A very interesting op-ed blog post on Bartitsu – what it was, what it is, and how it relates to 19th c Antagonistics in general, by our good friends at Academie Duello in Vancouver
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Coming in 2014: Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons, a three-part graphic novel series to be set in the Foreworld universe.
Taking place in the year 1913, the trilogy will chronicle the adventures of Persephone Wright, who leads a secret society of radical Suffragettes known as the Amazons. As highly-trained saboteurs, insurgents and bodyguards, skilled in the martial art of Bartitsu, they fight for women’s rights in King Edward’s London. When the stakes dramatically escalate, the Amazons are thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse against an aristocratic, utopian cult …
Featuring a dynamic cast of both historical and fictional characters, Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons will be written by Forteza Bartitsu instructor Tony Wolf and published by 47North, the science fiction, horror and fantasy imprint of Amazon Publishing.
Rumor has it that the Forteza gym will serve as a model for a key location in the story …
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This past weekend Greg Mele, Jesse Kulla and David Farrel of the Chicago Swordplay Guild were at the International Medievalists Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to present a reconstruction of an early 15th century Judicial Duel in conjunction with members of the living history group La Belle Compagnie. There will be a full write up and video of the event on the Chicago Swordplay Guild website in the days to come, but for now, here are a few teasers:
The First Step: Duel with Spears
The duel began with spears, fought to five blows, afterwhich, if no advantage was reached, the combatants would turn to swords.
Part Tw: A Short Exchange of Sword Blows
Having failed to gain an advantage with the spear, the combatants turn to swords. Note that the fighting in closed visors begins to takes its toll on the fighters’ wind…. (And note that the less-winded is the one who is a regular part of FightingFit!)
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Price: $30
Jesse will be teaching this August at the Pacific Northwest HEMA Gathering. Jesse discusses his class “Making Fiore Flow: Fast, efficient means to teaching dagger defense to someone who might get stabbed.” in this recent interview:
http://www.pnwhemag.com/2013/04/29/qa-with-jesse-kulla/
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To help our good friend Phil celebrate the opening of his new studio, Keith will be teaching an Introduction to Martial Blade Concepts, at Philip Nearing Wing Chung. The seminar will be at 1363 W. Chicago Ave. in Chicago from 12:30-4:30pm. The cost of the seminar is $50. Come and familiarize yourself with the knife and the fundamentals of how to use it to defend yourself with a top drawer instructor. Any questions or inquiries can be made via Facebook email or simply calling me at 312 282 9571. See you there….
Read More »This past weekend the Guild was an invited performer at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo or C2E2. During a one-hour demo we demonstrated longsword, dagger, armoured combat and sword and buckler, followed by Q&A and then a 45 minute lesson for interested attendees.
I don’t think we expecting the size of the crowd – several hundred people, or that we would be in one of McCormick Place’s main halls – a vast, cavernous space. It gave us plenty of room to demonstrate and teach, but the last minute failure to get a microphone made for an interesting challenge! The solution was probably best handled by adhering to the Guild’s motto, Ferrum non Verbum, and getting to the sword play, as seen in this film clip we call “Erin kills everyone”:
Or this clip of Jesse and Trey doing a little sword and buckler fencing:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8ULr-z3KGM]
Guess which one is the sword and buckler fan and which one just plays one at demos! (Our thanks to FireFighter214 for the video.)
All in all it was a fantastic experience and we are looking forward to next year!
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The Forteza-MBC Instructor Crew
On April 6th and 7th, renowned self-defense instructor Mike Janich presented a two day workshop on empty hand combatives, and empty hand vs. knife tactics. Mike is the founder and head instructor of Martial Blade Concepts, which is described on the MBC website as:
Martial Blade Concepts (MBC) is an edged-weapon system specifically designed to meet the needs of today’s concerned citizen and armed professional. Based on Michael Janich’s extensive analysis of the Filipino martial arts and many other systems, MBC takes combat-proven tactics and adapts them to modern tools, threats, and legal concerns. The result is a practical, easy-to-learn system that is ideally suited to modern self-defense.
