About Us

About the Club,

We are a group of largely self-taught HEMA enthusiasts that got together due to a common desire for a place to practice HEMA in Gainesville and a community to do it with. We started out in August of 2019 as Gainesville's first group for historical swordfighting. Our goal is to become an all-round school for many different forms and styles of HEMA, and branch out into a variety of different weapons and systems. Right now we currently offer German longsword and sword & buckler lessons, with others on the way. On occasion we also do one-off classes on other systems, including the following: dagger, quarterstaff, saber/sabre, wrestling (armed and unarmed), and rapier.

About me:

Christopher Preston: Founder, and longsword teacher, as well as 2021 Florida AAU state longsword champion. Primarily studies longsword as taught in Meyer's treatises for longsword, and sword & buckler from MS. I.33. Specifically Jeffrey L. Forgeng's translations of Joachim Meyer's "The Art of Combat" 1570 and 1600 editions as well as his translation of MS. I.33.

We also have a YouTube channel, although there are no videos there yet;
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbPRDc3DwI9YXamSNcfma5Q

Contacts:

GainesvilleHEMA@gmail.com

(352) 340-3424 (Please leave a message if you get the answering machine, and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.)

Discord Server; https://discord.gg/jjhXXRRmRx