Welcome to 2025! I hope you had a great winter holiday with friends and family, and enjoyed our mini-winter break. I’m excited to get back to working with folks this week.
With the new year often comes resolutions — even with fencers. A lot of us embark on the 30 in 30 program to get back into the swing of things.
For those who haven’t done it before, 30 in 30 is the idea of spending 30 minutes a day for 30 days working on fencing. It can be anything from partner drilling to solo drilling to exercising or reading a fencing book, etc. Anything that you can relate to fencing counts.
And, honestly, if all you can do is like 5 minutes one day, it’s still something. Doing something as simple as some mirror work to check your form when on guard and lunging is useful XP. There’s also this nifty Fencer Footwork & Reaction app that you use. It’s a great way to jumpstart the year.
I’ll be logging what I do every day on the Academie Discord. My main goals is to finish my research paper on the armor protection a “fencing cloak” gives against a sharp rapier. I did a little experiment over the summer, testing it, and finally getting around to writing up the results and comparing it to SCA and HEMA fencing rules, and what the masters wrote about in their books.
Happy swording!
—Justin
Head Coach | Instructor at Arms
Boston Academie d’Armes
(he/him)
