Consulting Swordsman
Creating a working syllabus is hard. Where do you start? What comes next? How do you know when you’re ready to move on to the next thing? I find it helps to remember that there is no one correct answer, because the optimum structure for the syllabus depends on its goals, and the specific aptitudes … Read more
Training happens in the brain, and in my experience, the biggest barriers to training exist between a student’s ears. One of the most common problems I have seen (and experienced myself), is the tendency to stop and make judgements when things aren’t going well. For example, I’m practising my still-imperfect mandritto fendente, as part of … Read more
I think that training ought to be focussed and goal oriented. The goal in any fencing context is to strike without being struck, so any problem can be thought of as “I’m getting hit” or “I’m not hitting”. Drills are the means by which we fix either of these core problems. Let’s start with the … Read more
We are in the middle of our annual monster seminar, the Fiore Extravaganza. We began with a day of pollax training from the medieval French manuscript Jeu de la Hache, taught by Lois Forster. Lois flew over from France with his armour and a squire (hi Vincent!). He is conducting an emprise, a feat of arms … Read more
A good swordsman must be able to handle a range of different opponents, and so must train to face lots of different styles of attack and defence. This is quite difficult to accomplish within a relatively small group of training partners, which is one of the reasons that it’s a good idea to travel a … Read more
While I was at the Armizare 2015 event, I had a discussion about Fiore’s first play of the first master of zogho largo with Francesco Baselice. Let me summarise our interpretations, with reference to the text. Qui cominza zogho di spada a doy man zogho largo. Questo magistro che qui incrosado cum questo zugadore in … Read more
You know you’ve done something right as a teacher or writer when somebody takes your stuff and recombines it into something new and meaningful. In my latest book, Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists, there are individual chapters for three of Fiore’s four virtues; boldness, strength, and speed. (I’ve yet to write the … Read more
I have been stuck in bed with some ghastly ailment for the last week or so, and am still not recovered yet (don’t tell my wife I’m working!), so I’ll be brief. The question on many fencers’ minds is how to win more matches. The solution is pretty simple: be a better fencer. Good fencers … Read more
Forms have been at the heart of martial arts practice since at least as far back as the Pyrriche war dances of ancient Greece, and documented in detail as early as 1536, in Achille Marozzo’s assalti in his monumental work L’Arte dell’Armi. I learned my first form while doing karate aged about 11, and have … 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