A great weekend
Published: Fri, 06/15/18
We held the HDC last weekend at our place in Beverley. We had fifteen people in the house and garden and it worked out pretty well. The idea was a to share a diverse range of martial skills as taught by highly experienced instructors. You can see the list of instructors and what they taught on the updated page. (Link below) I have also posted some pictures, somehow we managed to miss getting pictures of Allen’s Law enforcement session and either of Fox’s seminars on commando dagger and long sword. The dagger session was very good as always, I heard good reports of the longsword training too.
Milo taught an introductory session of small sword. I find it very interesting to work with a system of fencing which is actually intended for practical self-defence. It was the same with his pugilism session. Milo always brings a level of research and insight to his teaching which could be intimidating if he did not teach in such an engaging and good humored way.
Allen Reed gave a very interesting talk on the Thursday evening about his service as a deputy US Marshal, the subject matter ranged from the history of the USA, the complexities of the US justice system, to second amendment rights. Allen’s workshop was a brief introduction to managing an encounter with a potentially violent person. This meant dealing with a situation where lethal force could be used on either side. We were talked though the procedure and the different levels of permitted force were explained. We then tried some basic role play exercises involving approaching a suspect (who had a weapon concealed) and attempted to take control of the person. The person playing the suspect would look for an opportunity to fight back. We discovered that really taking charge of a potentially violent situation is a lot harder than it looks. When Nick Foot was playing my suspect he just walked straight into me and I found it very hard
to decide when to pull out my weapon before it was too late. It was fun, but I also found it a very valuable insight into the Herse role and the mentality needed. The Herse takes charge of a situation with a combination of authority, training, confidence and the option of using force if necessary. I have practiced the relevant drills in Stav training often enough, However, the stakes become much more serious when taking lethal force into an encounter with a dangerous person. I learned a lot from the seminars at the HDC, I hope everyone else did too.
Please check out the pictures http://hdc.stavcamp.org/
regards
Graham
PS Next big event is Stavcamp on the 15th and 16th of September with Ivar. Seven places already paid for, maximum definitely ten. So, if you want to be there book up soon http://stavcamp.org/