On Saturday, July 12th, we brought Jason (Jay) Vail up from Florida and 14 of us descended on the Highland Park Community Center gym for an extensive historical dagger workshop.
Historical Dagger workshop with Jason Vail | St. Paul Freifechter – Historical Martial Arts
With people in attendance from 4 different HEMA clubs in the area; Center for Blade Arts, Asfolk, Ramshead Fencing, St. Paul Freifechter, and someone from Living Meyer in Madison Wisconsin, we spent the better part of 5 hours with Jay diving into the use of the dagger in a series of lessons, drills, and sparring games based on the material in his book, Medieval and Renaissance Dagger Combat.
Starting off with some basic and some not-so-basic unarmed vs dagger defenses (covers), we moved into some unarmed defenses where we combined those covers with techniques to constrain and control our opponents such as arm bars, elbow breaks (theoretical, not actual..), and even the “Inside Upper Key” from the Fiore de’i Liberi manuscript; The Flower of Battle.
From there we progressed into learning the proper way to take the knife from someone attacking us (i.e. – disarm) by capturing their blade and forcing it out of their hand through the weakest part of their grip, regardless if they were gripping their dagger for a “Low Thrust” (stab from below) or a “High Thrust” (stab from above). Definitely a tricky thing to get right, especially in the middle of an active struggle, as we were about to find out….
We split the class and formed up into 2 lines. Each of us spent a round in “The Pit”, where each person in line would take a turn to advance and attack, and the goal of the person in the Pit was to defend themselves and disarm their opponent if possible. We did this twice – the first with a “Low Thrust” or the stab from below, then the second time defending against the “High Thrust” or stab from above. Fair warning – with a long line, being the person in the Pit can get pretty grueling…
After “The Pit”, we spent some time learning some dagger vs dagger techniques, including use of the “High Guard” position and distinct circular motions and pommel strikes seen in Joachim Meyer’s works, and then spent some time in a controlled, light sparring game to help reinforce those techniques.
The final part of the day was a bit relaxed and we went over some of Jay’s favorite judicial dagger dueling plays from Achille Marozzo’s Opera Nova treatise.
Though it was only one afternoon, and much was covered, many of us would have been happy to continue if it weren’t for the fact that our scheduled time at the gym was up and, more importantly, so many of us weren’t so exhausted by the end of the day. Jay’s knowledge and skills as an instructor could have easily filled an entire day and not just a few hours.
All in all, a very exciting, exhausting, but fun day – If you ever have the opportunity to attend a workshop or class that Jay’s leading, definitely make it a point to attend. Incredibly knowledgeable and a world-class instructor. We can almost guarantee – you’ll learn something new.
