More swords than you can shake a stick at
Published: Wed, 07/31/13
I received the programme for the 2013 Fightcamp yesterday. I am
teaching on the Sunday morning and there is a great line up of
teachers and classes. Sabre fighting seems to be a theme this year
with classes based on various sources, British, German, French,
Swedish and Polish, being offered through the weekend. There will
also be classes on longsword, smallsword, broadsword (and targe),
backsword and rapier. I am particularly looking forward to classes
on Bartitsu, wrestling and dagger training. Together with watching
tournaments and socialising in the bar in the evenings it will be
fun.
My class will be on Stav staff. I have no idea what kind of
response I will get. I had around 10 people at my session last
year on the axe. Apparently there was a lot of skepticism before
the workshop but those who took part had no hesitation singing its
praises afterwards. So I am hoping for a fair bit of interest this
year. I am going to divide the session into three parts, the first
part will involve how to hold a staff and how to deploy it as
efficiently as possible. To teach the first section we will use
the staff exercises for Fe, Thor, As and Tyr. The second part
will be about sensitivity and how to intercept an attack. For this
we will use some of the nine guards exercises, probably low left,
rat tail left and high left. For the third section We will look at
retaining, recovering and removing a staff from an opponent. These
exercises develop a sense of timing and blending one's energy
with an opponent. Developing real accuracy, sensitivity and timing
takes a long time of regular training but hopefully my workshop
will give those attending something to think about and take away
and may even get one or two to actually try training in Stav
properly.
You can check out the site http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/fightcamp/
and apparently there are 3 places left at time of writing.
Of course if you are primarily interested in Stav then check out my
calendar http://iceandfire.org/calendar.html for training
opportunities. There is still one place left for the Stav Camp in
Norfolk on the 4th to 8th of September. I will be going into a lot
of Staff training as well as Stances and much else. It is also a
very rare opportunity to meet Ivar. Site is at
http://www.stavcamp.org