Learn Fiore

It has been a while, but we just posted 4 new videos to our YouTube channel. Due to stay-at-home orders from the Covid-19 virus, Llwyd shot and presented these videos alone. And since he didn’t have anyone to spar with, he chose to focus the videos on fundamentals. So, there are videos on holding your sword, what a sword’s “true” and “false” edges mean, and terminology for range, cuts, and footwork. A playlist with the new videos can be found here. Please excuse some of the minor camera issues.

Welcome to 2020!

We’ve had a number of events happen in the lives of our members that have, temporarily, slowed down our work. But we’re still here: still reading, experimenting, and learning. We hope to return to teaching and videoing shortly. Our recent Fiore work has focused on his longsword plays. Here’s a picture of our silly variant of the 6th Student Play within the Zogo Stretto (close range) longsword section. We’ve replaced the master’s sword with a selfie camera in order to rub in the effect of the bind. This seems very on-brand for Fiore.

Stay tuned for more Fiore in the new year!

It’s time again for Atlantian University. We will be teaching three classes, with two being taught for the first time. The classes are “Applying Fiore’s Combat system to SCA Combat Forms”, “Fiore for the Armored Medieval Fight”, and “Fiore Poleaxe”. You can see a video version of the SCA combat class on our YouTube page (in two parts), and the notes for the Armored Medieval Fight class are on the articles page. Please plan to come join us!

Also note that Robert Charrette, author of our favorite Fiore interpretation, will be teaching Fiore classes at the event. Look for classes taught by “Laeghaire O Laverty”.

Three new videos have been added to our Youtube channel. Two are longsword plays – The Peasant’s Blow and a similar play from the Sword in Armor section. The third video is part 1 of 2 on Using Fiore in SCA Combat. This part looks at three Fiore plays, extracts common features, and discusses the skills needed to apply those features. Part 2 (which we haven’t filmed yet) will discuss drills to develop and practice those skills. This is a video version of our new class for Atlantian University which we plan to teach in February 2019.

Due to Florence, the approaching hurricane, the site for Fall University has cancelled all rental use so that the space can be used for evacuations. So, the event has been cancelled. The next University is February 2nd at Louisa County Middle School in Mineral, VA. We will almost certainly run Fiore related classes there. Stay tuned! In the intervening time we hope to shoot some more video possibly including the new class on application of Fiore’s approaches to SCA combat.

Pennsic 47 is next week. We hope to see you there. We’ll be fighting in many of the C&T events as well as the war points. Llwyd will be recognized as a Master of Defense (the SCA peerage for fencing) prior to the Monday rapier war point. Please join us if you can on the field near the Atlantian pavilion at about 2pm (final time not yet set).

We also hope that you’ll make plans to join us at Atlantian University on September 15 at Franklinton High School in Franklinton, NC. Llwyd and Aiden will be teaching 3 Fiore related classes: Fiore for the Armored Medieval Fight, Fiore Poleaxe, and Applying Fiore’s Combat system to SCA Combat Forms. Two of these are completely new classes. And there will be lots of other HMA and SCA classes to take as well.

We just posted two new videos to the YouTube channel. The first is about 3 new books that are facsimiles or translations of the Getty manual (links to purchase can be found here.) The second video discusses 3 ways to learn, practice and drill Fiore (a video version of the essay here.) These were shot with a new camera and microphone combination that seems to have improved our sound and resolution even if we have some lighting issues at times.

We’ve added a couple of new posts to the Learn Fiore site:

Learning Fiore: An essay with ideas on learning Fiore’s system

Our Goals: A description of our team’s goals with our studies.

We’re also internally discussing new videos and classes for upcoming Universities, so stay tuned for those!

Atlantia’s Kingdom A&S Festival is coming up on March 3, 2018 and we’ll be there. Llwyd will have a display table showing his work with the study group. Also, there will be two 30 minute demonstrations on the performance stage of Historic Martial Arts from 1320-1599 including 20 minutes of Fiore demonstrations from Llwyd and Aiden.

In other news, we’ve just added a new page describing the goals of our group.