Consulting Swordsman
One of the things I’m enjoying most about learning to fly is being an absolute beginner, and making beginners’ mistakes. Such as: Getting my radio check and airfield information call in to the office (we don’t have a tower at this airfield), and wondering why I couldn’t get a reply even though the radio seemed … Read more
Safety Guidelines for the Practice of Swordsmanship These safety guidelines come from my Recreate Historical Swordsmanship from Historical Sources Course (included in our Mastering the Art of Arms and Solo Training packages here) and have been adapted from guidelines in The Medieval Longsword, The Duellist’s Companion, and The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts. All … Read more
One of the most common questions I get asked is this: “there are no HMA clubs near me. What should I do?”, and my answer is always the same: “start one”. So the next question is “how do I do that?” The most difficult part of starting a HMA club is deciding to do so. … Read more
Boldness is a key virtue in swordsmanship. Perhaps the key virtue. Under the Lion on the famous segno page, Fiore wrote “Piu de mi leone non porta core ardito. Por di bataglia fazo a zaschun invito”. Nobody has a bolder heart than I, the Lion. I call everyone to battle. It is a key virtue, … Read more
Spring is in the air, the grass is pushing up under the snow, and books are making their way from my dusty hard drive and out into the world. Ok, in Finland, spring is nowhere to be seen. My kids are going ice-skating and everyone I know has a cold. Bear with me. I have … Read more
As I slowly progress towards mastery in my chosen Art, I get further and further ahead of my beginners. This could lead to me getting out of touch with their needs. I also get accustomed to a certain routine, a set way of doing things. Both of these things are death to a good teacher. … Read more
Training montages are common in swashbucklery movies and TV shows; you know the sort of thing, where the young student is trained by the old master. As you may imagine, these are usually my favourite bits. But they often seem to revolve around the “master” humiliating and defeating the student, which is hardly good training. The … Read more
Beginner you are not, hmmm? Beginners are the future of any martial art. And lucky too: the best learning environment is when you are the least knowledgeable person in the room. Anyone you train with can teach you something. It is more difficult to keep learning when you are surrounded by relative beginners, and this … Read more
It has been my experience that beginners feel they have learned something when they get to try a new technique. But experienced students of the art feel they have learned something when they have identified and corrected a flaw in their skills. This is normal, and in both cases, the student is correct. It can … Read more
I have been working for the last nine months on creating a teaching tool for students of Fiore’s art: a card game called Audatia. The game has been designed from the ground up as a way to make the abstract elements of Fiore’s system, such as the terminology and the overall tactical structure, easier to … Read more