Tomorrow night, Tuesday the 22nd of September, Polish sabre comes to HEMA Penzance for the first time, in the club's ordinary Tuesday session, alongside everything else we do. If you had told us in July that we would be saying that sentence, we would have laughed. We had a sabre or two at the club and we liked them, and that was as far as it went.
Then Jake went to Warsaw for a month to learn it at the source. You can read about that here. He trained at Akademia Szermierzy, the school that reconstructed the art from the sources, under Antek Olbrychski, Mikołaj Kołodziej and Rafał Kalus, and he came home with their encouragement to keep training with the members back home. What we train is Polish sabre as Akademia Szermierzy reconstructed it, and what he learned there is the real thing: the fast cut from the wrist, the long covered lunge, the guard that protects you by sitting still, the Hellish Quart that hits and covers in one act.
The day it clicked
Last week Jake showed Andy and George the cuts. Andy, being Andy, saw the Fiore in it straight away. In his words: "There's something similar in Fiore already. We talk about how your sword is your shield. So when you attack, you are moving from posta to posta, and that covers the lines of attack that your opponent can use." Then the two of them sat down and built a lesson plan together, Jake showing what he had learned and Andy shaping it into a lesson plan for the club, correcting Jake where Jake needed it. That is how this club works, and it is why we love it.
By the end of the week the thing was settled. Polish sabre is taught here with Jake's help. We start where the Poles start, with footwork, then the guards, then the cut, and we do not spar until the cut is right. Fiore stays the heart of every session; the sabre joins it. And we are all learning it together. Nobody here has been doing Polish sabre for years, so if you come along you will be starting where the rest of us are.
What you need
Nothing. That is the other half of the story. The club now owns eight Krieger S6 sabres, the same steel Akademia Szermierzy fences with, along with masks, gloves, jackets, gorgets and plated protectors for everyone in the room, all bought by our official sponsor, Wilderness Interactive. Turn up, and there is a sabre for you.
We have written the whole thing up, history and all, on the new Polish sabre page. The short version: sabre came to Poland in the fourteenth century, the earliest surviving manuscripts documenting it are eighteenth century, the famous cross-cutting is a myth, and the cut that is actually in the sources is faster, smaller and far more dangerous than the big swing everyone imagines.
Tuesday, 7pm, Penzance Leisure Centre. Your first lesson is free.