Session 12-21-08

A cold one today….I was pretty sure no one was going to show but Justin and Chris both showed up to freeze. Matt was wisely vacationing in Florida. Outside temp 13 F, inside the LOD a scorching 22 F. We found two antique heaters to warm our gloves up in the storage side of our training building.

No unarmed today…all weapons. When it is this cold I just have no desire to hit the frozen mats.

We started out with Justin and I having three bouts with the single stick. Chris came in a little late so we then each took a turn bouting him as well.

Next up we dug out our three headed flail trainer and discussed it’s use for a bit referring to the Montante class, taught by Craig Johnson, from last ISMAC that I took. We then did some work with the flail against the short staff and had several bouts with these mismatched weapons. Definitely fun to play with and very unpredictable…I can only imagine what fighting with a metal version would have been like. Plastic chain and nerf golf balls are crazy enough.

We then went over to concepts with the shillelagh…first to block then grab the opponents stick off the bind and pull then into a butt strike…second to set up a bind from an attack so we have action being dictated by us rather than having to try and pull off some things as a reaction. Once we had the bind the rest was up to the individual stickfighter. Personally I like raking the eyes with the ferrule on the butt end of the stick as I wind around into grappling.

We ended the session with some work on the murder axe from Paulus Hector Mair’s Opus. We went through the first play for about a half hour, forcing it too work at times but in the end finally getting a feel for what is being shown plus organically finding a few variations of our own.

I would have liked to work on some mountain axe and possibly even some boxing but it just got too cold and we called it a day.