If you could do just one drill..

[Jonny Deuteronomy]

Shock Quintain

[WilliamThomas]

I believe pell work would be the one thing that I would stress to new fighters. I would also caution them to please not throw more than 50 shots (not combo’s) at a time when starting off… after a week or two if they consistently do pell work (5 days a week) move it up to a 100 the next week. After two weeks of consistence, 150 and do that until you work your way up to 300 shots a day. I strongly discourage anyone from doing more than that, it is just hard on your joints EVEN if you are doing them slow with proper form.

I would also add a simple training tool that takes little effort and anyone can do it. I tell the folks I am working with take 5-10 minutes every night before they go to bed or while they are waiting in the office/ whenever… and envision their fights. Look through their minds eye at your opponent, slow the fight down, look for the openings, feel your body reacting blocking, striking, moving. Just something I had started doing when I use to box and and still use it with fighting in the SCA.

I know that is two, but oh well us mountain folk just can’t count.

WT

[Tascius]

For Louis de Leon

Ok I can't find the bungee arm throw guide so here is the basic form.

Get close to a pell and place your sword horizontally on your shoulder such that the sword grip is facing forward. Your elbow should be pointing down and near your ribs.

Get in proper stance, use Bellatrix method. With the spine straight, rotate your hips and shoulders together such that your sword hip is rotating toward the pell.

The sword should be moving toward the pell, extend your arm toward the pell but keep the elbow in near the torso. You will also need to turn your wrist such that the palm is facing upward as you strike. The sword should be moving in an arc horizontally. Try to hit the pell with the lower 1/3 of the sword. Your not trying for speed, simply power. The exercise is more productive at half speed. Imagine your fist is going to end up punching a block off of your opponents shield shoulder. That will put the sword right through the 'face' of your pell.

The purpose of the bungee was to keep the arm near the torso. It is not needed if you throw slowly. Imagine that you are hitting your pell with your hip. The hip powers the motion and your torso transmits the power. The shoulders move with the hip and remain level.

The blow you have just thrown would be a short stem blow. Short stem because it was thrown from very near the pell. To throw longer range shots just stand further away and extend the arm further but in the same manner.

The purpose of this drill is to get the feel of harnessing lower body power rather than using arm power. If you find you can't throw the blow well then try putting a bungee cord around your torso just below the ribs and worm your sword arm through this bungee loop. This will restrict your arm such that power must be delivered with a torso twist.

If you look in the links below this motion is called zero stem. Continue to short stem for the full motion.

zero stem
http://scholumartisbellum.pbwiki.com/Cl ... tionBlocks
short stem
http://scholumartisbellum.pbwiki.com/Cl ... -ShortStem

Hope that helps.

[paulb]

It appears that when the Archive lost about 6 months of material, the Bungee thread on my forum was part of that.

The point of the exercise is to encourage your body and arm to act as a unit, to avoid using the arm too much to supply power to the blow.

This done by making some sort of collar that will fit on your arm near the elbow - whether it is attached above or below the elbow is a matter of personal comfort. The bungee is attached to this collar, and run across your back to your opposite hip, where it is attached.

The bungee should be just taut when you are in the Bellatrix guard position. When you swing, it should pull on your opposite hip, encouraging you to use your whole body to swing. It doesn't make you do it - just encourages.

Once you're set up, just use the regular 6-target pell drill, or any other combination drills.

You can attach a second bungee for the other arm, to encourage your body to participate in a similar manner when doing punch-blocks.

I've attached a picture in a Word file showing how to attach the bungee.

Another way of achieving the same outcome is to do the drills with both hands on your sword. Both hands should be together at the end of the sword, with your "off" hand being closer to the end. If possible, use a longer stick than normal, and make it very tip-heavy.

Optimally, use about a 44 inch piece of rattan, with some carpet wrapped around the tip end. Don't make it too heavy - just get the balance point out far enough that you can really feel what the sword is doing. For either exercise, remember to keep your stomach tight.

Regards,

[Thorstenn]

I have done a two person drill very similar to this in the past but since We moved I can no longer do it anymore. It teaches you how to develop off balance power in your shots as well, as the second person tells you when to strike the pell no mater where it is from you.

Thor.

P.S. zeph says hi.

the drill that helped me progress the most is the following.
I hung a heavy bagfrom a big tree limb about 20ft up from 12 ftr length of rope.
I would mark the targets with Tape like Phelan suggested.I would get the thing swinging in an 8ft circle .Then challenge my self,today I am going to hit it with the last two inches of my stick no matter where it goes or I will keep my sheild within six inches of it at all times and fight it like that.

This taught me to hit a moving target,attack form all ranges,and how to distance myslef fform or close the distance to my opponent.

I am currently designing a steel arm so I can set one up in the back yard.

[Louis de Leon]

Your Grace, Tascius - thank you both for the instruction. This is something I seriously need to work on, and it sounds very helpful.

[Tascius]

Just for the record, the method I listed is just to get the feel of lower body power. It is not a 'throw this blow from now on' primer. Having read D. Paul's method, that's the one to do. A normal blow with a reminder attached!

I could not remember the method for attaching the bungee (that was at least 15 years ago) so I supplied another lower body power method I was more familiar with.

[Louis de Leon]

JIt is not a 'throw this blow from now on' primer.

Oh yeah, I know that. It's just that I have the bad habit of throwing my shots "all arm", and as a result I don't get a lot of blow acknowledgment. My fault, but fixable. If I could get my torso involved, if I could be less static when I fight - I just know I'd be doing better. And as soon as I read this thread it seemed like I found a possible cure.

I'm always very leery of pell work. I won't do it unless I'm 100% sure I'm doing something right, and not just burning something into muscle memory I'll have to unlearn later on.