Tennessee training get together

[david welch]

Denise Smith of Tullahoma, TN is having a get together for ARMA Tennessee August 12-13th so all us TN people can meet again.

We have invited a few of the new guys from KY to come down, and as far as I know, any one else in ARMA that is in the area is welcome, too. Mostly this is just going to be a going over the basics training meeting, so if you are a new member or a new study group you might want to think about it.

I am going to start about 9am Saturday and we will be going until nobody wants to play anymore, and we will start again Sunday and go for about half a day. We want to cover mostly long sword basics... but we are going to break it up with some dagger, grappling and staff so it isn't just one big long neverending long sword class. Our goal is to get everone ready, so when you go to one of John's 1.0s you can follow along enough to get all you can out of it. Ideally, this should be enough so you can work by yourself if you are just starting and not be lost, and we are goingto focus mostly on study group stuff since TN is so long we have a bunch of people working by themselves most of the time. This isn't a seminar or anything like that, it's just a big ARMA group meeting open to other ARMA members.

Denise should be by later to fill in the details.

David Welch
ARMA Tennessee

[david welch]

Bill had me post his training notes on the website. You might want to go over them between now and the meeting. We will be covering a lot of this material. I know it looks long, but we can show you this stuff in no time at all... even if you don't understand it all, we just don't want the meeting to be the first time you have ever heard of some of this. This references several of the masters, but focuses mostly on Meyer. You probably also want to read Doebringer. Really the core of what we do in Knoxville is follow Doebriner, and use Meyer to explain and expand his teachings.

We change and edit the training guide pretty regularly, but I don't think very much of the "basics" will change between now and then.

http://armaetn.org/ARMAKnoxvilletrainingnotes.html

[Denise Smith]

Special thanks to David & the Knoxville ARMA study group for being willing to come down and help us out.
Our study group (when we last met) consisted of three adults and three youth plus Katherine Johnson our study group leader. Since Kat moved we have been a bit lost and haven't been able to get together. I am hopeful that this will be the start of an active study group here in Tullahoma.
The location for the gathering will be at my home. So as not to post my home address on the web please e-mail me directly and I will send you the address and directions. This will also help me to know how many are coming so we can plan for the cook-out Saturday evening (side dishes and desserts welcome) as we will provide the main dish (E-mail for more details).
Tullahoma is located an hour and a half from Nashville, Chattanooga, and Huntsville, AL. So if there is anyone down around Huntsville or Chattanooga that would like to come your more than welcome. We are also only four hours from Atlanta's north side.
I will post info on local hotels and my back yard is available for tents (limited RV space on the driveway).

Denise
more info to come!

[Denise Smith]

There are two hotels in Tullahoma...
Jameson Inn
1-800-Jameson
931 455-7891
2113 North Jackson Street (41A)
www.jamesoninns.com

Hampton Inn
931 461-5222
1922 North Jackson Street
e-mail: THMTN_Hampton@hilton.com

[david welch]

Thanks for the hotel info, Denise.

For the staff instruction, everyone will need a staff. Home Depot sells 1 1/2 (?)inch poplar poles for about $7 for a 7 footer. We have some we have had for at least a year, they hold up pretty well.

You might also want to get an 18 inch dowel and round the ends for the dagger work. In a pinch, a rolled up and taped magazine or newspaper will work, but let's try not to go that route.

Everyone needs to have a waster, but again, if we need to we can let people use 48 inch dowels. If they need to do that, they need to tape the front and back with a strip of tape so the dowels have a marked "edge".

Everyone needs to be in the red shirt/black pants uniform, with flat soled shoes, and bring all the wasters, padded swords, sharps, etc that they have.

We will be bringing several sharps for test cutting, so anyone that wants to bring something to cut is welcome to. Mellons, rolled and soaked newspaper with pvc core, meat, etc.

Also, everyone needs to remember to bring water.

[david welch]

More stuff for you to look over between now and then...

The staff looks like part of it will be out of:
http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/swetnam.htm

The grappleing from:
http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/CodexW.htm

Dagger. A lot of it will come from Meyer and Jake's handout.

And make sure you check out Talhoffer:
http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/talhoffer.htm

Look carefully at the plates. Where we are doing Doebringer and using Meyer to explain it, we look a lot more like the Talhoffer plates when we fight than we do the Meyer plates.

What I really need to do is rewrite Doebringer with Meyer stuff... and switch Meyer's plates with the right ones from Talhoffer. Bill really has that about half done in his study guide (hint).

[david welch]

Since we are getting into the final countdown for this... is there anything you want to make sure we cover?

