Dear Friends of Der Fechtsaal,

Adventsfechten 2010 is over and it's been a blast! What started in 2008 with only eight participants in our small training hall became now an event with twentyfour fencers in a fully equipped training center - special thxs to the City of Krefeld to make this happen. So here's the review of the Adventsfechten 2010 on Saturday, the 4th of December 2010.

At nine o'clock in the morning doors of the gymnasium of the Städtisches Arndt-Gymnasium in Krefeld were opened for us and our twentyfour guests of groups as Alte Kampfkunst, Frequens Motus, Hammaborg, Krumphau und Krücke, Nauka-Fighting, MASD, Mispeldorn, PSV Oberhausen and Der Fechtsaal arrived.

Directly implementing our "participants focused"-approach we started at about ten o'clock with a spontaneous change of our program when Martin Bergermann (MASD) helped out on warming up the crew with some exercises containing yoga and stretching elements.

This was followed by Stefan Dieke's (Alte Kampfkunst) „Principles of Fighting“. Stefan split his class in two parts. Part number one was moderated discussion, finding access to fighting from a more theoretical point of view. We extracted principles we wanted to examine in detail in the second part, which were bridging the distance with weapons that either relay on impact like a cane or relay on sharpness like a saber. Very enlightening were movements in which the weapon followed the body and movements were the body followed the weapon as two extremes within the principle.

Around noon we had a short coffee and tea break with snacks and started off again about half an hour later with another spontaneous change of the program. Since we were surprised by a larger number of fencers than expected we organized a new schedule and held „Paulus Hector Mair‘s Sickle“ by Julia Gräf (Hammaborg), Ingo Petri (Hammaborg) and Daniel Nilges (Der Fechtsaal) and „Paulus Hector Mair‘s Flail" by Oliver Janseps (Mispeldorn) in parallel.

The sickle trainers Julia, Ingo and Daniel showed a new interpretation which condensed the Stücke that much that not three, four or more Brüche and Gegenbrüche were executed after each other but only one movement containing three, four or more ideas, meaning Brüche and Gegenbrüche happened in a concept of Obsessios and Indes. Sickle fighting becomes that way much more deadly than it's been seen before.

The flail class was, as all former pole weapon classes held by Oliver, biomechanically absolutely sound, based on a set of basic movements. Again Oliver proved his endurance on interpreting cumbrous material and also his nous in interpretation and made the flail the fun weapon of the event.

After another break all participants switched to the other topic. Only disatvantage of this solution was, that Julia, Ingo, Oliver and Daniel had to hold their classes twice and had no chance to check out the sickle / flail.

In the late afternoon we started sparring, using flail, sickle, Mordaxt, saber, Langes Schwert and as a special shooting with the sling. Also cutting tests with sharp sickles were possible were Ingo sliced a full target with his self made toothed sickle.

After taking a shower and closing the fabulous training hall we went to have a beer at the Limericks, Krefeld. Following our tradition we emidiatly started to plan the next event, Mittsommerfechten 2011, the theme is set and even the first trainers could be won. So, keep in touch and join our mailing list or become a friend on facebook. Latest arround early February we will come back with more details, by the way the gymnasium is already reseved.

All in all it has been a fun event and so far the biggest one Der Fechtsaal had, with help of all of our trainers, participants and friends. Thank you so much for attending!

And here, last but not least,you will find pictures online.

Best Regards

Der Fechtsaal