Hi,

I spent five days in Spain recently, ostensibly on holiday. This did not entirely prevent me from doing sword stuff.

I was teaching the first of my Foundations of Rapier (Capoferro Mechanics) webinars on Saturday, three days after we got back, so I did my best to stay fighting fit by training on my balcony. You saw the results last week. Here’s a much more characteristic “what I did on my holidays” pic:

Capoferro’s mechanics are hard. Not complicated, exactly, but physically demanding if you try to do everything exactly as shown in the book. And preparing to teach the class meant reminding myself which bits are essential to making the system work, and which bits can be sensibly compromised if your knees, hips, strength, or general willingness to suffer don’t quite match those of a seventeenth-century Italian fencing master.

We had the first class on Saturday evening, and I had a marvellous time. We worked through the basic mechanics, including guard position, footwork, how to hold a sword, and so on. I got the video edited and sent out to everyone signed up to the webinars the following day, so they’d have a fair chance to watch it before the second session.

I think perhaps the most important bit was getting Capoferro’s lean to make tactical sense. Why lean so far back? Why lean so far forwards? Why not just step?