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First of all, thanks to all of you who gave us feedback over the last couple of years. This wouldn’t have been possible without people outside of out club keeping us honest. The final page count is 328 pages of illustrations, drills, charts, diagrams, and commentary. We put everything we learned about Meyer’s longsword over… Continue reading It’s finally done! After 20 months of writing and testing, we’ve completed our Meyer Longsword Drill Book!

We’ve found that we really need to call out the constraints, especially in the early plays where students are just learning the exercise. Also, having a way to distinguish between a thrust in opposition from a free thrust is important in some plays. Therefore, we’re making the following changes to the diagrams. You can see… Continue reading Changes to how we’re doing the rapier diagrams

This beginner friendly seminar will introduce the German weapon known as the Langes Messer or Long Knife. The first session will be a basic introduction to the weapon, its unique features, and some drills you can do solo. After a break, the second session will be looking at all four of Talhoffer plays. If there’s… Continue reading Talhoffer Messer Seminar: Saturday Feb 8th

Ten months ago the Scholars of Alcala published their first drill book. Since then we wrote and released books on the dusack and dagger, but we never forgot where we started. So this fall we took the time to revisit every play in part 1 of Meyer’s rapier. As we went through it, we elaborated… Continue reading Announcing Meyer Rapier 1, Second Edition

On Wednesday nights we are starting two classes. For beginners we’ll be offering Meyer Rapier 1, which introduces the 16th century cut-and-thrust sword we now call a sidesword. For experienced fencers, we are offering Meyer Rapier 3, which adds daggers, cloaks, and spears.

Recently we ran a fechtschule instead of a tournament. This gave our fencers a very different experience where respect for the weapon and the opponent took precedence over winning points. Like a historic fechtschule, the bouts were not pre-arranged. Anyone could fence at any time by choosing simply declaring that they were ready. So there… Continue reading Fechtschule Experiment

Last Sunday kicked off with our first Fechtschule. Overall it was a resounding success with well over a dozen different weapon styles used including great swords, halberds, staves, one- and two-handed axes, and sabres. It seems that the only option not used was the longsword, as everyone was far too interested in using something they… Continue reading This week at Alcala

On January 3rd we returned Meyer’s dusack with a mission. This time we weren’t just going to work through the manual, as we had done in the past. No, this time we were going to create our own gloss or explanation for every play we learned. Nine months, ten chapters, and 163 pages later, we’ve… Continue reading We Published Our Second Book!

Alcala is a multi-disciplinary club. As such, it is really important for us to cross reference terminology across the various sources that we study. For example, if a Bolognese Sword and Buckler student drops into a Dusack class, they will get up to speed much faster if we offer touchpoints that they already understand. So… Continue reading Dusack Guard Names and their alternates

Alcala is wrapping up our Augsburg dagger class next week. It’s been a lot of fun, but people are itching to get back into Meyer rapier. So as a gift to the community, we’d like to present all of the notes we took over the last couple of months. This drill book includes all of… Continue reading Augsburg Dagger Drill Book