(suited for Beginners, Medium and Advanced martial artist)

This class will focus on techniques from a newly discovered Dutch knife fighting treatise.  Of course it contains some material/techniques that can also be found in other books but this is only to be expected.  What makes this intriguing is that it contains very specific moves that have not been found elsewhere (as far as I know).

We will focus on these techniques and also on the ‘tool’ being used.  This is not the ‘common’ roundel dagger or ‘Schijvendolk’ (translated as disc dagger in Dutch) but the more ‘unpopular’ dagger with a normal crossguard and round pommel which was the popular dagger in 15^th century Holland.

Before we get into all this fun stuff we will start with building a relationship with these ‘tools’ by using a specific flow drill which I designed especially for this kind of dagger work, but which you can also use for any other kind of dagger or even knife. These flow drills (as opposed to performing static techniques where someone attacks and someone defends) will enhance your fighting capabilities in a relative short period of time.  You will see that your insight into biomechanics will improve rapidly and this will automatically result in making you a more difficult target as well as diminish the chance of you becoming a real life target in a 2010 street fight situation.

In this workshop we will also examine the execution of the perfect armbar or lever. All manuals include armbars, either with pressure on the triceps or on the elbow. Although it was an apparently common move in wresting, knife fighting and even in swordfighting a lot of people nowadays find themselves having problems executing a solid armbar. There are a lot of counters one can perform against someone escaping from an armbar, but executing the armbar right the first time will save you the trouble of worrying about your counter against his/her escape. Therefore we will be focusing on this as well as it is an important part of the medieval dagger work.