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This month at Alcala we’ll be looking at four guards: Key, Hanging Point, Crossed Guard, and Side Guard. The Schlüssel (Key) devices starts with the all too common three slashes from the right side. After the third slash, you refuse the blade by pulling it back into Schlüssel (Key). This can be used to prevent… Continue reading Key, Hanging Point, Crossed Guard, and Side Guard

L’Ange does something unusual when he presents the thrusts. Rather than having a set of unrelated exercises, most of the plays build on the previous play. He is essentially working his way up to a full routine (think kata or assaulti). This is great for a daily practice, but when learning the components, it may… Continue reading The Basic Thrusts in L’Ange Rapier

Raising the foot prior to the thrust serves many purposes, even if you wouldn’t do it in an actual fight. First, it eliminates the question about how much weight should be on each foot. All of your weight much be over the back foot or you will fall over. When you step, assuming you land… Continue reading Why is his foot in the air?

The scholars have been hard at work refining the training guides. And since it’s been a month since we last shared, I wanted to update you on our progress. But first, here’s the link to the resources page with all the files. Meyer Rapier We’re getting really close to finishing the first draft. The write-ups… Continue reading Sept. Training Guides Update

After far too long of a break, we’re starting to make videos again. Our first outing is showing one of the two styles of rapier grips that our club prefers. We may go back later and re-cut it to for a more traditional YouTube style. We used vertical this time because we’re trying out videos… Continue reading How to hold the rapier in the Italian style

Our traditional cutting diagrams don’t really work with thrust-centric rapier plays. So we have created a new style of diagram more suited for the style. To start, we divide a circle into zones. These aren’t specific places on the opponent, but rather relative to where their sword would be in 3rd (e.g. Terza/Tertia, Langort). Onto… Continue reading Understanding Rapier Diagrams

The cutting diagrams we are using in class are inspired by the Meyer Lund diagrams. We don’t have clear instructions on how to interpret these diagrams, but it’s fairly clear that they meant to be used as patterns for cuts and thrusts. Since Meyer didn’t leave us with a key, we have to invent our… Continue reading Understanding the Cutting Diagrams

Fitness For our warm-ups, we are using exercises from Guy Windsor’sThe Duellist’s Companion: A training manual for 17th century Italian rapier. Sword and Buckler For Sword and Buckler, we looked at a selection of plays from Manciolino’s first book, chapters 3 and 4. In this book, all of the attacks from a given guard are… Continue reading Practice Notes for Oct 13

Rapier For L’Ange rapier we reviewed the fine details of the ‘German’ style grip. Then we repeated the exercise with the ‘Italian’ grip as you might see in Capo Ferro. Then we looked at plate 7 of Capo Ferro’s Use of Fencing. This play teaches one how to safely disengage when constrained and to punish… Continue reading Practice Notes for Oct. 16