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“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.” ― Richard Adams, Watership Down

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Irish soldiers and peasants, Albrecht Durer

https://www.wikiart.org/en/albrecht-durer/irish-soldiers-and-peasants

#I just love how comfy the guy in that cloak looks #I aspire to that level of comfort

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A celebration of Women’s Day by the Medieval Combat Group

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Historical Chinese Martial Arts! The spear design looks really clever.

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Another HEMA meme here to trigger those who totally aren’t Nazis, but just stand next to them making very similar salutes…

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Browsing for HEMA real estate like…

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youtube Swordman standing up to gender roles

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Women in late medieval fencing manuals. 

Via http://www.wiktenauer.com/

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Not study related, but as a fencer with a bad taste in humour, I find this picture to be awfully hilarious

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Markus, you are the best!

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Thinking About Breathing

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here and I’d like to catch up a bit.  It’s (still!) crunch time with my thesis, so all my writing energy is really being diverted there.  I’m waiting for some comments to be returned at the moment, but I’ve got enough work to keep myself occupied in the meantime.  I’m still regularly making it out to two practices a week, which is helping with my lunge totals. More than half-way to 10,000 and finally over what I did last year! Definitely enjoying the extra drill work and I feel like I am seeing some overall improvement. I’ve been keeping up with my workouts as well. I’m still getting to the gym to play with kettlebells twice a week.  I’ve only missed a couple weeks of this since starting in June and those were while I was on vacation and I’m still really enjoying it.  I’m playing around a bit with what I know, but I’m sticking to things I learned from the trainer for now.  Running kind of went by the wayside when I took up kettlebells but my schedule has shifted a little so I’m working on fitting it back in. It’s not necessarily the most effective part of my workout regimen, but I find it challenging and (sometimes) enjoyable. Last week I bought an electronic copy of Pavel Tsatsouline’s Kettlebell Simple & Sinister in an attempt to find some inspiration for writing my workouts. There’s a lot (off-topic) I could say about this book, but his discussion of breathing patterns really has me thinking. I try to observe my breathing when I’m lunging and in the past I have dedicated days/weeks/sessions to focusing on breathing pattern.  I’m generally pretty consistent these day, but my patterns when I do this are generally slow and even.  So the last couple days (2 November and 3 November) I’ve been doing 20 lunges here and there while I work, trying to focus on a (somewhat) more explosive breathing pattern.  It will be interesting to see if this is a. a useful course of action, b. a change I can make more permanently, and c. what effect this will have on my drills and sparring. But, I definitely think it’s worth investigating. Overall total: 5420 2014 total: 2580 2015 total: 2840 Monthly total: 240

#2014- 2015 Lunge Challenge #10000 lunges #personal #heavy rapier #I should be practicing... #The dangers of being in grad school and trying to get other things done at the same time

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Vacation Summary

I am home from my trip now and want to make a brief post because I didn’t write anything about my last few days of lunging.  We left the cottage early Monday morning so my last vacation lunging day was Sunday. I did a total of 620 lunges while I was away.  I also did some walking lunges around the cottage some mornings, walked a lot, went on a bike ride, swam a few times, and woke up early yesterday morning to go for a run and do some stretches before we got back in the car for the second leg of our trip.  While different from my normal level of activity, I’m not displeased with what I got up to. In terms of my lunging, I did 4 days with my off-hand and 2 days with my on-hand.  Since I pretty much never use my off-hand at practices I figured I need to work more consistently in my own time, especially given the nature of the rapier.  On two or three days of my trip I also did some footwork drills.  The need to continue practicing these for my off-hand was demonstrated quite effectively by how awkward the motion felt when I was doing it. Now it’s time to return to routine.  Tonight I should be going to fight practice and tomorrow I go to the gym to play with some kettlebells. Overall total: 4700 2014 total: 2580 2015 total: 2120 Monthly total: 680

#2014- 2015 Lunge Challenge #10000 lunges #on-hand is so not the proper term #heavy rapier #lunging with a rapier #personal #I wish there was an easier way of distinguishing between two types of lunges

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Since I don’t really have a lot to say about today’s lunges, I figured I’d post a picture of where I’ve been lunging.  Otherwise, I worked with my off hand again today and it was marginally less awkward and since it wasn’t raining I did my walking lunges and the footwork I’d hoped to do yesterday.   Overall total: 4400 2014 total: 2580 2015 total: 1820 Monthly total: 380

#2014- 2015 Lunge Challenge #10000 lunges #heavy rapier #lunging with a rapier #personal