Allenamento con gli Appesi 2015
HVN instructor Matthys went to Italy to teach there, here is his review of the weekend.
“I’m slowly recovering from a very intense but awesome weekend. I was invited to come to Italy to teach at the “Allenamento con gli Appesi” by Davide, Federico and Francesco. I went there with my old friend and AMEK instructor Mishael. The idea was that together we would fill the weekend with several workshops, some together and some by one of us. To top it off we also did a workshop together on Dutch Dagger.
The first evening they took us to a real Italian restaurant where they served 1.2kg steaks and beer per liter, if that’s not a good start of the weekend than what is!
Both the saturday and sunday workshops were filled by approx 40 very interested Italians. Within the group the level of the practitioners varied between absolute beginner to instructor.
My workshop on the saturday was about using the Zwerckhau in the offense, building up the intensity and gear along the way. Focusing on the timing, opening, centre line and working from contact. I can only speak for myself, but I was very happy with how it went.
My sunday workshop was sparring oriented, with exercises forcing the fighters to change their game, work with targets, guards and other parts of the fencing that they might not be used to, it was a very active and sweaty workshop but everytime the masks came off during a (short) explanation there were big smiles under tired eyes.
When all was done there I almost copied my sparring challenge as there was a queue of people who wanted to try out what they learned on me, close to an hour of sparring later I was tired, bruised but very happy.
Thanks again to the Sala d’arme dell’Appeso for having us over and there is a lot of talent in Italy waiting to take over the scene!”