I echo the Joe's sentiments in thanking Jacob Norwood for coming up to Columbus to put us through the paces. It was a small seminar, but this made for some great individual attention from Jake and his experience will prove to be invaluable as ARMA-Columbus and the Associate Members who attended move on with their training.
Saturday was the NTP 1.0 seminar - all the basics and some great drills that have been devised to help develop skill at the basics. We ended with some great free-sparring sessions with padded weapons of various types - everyone got to try out a little of everything. Bill Welch's paddeds are truly the real deal - great weight and balance!
Sunday was an "open day" in which Jake let us work on whatever we wanted. He took us through a workout that he uses to build conditioned muscle used in our art, and that was definitely an eye-opener. We also worked with the basics of dagger and ringen. Jake explained and demonstrated how all the principles of longsword could be transferred quite easily to ringen and dagger work, and we ended that portion doing some free-sparring exercises with dagger.
We then worked on the 10 ARMA cutting exercises, and Jake showed how they can be used to work into a florysh-type exercise and also how they can be applied in waster free-play and sparring. Some light test-cutting took place after lunch, leaving the area looking like Mail Call had just been filmed there with all the watermelons laying around.
Last we worked on the basics of the Meisterhau, with Jake showing how the proper footwork in conjunction with the blade work can make all the difference.
A good experience was had by everyone there, for which I'd like to thank:
- Jake, for travelling up to Columbus and putting us through the paces.
- Jaron Bernstein, for being the organizer of the event and getting us all together.
- Jeff McCarl, for being the host and provider of PLENTY of Gatorade and water!
- Jeff G, David, Aaron, Matt, Sean, Joe, and Charles for joining us and making this such a great weekend.
Some pictures from the event:
