Consulting Swordsman
This is not the end. It is not the beginning of the end. And frankly, while the course itself may be concluded, it is not even the end of the beginning. But the last class of the current beginners’ course is now over, and while it was not as well attended as I’d have liked … Read more
Last Tuesday I was still away in the USA, teaching a seminar for Lonin and doing some consulting for CLANG. Ilpo Luhtala covered the beginners’ course class, and this post is compiled from his notes. There were 17 beginners attending, plus a few more experienced students, and overall Ilpo thought it went pretty well. I … Read more
I’m writing this blog post in Seattle, sitting at a table in my friend’s house, with a gorgeous view over Lake Washington. Tomorrow I’m teaching a two day seminar for Lonin, then staying on to work with the CLANG team for a couple of days. When I arrived yesterday there was a boxful of my … Read more
This evening’s class was the smallest yet; some combination of factors had numbers down to 15. Given that at least four of the missing had let me know in advance, there is no immediate cause for concern. If the next class is similarly depleted, I’ll send an email round to those who I haven’t heard … Read more
So we are now half way through the beginners’ course, with no drop-outs. Fully half the course showed up for the basic class on Thursday last week as I mentioned in the previous post, another excellent sign. And though we never require a student to buy a sword, the fact that two of the beginners … Read more
This course is proceeding apace, helped along by the exemplary attendance record, and their tendency to show up on Thursdays. 21 out of 24 were there on Tuesday, which is pretty good. We began with the warm-up and as usual took a familiar pattern of exercises and added a few bits and pieces. This week … Read more
Between last week’s class and this one (on the 9th of October) we saw six out of the 24 attend class on Thursday 4th – this is an excellent proportion, especially for the first week. It takes some guts to show up with so little prior experience, but they all got stuck in, and seemed to … Read more
One thing I have never done before is keep an exact record of what I (and others) teach over the eight weekly sessions of a beginners’ course at the Helsinki branch of my school. Of course it is never exactly the same twice; every group is different, and as we usually have only two such … Read more
Intermediates class on Sept 3rd 2012 was run as a freeplay class. The goal of this class was to improve students’ freeplay skills, and to remind them of freeplay’s place in the practice of historical swordsmanship. It went like this: The class ran for 90 minutes and was loosely divided into five sections. We began all … Read more
Every evening, before class, the salle is cleaned by the students. Usually this entails just a swift floor-mopping, done more for show than effect. Last night I arrived early and was cleaning the bog. It seems that none of my students are really bothered by the gradual accumulation of filth, and so it tends to … Read more