Training

What training do we have?

We train the whole year. In summer we train outside, for winter when there is dark and cold soon we rent a gym. The trainings take place twice a week and last for two hours. One training a week is led by experienced teachers from the Digladior fencing school: Jan „Honza“ Šimek and Jan „Axík“ Aksman. The second training in the week is all by us.

The second from of training are weekend workshops — an intense weekend training of the fighting skills in Prague (usually 6 hours on Saturday, 4.5 on Sunday). The weekend workshops are led by external teachers and take place in gyms. Usually we hold one or two of these a year and we usually offer others not from our group to attend as well.

The third form of training are weekend training camps. Those that take place in winter are under a roof, others in tents. Here a less emphasis is put on the fight training but more on formations, camping, mercenary life, teamwork and functioning as a group. For some of the training camps we cooperate with other groups or individuals (either for training together or vice versa for tactical games).

Regarding the weapons, our primary focus is long (one-and-a-half-handed) sword and the most of the training is dedicated to mastering fighting with it. The trainings are organised roughly according to the Digladior's training plan (where they teach the German school of long sword) with deviations as needed for our group. The training is here and there interleaved by training fighting with halberds, daggers and wrestling (ringen) which allows us to gain fighting skills necessary for a mercenary of our time.

During the training we use steel swords (both regular ones and so called feders) for training techniques, plastic tubes and plastic swords for developing speed and reactions and soft foam swords for developing fighting mentality in free duels. For training in higher speed and commitment and for preparation for modern historical fencing tournaments we have fencing masks and whole-body protective gear.