Valkyrie WMAA

Reopening Step 1: It's time for the school to open its doors once again, and for in-person training to begin!

It’s time for the school to open its doors once again, and for in-person training to begin! Because of the high risk associated with training indoors, we’re taking it slow and choosing to move forward with a “new normal” that prioritizes the safety of our students and coaches and continues to grow the online community that we’ve developed over these past four months.

New Rules For Using the Space

COVID Phase 2 at Valkyrie

The Provincial Government has published its Restart Plan for re-opening businesses in our province and has scheduled the beginning of Phase 2 for Tuesday, May 19th. Under the plan, sports and recreation facilities are being allowed to re-open “under enhanced protocols”. Specifically, we have to take appropriate, effective measures to limit the spread of COVID-19. Here’s how different measures…

Remote Class Quick Guide: here's all you need to know to train with us from a distance

As the world settles into a new social distancing routine, we’ve been getting lots of questions about our remote classes. Here’s a quick introduction to how things work if you’re not already a Valkyrie WMAA student.

Class Schedule

As with all Valkyrie programming, class content is a little bit variable and will adapt to the needs of the group. Here is what you can expect in each of our…

Classes are Going Remote! Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we have cancelled all in-person classes from March 17-29. In their place, we'll be running remote lessons via Zoom!

The COVID-19 outbreak is continuing to affect our city, and the provincial health authority has stepped up its public health measures. As swimming pools, fitness centres, and other group facilities temporarily close across Vancouver, it’s time for us to follow suit. All in-person classes are cancelled from March 17th until March 29th (for the next two weeks). In their place, we will be running…

This video introduces some basic tools for spotting if someone is uncomfortable in a social interaction and trying to hide it. If you often find yourself surprised to discover that someone has made your friends or colleagues uncomfortable, start here.

Recent discussions around protecting fellow community members from predators have highlighted a common knowledge gap: someone looks at an interaction between two people, spots what might be inappropriate or creepy behaviour, but can’t tell if the target is distressed or okay with what’s happening. This is especially challenging if it looks like the people involved are friends or partners.

This…

As of today, there have been 53 confirmed cases of Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in British Columbia. The provincial health authority has cancelled all gatherings of 250 or more people, and travel outside of the country is being strongly discouraged. School closures and other more drastic measures are not yet being recommended. While there are no official regulations telling us to close…

Sliding Scale Drop-Ins are Here! We're making classes more accessible in 2020 with sliding scale pricing.

Happy New Year, friends! As part of our ongoing commitment to making training at Valkyrie accessible to as many people as possible, we’ve expanded our sliding scale pricing to cover drop-ins for all of our ongoing classes.

Here’s how it works: if you don’t already have a punch card or unlimited plan and you try to sign up for a class, you’ll be prompted to sign up for a membership.

You…

It’s the end of the year, and everyone’s schedules are getting exciting! Valkyrie will be open for most of December, with the following exceptions:

Sunday, December 22: Closed

– Tuesday, December 24: Closed

– Wednesday, December 25: Closed

– Friday, December 27: no Kunst Des Funkelns

– Sunday, December 29: Closed

– Tuesday, December 31: Closed

– Wednesday, January 1: no classes; join us instead for…

Thanks for an excellent BGSD 2! Hear what our attendees had to say, and check out our event gallery.

Big Gay Sword Day 2: Sword Harder was held at Valkyrie this November 16th, with eight amazing workshops from Sam Swords, Jon Mills, Claire Wemyss, and Kaja Sadowski.

We had 16 attendees from as far away as London, England, and were able to run a killer event at accessible rates thanks to our sponsors Costin Law, Ash Banks, Dillon Beyer, Owen Elliot, Sigmund Werndorf, and The Proving Ground.…

Fall Schedule Updates - we're freshening up our teaching teams, adding a new class, and tweaking our evening schedule just a bit!

It’s time for our annual instructor switch-up, where we shuffle our teaching pairs to give coaches a chance to teach with new partners, and students a chance to work with someone new without having to change their schedules.

Here’s who’s teaching when:

Knife Happy Hour: Justin Ring

Monday Lab: Knife Happy Hour: Justin Ring & Courtney Rice

POW! Sparring & Conditioning: Justin Ring

Tuesday Lab:…

The Valkyries are going to Swordsquatch!

Valkyrie WMAA is going to be closed from Thursday, September 5th until Saturday, September 8th, and it’s because a whole bunch of our staff and students are heading south of the border to participate in Swordsquatch 2019. This weekend-long event is one of the keystones of the Pacific Northwest’s HEMA community, and members of Valkyrie WMAA have participated since its inception in 2016.

This year,…

Our colleagues ask us about sliding scale pricing a lot. Does it work? Don't you lose money? Here are the numbers on why it's actually pretty great.

When we tell other martial arts instructors and school owners that we offer sliding scale pricing for events at Valkyrie, one of the most common responses that we get is: “But don’t you lose a lot of money on that?”