Mike Janich’s Martial Blade Concepts, as well as the adjutant systems of Counter Blade Concepts and Damithurt Silat (Practical Unarmed Combatves), is the base system four own Combatives program taught at Forteza. Students were very excited to train with the founder of the system they train in, most of whom had never met or trained with Mike before. Forteza instructor Keith Jennings also ran a prep seminar two months prior, so by the time Mike arrived in Chicago, all of the students in attendance had a solid base level of skill, which allowed us to skip right past the basics, and jump right into the good stuff.
Mike Janich takes Thayne for a big ride!
Day One was dedicated to empty hand skills. Mike focused on taking the instinctual startle response, and educating it to make for a functional tool that can be used under stress. Students were brought through variations of the cycling drill, Hubud, and shoulder stops. Saturday ended with a look at Junkyard Aikido, his expression of joint-locking techniques. Focus was on how to apply joint locks in an actual combative situation, and to use them to either viciously stop the fight, or use the lock to transition to either a weapon or escape. Special shout out to visiting MBC alum Thayne Alexander for taking so many hard falls on the hard wood floor! It was an impromptu school of hard knocks style clinic on how to fall properly.
Day two was Counter Blade Concepts, and how to transition from empty hand into knife deployment. Mike started with his signature video presentation which shows footage of actual knife attacks, and the aftermath of such an assault. The message was clear: knife attacks happen suddenly and violently, and seen over and over again in the footage were pre-fight indicators, off hand probing, and aggressive gross motor forehand thrusts and slashes predominately coming from right handed attackers. This reality check helped to bring a very serious tone to the day’s training, and with the problem clearly defined, Mike brought people through his counter-blade system. Rather than flashy disarms done against static attacks, focus was on shutting down the attack using a split X-defense, compression locking the attacking limb, mobility kills using low line knees and kick.
The MBC patented “Yojimbo” and its Chicago-legal little brother. Porkmen beware!
After lunch, Mike set-up his famous “Porkman” demo: a pork roast attached to a PVC pipe and rigged with twine and Ceram wrap to provide a model of bone, muscle, tendons and skin. Forteza instructor Keith Jennings did the honors with his newly acquired “Chicagojimbo”, a modified Yojimbo 2 with the blade ground down to the legal Chicago length of 2.5 inches. Even with the shortened blade, and with very little effort, the knife had no problem cutting straight to the bone. This impressive demonstration showed not only how capable even a small carry knife can be, but also how dangerous it really is to face off against a knife attacker. With the demonstration fresh in the students’ minds, everyone trained with newfound enthusiasm and respect for what even a small blade is capable of.
There were over forty people training on the floor, with room to spare. The positive feedback from the seminar was overwhelming, with everyone asking when we’ll have Mike back out for a follow-up seminar. The answer: as soon as we can! Thanks to Mike for making the trip out to Chicago, all of the MBC alumni from all over the Midwest who came out in support, and for all of the students in attendance who trained hard.
Full house!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf7BaLR_L1g&w=480&h=360]
Bartitsuka Michael Mauch, Nathan Wisniewski and Tony Wolf, all of whom will be travelling to the UK in September to take part in the 2013 Bartitsu School of Arms event, demonstrate a variety of sparring drills including strike-only, thrust-only and freestyle formats.
Read More »By Jesse Kulla Forteza Fitness, Physical Culture &Martial Arts Personal Trainer and Martial Arts Instructor
Obstacle or “Adventure” racing has become one of the most popular ways to test your mettle and inspire yourself to a new level of training. At the top of the obstacle race food chain is the Spartan Race – a race of pure craziness. When you are going to call yourselves “Spartans” and label your skill levels as “Beast”, “Ultrabeast” and “Death Race”, you pretty much have to be ready to throw down and throw the kitchen sink at competitors. And oh how they do, as you can see at the Spartan Race website.
