The Club Pell (And Cat Exercise Post)
A heavy-duty collapsible pell that shrugs off the strongest longsword blows you can throw. Plus, cats love ascending to its carpeted summit. Schematic below.
In which an innocent staff is broken and a pell knocked over to prove a point.
Using the Pell
The pell is more than just an object to strike. It gives feedback on your cutting and thrusting structure, trains your measure, simulates a bind with your opponent's sword, and is a great workout.
Structure. Test your cutting structure by delivering a simple oberhau (cut from above) to the pell. Did your wrists bend? Did the cut impact at the angle you intended? How much did the pell move, and how much of that was due to your core rotation rather than your Schwarzenegger arms? I've found that testing my form against the pell is essential for honing proper body mechanics for power generation - indeed, the pell smirks scornfully when you whiff a cut against it.
Measure. Start from out of measure when training against the pell and step in so that your cut impacts at your sword's point of percussion, or about 1/3 from the tip.
Simulated Parry. The pell intercepts and stops your attacks, allowing you to train techniques from the bind as if an opponent had parried. Try entering with a cut on one side, then strike to the other side as fluidly as possible.
Simulated Bind. The best use I've found for a pell is as a bind simulator. Liechtenauer longsword relies heavily on the bind for nachschlag (follow-on) techniques, and the pell simulates the bind very well. Treat the pell like an opponent's sword that has parried your attack, and drive your nachschlag against the (imaginary) opponent behind the pell. This exercise comes into its own with two pells one behind the other - the first for the bind, the second for the opponent.
What's a pell?
A pell is a post used as a target for sword strikes. It's HEMA's version of a punching bag. Sinking a tall post into your backyard yields the perfect pell - cheap, somewhat wobbly, and impervious to punishment. But because not all training spaces allow for sinking posts into the ground, the Club Pell was born.
Fully Collapsible
The Club Pell sets up and tears down quickly for easy storage. No tools required - just slot the legs together and drop in the pell.
Takes a Beating
Longsword is no problem for the Club Pell - even the largest fencers haven't been able to knock it over, much less break it. Be careful with wooden wasters - those break against it quite quickly. I've hit the pell with montante (the Iberian greatsword) as well as with staffs, and though not recommended, it came away undamaged. My staff, on the the other hand, did not.
The pell wobbles enough to avoid feeling like crashing against a brick wall, but I recommend you stick to plastic training swords to avoid metal fatigue with steel weapons.
Single pell work - Attempted Meyer square
Double pell work - Zwerchau + duplieren to a hard bind
Make your Own
Download the PDF here. I'd be honored if you make a Club Pell or two of your own based on my design - please just give credit by linking people to this site.
Construction Tips. Total cost is about $40. The only special tool required is a jigsaw, but a circular saw helps immensely.
All measurements marked with a ~ are OK to approximate. But pay attention to the ones not marked in this way as those are important to get right.
If the pell doesn't fit, take material off from the outside of the leg slots - don't narrow the width of leg tongues.
Metric users: You can adapt by measuring the width and depth of your pell and making the width of each leg tongue equal to those measurements. That way, the pell will slot into the assembled base. For example, my pell is 3.5" square, so my tongues are also 3.5".