On the one hand, making money isn’t really the primary goal of offering these kinds of discounts. Rather, we’re concerned with making training accessible to as many students as…

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Beth Hammer of Lonin taught two workshops on essential longsword skills. All About That Base taught attendees how to use footwork and posture to generate power and resistance in any fight. Grab ‘Em By The Blade was an exploration of Fiore dei Liberi’s blade grabs, and covered how to build effective techniques from a few core principles.

Claire Wemyss of Vancouver Strength Collective‘s Kunst des Funkelns program brought her personal coaching background to her first-ever workshop, Design Your Good Time. Our attendees built important self-reflection and communication skills that allowed them to build training relationships and drills that served their own training goals.

Jon Mills of Vancouver Strength Collective and Kunst des Funkelns warmed everyone up after lunch with Breathing Around Corners, and taught attendees how to breathe effectively under both physical and emotional pressure. Everyone came away with a much deeper understanding of the mechanics of breathing and the relationship between breathing and emotion.

Kaja Sadowski of Valkyrie WMAA wrapped things up with Marozzo Surprise!, an introduction to Achille Marozzo’s gioco largo and gioco stretto, or wide and narrow play. Attendees got a feel for how the tactics and mechanics of a fight change with the distance between fighters, and played a bit with the relationship between fighting and dance.

Our attendees traveled from as far as Seattle to come to this event, and came from a broad range of backgrounds and experience levels — from fighters who’ve been at this for a decade or more, to folks who picked up a sword for the very first time in one of the day’s workshops. Thanks to our wonderful sponsors, Team Mimosa and Rogue Fencing, we were able to fully sponsor 3 low-income attendees. Thank you so much to everyone who supported this event, and everyone who came out to play. It was a great experience from start to finish, and shows that “niche” events that serve marginalized communities can be successful, technically rigorous and challenging, and economically viable even while maintaining accessibility. We’ll definitely be hosting this event again in the future, and we can’t wait to see the movement grow!

Date: November 3rd, 2018, 10am – 5:30pm

Price: sliding scale with three options. Pay what makes sense to you:

Accessible rate: $40 + GST

Standard rate: $60 + GST

Generous rate: $80 + GST

Who’s teaching? BGSD is a showcase of up-and-coming LGBT instructors in the Pacific Northwest. We’ll be featuring workshops from the following awesome folks:

Claire Wemyss is an educator, coach, brightly coloured good-time enthusiast, and an instructor with Vancouver Strength Collective. She brings her background in dance, yoga, and martial arts movement practices, as well as her drive for rich and meaningful learning, to creating spaces where people can build strong relationships with their selves, practice, and community.

Jon Mills is a weightlifting coach, historical martial artist, Quigong instructor, and self defense instructor. He runs Black Dog Strength and Nutrition and is a director of Vancouver Strength Collective, a community centred multi disciplinary fitness studio in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side.

Beth Hammer has been practicing a variety of martial arts for the last 4 years including escrima, Fiore longsword and dagger, wrestling, and boxing. She has been on the team of Fiore coaches at Lonin for the last 2 years and is one of the founding organizers of Swordsquatch.

Kaja Sadowski is a coach and co-owner at Valkyrie Western Martial Arts Assembly. She has been teaching physical skills for over 15 years, and has been a martial artist since 2010. Her current specialties include rapier fencing, unarmed striking and grappling, self defense, and stress testing and adrenaline management.

Who’s invited? you are! BGSD is open to students of all backgrounds, experience levels, and identities. Everyone is welcome, and there are no pre-requisites for any of our workshops.

How do I sign up? Register now by clicking the button below! If you’d like to attend, but the event is out of your budget right now, there are sponsored spaces available. Contact us today to get your foot in the door, regardless of ability to pay.

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The full event schedule is now available!

We’d also like to thank our fantastic sponsors, Team Mimosa, and Rogue Fencing.

Latosa Escrima is a Filipino martial art developed by Rene Latosa after years of study with renowned Filipino martial art instructors such as Angel Cabales, Leo Giron, Max Sarmiento, Dentoy Revilar and his own father, Juan Latosa. Latosa Escrima is a comprehensive system that includes sticks, knives, swords (kampilans, bolos and machetes), staff, spear, shield, palm sticks, whip and empty hand methods including Cadena de Mano and Filipino Boxing. Unlike most martial arts that strictly teach techniques, Rene’s system focuses on concepts. These concepts are applicable to any weapon or empty-hand application. In addition, they are so logical and pure that people already use them to accomplish tasks in their everyday life. These concepts include balance, speed, timing, distance, power, focus, and transition.

Andrew and Beth’s workshop covered the concepts of power, focus, and speed for a dozen great students of all backgrounds and experience levels. The workshop was a fundraiser for Dying With Dignity Canada, a non-profit organization that provides end-of-life support for people with terminal illnesses, and raised over $500. Thank you to everyone who participated!