The pyramid of excellence – and pain – racers can challenge themselves with at a Spartan Race.
As an athlete, I’ve taken part in the Spartan Race for several years now, as a personal trainer, I’ve respected the Spartan’s goals of seeking excellence, and then pushing one level further. Of course, that means that once there was an opportunity to become an actual certified Spartan trainer – the first in Chicago – I wasn’t inspired to go, I had to do it! So, what do the founders of the Ultra Beast put would-be trainers through?
Wow, Where to start? I carried myself to Atlanta, in hopes that the weather would be nice, and so it was. We call that a small mercy, because it would be the only gentle thing that weekend. Got some sleep. Woke up, and got to the venue. It was a fancy gym, with everything you could want in a health club and spa. Not what I expected – I was thinking more like a sand-pit with ropes and stones. Nor did I expect that the first thing I would become acquainted with wouldn’t be the gym, but the first rate conference room. (More on that in a minute.)
Introductions were made, and stories from races that we have all run were shared. I did not win the farthest traveled award, there was a gentleman there form San Francisco. I also met the winner of the 2012 Spartan Death race. It was inspiring and humbling to learn that he had absorbed over 60 hours of punishment to claim that title. Yeah, 60 hours. I have some new standards of “toughness”.
Before we got started, we took a 5 minute burpee test. Yes, that means we got up, paired up, and did “hands off the floor” burpees for 5 minutes, to see who was could hack it. I was not at the bottom of the heap, but 63 was nothing to brag over either, I think 84 was the winning number. Now, I expected something like “drop and give me 5 minutes of burpees” – these are the Spartans, right? But see, like the Spartans of old, who were both warriors of supreme physical skill and tactical warcraft, we were here to hone our minds alongside our bodies.
And that was why we went from burpees to that conference room, where my brain was filled with science data, recovery charts, and the importance of Mental Grit. Vital to all racers, and more so to those who profess to learn the arts of defense, Mental Grit is the power to preserve despite terrible odds, nasty surprises, and truly “long haul” exercises. We then did a little work out before breaking for lunch: about 300 meters of bear crawls, just to whet our appetites. Lunch was all business, talking with other trainers, sharing success stories and work out tips.
Of course, having just filled our bellies, it was time to dive into nutrition as soon as we got back. That was extremely in depth, and changed how I viewed athletic nutrition. After a few hours of that, we broke, and did an hour long “level one” work out, which is just the Spartan way of saying “Good job in the class room, see you tomorrow”. I went back to my hotel and soaked for an hour, rehydrated, and got ready for day two.
Day two was all talk of program design and goal-setting. This was partly a refresher course, but had a lot of insight into helping clients set goals, as well as getting to the root of clients’ health issues. The program design was intensive. We talked for hours about how to “Spartan folks up”. Far and away, this was my favorite portion of the weekend. Skipping lunch, we broke into groups and went running, with one group running their work out, start to finish, and the other two groups sweating through them. Three hours of pure brutality. It was hard, but I got through all of it. Not everyone did. Survival is the first step on the road to excellence!
I now know why the Spartan gym has a full spa – you need it just to go home. After some time in their hot tub, I felt better, I limped to the hotel, packed, returned my car, and spent 18 hours In the airport getting back to good old Chi-town. This was a mind-blowing weekend, and my ideas about training for peak performance will be broken into before SGX and after. My clients are already profiting from the new ideas and strategies, be they there to cut weight, increase functionality or race train, and I can’t wait to share more of the techniques for honing Mental Grit.
Later this summer, I’ll begin my preparation to run the Beast. I’ve beaten the Sprint, and I’ve beaten the Super. Time to go for the gold, and come home with my running shoes or on them. I hope to see you there, because I’ll need a team. Spartans, are you ready? Aroo!
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