The final item on the Green Spur checklist is: Describe the mechanics required to keep your seat when striking from horseback. And here we come back to that Independant Seat once more. It keeps cropping up because it is probably the most important component not just of mounted combat, but of all your riding endeavours. …
We have a quadruple threat this month: Rapier, Sidesword, Longsword, and Quarterstaff. Yes some of our most senior students at Academie Duello in Vancouver are having their minds overloaded as they move through a day of classes -- now it's your turn at home to enjoy the same overwhelming sensation. Longsword Focus http://duello.tv/featured-videos/this-week-in-class/ This week…
Academie Duello is proud to announce a new program to take place at our Vancouver location starting this month. The En-guard program is a specialty dog training program based on the 1461 Hundekämpfe manuscript. I'm excited because this is one of the first times that we'll be drawing from German sources. Dogs were used by many European…
OK, I fibbed, We’re going to catch-up now. During the last VISS, there was some discussion amongst attendees about the number and variety of medieval/renaissance WMA/HEMA ‘salles’ that were being established of late. It is a reality of a business that it exists to fill a niche … and that there is a market out…
Luddites, ala lantern! We’ll try posting this again after being beat-up by technology … a week late. And we'll catch-up later this week if one of my peer's leaves me a space. There’s nothing this (last) week on WMA/HEMA; but we do have a wealth of links highlighting swords as symbols: of history; of trust; or honour;…
The traditional throws of Judo and Jujitsu are covered in many sources online. Although in Bartitsu class we never use the Japanese terms, we perform many of these throws. As an evolving mixed martial art for self-defense, Neo-Bartitsu also borrows from other traditions for the best combination of techniques, especially in the tricky realm of…
The Eight Cuts, Contorted for the Saddle Cast your mind back to the eight cuts which are available to the swordsman on foot. Now consider: ... which sword blows can and should be thrown from horseback to a mounted rider and a fighter on the ground As you face forward in the saddle, an immediate…
We're into the closing topics of the month. In Green Cord we're looking at the fundamental strategy for rapier combat: the True Fight. In Blue Cord we are countering defences of the offhand, and at Red Cord we're making some tricky plays with the cloak and then defeating them. In our longsword focus classes we…
Our next round of Beginner's Courses are starting soon! Shake off that lingering winter chill and greet Spring with a sword in hand! Both our Beginner's Courses, Taste of the Renaissance and Warrior Fundamentals, are 8-classes long and can be taken twice a week for one month or once a week on Saturdays for two…
I read a couple interesting anecdotes today in the book Failing Forward by John Maxwll. The first comes from two working artists, David Bayles and Ted Orland, who tell a story about an art teacher who did an experiment with the grading system he used for two groups of students: The ceramics teacher announced on…
Another episode of our stage combat feature: action movie trailers. What we're looking forward to and why. You may have noticed the text in there: From the Director of the Original The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. That's what we're going to talk about today: Niels Arden Oplev. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009)…
This week on Duello.TV it's time to do some longsword catch-up! We missed a couple weeks of longsword, so now we're going to give you a couple weeks worth of focus class content all on the topic of the window guard. We're also moving into the topics of constraint with the sword (green), constraining with…
Last week we took a brief tour through the mounted combat arsenal as part of the Swordplay Knowledge section. For the last portion of the Green Spur checklist we ask that you are familiar, at least in theory, with the general mechanics of swordplay from horseback, and how it differs from fighting on foot. Mounted…