My name is Petr Kavan, I live in Czechia.
Since I have discovered Lord of the Rings in my teens, I was a fan of fantasy, which later transformed into history entusiasm and an interest in medieval fencing. I attended lessons of historical fencing during my studies, which was before HEMA came to my country. It gave me some basics, even though I have later discovered that it was artificially made fencing system that was only very loosely based on misunderstood Marozzo. Apart from that, I have also acquired some experience in other martial arts, like Wing chun and Capoeira.
20 years later, by a coincidence, I have returned back to historical fencing, and was fascinated by the work that HEMA has done during that time. I started fencing according to Fiore, that was already well interpreted, and was pretty much exactly what I was looking for in my early historical fencing lessons. But then I have discovered I.33.
I was always bit of an intellectual, my friend used to mock me that I am a warrior theorist. And I.33 was the oldest and least understood fencing manual. History! Theoretical mysteries to explore! I looked in it and immediatelly fell in love with it.
First I was looking for existing interpretations, but what I was able to find (at least from what was freely available) just didn't seem right. The interpretations were wierd, it was pretty obvious that fencing just doesn't work that way. I was pretty sure that no sane person would describe an arming sword fencing system without ever mentioning a simple downwards cut to the head. This would be ridiculous. I was sure that if we don't see simple downwards cut all over the manuscript, it is because we are looking in the wrong way.
While I was once swinging around the sword, it struck me that the middle of downwards cut is surprisingly similar to halpschilt obsessio. Isn't it possible that every obsessio is in fact an action? And cuts and thrusts are hidden in there? This idea opened the floodgates. I suddenly started to see the logic of I.33's plays, and they suddenly started looking "normal". As a martial art. I was working on it for some time, I have decided that I am on the right track, and I started making Youtube videos to present this interpretation to public. These videos document my path - both great discoveries and sometimes backtracking when old interpretation of a technique suddenly stopped making sense.
Contact
I am not exactly living on social networks, apart from youtube. So if you want to share a comment (please do! I accept constructive ideas), it is best to do it under one of my videos. Here you will find playlist of all my I.33 videos