In the beginning was the (s)word, part 4

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So we are now half way through the beginners’ course, with no drop-outs. Fully half the course showed up for the basic class on Thursday last week as I mentioned in the previous post, another excellent sign. And though we never require a student to buy a sword, the fact that two of the beginners … Read more

¡Viva España!

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I spent the weekend 13-14 October in El Escorial, Spain, attending the Asociación Española de Esgrima Antigua annual meeting, as an invited instructor. It was a welcome opportunity to catch up with  their chief instructor, an old friend (and a fellow full-time professional colleague), Alberto Bomprezzi, and to see how things are done in Spain. La primera … Read more

In the beginning was the (s)word, part 3

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This course is proceeding apace, helped along by the exemplary attendance record, and their tendency to show up on Thursdays. 21 out of 24 were there on Tuesday, which is pretty good. We began with the warm-up and as usual took a familiar pattern of exercises and added a few bits and pieces. This week … Read more

In the beginning was the (s)word, part 2

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Between last week’s class and this one (on the 9th of October) we saw six out of the 24 attend class on Thursday 4th – this is an excellent proportion, especially for the first week. It takes some guts to show up with so little prior experience, but they all got stuck in, and seemed to … Read more

I Am Slow

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I am slow. So I study speed. The first advanced Fiore class every month is a freeplay-based session, in which we use freeplay and related exercises to expose specific weaknesses in individual students, for them to work on, and general weaknesses in the group as a whole, which sets the theme for the next month … Read more

In the beginning was the (s)word…

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One thing I have never done before is keep an exact record of what I (and others) teach over the eight weekly sessions of a beginners’ course at the Helsinki branch of my school. Of course it is never exactly the same twice; every group is different, and as we usually have only two such … Read more

Training Daggers

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About a year ago, my colleague and fellow Fiorista Bob Charrette kindly agreed to let me use some tracings he had made from Il Fior di Battaglia,  originally for his book Armizare, in my own little book of mnemonic verses, the Armizare Vade Mecum. As a token royalty payment I offered to make him four wooden … Read more

All by myself? Um…no.

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One of the many joys of having kids is their charming misconceptions about how the world really works. For example, both my daughters love driving my car. When bringing them home from daycare, as we get off the public road and onto our parking area, I often take them one at a time onto my … Read more

Freeplay class

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Intermediates class on Sept 3rd 2012 was run as a freeplay class. The goal of this class was to improve students’ freeplay skills, and to remind them of freeplay’s place in the practice of historical swordsmanship. It went like this: The class ran for 90 minutes and was loosely divided into five sections. We began all … Read more

Consuming Risk

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Swordsmanship practice is inherently dangerous. The study of risk has been developed to the nth degree over the last five hundred years or so. For an excellent overview, see Against the Gods, the remarkable story of risk, by Peter Bernstein. (Thanks to my friend Lenard Voelker for sending me a copy!). The assessment of risk … Read more