Consulting Swordsman
I spent the first week of October on a data detox. No emails, no whatsapp, no socialz, no scrolling. It’s been a lovely mental break. My initial reason for trying this was to allow my inner visionary to be heard, as per this post. The single biggest surprise is how little I missed it. I was … 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 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
I have just this very day completed the first draft of my next longsword book; snappily titled Mastering the Art of Arms vol 3: Longsword Advanced Training. Can you think of a better title? To celebrate, here is one small section of the book, that actually started out in life as a draft blog post, as a … Read more
Memory is the key component of mastery. Being able to effortlessly recall and recombine elements held in long term memory is the essence of creativity and expertise. This is why I have deliberately crafted my School’s syllabus to be a memory palace. It is obvious when reading Fiore that his system has been organised for … Read more
We had an interesting time in the “intermediates” class this week. (Those scare quotes are to point out that after all these years, we should probably be calling it the Advanced class. So I will.) We began by establishing the goal of the class: to address the problem of freeplay devolving into tippy-tappy shit. You … Read more
In this week’s intermediate level class, our monthly freeplay diagnostic session, the theme was One Thing. We began with the cutting drill, and I gave them one round of it to identify one general movement issue to work on. Then about one minute of basic power drills to identify one technical or tactical weakness to … Read more
This week’s intermediate class yielded some interesting insights. I began by asking my students what they thought my job was. As far as I see it, at their level, my job is mainly to keep their practice mindful, and provide solutions to any problem that crops up that they cannot solve themselves. We started by … Read more
I don’t believe in innate talent. I’ve never seen it in a student, and I have noticed no correlation between early successes in training and long-term achievement. But you can draw a linear relationship between hours spent in class and acknowledged skill. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is my sort-of-ex-student (in that he … Read more
I am weak. So I study strength. In martial arts, strength has little to do with the usual measures of muscular performance, and everything to do with grounding, structure, power generation and joint maintenance. Given my choice of profession my naturally weak skeleton is a blessing. My petite 12 year-old niece has wrists about the … Read more