Twelve weeks of Staff drills
Published: Tue, 10/29/13
We had a good training session last night. Five students training
and we used the hall at my church for the first time. (My thinking
is that while the planning application is going through we would be
best not actually training at the shop until the permission comes
through). We focused on the two person staff drills and I was
pleased to see that everyone knows how to do them. Still plenty of
work to extract all the possible lessons from each drill but that
process never ends. The purpose of the two person staff exercises
is to build up basic skills of working with a partner. This means
cooperation and a concern for the safety of your partner and
everyone else in the room. The five drills also introduce the
concept of the five principles but the most important lesson is
teaching the etiquette of training safely and responsibly. Without
that understanding of etiquette it would be most unwise to engage
in more advanced and potentially dangerous training. I am making
sure my current students are fully competent in the basic drills so
that I can move them onto advanced weapons and Close Quarter Combat
training when it is practical to hold more classes. It is my
intention that with the new centre students will have to do 12
lessons in the foundation class before they will be eligible to
train in the advanced classes. It will be interesting to see how
that goes down with prospective students but it will mean that
training with axe, cudgel, spear and dagger can be done with
confidence that everyone practising has a real sense of safety and
self-control. That level of awareness will make the training
challenging and fun and that is the attitude you need to take care
of yourself in everyday life too.
I would also like to know what kind of courses people would be
interested in? As well as being able to teach a wider variety of
weekly classes I am hoping that people will be willing to travel to
Crewkerne for longer periods of training. I will certainly hold
Saturday courses at least once a month. But I am also wondering
about long weekend courses, say Friday to Sunday? The other
possibility is 5 day 'boot camps' Monday to Friday for 4 or
6 people only and those attending could learn the basics of Stav or
I could run advanced courses over the same period for people with
some experience. It would be quite a commitment in time, money and
effort I know but it would also be worth traveling from another
continent for. Just exploring ideas at the moment but I would be
interested to know what people think.
If you haven't seen my new posting and video clip on
http://www.iceandfire.org then have a look.
regards
Graham
PS I am still battling with the Mac to get it to burn the DVD of
Ivar at the Summer Camp. It still won't burn the new DVD and
when I created a new short one to see if that would work the same
problem came up. However it will burn a pre-existing DVD file. The
plot thickens and tonight I will try and burn it on another Mac and
see what happens.