Wow, I haven’t posted in a while. Well, new job, another project… training. It was alright, at least I managed to spent a lot of my time practicing.

So, I stole the idea for this post from Mike’s HEMA blog, but I honestly think we should all do a review of our year. I’ll model my post partially on his, so, Mike, take it as a compliment.

So… my HEMA year was good. Here it is in a nutshell:

Injuries:

1. something wrong with the sole of my foot – this is the explanation for now, as I have not yet visited a doctor for it. It is painful, sometimes, the ball of the foot gets tender when I apply repeated pressure. It has come up recently, I am not sure from what exactly, and it gets worse after long driving – when I use the clutch too much. I think it will get better, though, if not, I am up for a visit to the doctor after the holidays.

2. got stabbed in the hand – no photo, sadly… One of our club mates did not hear my advie on taping the tip of his one-handed Regenyei XV – this one:

So… I got hit and about a centimeter entered into the soft part under the pinkie of my right hand. Nothing serious, but I was angry… well, because a week earlier I predicted someone will get hurt because of those damn tips. It healed enough to train in a week, and not it is completely ok, but it was frustrating.

That’s it! A lucky year as far as injuries go, of course, I am excluding an enormous amount of bruises, but, well, they are part of the day now.

So, the good things:

1. I had a smashing time at our summer camp this year, you can see some photos from it here. It is my favourite time of the year, those 9 days out of the city, into the sword camp. There is one magical thing about it – we have been going for 5 years, and every camp is better than the previous.

2. We now have a designated free sparring day – Sunday! It is great, and it was needed. Because of a wave of newcomers, we advanced people who are not able to train in the morning have spent a looot of time doing basics. It was perfectly good, and fruitful, but not always fun. Now we have one day just for getting wild.

3. I have a new piece of equipment that brings tears of joy to my eyes – new gloves. No, not any of the branded ones. They are a gauntlet prototype made by Dinko, one of my mates, and while they don’t look so good, the protection is top-notch. Maybe next year he will work towards putting them out there. I had not realized how much bad gloves had affected my sparring – I had become overly protective of my hands and messed up, even to the expense of my head (on my head, I have a mask which can withstand most blows, my older gloves could left me with a broken finger, and I work with my hands). It was also amazing how fast I could shed that feeling and start fighting logically.

4. We have a lot of people training – the old dogs are here, the new ones are enthusiastic, and I think we now clearly have 4 groups divided by level – just skillwise, not official, of course. Which is great. And I am happy. But the training room is getting smaller.

The bad stuff:

1. I lost of lot of myself into the whole bad-hand-protection thing. Only after I have freed myself from it, I understood the amount of damage it has done on my psyche. Well, it’s all healed up now, but it still sucked.

2. As things were not the best money-wise, I did not manage to get any new equiment this year – a jacket and a sword, to be specific…. yeah, I have swords, but I want more…. The jacket is a necessity, although my old gambeson does it’s work well. I hope to save enough money next year.

3. I have been behind on reading the new stuff that is coming out. The Meyer translation, the Leckkuchner one… And I want to, I want toooooooooooo…. But there has been no time. Well, I may be able to catch up during the holidays.

Other things to fix in the future:

1. My general fitness. It is not bad… but it is also not good enough. Actually, I’ll be honest – most of the time people are impressed and surprised that I can work so good and fast when I have a 20 pound (maybe more) extra weight. It made me happy that I have managed to overcome it, but now I think… what could it be without it?

2. My equipment. I need a jacket, a Liechtenauer from Albion (cause I want one, damn it), and I have fallen in love with this simple beauty from Szymon Chlebowski:

This is not simply sword vanity or sword greed. I am up to this level where I need better equipment, more equipment, and I need it soon. I need to do test-cutting, more sparring, and even just more general training with better equipment.

3. I want to spend more time on research. It may be hard to do so in the free time I’ll have in the future, but damn it, I am the historian and I know enough German to read the MSs (hard, but manageable). I should spend time doing it.

Overall, it was a great year. Fun, mostly healthy, extremely educating, thoroughly enjoyable.

What awaits next? Well, at least for now there are a couple of great HEMA things coming in 2014:

1. We are finally starting a Ringen class. Each Saturday. And the instructor will be… me. And Dinko, thank god. I would not have been able to do it alone, if not for his enthusiasm to make it possible. A small group – maybe 6 or 7 people – is a good start.

2. We’ll have uniforms. Well, you can see from photos we have a t-shirt and a hoodie, but now we are going full – new hoodies, pants, sweatshirts, hats, and kerchiefs. They must-haves are the shirt, pants, sweatshirts and hoodies.

3. Our website is almost there, and it will probably be online somewhere around New Years.

4. I will save what money I can and visit the HEMA brothers near me – Poland, Czech, Croatia…

So this is it… you should also give it a try.