Broadsword Academy Colorado Springs

Just a reminder that there will be no sword classes until Friday, 9/6. Enjoy your long weekend!

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Happy July everyone!

Welcome back from the June hiatus of classes (and the school year hiatus of posting to this page, sorry)!

We're going to try out a bit more structure to the class this month. We'll have a Technique of the Month that we'll be programming with dedicated time throughout the next four weeks as well as time set aside for free playing/sparring in each class.

Also, this summer I will be filming a new set of drill/technique videos to put on the members page for Broadsword Academy. I'm doing this because my understanding and ex*****on of these moves has gotten better over the last few years and I want to make sure that the updated videos reflect the most "ideal" forms. Especially if students are using them to practice at home. I will also be putting together videos for all four Humor Dances so that students can view and practice them in their entirety.

Finally, there is only one day this month that I will be out of town and that is July 16th. I'll make sure that there will be enough training videos posted by that point so that any students that wish to practice (solo or with partners) have some material to guide them if they choose.

See you in class!

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It has been too long since Broadsword Academy had a monthly post on it. For those of you who don’t know, I recently started a brand-new day job as a 5th grade elementary school teacher and it turns out (who’d have thought) that being a teacher is a LOT of work. So, in an effort to get ahead of some things while I have the time, this post will cover the upcoming class schedule from mid-October through the beginning of January.

For our Halloween class, we’ll be running a class on the favorite weapons of Jack the Ripper (because Victorian outfits are an easy costume for me), Michael Myers, and whatever the newest psychotic fanboy or ridiculously distant relative of the original killers from the Scream franchise that appear in the most recent movie (seriously, I think I watched the first three and I have since lost track of how many there are): the big knife.

October 20 and 24: Attacking the gap under cover/guard.
October 27: Sparring night
October 31: Big Knife Spooktacular
November 3 and 7: Footwork and Distance Drills
November 10, 14, and 17: Lunge and Recover Drills (and Sparring on the 17th)
November 21 and 24: Thanksgiving Week, No Classes
November 28 and December 1: Timing and Evasion Drills
December 5 and 8: Blade Actions (Beat and Bear)
December 12 and 15: Command (Grapple) Drills
December 19: Christmas and Hogmanay Class (don’t worry, swords will still be a part of this)
No classes until Friday, Jan 12

I know it’s two days early, but…
Merry August! It is the month of my birth (31st) and although I absolutely cannot be bribed with presents and baked treats, who says you can’t or shouldn’t try anyway?

It’s also the month that I begin my new day-job as a teacher! Which means that although I’ll still be making it to class in time to teach, the odds are not good for my brain to be fully functioning and adaptive. At least not these first few months. So, for August (and Sept and Oct, probably) we will be operating off a pretty rigid curriculum. Don’t worry, we’ll still have time for free play and sparring, but most classes for the next couple months will have definite drills and lessons that I’ve planned in advance.

So, here’s the schedule for August:

August 1st and 4th
Warm-up: Figure 8s
Weekly Lesson: Cutting with the tip.
Drill of the Month: 7733

August 8th and 11th
Warm-up: Footwork Line Walk
Weekly Lesson: Equilibrio
Drill of the Month: 7733

August 15th and 18th
Warm-up: Figure 8s
Weekly Lesson: Cutting Drills
Drill of the Month: 7733

August 22nd and 25th and 29th
Warm-up: Inner Child
Weekly Lesson: Flow Play and Sparring
Drill of the Month: 7733

Happy July everyone! Welcome to the month named after a man with a lot of blade experience. Or experience with the receiving end of a whole lot of blades. Ok, moving on from this joke and leaving it bleeding under a toga, we have a month with only 7 training days. There will be no class tomorrow, July 4th. Enjoy the holiday!

Since we’ve got a shorter month of training, we’re going to shift our usual schedule a bit. This Friday would normally be a mechanics day, but we’re going to stretch it and combine it with our simple drill days. And in honor of good ol’ Mr. Caesar, we’re going to spend a lot of time working on thrusts this month.

July 7, 11, 14: Mechanics and Simple Drills of Thrusts and Blade Sensitivity.
July 18 and 21: Advanced Drills
July 25 and 28: Sparring Days

Unfortunately, classes will be canceled for this week and potentially next week as well. I tested positive for Covid and, although the symptoms are mild, I won’t endanger my students.
I’ll keep you updated and when classes will be back up and running again.

They say “June Gloom”, well not at Broadsword Academy Colorado Springs! Unless you feel gloomy about parrying drills, blade alignment, and timing practice, which of course none of us do! There are currently no planned class cancelations this month and we’ll keep our general weekly themes of mechanics, simple drills, advanced drills, and sparring.

But we’ll add two new elements this month: Monthly Drill and Four Humors Drills. Monthly Drills will be a single sequence that we practice every training day. This will be to build muscle memory and programing that’ll help improve all the other movements. This month will be 7733.

Four Humor Drills have a similar aim to the monthly drills, but are meant to give you experience in different tactical patterns. We’ll start with Phlegmatic this month, which focuses on defensive structures while it eschews most other movements. Useful for when you can’t move because you’re knee-deep in a stream or guarding a doorway.

As you can see below, we’ve got an extra training day to sample another style at the end of this month. Our previous sampling days included Irish Stick and Quarterstaff, which means that we can choose from Medieval Longsword, Polish Saber, and Kali for this month. Let me know which you prefer in class.

