Students of the Way undergo three primary stages of training: Discipleship (private instruction with a teacher), Fellowship (group classes with peers), and Mentorship (passing on what they learn), adding each onto the next toward the status of KNIGHT.
Read more on what each of these stages look like through the menu above! At each stages, students engage with 3 key disciplines: philosophies of nobility, self-defense combatives, and the arts of swordsmanship. Take a look below to see more about what each of these entail.
CrossSwords:
THE 3 DISCIPLINES OF THE ACADEMY
PHILOSOPHY of the WAY
The ultimate goal of our academy is to train students in the arts of nobility. Martial training does this indirectly, yet our dialectical methods (good conversations) bring these truths to the forefronts of our brains in a direct manner. While some martial arts schools may discuss behavioral virtues alongside their training, CrossSwords is a school of Philosophy. The moral life has center stage for us. All students are students of nobility in soul as much as students of the sword.
- Members train soul-development through a variety of arts: mindfulness meditation, empathetic awareness, goal orientation, and temperance of virtuous aptitudes. Through approaching philosophy, theology, and ethics in a similar way to the sword, students train the expansion of their cognitive-emotional-relational faculties as the central mark of their progression.
- Students ranks and progression are accordingly marked by seasons of being poured into by a teacher (discipleship), coming alongside others in practice and communion (fellowship), and finally turning back to take on an apprentice of their own and pass on what they’ve learned (mentorship). In these three arenas, we grow and nurture the whole individual, believing that everyone needs all three of these in order to attain the Knighthood.
SELF-DEFENSE and COMBAT
Students develop of competencies in hand-to-hand combat arts through boxing, kickboxing, grappling, and physical endurance. All students learn how to use physical force to protect themselves and others, as well as the value system of not using them. This may seem odd to those outside of the martial arts world! However, we hold that a psychology informed by the reality of danger complimented a physical excellence in matching it provides the best kind of mental state to avoid those same situations and prevent their escalation.
MARTIAL SKILLS INCLUDE:
- Effective Full-Body Striking
- Powerful Elbows & Hands
- Integrative Knees, Kicks, & more
- Structural Competency
- Movement Principles & Footwork
- Terrain Awareness & Utilization
- Stability, Spacing, & Jamming
- Angling & Counter Attacking
- Close-Quarters Combat
- Grappling, Takedowns, Ground Defense
- Proactive Mental Training
- Combat Readiness, Aggression Preparedness, Explosive Twitch.
- Mindfulness Training, Emotional Discipline
- …and more
SWORDSMANSHIP and WEAPONS
• CrossSwords students practice a modern style of blade training, gaining a sound basis of both contemporary and medieval swords, weapons, & martial arts: katanas, longswords, knife & short blade work, bo-staffs, pole arms, stick fighting, and more. These styles operate as paths which students may walk after completing their basic training in “Cruciform” which is a unique foundational system of swordsmanship.
- Swinging swords around can not only offer great exercise, but allows or members to engage with something tangible and real that is united with traditions ancient, mythic, and of tremendous meaning. It’s also, of course, extremely fun!
- All Weapons Training incorporates heavy practice (with hardwood training weapons), Sparring and Drilling, Forms & Combative Practice, and eventually graduating into Steel at higher levels. (This is not modern sport fencing. With influences from ancient systems across the globe such as Kenjutsu, Armazaré, Escrima, and more, we are modern warriors in a unique style of the complete sword)
KNIGHTHOOD
The triad of programs form the composition of training for CrossSwords students, and find their nexus in the image of the KNIGHT. The Knight (a CrossSwords Black Belt) is a man or woman of heroism, grace, humility, conviction, and integrity. The way to this kind of Knighthood is not only in steel or in spirit, but with the whole self: the whole soul. The Sharpening of this soul lets one wield their body as a weapon… but more importantly to wield their weapons as tools for cultivating nobility in themselves and in their world.
CrossSwords 