Blog Posts Fitting everyone into tournaments I want to talk about tournaments for a bit. Specifically, tournaments and segregation. The ideal of any martial art is that skill will win out over natural advantage. At the
Blog Posts Balancing Reality and Fantasy in Martial Arts Practice The UFC is the ultimate test of the value of any unarmed martial art. If your art doesn’t stand up in full-contact Mixed Martial Arts practice, it’s of no value. If you train with weapons, then your art and training
167 Good, Bad, and a Little of Both Saturday Valkyrie had to deal with an assault in the neighbourhood. We intervened quickly, and as a team. It was an unpleasant interruption to the afternoon’s teaching, but
Blog Posts In Search Of Real Self Defense Run away. That’s got to be the piece of martial arts advice I hate the most. It’s so full of smug assumptions about what constitutes a
167 Hard Starts Sometimes I don’t know how my students do it. Fencing is a damned hard thing to learn. It’s demoralizing. You have to be fit, and that&
167 Fat There is a current and recurrent thread amongst HEMA and other martial arts disciplines that mocks the fat instructor. It’s one of those things that everyone feels comfortable
Blog Posts Molar Equations And The Plastic Brain I wanted to be a science nerd really bad in high school. There was a problem with that for me. With my family’s frequent moves and the differing
24 Stripping Down To The Real Basics I was looking over an old notebook about a month ago, from back when I started rapier fencing. One day I had taken a bunch of notes after talking to
Blog Posts Fixes and Changes We’re coming to the end of another cycle of teaching at Valkyrie, and we’ve already started rolling out a new curriculum. For the coaches, it offers
167 Change and Mutation Hopping into the shower this morning, I saw a nice big long-legged spider sitting in the tub. As a life-long arachnophobe, this presented me with a bit of a dilemma.
167 500 Blows I’m reminded today that it was eight years ago that I fought 500 passes in two hours. I didn’t do it as a personal challenge. I
167 Devil On Your Back I read an article about a week or so ago that really bugged me. It was one of those feel good, overcome your failures sort of articles. It talked about
Blog Posts Red Team: Being a Better Bad Guy The future of martial arts training should lie in scenario work. I think it’s unlikely, though. I think we will see a rise in scenario based training, but
24 Sex and Swordplay Not talking about gender today. Had a fun class last Saturday. We are into our Mobility phase of exercise, where we work on assimilating a lot of the new muscle
24 Modern Ancient: Moving Forward with Historical Martial Arts What’s the point of training with a sword these days? Or, more accurately, what’s the point of training in the use of the sword as a
24 Protection and Pain: Finding the Balance In the picture above you can see two Valkyrie coaches going at with Cold Steel plastic Bowie trainers, and wearing partial High Gear body armour suits. High Gear suits are
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
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
