a break from swordplay and wrestling to tackle the question of how to ride those spooks. Staying in the Saddle There's…
We’re always fascinated by the variety and complexity of the different styles and techniques of historical swordplay that are being rediscovered and explored by our HEMA/WEMA peers. But a part too long neglected, is what happens when two historically-compatable but regionally separate styles meet? Let’s take the year 1550 as an example … An elder…
I have very specific ideas of how tournament training should figure into one’s overall martial development. I also don’t feel it is essential for all positive martial development; However you certainly can’t beat ramping up to a particular event, such as a tournament, for its ability to create an intense training environment. In a recent…
Read More... from Sparring Under Pressure: Staying Collected Using Scaling Speed Exercise
Swordplay from the Ground: unarmed grapples Wrestling was a large part of knightly combat, both from the ground and horseback. Not only did grappling provide a non-lethal method of taking hostages, it was sometimes the only option left when a knight had been disarmed, or when an opponent was too close for swordplay. In the…
Read More... from Up Close and Personal: Grappling from the Ground
As a community We try to remain as true to form in recreating ‘authentic’ swordplay as our understanding of medieval and renaissance fight-books will allow us. Modern technology has resulted in us being able to have access to functional (and affordable) armour and weaponry that allows us to practice techniques with the same ‘heft, feel…
One important component of how we train at Academie Duello is slow work. Slow work is a type of sparring practice where you fence freely against an opponent but at a speed that is slow enough that you can consider and be observant of your actions as you respond fluidly to the situation at hand.…
Swordplay from the Ground - Guards of the Sidesword Our core weapon for Mounted Combat is the longsword, but we use it in one hand when mounted. For that reason it is useful to look at guard positions from the sword and buckler tradition. In the Blue spur we ask that you Demonstrate six core…
Saturday’s Viking Ragnarök follow-on to the Y2K and the Mayan calendars 2012 cataclysmic predictions was similar in effect in that we’re all here together to read this bit. But the recent Viking (non) event did have a HEMA/WMA bonus. We were reminded for a short time of the spirit and fighting techniques of the medieval…