This sword school in Manila teaches historical European combat

Forge Pioneer is a school that specializes in Historical European Martial Arts through historical manuals, drills, and high-intensity sparring.

You may have experienced shooting a few arrows at an archery range at a mall and channeled your inner Katniss Everdeen. But what about wielding a sword like Anakin Skywalker? Forget what the movies taught you about sword fighting and try the real thing.

There’s a real-sword school in Manila called Forge Pioneer that lets you do just that. It teaches Historical European Martial Arts, or HEMA, a modern combat sport that recreates fighting techniques used in Europe centuries ago. Practitioners study old manuals and turn what they find into drills and live sparring. It is a contact sport, and it’s more serious and high-intensity than roleplaying suggests. Think less cosplay, more a mix of historical research, physical training, and combat sport.

Training starts with the longsword, where students learn to control a weapon while working on distance, footwork, and timing. They eventually move to one-handed weapons paired with a buckler, a small round shield used for defense. These could include an arming sword, messer, saber, dusack, or sidesword. Each weapon has a character of its own, but skills learned with one carry over to the others, letting trainees work across styles instead of sticking to just one.

Rapier and dagger training comes later, moving the focus toward precision and point control. Eventually, students take on the single rapier, which the school considers one of the hardest weapons to master.

Despite the complexity of the terms and the intimidating weapons, no experience is needed to start HEMA. Forge Pioneer provides the equipment needed for training, along with trial lessons.

So if you’ve ever wondered what it’s actually like to pick up a sword and learn to use it, you can do that in Manila. Just don’t expect it to look like a movie fight scene.

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