CAS Activity: Action

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- learn about swordplay and how it worked
-see if I have what it takes to practice a very demanding sport

PREPARATION: After watching many videos and trying to get to know about historical fencing, I searched on the internet for any events or classes that relate to it; and thus I found "Academia da Espada"

I have always been interested in swords and generally medieval warfare, but I had never tried any activities that relate to this is some way. So, after some searching, I found the "Academia da Espada"; it is a small group in Pinheiros that teaches olympic fencing as well as historical fencing, in fact, the only ones to do so in Sao Paulo (and possibly Brazil).

Historical fencing is relatively popular in Europe and Canada (with over 60 clubs in England alone), but not so much in the rest of the world, so I was really excited when I found out about "Academia da Espada". The classes don't ever really "pause", as the instructor is there almost every day of the year, so I was able to get started rather quickly in some experimental classes; and while I figured that it would be a rather tiring and demanding sport, I was really not imagining that it would demand so much physical effort.
The very basics are a little similar to olympic fencing; in that you stay in a "rest" stance and all of your actions depart from such (this rest stance depends on what historical manual, books written by masters centuries ago now available online, you use to practice, in our case we use Fabris's), and a guard to rest the sword. The rest stance used by us consists of facing your side to the opponent, placing your feet at a 90 degrees angle, and bending your knees. Every action stems from this; walking back and forth (with the right foot starting the movement forward and the left one starting the movement backwards), and all the ways to guard, attack, riposte, etc.

Now, this might not seem too hard, but imagine staying and moving with your knees bent for about 5 hours straight, only resting occasionally when you are not either training or sparring (which is almost, well, never), I can assure that it tires more than any leg press section you can imagine. The first two days were the heavier though, as I was still learning all of the different ways to move, so I would do literally nothing more than walk and run back and forth on the "bent knee" stance; however, after I started to learn rapier (the type of sword used by us) attacks things got interesting. While you still need a great amount of training and repeating, I got to train my aim and actually stick the sword at things, which is way more fun than walking back and forth for hours.  

The community is actually much bigger than I imagined, for now I have met about 15 people, but I suspect that there are more (surprisingly, there are women too). Everyone there shares a common interest, historical fencing, which is very rare in Brazil; so it is a very tight and small community that welcomes anyone willing to try. I just had my first match yesterday, on a "sparring day" in the academy (if you want to be dramatic I guess you can call it a "tournament"), and while I lost every fight horribly (as expect of a 2 weeks beginner), the activity really caught my attention and I pretend to stay practicing for as long as I can. It's going to be very time consuming, especially considering my school activities, but I'm up for it.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
-It takes a lot of effort to learn a martial art, but it is also incredibly rewarding if you manage to do so
-If we want something in life, we need to get up and go looking for it