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Academy of Historical Arts

Academy of Historical Arts

Historical fencing with professional, modern teaching

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Longsword Warm-Up & Technical Exercises

Useful longsword exercises to warm up and prepare for your training, or for solo practice at home.

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19th April 2023 by

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Technical exercises with the longsword. Photo by Keith Farrell, 2020.

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.

Introduction

Some introductory information to set the scene for the course.

Lessons

Purpose – why do a warm up? Preview When to warm up? Preview How to warm up? Preview Mistakes to avoid If you start to feel pain How to use the following videos Making your own exercises

Exercises

A set of individual, standalone solo drills that each have a particular technical focus that will be beneficial for your fencing and sparring, and that can also work well in isolation as a warming up exercise.

Lessons

Video: Drill A (Zwerhaw) Video: Drill B (Streychen, Zwerhaw) Video: Drill C (Mittelhaw, Zwerhaw) Video: Drill D (Oberhaw, Underhaw) Video: Drill E (Zwerhaw) Video: Drill F (Streychen, parry, Oberhaw) Video: Drill G (Streychen, Vom Tag, Oberhaw, Lang Ort) Video: Drill H (Oberhaw, Zwerhaw)

Flourishes

Sometimes, doing the same action or little set of actions on repeat can become boring. A longer sequence of actions can therefore be the solution – something to keep the brain a bit more occupied while still working through a variety of useful movements on repeat! Luckily, there are some longer sequences like this in our historical source material.

Lessons

Video: Nuremberg Hausbuch Video: Kölner Fechtbuch Video: Meyer's four openings drill

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Address

Registered Office:
Academy of Historical Arts Ltd
63 Commerce Street
Glasgow, G5 8AD
United Kingdom

Also trades as:
The Vanguard Centre
Liverpool HEMA

Contact

Contact Us:
Please use the contact form to establish contact in the first instance.

Business Hours:
Mon-Fri from 2pm-5pm, then 6pm-9pm.
Weekends depend on what events are running.

Registration

A company registered in Scotland.

Company Registration Number:
SC510495

VAT Registration Number:
425906000

EORI Number:
GB077822973000

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