Step 1: Form a Counter Guard. Step 2: There is no step 2.
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How to avoid being one-shotted 2 comments
Winter War Maneuvers 12 comments
It has been a long time since we posted anything about melee, so for a change of pace, I thought I’d provide a recap of a melee training that I ran recently. I was not initially planning on attending the event (5 hour drives are the new normal for event travel, but it’s a bit much […]
A Cold Day in January 2 comments
Today marks the 2-year anniversary of one of the most formative days in my study of historic Italian rapier fencing. Initially, I didn’t write about the day because it always seemed that I’d have even more insight about the day in the near future. This continued until months had passed, then years and it no […]
Five Minute Lessons: Teaching at Events 2 comments
Motivation: Last April, I moved to Calontir, a land where, up until just a few years ago, there was no fencing. Calontir’s Steel program (as opposed to rattan) is somewhat unique in the Known World, as it is cut & thrust default. However, because the program is relatively new, most of the fighters are also […]
Walk Like an Agrippan: Part 4 – Stance and Footwork 5 comments
The previous 3 sections (1, 2, 3) of this series on Agrippa have focused on dissecting the framework of the stances and motions found in Agrippa’s fencing manual. Starting with these may have seemed an odd choice, as typically one introduces a fencing system by describing how to perform the basics. However, in my opinion, determining how […]
Agrippa Part 3: The Controversial Lunge 13 comments
The presence of a lunge in Agrippa’s system is a somewhat controversial topic. One of the earliest historical fencing scholars, Edgarton Castle noted in his 1885 book, Schools and Masters of Fence from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century, that while some of the positions shown in Agrippa’s manuals appeared to be lunges, that the development […]
The Nature of (Historical Fencing) Knowledge: 2 comments
My recent efforts to decipher Agrippa’s fencing manual has me thinking a lot about the types of evidence that are available to us as historical fencing scholars. As students of historical European martial arts, we are faced with the challenge of attempting to recreate techniques that have been out of use for 500 years or more […]
Agrippa part deux: Movement 10 comments
In part 1 of my discussion of Agrippa’s fencing system, I focused on the positions that are described in the manual. Importantly I extrapolated a set of “degrees-of-freedom” based on the ways in which the various positions differed from each other. In this posting, I hope to demonstrate the importance of those degrees-of-freedom by describing […]
Unless Your Opponent has Studied His Agrippa… 1: The Positions 3 comments
I recently finished reading Ken Mondschein’s Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise, which is a translation of Camillo Agrippa’s Treatise on the Science of Arms with Philosophical Dialogue, published in 1553. As someone who is most accustomed to the writing styles of the later Italian rapier treatises, I found Agrippa’s approach somewhat difficult to understand at first. Giganti, Capo Ferro, and Fabris […]
How to be the one in a 2v1 part 1: Initiative and Obedience 1 comment
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” – Mike Tyson I came across this quote following a baronial fencing practice, and it seemed oddly fitting to one of my observations from our 2v1 practice that day. The 2v1 drill we were working was focused on training the two to defeat the […]