[Denise Smith]

It's not too late to attend! Just call 931, four double nickel, zero eight, ninety eight. for directions. Tullahoma is easy to get to and we are going to have a great weekend.

[david welch]

Wow, what a weekend!

Denise and her (soon to be ARMA member I hope ) husband Chris were terrific hosts and made us feel right at home.

These guys are able to pull together a combined adult and junior member class of about 15 people. Not bad for a "new group", huh!

We had a pretty full day and a half of longsword, dagger, grappling and staff basics. We had way more material than we had time to cover as well as I would have liked, but I am pretty sure we were able to hit enough of it these guys can work a lot of it out on their own. Once you start practicing with "intent", it gets a lot easier to sort doing it right from wrong.

I knew I had had a productive weekend Sunday. After giving the section on grappling covering how to use your body's boney sharp bits to cause constant discomfort to your opponent I was hearing :

"UGH!"
"Hey!"
" That hurts! How are you doing that!"

I had a blast!

I am sorry for the guys from KY, though. One couldn't make it, and the other one worked until midnight and then drove down for the day Saturday. Unfortunately he made it in right after the longsword basic part had finished, and the group was just too big to give him enough help catching up. We are talking about another trip up to the Frazier Historical Arms Museum in Louisville, so maybe we can work something out with you all later.

Any way, good job Tullahoma! I look forward to getting to train with you all again soon!

[Jake_Norwood]

Sounds great. Wish I could have been there.

I look forward to training with all you guys in about 6 weeks.

Jake

[david welch]

Sounds great. Wish I could have been there.

I look forward to training with all you guys in about 6 weeks.

Jake

Me, too.

I wore puffy pants.

[JeffGentry]

Maybe we should have a puffy pant's training day.

Gotta love those puffy pant's.


Jeff

[Denise Smith]

Thanks again to David and Donna, Bill and Jennifer for coming down and sharing so much information with us.

We learned a lot! They stressed the ARMA rules and methods. They showed us how to stretch & warm up properly, basics in long sword, staff, dagger, and grappling. They even taught us how to read and translate some of the old books.

We had a full day on Saturday and the joy and adrenaline of it kept us going even though some of us (older ones) felt our bodies scream afterwards. My Calcium and mineral supplements prevented any muscles cramping though.
We watch John Clements and Paul Champaign on the History channel's Modern Marvels episode about knives, sword, and axes (we bought the DVD).

My husband was in charge of feeding us all but found time to join us on Sunday and will be sending his paper work in ASAP; he really enjoyed David working with him. Our daughter (13) wasn't able to be there for most of it but she did come out for awhile. She remembered all that she had learned from Kat and Jake and after such an amazing weekend (mostly as a spectator) she is now committed to joining and participating.

David and Donna were great at reading people and seeing where their fear or confusions were. Donna tutored me through some areas and both focused on making sure My son and I would be prepared to lead our next group meeting.

We had such a great time with Dan Hinson (Nashville, TN) both on the field and listening to him on our piano. I'm sorry we didn't know Richard Martell (Louisville, KY) was wanting to focus on long sword and would be arriving later. After all that David said about the museum in Louisville I can see we will be going up that way too (maybe early October), perhaps we can meet with Richard and his group then.

To all who couldn't make it I hope you will be able to the next time we have the Welch family in Tullahoma. Keep watching for other opportunities to study with others, it make a significant difference in ones understanding of it all.

[Richard Martell]

Thanks to Denise Smith for allowing me to attend the get together of her group. Even though I arrived late and missed the start of the longsword instruction, I learned a lot. Jennifer got me caught up with the rest of the group and during a rest break David gave me some one-on-one instruction. I brought home a better idea of what I should be doing when I practice.

I had "sparred" once before back in June and had a lot of fun whacking my opponent with my padded practice longsword, but without knowing the basics I was just swinging wildly in the air. The instructions and demonstrations given by David, Bill, Jennifer and Donna were very easy to follow and understand. They did a great job.

After the grappling and staff demonstrations I now want to expand my study to include more than just the longsword. Also, after describing to my 13yo daughter the participation of the youth that were there, she now wants to join ARMA as well. Now I have a practice partner at home.

My only regret was that I could not stay the entire weekend. Thanks again to Denise Smith and the Tullahoma group.

Richard Martell

[Gene Tausk]

[quote="David Welch"]Wow, what a weekend!

Sounds like you guys put on a great event. Congratulations! Looks like there is a solid ARMA presence in the Smokey Mountain State (or whatever you guys call yourselves).