The Armour Archive

So, I do lots of pell work, and I have several combo's and drills to do, but I've been getting bored lately and trying to mix it up. Here's something new I came up with:
Deck of cards drill: For you gym goers, this should seem familiar. You assign each suit an exercise, shuffle the deck, then work through the deck doing ther number of reps on the card (faces and aces are 10).
example would be, diamonds are pushups, spades are squats, hearts are pullups, clubs are situps or whatever. no breaks in between.
Now, we just substitute blows, combo's, or footwork drills and do the same thing. Pell session is different every time, and if you work your way all the way through the deck, you've done a hell of a pell session.

I'd love to hear about more cool pell ideas

I don't do the pell as often as I should, but when I do, I usually start by doing 5 of each strike. Then 4 of each. 3, 2, 1. If I don't do that, then whichever strike/combo I had done last during my pell work, would become the one I would overuse in practice. Doing this countdown stops me from getting bored, and prevents me from overpracticing something.

Then I repeat, starting at 6 and working my way down.

After that should be combos. But frankly, I don't have many combos worth using.

dumb question: your pel work: in armor or out?

michael

for me, i pell work out of armor except for the gauntlet i always use. my arm isn't much heavier in armor. and i move the same in or out of armor.

Similarly for me. Gaunts, sometimes my helm if I'm working a new technique.
Although I did just get a revival zuparello, so if been doing pell work in that to get used to it.

Marc, I do a fair amount of greatsword/bastard sword work too, but when I practice on the pell it is pretty much all slow work. Do you do yours slow work or at speed?

I do wear my gauntlets and mostly just practice angle precision, blow/combo timing and footwork.

I like your idea of adapting a randomized gym workout method into pell-work, which does get really boring. My attention span rarely lets me do more than 15 minutes at a time, but that might help me stay focused.

I find that greatsword pell work is mostly useful for developing/refining new techniques and storing them away in the ol' battle computer.

MarkH wrote:Similarly for me. Gaunts, sometimes my helm if I'm working a new technique.
Although I did just get a revival zuparello, so if been doing pell work in that to get used to it.

ha ! i just got a new revival zuparello as well for christmas to myself ! i love it. i did the same thing by wearing it during pell work to test it. but my pell work is mostly slow work so no need to wear much armor. well, maybe my helm if working on a new move.

Since I'm new full armor I generally suit all the way up and use footwork and circle the as I work the pell. Also, I was just speaking with some fighters last night and got the recommendation to use a dumbell slightly heavier than your shield and hold that in your shield hand while you work.

I'm going to try the card system for sure!

Prost!
Jon

Hi Deitrich,
I mostly do my pell work slow as well, to work on footwork, angles, combos etc. I will even work new shots forward and reverse motion to really try and train my muscle memory "groove" for a new movement.
BTW Deitrich, I saw the footage of you up on you tube. That finals fight you had against the florentine fighter was Awesome! Great movement and sword angle!

MarkH wrote:Hi Deitrich,
I mostly do my pell work slow as well, to work on footwork, angles, combos etc. I will even work new shots forward and reverse motion to really try and train my muscle memory "groove" for a new movement.
BTW Deitrich, I saw the footage of you up on you tube. That finals fight you had against the florentine fighter was Awesome! Great movement and sword angle!

Hi Marc, ok I had a feeling we would be on the same page with training.

Thanks much for the compliments, that is high praise indeed coming from someone who I've gone on record as saying is a serious badass with the longsword/greatsword.

Did you also see the video where I'm fighting greatsword against the aggressive leftie with the huge shield, in the tiny arena? I wanted to ask if you can think of anything I could have done better in that fight, aside from just being faster/stronger/better.

The first bout I put a zwerchau right under his swordarm, but didn't manage to void enough of his wrapshot, so it was a double.

Could you describe how you practice voids with a pell? I find that the fact that my opponent is rooted in the ground makes it hard for me to imagine where I should be to narrowly escape his cuts.

Thanks!

marxbruder wrote:Since I'm new full armor I generally suit all the way up and use footwork and circle the as I work the pell. Also, I was just speaking with some fighters last night and got the recommendation to use a dumbell slightly heavier than your shield and hold that in your shield hand while you work.
Jon

No one told me it, and once I got my own shield I stopped the practice, but...
When I first was using the loaner shields at the shire, all of them had a tendency to hang from my elbow, they usually didn't put any weight on my hand. So I took small weight for a barbell, tied a rope onto it and hung it from my arm during pellwork.

I quickly learned not to move my shield arm during pell work, as that hanging weight would quickly swing back and hit when I wasn't expecting it.

[/hijack]

I want to make a pell that talks back. I want it to say something every time I hit it, starting with talking smack, then to "oww," ramping up through "fuck, dude, cut it out," all the way to crying and begging like a little girl.

When it goes past screaming in agony to the quiet, powerless whimper of utter and complete submission is when you know your workout is over.

I believe I function as that pell for most of Drachenwald!

Hi Bob,
It's pretty hard to practice timing stuff against the pell. What I do is put myself in that billionth of a second "snapshot" of time when I have to move, and then practice the movements, footwork, angles etc. I'm trying to accomplish. Your pell may be rooted to the ground, but you can still envision the angles that are created as your opponent moves and then go through the technique. For example, if I want to void a simple leg cut and counter, I can set up at range, then figure out how to step so that I am still in range to hit my opponent/pell. Similarly, if I want to practice an offline step and counter, the pell become the target, and a tool you can use to make sure that your body is properly oriented after the step, and your positioning is correct to throw a good blow. if you step, but don't turn your centerline to reorient on your opponent after you've moved, you'll be in a bad position. It's important to drill all the aspects of a move, like the step, and recovery of a void until it's smooth. Otherwise, it won't be there for you in a fight. Easy to demonstrate HARD to describe in type. Just remember, ALL drills, solo or paired rely on you being honest within the drill. If you cheat it, go through on auto-pilot or half-ass it, it will be of minimal value. I hope that helped at all

Don't know how well it would work for us honestly but I know the foil dummy at the local fencing club has a foil mounted to an arm extending from the middle of the chest so beats and other moves can be practiced against an actual object.

Expanding this idea to the pell would be to build a padded spear as long as a sword and arm extended. Mount it at the level of the shot you want to work against. Now you are forced to throw shots without running into the sucker. The padding it to keep the hurting down a little. While not perfect it will force you to work angles. A Cheaply made shield blank can also help with this, allowing you mix things up by eliminating a target area. So a good exercise would be with the blade at chest level and the shield on the left side representing a basic flat snap. Now you can work out combos and have an area off-limits with a visual reminder and a physical obstacle you have to overcome.

I like to hook a shield to the pell to practice getting around and between the shield. Has really honed my angles and such. Now I just need to mount it to a gigantic spring so that it sways when struck, allowing it to hit back