Useful technical exercises with the longsword to warm up and prepare for your training, or for solo practice at home.
About the course
The warm up is a crucial part of any training session. It gets you moving, loosens you off, and prepares you for the physical activity ahead. It is how you set yourself up for success in the session, and how you can help avoid injuring yourself with overly-vigorous movements.
Many people’s exercise of warming up is often that it can be both boring and fairly irrelevant to the martial art in question. The choice of exercises is often what leads to this unfortunate state of affairs. It doesn’t have to be like this, though!
In this video course, we show a variety of useful exercises with the longsword that you can use for warming up at the start of a session. They are examples of exercises that Keith Farrell uses when teaching at his club Liverpool HEMA or when teaching workshops at events. Furthermore, these exercises are also useful technical lessons, in and of themselves, and they can be used to improve your sword handling skills and the effectiveness of your performance while fencing.
Finally, these exercises also serve for useful solo training if you are unable to attend your club for a period of time.
The lessons are delivered by way of videos with voiceovers (and with textual video transcripts, in case you would prefer to read while watching in silence).
About the instructor
Keith Farrell is a well-known professional HEMA instructor who has taught at events throughout the world. His main area of expertise is fencing with the longsword according to the German sources, although he has interest in several other HEMA disciplines as well. With a background in karate and modern fencing, and having been involved with HEMA since 2008, Keith’s understanding of historical fencing is extensive and improves further every year.
He has also authored and edited several books, and has won several medals in competitions over the years, demonstrating a high level of art, theory, and practice in a holistic fashion.
Access and price
The price is a one-time payment for perpetual access to the course.
Please note that this course was originally developed as a proof-of-concept, to give ourselves some practice at making online courses. Furthermore, it was largely filmed during the pandemic restrictions in 2020, when it was not permitted to visit sports halls or indoor locations, or to meet other people. The videography is therefore not ideal but was the best that we could do under the circumstances, and the low price reflects this.
The content of the lesson is still exactly what we would be teaching if the videos were better, so you can expect to receive high quality information from this course.