Arm Hurting: Renaissance Style

No, the time machine that took me back to the Renaissance is not what hurt my arm. In fact, I took a bus to get there. You take the 33 at the bus loop, get off at East Blvd, get on the 16, get off at Seymour, walk down two blocks and ta-da! You’ve officially arrived in the Renaissance.

You must think I’m crazy right about now, but after hearing about Academie Duello, I insisted on taking this trip to the past. While I was still in California, I always wanted to take a sword class. I looked and looked and looked and couldn’t find anything. As I was wasting time on Facebook, while I should have been reading (no matter how much I read, I always have more), I saw an ad for this place. Facebook ads are usually terrible, boring, and usually scams (they have been in the past at least; they are getting better), so I had doubts on whether this place actually existed since it seemed that such places do not exist in the world (from my limited research). I believe that you can sign up for a free class on any day that they have classes, so the one that I chose was on Saturday and luckily it was the first Saturday of the month (that means that the class rotation schedule starts over again).

It took me over an hour to get there since I was lost and their website didn’t help much since they just moved a few days prior, but once I got there, it was amazing. Once the class started, we learned how to hold the rapier, stand properly, and other various basic things. Being the weak person that I am, that rapier is not easy to hold, so I switched sides a lot, which also confused my brain when telling me how to stand and how to lunge. By the end of the class, my rapier was mostly touching the floor since I wasn’t used to holding it yet.

The end of the class was the most interesting part though. It was a rank test day (I’m not sure if they do this when there aren’t rank tests), so they had everyone in the room stand in two lines, no matter your skill level, and practice. It was quite intimidating since I had just learned everything about 20 minutes prior, but I met a lot of interesting people who helped me with my technique and they were all very nice.

To get a better feel for it, here’s the video from the end of the class that I just mentioned. I’m towards the beginning if you look hard enough.