This month’s schedule:
June 2 & 6: Mechanics
June 9 & 13: Simple Drills
June 16 & 20: Advanced Drills
June 23 & 27: Sparring
June 30: Cross Training Day

This is the May
… post for Broadsword Academy.

First off, let’s talk changes. Nothing big this month, but there will be some small adjustments. At the moment, classes are pretty strictly divided into Mechanics/Simple Drills/Advanced Drills/Sparring. But this month we’ll be experimenting with some blending of lessons and themes.

The various weeks will still focus on mechanics, drills, etc, but we’ll add some sparring and other exercises throughout the month to keep you on your toes (and to encourage people to come to all the classes instead of just the “fun” sparring ones at the end of the month).

Speaking of the end of the month, May has an extra training day, so we’ll be taking a look at another weapon style and seeing how our principles apply to something other than a broadsword! I’ll give you your options and get your votes for the new style either in class or in the group text.

To help keep all this organized, there will be a new addition to our class: a dry-erase whiteboard! The board will have our curriculum for the day and some notes will be added throughout class. Then, a picture of the board will be uploaded to this page after each class so that we can track what we’ve been learning and you can see what you missed if you had to skip a class or two.

So, here’s the schedule for the month of May:

May 2 + 5: Mechanics with a special Star Wars themed training for Revenge of the Fifth
May 9 + 12: Simple Drills
May 16 + 19: Advanced Drills
May 23 + 26: Sparring
May 30: New Style Day

This is the May and I’ll see you in class!

Reminder: There is no class this Friday as I will be out of town. But there will be a new video in the BACS Instructional Videos group to give you something to work on.

If any of my students can't access the group, let me know and I'll fix the issue.

Welcome to April!

A few announcements for Broadsword Academy before we get into the schedule of the month. Because of the break in training last month, I didn’t get around to filming the new Four Humor training sequences. That will change this week and they’ll be edited and up on the instructional videos page by the end of the month so we can start practicing them.

Speaking of breaks in training, there will be no official class on Friday, April 14th. I will be out of town that weekend, but I will film a series of drills (since it’s a Simple Drills day) and post them to the instructional videos page for you to practice either solo or with a partner.

Also, we had a great time playing around with Irish Stick Fighting for our crossover classes at the end of March! So much fun, in fact that we might be adding in a stick study group to the dojo in the next few weeks/months. So, keep an eye out for official day/time announcements coming up.

April Training Schedule:
April 4 & 7: Basic Mechanics
April 11: Simple Partner Drills and Sequences
April 14: No class, but check the Instructional Videos Pages for at-home drills
April 18 & 21: Complex Drills and Adaptability
April 25 & 28: Sparring

Ah, March. The month of shamrocks, imbibements, and the color green! For Broadsword Academy, this March is also the first month this year when we will be doing a cross-training weapons day on Friday the 31st. This means that we'll be sampling a different weapons system than our usual baskethilt broadsword on that day and seeing how the mechanics and principles line up. What will be the same, what will be different, and so on.

Then there's the question of which "new" weapon system we should experiment with. I'll give you some options below and you can cast your vote either in the comments below or personally in class. You can also suggest weapon styles that are not listed below, but if your suggestion needs a bunch of specialized equipment or I feel that we can't test it out safely, then it's probably not going to happen (yet). Since our class is a benevolent dictatorship, I'll have the final decision as to which other system we'll test out at the end of the month. Have your vote into me by the 14th, so that I have time to structure the class properly.

Another announcement is that I will be filming several original sequences/katas/dances based on the Four Humors of Fencing. Each dance will have several layers of techniques of varying complexity and will be great supplements to our training. Once they're filmed and added to the BACS Instructional Videos page, any students who want to learn and perform the beginner, intermediate, and advanced sequences in class will get a badge of recognition (in addition to bragging rights) based on their mastery of the movements. The first of the videos will be posted by mid-month with the others following by month's end.

So here's the schedule for March 2023:
March 3 & 7: Basic Mechanics
March 10 & 14: Simple Partner Drills and Sequences
March 17 & 21: Complex Drills and Adaptability
March 24 & 28: Sparring
March 31: Cross Training

Possible systems that we can cover on Cross Training Day:
-Kali (Filipino Stick and Knife)
-Antrim Bata (Irish Stick Fighting)
-Quarterstaff
-Polish Saber
-Medieval Longsword
-Kenjutsu (Japanese Katana)

Happy Imbolc everyone! We've got a shorter training month, but not just for the obvious reasons (it's February, duh.) It'll be my five year anniversary on Friday, Feb 17th, so there will be no official broadsword class that night. I will post some drills and solo work that y'all can do at home for that night, because I will be off celebrating with my lady.

I think we've all had a blast on our sparring days (it's so great to see students implementing their lessons with skill and enthusiasm) and I like how the new training schedule is working out. Based on what I saw during our last two sparring days (in my own form too), his month we'll be focusing on angles of attack that also keep you defended (and lead to fewer double kills) and inside/outside half-hanger parries since a lot of us are getting caught in the underside of the forearm or the belly when we try to defend a lower 5 or 6 cut with a "Standard" (blade pointing up) inside/outside parry.

So, here's the schedule:
Feb 3 & 7: Sword and Body Mechanics
Feb 10 & 14: Simple Partner and Solo Plays
Feb 20: Complex and Adaptability Drills
Feb 24 & 28: Sparring Days