1st HEMA Conference for Instructors

On the weekend of the 16th to 18th of March Colin Richards (Arts of Mars) hosted the first international HEMA Conference for Instructors near Hannover in Germany. Colin called and Roland Warzecha (Hammaborg), Bart Walczak (Brotherhood of the Eagle’s Nest), Jonathan Miller (Linacre School of Defense), Matt Galas, Hans Heim (Schwertkampf Ochs), Gabor Erenyi (S.A.G.A.) and me followed his call. We all missed James Marwood who unfortunately had to cancel in the last minute.

The main goal of this conference was to examine if such events like this would be useful and also necessary. First of all I can answer this question..... YES ABSOLUTELY!!

Several topics have been discussed, e.g. self-evaluation for instructors, how to bring historical techniques into sparring, warm-up exercises, what kind of instructors are we, etc. etc. etc.

During two and a half days we took the gymnastic hall and also the conference room of a small sports club in Apelern to its limits and we all enjoyed everybody’s very good mood. Matt Galas was full of input (like always) and so our brains were constantly overloaded. Thx for this Matt! ?

On Friday we all arrived on different times and – believe it or not - when Matt arrived at 22.30 we decided to be a little bit productive right on the spot and so we decided on the discussion topics and we set up the schedule for this weekend.

Of course it was absolutely clear that if a group like this comes together we immediately used the possibility to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk a little more and more and more.. (shall I continue? ? ) and so the first day ended at 1.30 a.m. with a lot of tired people in their sleeping bags.

Saturday 07.40 some small stones hit the window next to my sleeping place..... I raised my head and looked out of the window..... Colin (he slept at home, this lousy rat... no solidarity with his guests ;) ), Matt and Sandra (Colin’s wife) stood in front of the building and could not enter because the door was shut. Well... I am happy to never have a bad mood in the morning ? so I went down and opened the door... GOOOOOOOOOOOOD DECISION!!! They had brought the breakfast! 08.00 the breakfast started and at 09.00 we all were in the gym to start with the first topic... WARM UP GAMES! Hans absolutely got the wrong job... instead of being a magistrate he should be a navy seal drill instructor – he showed no mercy and basically wiped the hall with us. Finally he showed us some really nice funny games and than we did some stretching. The whole day was spent in a very good atmosphere of talking. Everybody stated his opinion on several topics and so Sandra was forced to interrupt us at 18.30 because if she hadn’t we would have missed our table in the restaurant. The day ended like the last before.... talking talking talking talking talking until 00.30. Boy, was I tired!!! (This does not happen very often)

Sunday... same shit different day... woke up at 06.30, waited until 7.45, then breakfast, then down to the gym, new warm-up games; this time it was up to Matt Galas to be the devil in disguise. After warm-up we were brainstorming how to bring sparring on to a higher level. Maybe the most important topic of this weekend. We all showed a lot of games and exercises and so the day went by. It was a pity that Roland had to leave on Saturday night because of his job, because his experience in free fight and sparring drills would have been very helpful here. He even showed his game on Saturday evening, but his opinion was missed quite a lot.

At 14.00 the meeting was over. ? We all went to Colin’s and Sandra’s house to take a last cup of coffee and we all left one by one. Hans and I were there together and we did our 6,5 hours journey home with Hans’ car.

All in all I have to say that this weekend was an absolute gain for those who were there and we all are happy that we have decided to make this a constant recurring workshop.

Finally my special Thanks goes out to Sandra. She was the good ghost of this workshop. She did two delicious meals for us, prepared the breakfast, cleaned up the whole area alone after the workshop....WOW!!! THANKS SANDRA FOR YOUR 100000 HELPING HANDS!

I am really looking forward to the next workshop!

Harry