What to bring
All you need to bring to your first session at Elgin Broadsword Society is some comfy ‘workout’ clothing, a bottle of water, a good attitude and a willingness to learn. Everything else we provide from weapons to basic safety equipment.
What does a session look like?
At Elgin Broadsword Society we run a fairly consistent format for each session. Sessions run for approximately 2 hours and usually comprise of the following (timings approx);
- Stretching – 10 minutes
- Warm up games – 10 minutes
- Slow drills with sword – 40 minutes
- Free sparring – 1 hour
On your first session with the club you will likely take part in the stretching and warm ups. Depending on the drills planned for the day you will then either join in with those (just follow along as well as you can) or if complex drills are planned one of the other leaders may take you aside and run through the basic cuts and guards while the rest of the class run drills.
If you were able to join in with the drills then a leader will run through basic cuts, guards and the correct stance at the beginning of the free sparring time and hopefully we will have you swinging a sword at someone before your evening is finished! We will get you sparring first with padded swords so that you can get used to actually hitting people while needing limited safety gear but we aim to progress onto the use of hard synthetic swords as soon as possible.
If you prefer to just observe for your first session, that’s absolutely fine also – the best time to observe is during the free sparring at the end.