Okay, this is the first in our series of basics with respect to the study and practice of armazari at the Academy of European Medieval martial arts. The very first thing I want to look at today is handling the sword, the basic sword grip and how that can also translate to training supplements such as replacing a stick for the sword. So the first thing I want to look at is how to handle and grip this weapon properly. The sword has a center of balance and you want your lead hand, the right hand on the sword as close as possible to that center of balance, which means it has to be gripped very close to the guard of the sword. The principal grip is the thumb and four fingers. The rest of the grip supports that. This does not change. We don't allow any sort of twisting and turning. We have no need to bring our thumb up onto the weapon. We want to keep the thumb below the guard. So principal grip, thumb and four fingers, the rest of the hand support it. The left hand can go wherever it needs to on the sword grip in order to facilitate both the speed and leverage of the grip and also the ability to precisely control the degree of force coming into the blade. So lead hand, thumb and four finger, principal grip, rest of the finger support. You don't want any fingers flying out away from the grip. You want them to be on there. The strength of the grip should be holding the sword, not squeezing it. So you want to hold it, not squeeze it, you want a flexible grip. Left hand again, anywhere it needs to go on the sword in order to support the position that the weapon is placed in. Now if I don't have a sword, I can do exactly the same thing with a stick. As long as I remember the proper method to hold the sword, I can translate that to the stick. There's a lot of circumstances in which you might not have a sword handy, and you still want to do some practicing basic post-apositions, even some footwork. Any sort of stick, even a 30 centimeter ruler can work. And in some cases a yard stick or something like that can be a good sword trainer because it has those edges on it. But even a simple round stick can work just as well. So in this case I'm going to use these two little nubs as the position of the guard, and I'm going to bring my grip just like I would on the sword. The right hand, fully gripping, thumb and forefinger, principal grip, breast the fingers supporting it, and then the left hand on the grip that I've established on this sword training implement. So we can do everything that we want to do with respect to sword practice with not a sword. A stick would work just fine, and everybody can find a stick, take a walk into your backyard or into the local park, and pick up a stick. There's been lots of wind this last few weeks, so you'll probably find lots of sticks lying around. So from here we can just do our basic training. So the first thing we're going to look at next, and our next video is basic post-apositions.