A good friend of mine, Scott Wilson of DarkWood Armory, who’s moved back into town a while back, has started a Western Martial Art (WMA) training Group. Scott’s trained mostly in of Italian Swordsmanship of Fiore de Liberi’s Flos. WMA unlike Eastern Martial Arts pretty much disappeared after the discovery of gunpowder and usesage of firearms. From what I can grasp is that these old sword masters wrote thier styles down much like Musashi but for years these manuals have been lost. But recents finds and translations seem to have founded a new love for these arts.
As a member of the SCA for all of my adult life and a student of Eastern Martial arts(Shotokan Karate) I’ve always thought that shotokan translated well with SCA heavey combat by use of stances and the generation of power with hip action. PLus the hand and arm position went real well with CA Sword combat.
We studied the long sword(2-handed sword) starting with the basics. I was a little surprised at the litghtness of the sword. It actually weighs lees than my single handed SCA sword. I thought it interseting that many of the strokes we went throgh were very similar to Japanese sword strikes. It goes to show that much like any striking or grappeling art either Eastern, European, American, a punch is a punch and a kick is a kick and the “styles” we study is just a delivery system.
This class proves to be tons of fun. It’s something different yet similar.
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My Google Alerts on Fiore popped up your site. Interesting to ‘meet’ another person training in Fiore and with Clubbells.
Ref ‘a punch is a punch …’ – I have a saying “There are no secrets in the martial arts”. As you say, punching & grappeling are the same in all the arts.
And BTW … nice logo!
Ken
Welcome to the world of WMA and Historical Fencing!
Are you still involved in this class?
Thanks Ken.
Jeff, I’m still in volved. It’s a blast! Looking at taking concepts and putting them into use with SCA fighting.