The warm up is a crucial part of any training session. It gets you moving, loosens you off, and prepares you for the physical activity ahead.
Warming up can often be both boring and fairly irrelevant to the martial art that you are training. The choice of exercises is often what leads to this unfortunate state of affairs. In this training video course, we show a variety of useful exercises with the longsword that you can use for warming up at the start of a session, and that are also useful technical lessons in and of themselves.
Finally, these exercises also serve for useful solo training if you are unable to attend your club for a period of time. The attention to technical details in the voiceovers will help you improve how you use your sword and how you use your body to support your sword actions.
About the instructor
Keith Farrell is a well-known professional HEMA instructor, publisher, and researcher. He used to participate in competitions and has won several medals for his fencing skills; now in retirement from competition, he teaches regularly at events around the world and enjoys fencing for the sake of moving effectively and efficiently according to the historical sources that we study. These video courses are a result of popular demand!
About the course
For each flourish, Keith has provided his translation of the source material, so that you can read the original instructions.
There are voiceover instructions for each flourish, so that Keith can draw your attention to important parts of each exercise. This helps to make the clips more valuable than simply showing an interpretation of the flourishes.
Finally, the voiceovers are also provided as a transcript for each video, so that you have access to these instructions in written format.
The price is a one-time payment (including all appropriate local taxes) for perpetual access to the course.
Course Curriculum
- Drill A - video with voiceovers (Zwerhaw) (2:14)
- Drill B - video with voiceovers (Streychen, Zwerhaw) (1:46)
- Drill C - video with voiceovers (Mittelhaw, Zwerhaw) (1:16)
- Drill D - video with voiceovers (Oberhaw, Underhaw) (1:08)
- Drill E - video with voiceovers (Zwerhaw) (1:35)
- Drill F - video with voiceovers (Streychen, parry, Oberhaw) (1:36)
- Drill G - video with voiceovers (Streychen, Vom Tag, Oberhaw, Lang Ort) (3:02)
- Drill H - video with voiceovers (Oberhaw, Zwerhaw) (2:45)
- Meyer's four openings drill (aka "Meyer's square") (1:52)
Keith Farrell
Keith Farrell is one of the senior instructors for the Academy of Historical Arts. He teaches HEMA professionally, often at international events, and has an interest in coaching instructors to become better teachers. His main area of expertise is fencing with the two-handed longsword according to the teachings of 15th century masters in the Liechtenauer tradition. However, he also enjoys fencing with the Scottish basket-hilted broadsword, with the sabre, and with a variety of different swords!
Keith has authored several books for Fallen Rook Publishing, including Scottish Broadsword and British Singlestick and the award-winning AHA German Longsword Study Guide. He maintains an active website at KeithFarrell.net, and has also had several articles and interviews published in a variety of magazines and journals.