Consulting Swordsman
I’m currently in Helsinki sitting at the dining table in my friend Tina’s apartment, and it’s a very good day, on several counts: I spent the weekend at my salle teaching my students. We covered breathing exercises on Friday evening, spent all day Saturday torturing ourselves with rapier footwork, and all day Sunday working on … Read more
The brand-new Rapier Beginners’ workbook is now available for pre-order from my distribution partner Fallen Rook Press. The books are in layout now, and should be shipping within a few weeks. Leaving extra time for hitches, you should get the book by the end of November, but probably earlier. The key innovation in this new … Read more
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to teach swordsmanship through books and videos. It’s not a simple problem, not least because every student is different, and has different needs and preferences. How the material should be ordered and presented, what photos may be needed, how much explanation is sufficient (oddly, more is … Read more
You can’t learn martial arts from reading a book… or can you? I’ve always thought so; in fact, I make my living by teaching martial arts I’ve learned from books. Very old books. But *reading* a book doesn’t help on its own; you have to put the work in figuring out in practice what the … Read more
Not long ago I braved the North Passage and flew to Seattle via Iceland. This was about my twentieth trip to Seattle, but my first to SwordSquatch. The event is run by a group of Lonin students who got together a few years ago to create the event that they would want to go to. … Read more
I got back from the amazing SwordSquatch on Tuesday, and I’m processing the experience; expect an event review soon. But in the meantime, I am looking forward to my upcoming trip to Helsinki, where I’ll be seeing old friends, making new ones, and teaching a lot of swordsmanship at the Swordschool Secret Hideout (aka The … Read more
The trumpet-blast of the Star Wars theme when that logo hits the screen transports me instantly back to the age of 11. Everything onscreen after that gets absorbed with the absolute trust and lack of cynicism that you’d expect of a person who still maybe sort of believes in Santa Claus. It’s magic, pure and … Read more
I think every historical swordsmanship practitioner ought to be at least competent with the rapier. Longsword, smallsword, messer and sword and buckler practitioners can all benefit from some rapier training- there is no better weapon for learning how to manipulate blade relationships. There are several systems of rapier fencing. Broadly speaking they are Italian or … Read more
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of chatting with Robert Zoltan of the Literary Wonder and Adventure Show. It was a fun conversation, often drifting into areas I know nothing about (such as flint knapping and football). According to the show notes, we covered: Why boxing is potentially safer without gloves, the earliest … Read more
Historical martial arts can be hard on the knees. But in my experience, 99% of the time the ‘crazy’ positions we see in the sources (like the extract from Meyer, above), are perfectly attainable with a little, or a lot, of work, without significant risk of injury. It just takes patience, caution, and knowledge. I … Read more