Consulting Swordsman
The real thing is the only bullshit-free scenario in martial arts. If you’re an MMA fighter, that’s the ring on fight night. If you’re a soldier, that’s being in the presence of the enemy. And if you are a swordsman, that is someone trying to take your head off with a blade. But the real … Read more
Despite my reasonable and gently-worded objections, the USFCA have gone ahead with their plans to create a pedagogical certification system for historical swordsmanship. I am clearly not alone in my feeling that this is a bad idea, as it has created something of a shit-storm on social media, including a series of vicious ad hominem … Read more
Swordfights are resolutely, absolutely, analogue. It is random, chaotic, non-linear to a degree. But for centuries, millennia even, man has been imposing order on the chaos, cataloguing the actions, naming the techniques, systematising the Art of Combat. This begins with taxonomy- such as naming the positions swordsmen use or find themselves in, the blows that … Read more
Way back in the dawn of time when I came to Finland to open my school, my research into historical swordsmanship was at a very early stage. But we all have to start somewhere. As I wasn’t sure whether to focus on Vadi or Fiore I included elements of both systems in the material I … Read more
I’ve been rushed off my feet with a plethora of interesting projects, including a card game version of Fiore’s art of arms, an upcoming trip to Oulu, and finding out the hard way that my youngest child is lactose intolerant, so time for blogging has been severely curtailed. I hope that the next few weeks … Read more
Finding myself at odds with a colleague regarding what it is fair to call “Fiore’s Art” (or indeed any other historical master’s), I have decided to get down on virtual paper my views on the subject. It is obvious that coming from a different time and culture we cannot ever perfectly recreate the Art as … Read more
The Fiore Extravaganza, a week-long immersion in medieval Italian martial arts, is now over. This year we spent much of our time working through Filippo Vadi’s fencing theory, and his 25 longsword plays. This was in part to help with the commentary section of my upcoming Veni VADI Vici book, in part to satisfy the … Read more