Monday 20 October 2014

Spatha Fencing

Bought through: Living Social
Voucher for: One ($12) or Five ($49) Fencing Classes - North Melbourne or Albert Park

Spatha Fencing

I've been known to dabble martial arts, but what I really love is the romance of using cool weaponry - the short sticks in Eskrima, a Philippines based fighting style; the clever staff work in Bojutsu; and the thrilling explosiveness of Kendo, an awesome Japanese sword fighting technique. I've also really enjoyed fencing and have been taking classes on and off since university. 

I saw this voucher pop up on Living Social recently and thought, fantastic! I was quite excited about getting a refresher in my foil technique and secretly, just having lots of fun in combat bouts.

I booked in for my first lesson at Spatha's Melbourne location, an expansive training arena at the North Melbourne Football Club where they held practise on Monday nights from 5.30pm onwards. (My class started at 6.30pm). 

The location was open and airy with what looked to be an Olympic grade Laurent-Pagan electrical scoring apparatus. Impressive, most impressive, and just a touch intimidating as I'd never been wired up before.

And it looked like that wasn't going to be happening anytime soon either. 

Truth be told, I'm drawn to fencing from the great cinematic sword fights and am a fan of the renowned Bob Anderson, an English Olympic fencer and beyond par fight choreographer, who had trained everyone from Errol Flynn onwards to Johnny Depp, even working on The Hobbit until his death in 2012. 

I prefer being free of the electrics, but the classes I received on this intro pass still felt a little basic - we were given plastic foils for the first couple - and then the lessons eventually got bogged down into board-written formulae of attack, feint, lunge, parry... 

This may be what the sport on an Olympic level is made up of, but for me it was way too written-technical for this early stage of training.

I've had many classes before, one term was even with a pupil of Bob Anderson's when I lived in London, and I found you best learnt to fight and utilise demonstrated techniques by physically engaging with different combatants, round robin style. Fencing is essentially chess with swords.

The beginners section of this school weren't part of a dedicated class on their own, but more of an adjunct to the main action on the floor. As such, I found we didn't have a consistent instructor who could recognise how we as students individually needed to learn, and best tailor the lessons to our varying skills and enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, my excitement with each additional class was a lesson in diminishing returns and I don't think I'll be back anytime soon.

Pros: Some of the techniques were a useful refresher to earlier lessons at previous schools; a good space at North Melbourne for more established fencers

Cons: No discussion on protective clothing (gloves for your sword hand); inconsistency in instructors, who were more other senior fencers than trained teachers; technical homework introduced discouraging to casual learners


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