This past Saturday at Black Dragon Martial Arts and Wellness Center, Lake Superior Armizare held an open house to demonstrate what the medieval martial arts was all about.
The term, L'Arte D'Armizare, or Armizare, was used by the armsmaster, Fiore dei Liberi, to refer to his style of martial arts developed and taught in the early 1400s in northern Italy.
It is a medieval Italian martial art that was used by knights and other European warriors.
Instructor Nathaniel Skinner felt opening up this unique art to the community is important.
"History is important. We can learn more about it ourselves by the way our ancestors fought. I teach my students the history behind Armizare but I always encourage them to do their own reading and research, too," Skinner said.
With the rich history comes a lot of sweat and heavy breathing during a battle on the mat.
"It's a lot, it's a lot, very explosive. It's hard to say because of the nature of constantly moving. When you are sitting and observing, it doesn't look that exerting but having to just really blitz in a moment's notice, you need to constantly have that energy up. You are playing chess and moving with your body at the same time and analyzing everything you can. It is like running a 50-yard dash and playing chess at the same time. It is both mentally and physically exhausting," Skinner said.
Jacob Jackson has been a student of Skinner's for nine months and commutes from Cedarville.
"I'm an electrician in my normal job. For me, this is a way to burn off some energy. It also gave me a lot of confidence. I am a nerd, I don't interact with a lot of people. I also wanted to learn more about history of this art. I fell in love with it. I was looking for something to get me outside the house and to get me exercising outside of work. I thought for a while that there would be nothing like this up in the Soo. All these clubs are down in Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Milwaukee. I happened to see a Reddit post of Nathaniel's one day so I reached out to him and joined up," the 24-year-old Jackson said.
After a seven-minute battle with fellow student Alexander Lair, Jackson describes the fight he won 10-9.
"Very intense. This is like 3-D chess at 80mph where it's everybody's turn all at once. It's a lot of explosive movement. It's a lot of thinking trying to figure out what your opponent is going to do. There is a lot of sudden physical movement. It takes a lot of effort to know when to exert that sudden force and when to hold off. It's very intense and very fun," Jackson explained.
There were fight demonstrations, information on the available classes, and some refreshments at the event.
Click here for more information on the Lake Superior Armizare.
