Fiore Seminar, Denver

[John Jordan]

April 26-27th, 2003
Denver, Colorado, USA

Two day intro class to the Fior di Battaglia.

Details available at:

http://scamelee.freeservers.com/seminar.html

(WARNING: LOTS OF POP-UPS!!!)

John Jordan

[John Jordan]

bump...

[John Jordan]

....set....

Only twelve spaces left and we've had two registrations per day for the past four days....

[John Jordan]

I *may* have one spot left. I will post later this evening to let you know.

[John Jordan]

Stewart,

I sent you a private mail about this. I have a space if you are still interested. My apologies for the delay.

[Jake_Norwood]

I attended this Seminar with Bob Charon this past weekend. It was a worthwhile trip and despite some initial skepticism I left very pleased.
Bob has clearly done a lot of work in both translating and interpreting Flos Duellatorum. He himself impressed me with both his physical build (courtesy of Farmer Burns and Matt Furey...I'm convinced now and ordered "combat conditioning") and the solidity of the techniques that he's extrapolated from Fiore's system.
The first entire day of the seminar (7 hours of practice) were devoted to Abratzarre (okay, I have no idea how to spell that...but it's wrestling...I'm a German school guy!) and Daga (dagger) work. This formed a solid foundation of balance and footwork on which Fiore's system is grounded. While the seminar was not in any way physically demanding (all techniques were practiced slowly and without force, though Bob did emphasize the "attitude" of intent...more on this later), it did leave me with horrible sore calves from spending almost 17 hours on the balls of my feet in the course of the weekend.
The second day covered Fiore's longsword Posta and some set plays, again at longsword. I'm happy to say that despite a friendly debate concerning edge parries the night before, all the longsword techniques and parries were practiced with the kind of edge/flat dynamic that we're so adamant about around here with only one or two exceptions in the whole day. Bob was able to demonstrate many techniques with some speed and obvious intent, and I got the impression that he could perform many of them with real intent ("in ernst") if he wanted to. I plan on taking what we learned from him and applying an ARMA attitude to it over the next several months. I assume that we'll have great success with this out here.
Outside of the Seminar I was able to join Bob and a few others in a long discussion on community politics, swordsmanship, and a number of other things.
As I said before I went out there with some apprehension (I know that Bob was a long-time SCA member, for example), but found that I was treated with the utmost respect (when I introduced myself as "Jake" Bob filled in, "Jake Norwood of the ARMA?" "Yes," I said, taken aback) and despite some dogmatic disagreements we got along quite well. I'm of the opinion that most all of what Bob teaches could easily be adapted to our training methodology--easier than Christian Tobler's Ringeck interpretation, for example.
I did sorely regret that there was no sparring or even free-play of any kind, as I would have liked to see Fiore "at speed." I certainly gained a whole new respect and understanding of Fiore and the Itallian system, and I was suprised at the depth of the differences with the German tradition under Lichtenauer.
Anway, thanks to John Jordan for putting together a high-quality event.

Jake

[Brian Hunt]

Yep, my calves hurt also. <img src="/forum/images/icons/crazy.gif" alt="" /> Imagine my surprise to be at the seminar, and realize that Jake is there also. By gosh we could have car pooled or something from Utah. Great seminar. Would like to place my stamp of agreement with Jake on his well thought out comments on the seminar. Had a great time, learned a lot, and I can go back and reference Fiores manual and it jogs my memery wonderfully to remember the techniqes I learned. Can't wait to start trying them at speed, and see if I can pull them off in sparring later. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

[John Jordan]

I'm glad you guys had a good time and I'd like to thank you for attending. I would have been very disappointed if folks didn't treat you well since a tolerance for disparate views is the key tenet of the Rocky Mountain Historical Combat Guild.

Sorry about the lack of free sparring but I didn't feel we were prepared for that (with a few exceptions, to include y'all). The rough outline that exists in my head and no where else has us prepared (as a group) for free-sparring about this time next year. Right now we are focused on learning the basics and promoting the study of WMA in the area. In 2004 or 2005 we are looking at having a multi-instructor event on the Front Range and will work free-sparring into that.

We'll be announcing a July Christian Tobler seminar soon and are looking into a third seminar (probably Fiore) in the Fall. We'd be more than happy to have any of the Provo folks who care to make the trek over the mountains.

[Shane Smith]

I agree completely! Fiore provides the most consistantly effective AND understandable historically-validated system of medieval fighting arts to be found in my opinion.It is truly astonishing that he was able to combine all of the various aspects of the fight into one codified Art, the Flower of Battle. We spend a considerable amount of time focusing on his work here in VAB.

[Guest]

I would have been very disappointed if folks didn't treat you well since a tolerance for disparate views is the key tenet of the Rocky Mountain Historical Combat Guild.

For future seminars if you would like your seminars to have still more impressive material on top of the impressive material already being presented then perhaps you should add John Clements to your venue of instructors and some other ARMA scholars...as long as it is not a "Members Event", if you're are serious about disparate views .

I think this would be nice and it would be much larger. But you would have to get more space <img src="/forum/images/icons/tongue.gif" alt="" /> The event I'm hosting this year is for showing appreciation to ARMA members for thier work and research. If I opened it up to other WMA schools it would be huge and I don't have the space... I may do this next summer of 2004 and perhaps include a Tourney and invite all WMA groups, big and small (but as you know John it takes a lot a preparation and hair pulling to plan these events <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />)

Cheers

[Jake_Norwood]

I'll back up Todd on that, John. After discussing training philosophy with the German branch of your group I really felt that John C. would be not only well received by your group, but that his no-nonsense approach to training would blow you guys away. Every atendee at a JC seminar gets personal attention to form and intent, and despite the [censored] you might hear from nay-sayers, I've never been to a JC seminar where someone was hurt, and I've been to more of them than anyone I know. On top of that the training really is top-notch; every element of the physical application of HES I know I got from JC or one of his students (I wish that we had had more free time at the recent seminar so that we could swap physical techiniques and not just gabbing). If you're interested in really performing the techiniques with historical intent and physicality, then JC is the way to go.

Having JC out will also really clearly tell the community that you guys are as "neutral" as you claim to be--leaving him out but inviting all the others sets you up as an "IMAF" group, which isn't your stated intention, I know. Just contact him at armadirector@aol.com and he'll let you know what you need to do to get set up--it won't be any more difficult than having, say, Bob over. You can contact me, of course, to help you set such a thing up, too.

Oh, and just 'cause JC would be coming out doesn't mean that it would be an official ARMA seminar. He has a whole set of presentations for non-ARMA groups.

Thanks again for you hospitality in Denver!
Jake

[Guest]

Sorry about the editing of my post, my english she a not to good <img src="/forum/images/icons/tongue.gif" alt="" />

[Guest]

John, if you really want to see the real deal, get John Clements out there! We just had JC here for a seminar last month. About half of the participants were non ARMA members from various backgrounds. All of them were extremely impressed with the quality of the instruction and the focus on really understanding how to perform techniques in earnest against an antagonistic opponent. Several of them had been to other seminars with other instructors and remarked that they had never seen such a practical, realistic approach. No other instructor I know of demonstrates techniques with real speed, and "intent" the way John does. This is critical to really understanding how techniques work in combat and how they look when done correctly.