One year ago, Ingulf and I were head over heels in the preparations for our Releaseparty and Fechtschule. We had just started out with HEMATICS and weren’t sure if we should plan this event for later – in retrospective it was perfect that we did it immediately and had a great evening with all of you! One month later we started a new video series: Hematics Vor Ort with Keith Farrell at the Dreynevent in Vienna, just in time for it to be the last fencing event we could attend in 2020.
Corona did not only hit us with a lack of fencing, but also economically. Both of us being self-employed we did not have the chance to follow our working routine as we were used to, major events got cancelled that we wanted to visit and where we planned to set up our brand new HEMATICS stand that we (actually mostly Ingulf, thank you) created in the spring. It was a hard time, seeing that many of our friends were not able to attend fencing practice and even harder, that we ourselves could not do so.
But summer came and things were getting better, it was clear for us that we will organize another weekend of filming as soon as possible. Said, done. For the first time, we could invite our high tier supporters to join us on set and for me it was a real pleasure to get to know Martina & Jonas who even made the long trip from Switzerland to visit us in Salzburg to get their personal lessons, show up in some tutorials and spending a great weekend with us (watch the sneak peek behind the scenes here)!
The next highlight during the summer was definitely the Swiss Bear’s Cup (learn more here). Finally, Ingulf could visit a tournament and set up our super fancy stand – but not only that, it was also important for him to coach our supporters Jonas and Georg during the tournament and he told me very proud at our next call that they managed to get 1st and 3rd, congratulations again! I know that you can’t achieve that with some online videos, you really have to constantly put in hard work into your practice. And that’s worth something! I have a great deal of respect for all the fencers who managed to keep this spirit up over the past year, cheers to you!
During the summer we had already contacted our possible new instructors and in a tight race you decided that we should start producing videos with Florian and Julian from Klingenspiel, my alma mater of fencing. It is my pleasure to reveal to you here that we have already filmed the first four videos of the six video long course about the basics of Italian rapier fencing in the tradition of Salvator Fabris! Over the next months, you will be able to watch them and I hope that maybe some of you longsword guys may take a sneak peek into this beautiful weapon!
As the year is coming to an end, Ingulf and I reflected about our work, what we have achieved and where we want to take this. Most of all, we would like to refine our Patreon goals and to get the homepage up and running with a nice user interface and structured courses. We would very much like to hear your wishes concerning our program in the upcoming year and also how you were able to shape your practice the past year with the help of HEMATICS – just write us an email or comment below.
So, I hope you had a nice time over Christmas (I certainly had, I got myself a sword and ate enough for the next three months), that you keep up the good spirit and that your fencing clubs may start practice again with renewed motivation and a good focus on what you want to achieve in the new year. Please also let us know about your fencing New Year’s resolutions. I wish you all a happy new year!