One Year Reflection

I thought I started studying Armizare in October when in reality it was September.  Thirteen months have passed since I started this journey into HEMA, which stands for Historical European Martial Arts.  It turns out it was mid September when I discovered our recently opened HEMA school, High Desert Armizare.  So I missed my one year anniversary.  Whoops.  (sheepish grin)  I am pleased that not only have I stuck with it I have become even more enchanted with it-ALL of it.

  I remember being not so thrilled about the idea of grappling.  But learning dagger sounded fun and cool too.  So if I had to learn grappling and dagger to learn how to wield a longsword I decided I would still do it.  I picked up sword work fairly easily.  Well compared to the other two anyway.  Out of the three I struggled the most with the dagger.  Grappling wasn't far behind.  For about the first nine months or so grappling and dagger work were my least favorite. Mainly because I found it to be difficult and awkward for me.  I believe part of it was exhaustion after working a graveyard shift with too little sleep.

   August and September it seems like we worked with swords completely.  Three weeks ago we started working with daggers again.  I am doing much better and am just as thrilled with it now as I am sword work.  A clearer, non-sleep deprived brain, more experience in Armizare and a greater understanding of how it is a holistic system has made quite a lot of difference.  I have a greater appreciation and knowledge of body mechanics and physics now.  I love how just a simple move properly performed can bring an opponent to their knees.


At about that time a member of our sister school, NW Armizare put out a free app on google play "Pocket Armizare".  A free phone app that combines all four of Fiore's manuscripts in one place and they are all cross referenced with one another.  So if a play is found in all four you can see them all do to the cross referencing.  To the gentleman who did this, "THANK YOU!"  I happily downloaded it and have been scrolling through it.  It is a handy reference to help remind me of what we did in the last class.  I am amazed at how much of it we have covered this past year.   With this app I can also make my own notes using what are me a key terms to remember the day's lesson.