Destreza seminar recap

It would seem that school has been keeping me much busier than I could have possibly thought. I'm glad I only have to go through the PhD qualifying exams once. Only one more week, and then my life goes back to normal! Anyway, enough about me; last weekend (April 17th and 18th), AEMMA had the pleasure to host Maestro Ramon Martinez from the Martinez Academy in New York City for a seminar on the Spanish school of swordsmanship, also known as "La Verdadera Destreza." In the following paragraphs, I will give a brief description of the system, as well as some of the concepts and drills that we learned over the course of the two days.

The Spanish school of swordsmanship can be traced back to a 16th century lawyer named Don Jeronimo Sanchez de Carranza, who wrote his fencing treatise De la Filosofía de las Armas y de su Destreza y la Aggression y Defensa Cristiana in 1569. It appears, however, that his work was actually a compendium of techniques and concepts that he had collected throughout his lifetime. His fencing method remained relatively unchanged for nearly three hundred years, and was adapted for use with a number of weapons, including the sidesword, rapier, and sabre, as well as with accompanying weapons (dagger, cloak, and buckler).

Maestro Martinez introduced us to some of the fundamental concepts of Destreza, which started with us going over the footwork of the system. Somewhat unsurprisingly, it bears a remarkable similarity to what we already do with Fiore, the only difference being the considerable focus on circular movement. One of the drills we did, for example, began with two fencers standing directly opposite each other. A's job was to walk clockwise around the circle, with the intention of getting to the outside of B; B's role is to maintain the diameter of the circle. We did a number of drills that involved similar actions (changing direction, stealing the lead, stealing the lead by changing direction, and so on), both with and without the sword.

Building on the previous drills, we then looked at the various blade engagements, or atajos. More so than in Italian rapier, attacks to all four quadrants (outside high and low, inside high and low) are all equally possible, and rely on taking the appropriate step: when making the atajo to the outside, you step to your left, and you step to your left when making the atajo to the inside. Since this is not something I can really describe, I'll need to post some video on how this is done. (Will be up soon, I promise!) Once we got a firm grasp of how the basic blade engagements work, we then went on to practice cambio, which is analogous to the Italian cavazione (both over and under the sword, depending on the position of the sword). I'll continue with my report tomorrow.