New study group help

[Thorvald Barrett]

For many years I have done all the wrong things. I have never had any formal training, but what I have done is sword fight with a friend of mine. I understand that we are at a disadvantage, but I was wondering what we should do to counter act what we have tough ourselves, and learn how to fight properly.
If this helps, we have used hardwood weapons almost exclusively up to about a month ago. Right now our only training weapons are one of the fiberglass rapiers the ARMA shows how to make, and two Cold steel hand and a half swords.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Sal Bertucci]

Are the Cold Steel swords blunt?

Have you only fought with swords, and that's it? What exactly have you done wrong all this time?

I would recommend start using manuals if you haven't already. They give you a point of reference. (many of them are available on our website)

Have you submitted an application? The drill that we have are very helpful to getting the basics down, and the videos in the members area are quite insightful.

How's your footwork?

Give me more to work with and I'll help as best I can.

Sal Bertucci
Scholar Adept

[Jaron Bernstein]

For many years I have done all the wrong things. I have never had any formal training, but what I have done is sword fight with a friend of mine. I understand that we are at a disadvantage, but I was wondering what we should do to counter act what we have tough ourselves, and learn how to fight properly.
If this helps, we have used hardwood weapons almost exclusively up to about a month ago. Right now our only training weapons are one of the fiberglass rapiers the ARMA shows how to make, and two Cold steel hand and a half swords.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Where are you located at?

[Thorvald Barrett]

The cold steel swords are wasters, http://www.coldsteel.com/bokkens.html
We are in tri-cities WA.
Our footwork is good, but not correct. Everything we have learned we have learned for experience. We have just gone out and fought. We do not fight with live steel, ever.

[Sal Bertucci]

ahhhhhh, ok, I was a little worried there for a bit.

What wooden wasters were you using before? The Cold Steel ones can take a beating, but are poor training tools due to the way they are manufactured. (from what I understand)

I think that you will be able to benefit from the Vaage article that will be coming out soon, and from other material that we have in the members section.

So, you have longswords and rapiers. Why did you pick those two? (they're on my perfered list as well )

Going out and fighting is good, but I think you should consider picking a manual, and allowing that to enrich your freeplay.

We don't currently have anyone in WA, that I'm aware of, but you might consider starting a group there. That would open some events for you.

What are you doing to practice footwork?

[Thorvald Barrett]

[quote="Sal Bertucci"]ahhhhhh, ok, I was a little worried there for a bit.

What wooden wasters were you using before? The Cold Steel ones can take a beating, but are poor training tools due to the way they are manufactured. (from what I understand)

I think that you will be able to benefit from the Vaage article that will be coming out soon, and from other material that we have in the members section.

So, you have longswords and rapiers. Why did you pick those two? (they're on my perfered list as well )

Going out and fighting is good, but I think you should consider picking a manual, and allowing that to enrich your freeplay.

We don't currently have anyone in WA, that I'm aware of, but you might consider starting a group there. That would open some events for you.

What are you doing to practice footwork?[/quote]

I do not know if I would call the Cold Steel swords long sword, they are only 44in, the blade length fo the rapier is almost the same, I chose the longsword almost exculsively because of the crossguard, I studied finding the sword and found that with the Katana there were huge problem in this technique because of tis lack of a croosguard.

After studying Fabris some, just loooking at pictures because I can't read italian, I realized that the rapier is not what it looks like in the movies and the olympics.

My footwork is the same, looking at pictures of fabris, and trying to figure out what he means.

I dont use anything but the rapier right now.

[Jonathan Newhall]

I've seen longswords with a blade length of about 34 inches up to around 40 inches as the common length range. Personally I like about 36 and an 8 to 10 inch handle, leaving me at around that 44 inch sword length you wouldn't call "long" :p

[Sal Bertucci]

I haven't gotten into Fabris yet, but I'm working my way there. There is an English translation of Fabris, FYI, The Art of Dueling by Leoni. I think you might find that helpful to your practice.

Footwork is one of those things that's hard to help with via text, sorry. It sounds like you're making good progress, and you're at a good place to start. I would recommend making lunges from each of the guards a few times a week as well as basic stepping offline, forward, backward, etc.