Sunday the 13th marked the first official ARMA Wisconsin training day. Despite some amazingly severe weather in the AM (seriously...first my car was pelted with ping-pong sized hail, then I had to move a blown down tree from the road to continue forward, then I had to pull onto the side of the road for 15 minutes because it was raining and blowing so hard, ect), the day turned out great...lot's of sun and a humid 80degF <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />
In attendance were Wisconsin ARMA members Chris Thies, Aaron Pynenberg and his brother Ryan, Phil Ristow from Minnesotta, Bob Ferdinand and his teenagers (also from Minn.), and ARMA application submited Karen Rose. Including myself...there were ten of us there!
We trained for a good solid (with numerous water breaks of course) 4 1/2-5 hours. Thanks to Phil being much more organized than myself (btw, it was cool having two of us instructing and helping each other instruct...much recomended to any other groups trying to get started) we were able to train in a logical manner.
We started with basic foot work, then onto the basic guards and ways to use them, basic strikes, then the master strikes, followed by the Versetzen. After most everybodys brain was no longer absorbing longsword stuff, we then covered some vague - not master specific...just some of the common themes - of dagger combat. We finished up the day of training with a short lived amount of sparring...breaking three padded weapons in about 10-15 minutes (yep...we were hitting hard and fast)!
A cookout and general socializing followed.
All in all, a great day and something we will definantly plan on doing again! It was also a very nice chance to figure out who lives near whom and therefore know who's nearby and available for more regular training. And of course the regular great things like finally being able to put a face to a name and the comraderie'(sp?) of brothers (and sisters!) in Arms.
Pictures to follow soon:)
Jared L. Cass, ARMA Associate, Wisconsin
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