Online Longsword Course, Starts April 1

Greg Reimer March 18, 2018

One thing I advocate regularly is how important rhythm is to success. The more that you can make swordplay a habit in your life (even a small one), the easier it is to create meaningful long-term improvements in your abilities. But getting into that rhythm can be challenging.

Helping people build the habit of mastery is the goal behind our very first co-operative online course. We want to bring together practitioners from all over the world to learn and level-up their longsword skills all together at the same time.

Not that interested in the “Italian” school? No problem. This course presents foundational longsword combat training that any student from any school or tradition can find useful, practical and informative.

Starting April 1 2018, over six weeks, you’ll be guided through the entire Longsword Fundamentals series (I-II-III) of courses along with your peers.

Each week you’ll have a prescribed plan:

watch the video lessons for that week
complete each lesson’s brief quiz challenge
complete each lesson’s practice challenge (solo or paired)
submit a 1-minute video of the assigned technique, and make helpful comments on other students’ submissions

The course moves from fundamentals of cutting and body mechanics through to blade control and combative strategy. There is useful content for all levels of experience and an opportunity to receive feedback from peers and Duello experts. Estimate around 2 hours per week to complete the course material. You’ll also get two extra weeks at the end to catch up on missed assignments.

Subscribe and Get on the Weekly Email List

The course is available to all Scholars Club and Masters Club subscribers. If you’re not a subscriber, you can get all the benefits of this collaborative online course, plus everything else we do, from only $29/mo. Click here to subscribe.

If you’re already a subscriber, or after you become one, join the course by joining our April-May course mailing list. This list will be used only to communicate weekly course content as well as “getting started” information. Click here to sign up to the April-May Longsword Online Course list.

We’re looking forward to seeing you on April 1st!

Devon & Greg

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Categories: News & Updates

The 5 Minutes Per Day Practice Regimen

Rhythm is the most important thing to cultivate on the path to mastery. Whether you leverage our online course or simply get started with your own practice ritual, start making those little steps. Five minutes of real practice time honours your commitment more than hours of good intentions.

To access this content, please purchase DTV Subscription – Scholars Club $29/mo, DTV Subscription – Scholars Live! Month-to-month $109/mo or DTV Subscription – Scholars Live! 3-Month Term $99/mo.
LOG IN HERE if you already have access.

Devon Boorman March 19, 2018

Ready, Willing, and Able: Changing Your Training Behaviour

To achieve any goal outside of your current path requires behavioural change, whether that is the goal of simply learning something new, achieving a particular martial goal, or making a change for your health.

Devon Boorman October 16, 2017

30-for-30 Swordplay Challenge Recap

Congratulations everyone who participated in this year’s 30-for-30 challenge! Throughout the month of January students of the sword from around the world challenged themselves to build the habit of swordplay training with 30 minutes per day of swordplay practice.

Worldwide Effort

This year we had more than 300 declared participants (a new record!). Participants came from all over the US and Canada as well as from Indonesia, Japan, China, Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, Brazil, England, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal, Turkey, and Poland. Amazing to have such an international community joined together through a shared love of swordplay and personal improvement.

The way that people chose to engage with the challenge is about as varied as the participants themselves and this year included training with a diversity of swords both Eastern and Western, a focus on core strength and mobility, teaching challenges, translation projects, reading assignments, and sparring. I enjoyed the variety of ways people chose to meet the challenge as well as the focus on rhythm over herculean effort. The most important thing that one can get out of this kind of challenge is the capacity to break daily inertia and make a small move forward each day toward a goal or habit.

Celebrate and Reflect

At the end of any given challenge it is important to take stock and consider what lessons were learned from this period whether you met every day of the challenge or a smaller number. I for one found a new joy and habit for training as the first part of my day and have managed to maintain this since the challenge. I also renewed my own following of “minimum viable commitment“.

Several times during the challenge I found myself close to the end of the day, no practice done, and about to crawl into bed. Instead of foregoing my training I decided that five minutes would be infinitely more than no minutes and found myself occupied in my practice for the full time or close to it. This let me go to bed much more satisfied.

We’re Here to Support You

Throughout the month we made practice videos and training advice available through Duello.TV and those same videos and advice will stay accessible in the 30-for-30 area for the rest of the year. Our goal at DTV is to make daily practice and learning accessible to everyone who has the desire to do so. Support DTV and the 30-for-30 free content by subscribing or sponsoring DTV for as little as $4/mo. We hope what we offered was useful to those who participated and that our courses and videos will help everyone take their training and learning even further this year.

Thank you again to everyone for your enthusiastic participation, for sharing your stories, and helping make 2020 start out right. Please share your experiences and highlights from the challenge in the comments!

Devon