Teenagers aged 16+ are welcome to come and train with us at this club.
Working with the longsword is quite physically demanding. Of course, any martial art is physically demanding, but learning to use the longsword places additional demands on the muscles, tendons, and joints – this does pose a risk for injury until the body has enough physical strength to cope with these demands easily. Our loaner equipment includes light plastic training swords (about 750 grams) to mitigate this as much as possible, but people do need a certain amount of physical strength to be able to do the training safely.
In our experience, younger people tend to struggle more, simply due to not having grown into their natural size and strength yet. Of course, some adults may also struggle, and some teenagers may not find it a problem at all. It really depends on the physical strength of each person.
For these reasons, we have set 16 as the minimum age for attendance, and we do not currently have plans for a separate children’s session. However, if you are interested in some private tuition, perhaps as a family, this is something that we can discuss if you get in touch with us.
Official paperwork
Our chief instructor has enhanced checks by PVG and DBS for working with children, and our insurance policies allow us to work with children.
Parents are welcome to stay and watch, but this is not necessary due to the instructor’s DBS paperwork.
Age appropriateness
We will endeavour to keep the club environment and atmosphere appropriate for under-18s, but as this is a martial art where people are receiving hits from swords, we cannot guarantee that the language will be perfectly pure.
Along this same vein, there will be physical contact (including some grappling and wrestling), and there probably will be bruises from impacts now and again.
There is very little that can be done to reduce the chance of this – it is just the nature of the activity.
If learning to fence with the longsword appeals to you, then give it a go!
Read about what to expect for your first session.
Then book your attendance, and come along!