Help for a straggling group

[JeremyDillon]

Hi, my group of WMAers has been practicing very regularly for the past few months. As unofficial 'leader' of the group, it's been my responsibility to come up with training materials and excersises for the group to work on. At first we covered basic principles from J. Clements' wonderful "Medieval Swordsmanship", as well as bits and pieces from Talhoffer, Meyer etc. My problem is this: the group is getting a little bored with our standard excercises, and even the promise of new knowledge and ideas has failed to bring some of our members back. What I am in desperate need of is some ideas to help reinvigorate my group. As it stands, our twice weekly practice regimine includes basic cutting excercises, including cutting and thrusting with different kinds of footwork, demonstration, practice and review of concepts from source materials, and sparring (one on one, one on two, two on two, three on one, three on three, etc.) with different weapons and combinations of weapons. Lately, I've introduced a couple of new variations, such as offense only/defense only sparring adn half-speed steel blunt sparring. Any ideas would be welcome.

[Richard Strey]

Now that Jeffrey Forgeng made it available to the English-speaking public, you could get a copy of Meyer's treatise and do what we did: Go through all the Handworks and learn and drill every single one of them. It will leave you with a much broader ability to fence.

[Jake_Norwood]

I've seen few things re-energize a group like a seminar or study day that introduces outside fighters and/or instructors to your group. Have you been able to organize one before?

Jake

[JeremyDillon]

Thanks for the tip Richard, I'll have to pick a copy up.

I've thought of trying to do something like that. As a matter of fact, myself and the other founding members fo the group have been talking about organizing a trip to an ARMA event or seminar. That would probobly get some people interested, I'll have to look into it a little more.

[david welch]

If you were to use an actual location in your profile, you might be suprised at the help that is already available to you.

[JeremyDillon]

If you were to use an actual location in your profile, you might be suprised at the help that is already available to you.

Sorry, hadn't had a look at my profile in a while and it was needlessly silly.

[Gene Tausk]

If you were to use an actual location in your profile, you might be suprised at the help that is already available to you.

Sorry, hadn't had a look at my profile in a while and it was needlessly silly.

Have John or Jake host a 1.0. That will get your groups's energy going.

Hehehehe.