Could Star Wars-style lightsaber duelling be fitness fans' new hope?

A short time ago in a fitness studio not that far away...

It is a dark time for health and fitness. The days are short and the weather is cold. A lone reporter has been dispatched to north London in the hope of finding the fitness class that could save the galaxy…

“Your butt’s sticking out,” says my Jedi Master.

“Sorry,” I say, straightening my back. Like any young Padawan, I must start from the bottom.

The main point here, obviously, is that I am becoming a Jedi Knight, but I suppose that if you’re utterly unromantic you could view what we’re doing as a martial art. Faisal Mian, my aforementioned Jedi Master (in spirit, if not in the view of Lucasfilm’s legal department), is teaching me some of the basic poses that will underpin my education in the art of lightsaber duelling. (I mean: LED sabre duelling. Ahem.)

The duelling Faisal teaches is a blend of Eastern and Western martial arts that he devised with his friend Nick Musson. Faisal, 48, is a tai chi expert with training in various forms of self defence, while Nick, 44, has been studying European sword arts since his childhood. Three years ago, while horsing around one evening with replica lightsabers, they hit on an idea: why not combine their knowledge of martial arts with their love of science fiction? 

Thus the Silver Sabres combat academy was born. In the short time that has elapsed since its foundation, the academy has won fans across the galaxy, training and taking on eight new instructors and running regular classes in seven towns and cities.

All the students begin with simple wielding exercises of the kind I’m currently attempting. Knees bent. Back straight. Arms out, and hands – right hand at the top, left hand at the bottom, for – on the hilt of the sabre. All I’m doing, for now, is holding it out in front of me. By directing my posture, Faisal is coaxing me towards a kind of physical mindfulness: where my limbs are, what my muscles are doing, how it’s all coordinated. 

Unfortunately I’m about as coordinated as a dying Sarlacc. Faisal is now trying to get me to repeat, over and over again, a movement in which I drive the sabre down to my right and then to my left, rearranging my grip as I glide between the two motions. The repetition, he tells me, will eventually make this effortless, so that when I’m fighting I can think about tactics instead of where my hand should be. 

But it’s not easy: as if under the spell of a Jedi mind trick, I can’t seem to hold more than a couple of instructions in my head at a time. Faisal has to keep reminding me to keep my chin down, pull my elbow up, all manner of small adjustments.

My classmates are faring better. There are seven or eight of them, a few of them dressed in semi-Jedi attire rather than sportswear. There are leather boots and some kimono-ish robes. Faisal tells me that his classes tend to consist of readers rather than traditionally sporty types, and there’s certainly a whiff of nerdishness here.

Then again, that whiff might be coming from me, because I am practically soiling myself in excitement. On paper, what I’m holding is an internally-lit polycarbonate tube, but in my mind, it’s a lightsaber. Even though it’s a Darth Vader-ish red blade, rather than the fetching Obi-Wan Kenobi blue kind that I’d hoped for but not been bold enough to ask for. (So this is my fate: chivvied to the dark side by social awkwardness.)

The repetition eventually starts to get uncomfortable, but thanks to my laughable manchild enthusiasm, it’s not quite tedious. Faisal then takes me through some parrying exercises, in which I protect myself formulaically from his slow, alternate-sided attacks.

This is all feeling good for my body and mind in a holistic, yoga-ish kind of way, but I haven’t yet broken sweat. I wonder if we can try some duelling. Holding the sabre now seems fairly natural. I can’t yet summon it with the Force (God knows I’ve been trying to summon the TV remote for years) but if Yoda can fight with one – Yoda, the geriatric, fun-sized Grand Master of the Jedi Order, looks less like a fearsome warrior than a junked Furby prototype – then so can I.

The class watches as Nick sizes me up. He is, I note, enormous. Each of his shoulders is as big as my head, I realise, as I crouch low and grip the sabre. 

Suddenly he barrels towards me, a frenzied, red-sabred golem who is somehow attacking me from every side. Scurrying backwards, I parry precisely one attack before he lands a series of hits of which every single one, had he been using a sharp blade, would have been fatal.

So my swordplay needs work. And my posture, and my mindfulness, and everything else. I remain convinced that I am a Jedi in waiting, but Faisal, ludicrously, was more circumspect when he later assessed my afternoon’s work. “You’re strong and you’re fit,” he said, softening me up for the inevitable, “but you’re not physically literate.”

That physical literacy, he said, will come with lots more training, and having seen his other students duel balletically and athletically, I can believe him (I am taking a wild, wild guess that they, like me, have never shown any prior signs of sporting excellence). 

But the stupid brilliance of this class is that, like any good sport, it hoodwinks you, via cunningly deployed fun, into forgetting that you’re doing exercise. If I keep coming back, then in a few years I might be able to hold my own in a duel – which I reckon will be just in time for the casting of the next Star Wars trilogy. Hey Disney – you know where to find me...

The Silver Sabres Combat Academy is looking for students and coaches. Go to silver-sabres.com for more details.