CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The Middle Ages are long gone, but the legacy of medieval weaponry lives on, especially in Cheyenne.
Every Sunday afternoon, roughly a dozen community members take the center stage at the Lions Park amphitheater to learn and practice various 15th and 16th century sword fighting techniques. The group is Wyoming’s only chapter of the worldwide organization Historical European Martial Arts, or HEMA. HEMA communities spend time discovering, translating and interpreting manuals left behind by master swordsmen.
Cheyenne’s chapter was started by resident and sword enthusiast Michael Binsse, who discovered the HEMA world rather accidentally. The Florida native developed an interest in metal and blacksmithing when he graduated from high school. While watching a YouTube video about smithing one day, he saw an unusual recommended video: Two people with long metal swords and padded outfits fighting one another. Binsse discovered they were a part of HEMA and, intrigued, tried to find a local Florida chapter.
Binsse wouldn’t be able to join HEMA, however, until he moved to Denver in 2018. In need of a hobby, he enrolled in sword fighting classes at the Krieg School of Historic Fighting. The experience was life-changing.
“I went to that first class and my mind was blown,” he said. “It removed everything I knew about sword fighting that I would see in movies or a painting from the 15th century; it took so much of the imagination away. … It shed so much light on how things work. It started a whole new path for me in learning about swords.”
Eager to absorb as much as he could, Binsse started attending weekly lessons and joined another fight school, the Rocky Mountain Swordplay Guild. When Binsse moved to Cheyenne in 2022, he couldn’t continue lessons and interact with the Colorado HEMA community as often as he liked. With encouragement from his former teachers, and five years’ worth of fighting experience under his belt, Binsse decided to open his own informal fight school in the capital city. He started posting about the Sunday meet-ups on local Facebook community pages. Slowly but surely, he said, people began to express their interest.
The three-hour lessons are free for attendees, but for safety reasons only those over the age of 18 are allowed to participate. At the beginning of every meeting, Binsse hands each attendee a wooden waster, or practice sword. He goes over the basic sword parts and grip techniques to first-timers before teaching a group lesson on various postures and guards. Toward the end of the class, the more advanced students can put on padding and practice sparring one another with metal swords.
Although the idea of wielding a wooden or metal sword can seem daunting, Binsse said people are always excited to give it a try.
“Everyone who shows up is super open minded,” he said. “It’s always just pure joy, you’re interacting with people who are smiling while you’re hitting them with a metal stick.”
One of these smiling participants is Alexander Delphi-Shepard, who attended his first lesson on Oct. 1. Delphi-Shepard became interested in medieval weapons when he was 12 years old, after reading the book series “Ranger’s Apprentice.” He heard about the group back in May through a Facebook post on Cheyenne Connections, and was glad to have finally made it.
“The class is very well rounded and informative,” he said, resting a waster over his shoulder and observing the other attendees. “The people are kind and accepting and seem like a determined group of individuals who want to carry on something that would otherwise be lost.”
Like Delphi-Shepard, member Jeremie Dobbs also appreciates studying the ancient arts. Dobbs has attended almost every class since the beginning, and is now comfortable performing basic sword techniques. While waiting for Binsse to finish boarding Delphi-Shepard and the other Oct. 1 newbies, Dobbs practices with his waster and mimics a sword fight with his young daughter, who came to observe the lesson and test out her own kid-friendly weapon, a Star Wars lightsaber.
“[Binsse] is a great instructor and does a great job explaining the concepts and different postures and things,” Dobbs said. “I’m not really participating to be competitive, but more for the experience for learning the discipline of medieval martial arts.”
Cheyenne HEMA typically meets every Sunday from noon to 3:30 p.m. in Lions Park. Meeting times and locations are subject to change, and any updates can be found on the group’s Facebook page.
