At the end of January we finished up the fourth 30-for-30 Swordplay Challenge. The Facebook group this year had over 250 members with reports coming from at least 100 of them throughout the entire month. I enjoyed reading posts from practitioners throughout the world with varying levels of experience and coming from different backgrounds and disciplines.
\nI took some time to reread a bulk of the training reports and compiled some interesting collections based on the diversity of training represented. I hope they’re as interesting and entertaining to all of you as they were to me.<\/p>\n

Types of Training<\/h2>\n

Participants in this year’s challenge reported a lot of different types of training both solo and partnered to make it through their challenges. These included:<\/p>\n

\n
• Solo Sword Drilling (cutting, thrusting, target drills, etc)<\/li>\n
• Solo Non-sword drilling (footwork, posture, isolation exercises)<\/li>\n
• General conditioning (quite a few people reported running, kettlebells, and gym workouts)<\/li>\n
• Sledge hammer training (yup it was a thing)<\/li>\n
• Katas, assaults, and other choreographed forms<\/li>\n
• Partnered drills<\/li>\n
• Lots of sparring<\/li>\n
• Reading historical and modern training manuals<\/li>\n
• Translating historical manuals<\/li>\n
• Watching training videos<\/li>\n
• Dancing (was reported by several people. Good cross-training!)<\/li>\n
• Juggling (though I think the person in question does 4-hours of this everyday, regardless of swordplay challenges)<\/li>\n
• Water Polo<\/li>\n
• Live cutting<\/li>\n
• Mounted Combat<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  Swords & Tools<\/h2>\n

  The types of weapons and tools employed in training this year was pretty broad:<\/p>\n

  \n
  • Longsword<\/li>\n
  • Rapier<\/li>\n
  • Backsword<\/li>\n
  • Sidesword<\/li>\n
  • Weighted swords<\/li>\n
  • Sledgehammers<\/li>\n
  • Balls<\/li>\n
  • Weights<\/li>\n
  • Katana<\/li>\n
  • Saber<\/li>\n
  • Shinai<\/li>\n
  • Spadone<\/li>\n
  • Montante<\/li>\n
  • Messer<\/li>\n
  • Storta<\/li>\n
  • Cutlass<\/li>\n
  • Dane Axe<\/li>\n
  • Poleaxe<\/li>\n
  • Dagger<\/li>\n
  • Sickle<\/li>\n
  • Epee<\/li>\n
  • Dussack<\/li>\n
  • Lots of improvised drilling devices including dowels, kids wooden swords, ladles and pot lids.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Training Locations<\/h2>\n

    When someone is intent to get their training in, they’ll do it no matter where they are. The following locations were reported for physical drilling (not including reading locations):<\/p>\n

    \n
    • Schools, studios, and halls<\/li>\n
    • Parks and other outdoor green spaces<\/li>\n
    • Bus stops<\/li>\n
    • Amusement park line-ups<\/li>\n
    • Movie line-ups<\/li>\n
    • Moving vehicles<\/li>\n
    • Planes<\/li>\n
    • Garages<\/li>\n
    • Parking lots<\/li>\n
    • Living rooms, bedrooms, and dining rooms<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Historical Sources Mentioned<\/h2>\n

      People mentioned many different sources both for their reading as well as for guiding their physical training. These included:<\/p>\n

      \n
      • Marozzo<\/li>\n
      • Capo Ferro<\/li>\n
      • Fiore dei Liberi<\/li>\n
      • Leichtenauer (non-specific source)<\/li>\n
      • Docciolini<\/li>\n
      • Salvator Fabris<\/li>\n
      • Viggiani<\/li>\n
      • Dall’Aggochie<\/li>\n
      • Annonymous Bolognese<\/li>\n
      • Alfred Hutton<\/li>\n
      • Ferraro<\/li>\n
      • Joachim Meyer<\/li>\n
      • Von Auerswald<\/li>\n
      • Angelo<\/li>\n
      • I.33<\/li>\n
      • Paulus Hector Mair<\/li>\n
      • Nicoletto Giganti<\/li>\n
      • Paschen<\/li>\n
      • Filipo Vadi<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        Countries<\/h2>\n

        This was a little harder to put together in a timely fashion without going through everyone’s profiles. My results are based on countries mentioned:<\/p>\n

        \n
        • Indonesia<\/li>\n
        • Israel<\/li>\n
        • Spain<\/li>\n
        • Canada (BC, Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick)<\/li>\n
        • USA (MI, MA, NY, WA, WI, FL, TX, CA, MO, UT, NC, NJ, ND, MN, RI)<\/li>\n
        • Germany<\/li>\n
        • Russia<\/li>\n
        • Netherlands<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          Thanks again to everyone who participated, it was inspiring and entertaining. I hope that people not only got results but set a new habit for themselves to bring into the new year. Please share a thought in the comments<\/a>.
          \nDevon<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          At the end of January we finished up the fourth 30-for-30 Swordplay Challenge. I took some time to reread a bulk of the training reports and compiled some interesting collections based on the diversity of training represented. I hope they’re as interesting and entertaining to all of you as they were to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathofthesword.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathofthesword.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathofthesword.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathofthesword.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathofthesword.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pathofthesword.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathofthesword.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathofthesword.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathofthesword.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}