Your Carosella Tournament Guide

Sunday September 26th is Tournament day, and the culmination of Carosella, the Mounted Combat Arts Intensive, and for some of our regular students, an entire year’s worth of training in the arts of riding, horsemanship, and swordplay. There are fun and friendly competitions for all levels of riders and HEMA practitioners, both on the ground and in the saddle.

Now Available: Carosella Unmounted Passes

Did you know that Carosella isn’t just for the horsey set? For those who want to learn all about swords, armour, bows, and horses from the safety of the ground, we have unmounted passes. From $45 for individual tournaments, to $265 for a full three days of swordplay, flags, archery, gatka, and armoured fighting near (but not on top of) horses, the unmounted passes are a fabulous option!

Horse Archery is back at Carosella!

Horse Archery is Back at Carosella 2021! We’re delighted to welcome back Robert Borsos of Borsos Torsz Horse Archery. Robert has been an instructor at every Carosella since 2013 and we’re thrilled he could make time in his busy international schedule to run his ever popular Horse Archery workshops. The …

The Base of the Training Pyramid

Although a discipline in itself, dressage is not merely a style of riding but the basis of all riding. The show-jumper teaching her horse to balance and collect to squeeze an extra stride into an awkward line of jumps; the cowboy training his reining horse to bring the haunches under for sliding stops and rollbacks; and the knight using half-passes to manoeuvre in battle are all practising dressage.

Finding Your Way Around the Horse

This is the first in a series of posts that will look at the individual requirements in the Horsemanship stream of the Cavaliere Program, beginning with Level 1. Even if you already have your Horsemanship 1 it is worthwhile reviewing this material, as subsequent levels are all built upon this foundation.

Mounted Combat Fundamentals: What you need to know about swords before you introduce them to your horse.

Before we let you get on our horses and swing swords around we want to make sure you can use them competently from the ground.  Historically, a mounted knight also needed to know how to fight from the ground, since being unhorsed in battle was extremely common.  For these reasons a good …

On Riding: 7 ways to improve your equitation

No amount of skill with the sword or lance will save the knight who can’t make his horse go where he wants it to. The training that teaches a horse to respond to its rider’s cues is dressage, and the training that teaches a rider to cue her horse clearly and effectively is equitation.