York School of Defence

Tonight at the YSD, a group of experienced wrestlers who know what it's like to be down on the mats with someone trying to crank, rip and choke them into oblivion, got to experience, try out, and improve some Aikido "knife defences" that were advertised as genuinely being for actual self defence.

The comments were not pretty.

We're big fans of Historical Fencing Armory at the YSD. They're lovely people and the kit is excellent quality at an excellent price, and it's delivered incredibly quickly.

Expect more orders from us in the future!

Shop pegboards... Perfect for sword storage.

I love private lessons. It's splendid being able to dig deep down and explore why the magic happens.

https://yorkschoolofdefence.co.uk/private-lessons/

A reminder that this is a GenAI free zone. Art for our club is all done in-house by moi, and we work with local artists and friends to produce artwork for our events. Whilst our artists produce amazing work I will be the first to admit that my own efforts aren't the greatest. But that's okay, because an actual human took the time to do the thing (mistakes and all) rather than being lazy and actively contributing to the ensh*tification of society.

Generative AI is awful. Please stop using it. Every time you use AI to produce a poster, a meme, or a t-shirt design, or to generate a load of word salad for your latest post, you're using systems that have been trained on plagiarised art, and you're contributing massively to a worsening environmental crisis. And if you want a reason that may seem closer to home, see your laptop? Your mobile phone? Your console? Any consumer technology you have? Prices are skyrocketing thanks to AI data centres buying up hardware, very soon you will have to rent computing power rather than owning it and you've only yourselves to blame... "They will own nothing and be happy about it."

Put in the work yourself if you can't afford to hire someone to do it for you, and stop letting billionaire tech bros mansplain to you.

Cutlass is featuring heavily in our workshops and classes at the moment, and it was absolutely wonderful to be invited to teach some cutlass drill to York Sea Cadets on Friday evening. A fantastic bunch with some real talented swordfolk coming through the ranks!

Thanks to our first course booking up in record time we're hosting the same content taught by the same great instructor on a different night! We'll be strictly limited to ten spaces. This time the course will take place between 19:00 and 20:30 on a Wednesday! Drop me a message or head to www.yorkschoolofdefence.co.uk/longswordcourse if you'd like to book or find out more!

We had an absolutely splendid time at Bladeworks 2026, it's one of our favourite events and we're so lucky to be invited back every year. It's full of fine folk and whimsy, and it has a splendidly chilly beach for splashing about on. If you haven't been I recommend adding it to your "must visit" list of events, especially if you enjoy the vibes of the things we do at the YSD! You'll find similarly minded people at the MCG who host Bladeworks.

This year we brought classes on savate (taught by Lauren), pugilism (taught by Mark) and some cutlass/boarding action work from moi.

We were looked after and made to feel welcome by everyone at the MCG, they prepared an amazing meal on the Saturday and provided us with food, a roof over our heads and some great things to do across the weekend.

Five swords out of five, will definitely stab again.