216 April 9 Tournament Wrap-up Valkyrie had it’s first tournament just a little less than two weeks ago. Results can be found on our facebook page, and I talked about the format in
24 Habitus: Or Why SCA Rapier Is Awesome...And Why SCA Rapier Sucks. Clearly I’m a little proud of my SCA rapier background. I had access to a number of seriously talented fencing teachers and dedicated historians, and came from an
24 Blow Calling and Context When I started in the SCA, lo those many years ago, things were great. We had what felt like a unified approach to dealing with how to acknowledge hits from
216 Tourney Time The bulk of my rapier training, before moving into full-time teaching, was for tournament fighting. At my peak, I think in a two year period I hit about 70 tournaments.
Blog Posts On Making My Martial Arts School a "Safe Space" This post originally appeared on the author’s blog, Kaja(s)words. Kaja Sadowski is an instructor and co-owner at Valkyrie Western Martial Arts Assembly. I’ve been
23 Double Death Decisions I hate double kills. It annoys me to no end when I see students do it, I hate it when it happens to me, and I find it inexcusable when
22 Fighting Fear At Valkyrie we make it no secret that we’re owned and run by women. We constantly, actively recruit women as students. When the subject of women, fear, and
Blog Posts Barriers My early training was constant, but didn’t always take place in a martial arts school. Class was always the hardest part of training, under the exacting eye of
Blog Posts Best for Self Defense: Sport or Traditional? One of the favorite arguments amongst martial artists is to compare the relative values of a sport martial art like Muay Thai to a traditional martial art like Wing Chun,
Blog Posts Daily Work at Valkyrie It was a late start today. We all overslept a little. After puttering about and getting out of the house, we all arrived at Valkyrie about Noon. By the time
167 A Change is Gonna Come Valkyrie is now open. It took us years to put in the base work, and six months of headaches, tension and bureaucratic fighting to get the doors open, but here
Blog Posts Full Time For the second time in my life, I’m going to be a full-time martial arts teacher. It’s a privilege and a responsibility, and not a thing
167 Bullshit and Lies Do you want to be an eagle or a crow? Common sense and admiration are fantasies. We look at the eagle, the hawk, and the falcon and think of the
24 Ability-Ranked Sparring Now that Valkyrie has been around for a while, we are starting to see a few things in our method that don’t scale as well as we might
167 Moving Past Quit She’s supposed to be searching me, but I’m just tired of it. So I turn, with everything I’ve got, and smash my elbow into
24 Sword and Dagger Picked my dagger up last night. I’ve been fighting single sword exclusively for maybe three or four years now. I made the decision to stick to sword alone
167 Assembly Been sick for over a week. Missed a lot of work, which is going to suck when the next payday arrives. But at least I’ve managed to catchup
Blog Posts Aeschylus, the Turtle, and Arwrology Taught the third class in our four class self-defense series last monday, despite being sick as a dog. It went well. Six hours in and I feel like everyone has
62 Self Defense Classes Next week marks a big new step in martial arts training for me. Valkyrie will be teaching our first ever self defense classes, as a four-class series. I’ve
216 I Saw This Happen... Sometimes people don’t take the right precautions. They leave the house without thinking of their defense, and they pay for it with their lives. I’ve seen
Blog Posts Teaching Tempo and Deception My favourite part of teaching has to be those nights when the students figure something out on their own. We’ve been hitting movement a lot lately, discussing tempo
167 Cultivating Awareness When I demonstrate a technique, I do want you to perform it the way I do. Last night we did wrestling, and explored some pinning movements from a couple of
167 Grinding and Forgetting Some of my favourite moments in martial arts are when the whole class is pushed past the point of exhaustion. During last night’s class, I looked up during
167 The Cost of Doubt Doubt costs repetitions. The time you spend thinking about how to do something, or what you have done wrong, or even if there is a better way to do something,
Blog Posts Heaven and Hell on the Night Train Good dramatic title, isn’t it? One of my favourite zen tales is the story of the badass samurai looking for a little wisdom. He came across a priest,
