Drills: Arms

Chicken Wings

A pretty straightforward sparring session in which the only legal shot available for both fighters is the arm. Typically this is taught in time with teaching a person proper guard so that they are punished if/when their elbows stick out. Typically I run this as a first blood scenario. First person to snap an arm gets the win and causes both fighters to reset.

Offhand Single Blue

Fighting single blue is a pretty excellent thing to do when you have the opportunity to spar with another person because it forces you to rely on footwork as well as offensive and defensive sword work at the same time in order to win. If you swing and miss it gives the other person an opportunity and you don’t have a second hand worth of stuff to fix your mistake. Doing it with your offhand allows you to train up something that is otherwise derpy. If you’re going to do anything that requires two hands then fighting off hand single blue will improve your off hand. It’s an awful experience that you will likely hate, but this means that you’ll also be able to improve quickly.

Samurai Style

Samurai style is another drill designed to train one handed swordsmanship. The basic premise is that you start with a weapon at your side and for each time it leaves your side you may swing only once. You can block to your hearts content, but in order to strike a second time it must first return to your hip. To train speed/accuracy you do this as another first blood exercise. This can be executed with either your main hand or your off hand. Until you’ve got practice start with your main hand. Since the goal is to train accuracy it’s important that you work with a hand you are coordinated with or start slow until you’ve got the hang of it. When this goes wrong it’s two people repeatedly punching each other in the hands or throwing face shots.

Seated Combat

Similarly stupid like samurai style the goal here is to train speed and reflexes with much less focus on accuracy. You and a sparring partner sit cross legged across from each other. Set yourselves up so that both people can reach their opponents torso. Tap weapons and play by normal rules without moving your feet. First person to a torso shot or two limbs win. Rounds usually only take seconds so you can get a lot of them in quickly. The end goal is simply to increase your hand speed while removing all other variables.

Assgrinder

A melee in which the only legal shot is to a person butt. Theoretically this ought to teach people how to throw wrap shots as the only other way to score this shot is by getting behind someone. Handy for teaching field awareness as well.

Kyrian’s 12

A series of 12 shots to practice I learned from Sir Kyrian. It's likely this has been around for a long while and someone else taught it to him. In any case... there's 6 Swings, 3 stabs, 3 wraps. For the swings try to make sure that each pair of locations (IE, 1 and 2) you strike the same point on both sides of the body. Ideally you do this by using only your wrist; first swing on one side and then flip your wrist over to hit the other side. If you can't do that at first no worries, use your arm as you need to just focus on accuracy. It is more important to train for accuracy and precision then it is to do this fast or with much force. Do it slowly and accurately and then when needed you can speed it up. If you try and start doing it quickly your form will break down so when you need to execute on the movements you’ll have issues because typically the swings won’t go where you want them to.


6 Shots:

3 Stabs:

3 Wraps:

Wrist Strength Drill

Find a single blue and a round protruding object like a doorknob. Brace your elbow with your non-sword arm, to attempt to keep both your arm and elbow from moving. Next, using only your wrist, circle the protruding object in large, slow circles. The most important part is to make a perfect circle. If you find that your circle looks more like an oval or is otherwise lopsided then you need to keep going at a slow pace until those bits and pieces of your wrist muscles are built up. Once you can make a perfect (or close to it) slow circle then you can start to speed it up until the motion becomes relatively quick. Again, keeping a perfect circle using only your wrist is most important. Finally, repeat the process by shrinking the size of your circle until it’s the minimum distance possible around the shape. When I demonstrate this on a field I use a person’s outstretched arm and make circles around their fist.