Consulting Swordsman
I’m teaching a seminar here in Suffolk for my friends at Suffolk HEMA on Saturday October 18th. If you’d like to learn to move better, and to analyse any guard position or movement from a structural perspective, you should come! Move Like Fiore Improve your structure, flow, and control in Fiore’s art of arms Good … Read more
Holding the sword correctly is safer One of my students mentioned tendonitis problems in his wrist on the Swordschool Discord server this week. It’s probably caused by holding his sword incorrectly, which forces the small stabiliser muscles to do more work than they evolved for. He is by no means the first student I’ve seen … Read more
Medieval scribes had crap posture too! Image from: http://www.booktryst.com/2012/03/medieval-scribes-gripe-about-writing.html One of the challenges of my new lifestyle is that I don’t have class three or four times a week to keep me to a fitness regime. Before I could make the switch in my head from swordsman-writer to writer-swordsman, I had to figure out how … Read more
One of my favourite internet distractions is seeing how other writers (proper writers. Professional writers. Oh wait, that’s me too!) set up their work space. The fallacy, of course, is the underlying idea that if I just use the same tools, I’ll get the same results. This is not so. It is well to remember … Read more
I have just come back from teaching seminar in Oulu, a charming little town in the North of Finland. Friday afternoon was spent doing game development with our game designer for the new card game, which is coming on very nicely. I was asked to run a conditioning class before the intermediate class that evening, … Read more
The effects of Longsword Length One of the mysteries surrounding German (i.e. Liechtenauer) and Italian (i.e. Fiore) unarmoured longsword combat (and I’m sure it keeps you awake at night too) is the different responses to a crossing at the middle of the sword (meza spada) in the two systems. At Fiore’s crossing of the swords … Read more