Learn How To Swing A Sword, 'Medieval Irish Celtic Knight' Style

Steely Focus in Warrior’s Outlet
The Courier-Mail, Philip Hammond, 18th November 2005

IT WAS inevitable with so many people in southeast Queensland periodically escaping the 21st century and immersing themselves in medieval lifestyles.

Now there’s a place where you can learn the arts of the Dark Ages while getting some healthy outdoors activity as well.

For $220 at a specialist centre at Chermside, on Brisbane’s northside, you can try an introduction to medieval fighting skills, hefting a 4kg steel broadsword for a couple of hours at a time.

“A lot of customers have come here looking really unhealthy,” confides Malcolm Platt, one of Brisbane’s MICK (Medieval Irish Celtic Knights) clan who, with his wife Rayna, run the store 1300AD.

“They have very quickly given up smoking because they realised they couldn’t survive more than 30 seconds on a battlefield before they’re dead.”

When local crowds watch knights in combat at some of Australia’s biggest time-warp tournaments, the action is not choreographed, Malcolm explains. The fighters need to be fit as well as skilled to avoid a bruising, and to fight for extended periods.

A brief mention deep in Brisbane City Council’s “things to do” website reveals that early in the week, from 6.30pm-9.30pm, would-be warriors can learn the rudiments of swordsmanship over six lessons.

When 1300AD opened in June, “the response was instant,” Malcolm says.

The place was quickly over-run with parents and sword wielding children, while simultaneously developing as a drop-in centre for those curious about life a millennium ago.

[b]"We have a set curriculum, with the first six lessons working through the basic moves – the cuts, blocks and parries with either hand, and moves backwards and forwards. It takes them six weeks to go through that until it becomes mechanical.

“When they go on to the advanced course, and start putting steel on steel, then everything they’ve learnt clicks and from that point they develop skills quickly.” [/b]

The Platts like to meet their customers before training starts to assess them. It’s the same with sales of swords and other medieval gear – those customers with the wrong intentions get short shrift.

Malcolm said some visitors to 1300AD bought a sword, returned with their families, then developed the research bug, often returning to have shields made with their own coats of arms.

Many simply want armour and weapons for decoration in their homes.

“If you’re going to hang a sword on the wall, you might as well have a real one and know how to use it,” he says.

Like Malcolm, who has turned his collecting hobby into a business, the people who are attracted to the disciplines and chivalry of the knights of old are welcomed into Queensland’s medieval re-enactment community in all its facets.

“If you don’t have honour, we can’t train you. You won’t grasp the concepts of what is a medieval martial art,” he says.

The hall area behind the shop in Wallace St quickly became too cramped for sword-fighting lessons.

Malcolm says even the hired hall in Wavell Heights, where shifts of eight warriors develop skills and strength wielding single and double-handed swords, is limited and an even more spacious facility is being planned.

And after the first children’s classes in swordplay, the Platts are now planning a new round of lessons in the forthcoming Christmas holidays for kids aged more than five years old, using wooden swords.

Looks like they have a website up too, which provides some further info on what they do.

MICK - lol.

Worst acronym ever.

Don’t take this the wrong way, (I’m not a huge LARP freak or something) but I think it’s kinda cool.
I’ve actually been thinking about making a freaking huge broadsword/claymore out of wood. (Inspired by the anime ‘Berserk’) Somewhat bokken-ish. Then I would swing the fucker all day and hit stuff 'till it broke, then make another. No good reason really, just think it would be fun.

I’m sorry but these guys are fucking retards.

Here is why:

For $220 at a specialist centre at Chermside, on Brisbane’s northside, you can try an introduction to medieval fighting skills, hefting a 4kg steel broadsword for a couple of hours at a time.

Medieval and any other single handed swords over 3 pounds (1.5kgs) are the realm of fantasy. Check out ARMA for details. So for a start their weapons weigh 3 times what they should. Ironically most shitty replica swords are heavier than they should be because retards think the real weight ones are too light.

Malcolm said some visitors to 1300AD bought a sword, returned with their families, then developed the research bug, often returning to have shields made with their own coats of arms.

Right, their OWN coat of arms. Probably the old “family coat of arms” scam. Bad news - unless you are Polish, where arms were tribal rather than individual for some fairly complex regions, coats of arms belong to an individual NOT a family. The idea of family coats of arms is a marketing ploy. The only way it is “yours” is if you are the eldest son of the eldest blah blah blah back until it was last used - but people who are armigerous usually know it since they are usually chinless pom toffs busy playing polo and fucking the housekeeper.

Crap - want to learn to fight, ARMA is a better bet - they have the medieval fechtbuchs (fight books) available for download and have done the research.

I’m Polish! Tell me more! I want to find out if I have one. I bet it’s like a picture of a hick milking a cow, though. :frowning: