Guy Windsor

Consulting Swordsman. Writer.

Archives for October 2012

In the beginning was the (s)word, part 4

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So we are now half way through the beginners’ course, with no drop-outs. Fully half the course showed up for the basic class on Thursday last week as I mentioned in the previous post, another excellent sign. And though we never require a student to buy a sword, the fact that two of the beginners bought their own brand new and shiny swords this week is another very good sign for their long-term interest.

I try to illustrate the process of learning through continually referring to the base already established, then adding to it. This in the macrocosm, of the material covered in each class, and in the microcosm of each specific technique. And this applies as much to the warm-up exercises as anywhere else. This week we included kicking squats, to revise last week’s new material, but also added one armed push-ups. I think I’m the only one of my colleagues that has beginners doing one-armed push-ups, but it’s really not that hard, if you show them how to build up to it and don’t expect a full, perfect iteration at the first attempt. It’s ok to keep your wight on your feet and use your legs to do the work, so long as you are gradually building up the amount of weight on the arm. Eventually the legs do no work at all. Eventually…

We then reviewed falling in pairs (without a demonstration), before going on to revising the four steps, four guards, and 2 turns that they already know, with only the very briefest demonstration of the components. Memory gets better if you use it – and recognition and recall are two separate processes. We want recall.

I then carefully demonstrated the volta stabile, and we all did them together. After they had done them on their own, we went to the four guards drill. I walked them through it then let them practice. The out came the stick for the stick exercise.

From there we revised the first two plays of the first master of the dagger, before I taught them the roverso disarm as shown in the Pisani-Dossi MS. This took a while as it has a lot of moving parts, but when most of them had it, I took them to the book and Lo! It wasn’t there. Oh no! Am I making shit up? This brought up the fact that there’s more than one copy of the manuscript, and they are different. So I showed them the P-D, and the first two plays of the third master of the dagger therein, and had them do it again.

This brought us to 6.55, and we took up the swords. I had them work on the mandritto fendente finishing in posta di dente di zenghiaro, returning up to longa with a thrust or a roverso sottano. Then the same thing on the other side, so creating tutta porta di ferro. Then we did some basic grip exercises: first, writing your name with the point of the sword, then shifting the sword in the hand, from point on the ground to point up, without flexing the wrist, just using the fingers. Then I had them repeat the cutting exercises, with the image of drawing the lines of the blows in the air, rather than striking. Sure enough it got a lot better pretty quickly!

We then revised the first two steps of first drill, and added step 3, the pommel strike. I then took them to the book to show them the pommel strike done as a counter-remedy- they already knew to look for a master wearing a crown and a garter. But there wasn’t one! The pommel strikes were being done by scholars… so we turned to the mounted combat section and found the 8th play of the sword on horseback, and there he was, wearing the right bling and described as a general counter-remedy. This emphasised to the class that the Art is represented by the whole book- you can’t just stick to one section.

So they did it all again, having seen it in the book, and we were done.

After class, Ville Henell got them all cleaning their swords (good man!) and afterwards no less than four of the beginners came and asked for help with a warm-up exercise. Outstanding. The one they wanted was the whisky and cigars drill (sitting down on the floor with your legs in the air, as if reclining on a leather armchair with a whisky (single malt, natch) and cigar (hand-rolled cuban, of course), and your feet on a silken footstool). We got them all to realise it’s about skill, not raw strength. And guess who’ll find it all much easier next time in class. Fully half the class was still training half an hour after class ended, and I tried to spend some time with everyone.

All in all, they are coming along nicely!

 

 

¡Viva España!

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I spent the weekend 13-14 October in El Escorial, Spain, attending the Asociación Española de Esgrima Antigua annual meeting, as an invited instructor. It was a welcome opportunity to catch up with  their chief instructor, an old friend (and a fellow full-time professional colleague), Alberto Bomprezzi, and to see how things are done in Spain.

La primera cosa que quiero decir es que fue un placer e un honor estar invitado a este evento; y quiero agradecer a todos los instructores y estudiantes por darme la bienvenida a mi, y su paciencia con mi español. Me alegría mucho encontrarme a tantos nuevos hermanos y hermanas del espada. ¡Gracias a todos! Y he aprendido una nueva palabra importantísima: ¡Porrón!

The event was well run, and organised in a way I haven’t come across before. Each day began with an hour of free fencing, in which everyone who wants to take part, finds a partner and fences fro three minutes. A whistle is blown, and you change partners. After three such rounds there is a five-minute break. After an hour, there has been a lot of very happy chaos, and everyone is nicely warmed up. I spent the time watching the students fencing, which told me (in the first five minutes) what to cover in my classes.

Alberto is very upfront about what he is doing- he teaches fencing, with historical weapons, taking his theory from Spanish rapier sources (Pacheco y Narvaez, and Carranza, if I recall correctly). This is very different to my own approach which is very much by the book.  Indeed, one of the reasons Alberto invited me was so that his students could experience a different way of doing things.

In my first class I covered entering into measure and attacking from wide measure, and what to do when you get very close. This is because almost every action I saw in the longsword freeplay was done after the fencers came close enough to cross swords, then played from there. So they know how to bind and wind, but mostly they didn’t know how to attack with vigour without exposing their hands. So we took one parry and riposte (from first drill, so second play second master of the zogho largo), and worked in a tempo before the attack, and before the parry. We then took the pommel strike from the 8th play of the sword on horseback, and played with that as the attacker’s back-up if the strike fails. It was a very interesting class, clearly somewhat outside the students’ experience- and also outside mine as I taught the whole thing in Spanish, for the first time ever. I learned Spanish growing up in Peru during the school holidays from ’87 to ’92, which makes it 20 years since I last spoke the language regularly. But with plenty of goodwill from the students, we got by.

There were only two class slots per day, with four classes running in each slot. In the afternoon I watched Chris Chatfield teach pugilism based on Saviolo, and Alberto teaching rapier and dagger. I also got to talk to Rob Runacres, who had asked his colleagues to suggest whatever tips they may have for his improvement. So I took him aside and taught him the basics of establishing a groundpath from the sword to the feet. (I’ll cover this in a blog post next month.) It was a pleasure to teach him, as he was very open to correction, and willing to learn.

The second day began predictably late, but with so much free time built into the schedule it didn’t matter. When in Spain, chill out! I had originally been asked to teach one longsword and one rapier class, but Alberto asked me to teach a second longsword class instead, so I did. This one focussed on one basic drill (first drill again), and looked at how the blows create the guards, what the guards are for, the difference between zogho largo and zogho stretto, and making your actions work despite your opponent’s best efforts to stop it.

In the afternoon, after another short lesson in the mighty porrón, I got to spend about half an hour in Manel Avrillon’s knife class. I adore martial arts of just about any type, and after an unrelieved diet of European food, the occasional Indonesian curry or Japanese sushi is very welcome. But I spotted Chris Chatfield waiting for me, and I had asked him to take me through his interpretation of the first set of plays from Vincentio Saviolo’s His Practice.

Back in 2000 at the second annual meeting of the British Federation of Historical Swordplay (which I helped to found in 1998) I saw a demonstration of this form that has stayed with me. Duncan Fatz was reading the treatise aloud, while Chris and a chap called Alistair O'Loughlin performed the actions. It was a perfect example of by-the-book historical swordsmanship. Yes, it was probably mostly wrong in terms of the specifics of execution, this was 12 years ago after all, but the approach was perfect. The spectators could see the words of the book come alive. So I was very curious to see how Chris’s interpretation had changed. And changed it has- the footwork alone is a very interesting set of mechanics that echoes both 19th-century pugilism and T’ai Chi Chuan. Chris walked me through it for about an hour, and while my left heel stubbornly refused to plant itself the way he wanted it to, the mechanics made perfect sense. I look forward to trying them again- perhaps at a weekend seminar in Helsinki next year…

Anyway, you couldn’t ask for a better host than Alberto, and his students were keen, enthusiastic, open to alternative approaches and fun to teach. All in all, a great weekend.

In the beginning was the (s)word, part 3

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This course is proceeding apace, helped along by the exemplary attendance record, and their tendency to show up on Thursdays. 21 out of 24 were there on Tuesday, which is pretty good. We began with the warm-up and as usual took a familiar pattern of exercises and added a few bits and pieces. This week we added kicking squats and push-ups with one foot off the ground. Falling revision was followed by re-checking the correct placement of the weight on the feet, then we looked at tailbone placement, for absorbing vertical energy (gravity, carrying a TV upstairs) versus horizontal energy (pressure from an opponent). We then took that data and applied it to posta longa, with gentle pressure from a partner to check for correct positioning.

Then revision of the four steps, and we added the meza volta (half turn). We then did the stick exercise which generated natural tutta voltas (full turns), which we then took out of context and practiced solo. Volta stabile next week I think, and the three turns as a chunk to add to the four steps.

We then revised the first and second plays of the first master of the dagger, and added a disarm done against a roverso (not quite the full version, the first two plays of the third master from the Pisani Dossi, that’ll come next week). But we did do the counter-remedy to the third master, just for fun. It’s a lovely trap.

I then, at last, took them to the book to show them the third master material.

This brought us to 7pm and the salute, followed by striking mandritto and roverso fendenti; we have now dropped the natural swinging as unnecessary. This lead us naturally to a mandritto fendente finishing in posta di dente di zenghiaro, returning up to longa with a thrust or a roverso sottano. Then the same thing on the other side, so creating tutta porta di ferro.

From tutta porta di ferro thus created, we went and revised the first two steps of first drill, which took us up to 7.30. I had promised them last week to teach them the pommel strike counter (step three of the drill) “next week”; but I had been careful not to mention which day of the week I’d teach it. I pointed this out and promised to cover it on the Thursday class (which I did). This seemed to do the trick, as fully half the course came along last night, so with 15 regulars and 12 beginners we were a trifle full. Last night’s free training gave me a chance to work one-on-one with a beginner who has arthritis in his left wrist, finding alternatives to push-ups, and to teach three of them how to do the shoulder stabilisation drill with much less effort, in addition to the usual pottering about fixing problems as they arise.

All in all, great progress!

In the beginning was the (s)word, part 2

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Between last week’s class and this one (on the 9th of October) we saw six out of the 24 attend class on Thursday 4th – this is an excellent proportion, especially for the first week. It takes some guts to show up with so little prior experience, but they all got stuck in, and seemed to enjoy themselves. A large part of my job is taking 21st century office slaves and getting them sufficiently fit and strong to do medieval martial arts. The first of this batch to attract my attention in this regard is a tall, slim gentleman with back issues. So I spent twenty minutes or so with him after class working on posture and core strength exercises.

Day two of the beginners’ course saw one new face (who had been sick the week before) who brought with her a history of forearm tendonitis. My specialty. So we spent some time after class fixing that, with massage and wrist strength training exercises. (What on earth makes the average doctor think that strapping up a wrist for a year will actually help? Muscles that don’t get used waste away. Sure, the inflammation in the tendon dies down, but there is nothing stopping it coming back. Doh.)

The class began with the warm-up, almost exactly the same as last week’s but with less time to do more stuff. I added in our current favourite shoulder stability exercise, and cross-squats. I promised them kicking squats this week… We then went straight on to revise the four steps and four guards from last week, then I introduced them to the stick exercise– to get them to do these steps naturally and without thought.

We then gave the students the usual “a mask is not armour” speech, and showed them our utterly destroyed fencing mask – what happens when modern sports equipment meets medieval weaponry. Then I had them tapping each other gently on the mask with wooden daggers. When that was going nicely I taught them the First Master disarm, then showed it to them in the book, first the four strikes, then the five things, then the first master and his play.

I find it works best to show the beginners the technique a few times, let them try it, make a few tweaks, and get them to experience a few successful repetitions, before showing them the book. That way they recognise the images from their own experience, rather than perceive it as something new and different. Then I had them repeat exactly the same exercise having had the source, with all its Italian weirdness, explained to them. So they try to assign the new fancy names to familiar actions, not the other way round.

When that was going nicely I added the counter (second play first master), not least to hammer home the idea that this is not self defence- this is a medieval combat style for professional warriors., there is no moral value assigned to defence per se. The action we were doing, by modern standards, is simply murder- how to strike with a dagger despite the target’s best efforts to stop you.

This took us to 7pm, and we picked up the swords, saluted, and got busy swinging them up the hall. After that was re-familiarised, I had them think about hiding behind the sword as they strike.

I then demonstrated the cut done to the mask, by having a beginner, with whom I had never crossed swords, tap me on the mask while I practised not flinching. It is vital for them to see that they can do it safely. And that I am not asking them to do anything I would not do myself.

It would make no sense to stop there, as practising being hit is of limited value. So we added the parry from tutta porta di ferro (not that I gave them the terminology just yet). I just told them to hit the incoming sword away, middle to middle, using the edge of their sword.  And lo! we ended up at the book again having a look at the second master of the zogho largo. Literally 60 seconds or less of “look at the book, isn’t that cool” and it was “go back and do it again, now that you know what it is”.

That took us to 7.30 and the final salute, after which the President of the SHMS handed out a printed copy of the training guide to each member of the course.

I Am Slow

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I am slow. So I study speed.

The first advanced Fiore class every month is a freeplay-based session, in which we use freeplay and related exercises to expose specific weaknesses in individual students, for them to work on, and general weaknesses in the group as a whole, which sets the theme for the next month of classes. This month we are working on speed. The first indication that this would be necessary was that almost none of the students present could get their freeplay kit on in under 120 seconds.

Speed, celeritas, is one of Fiore’s four key virtues that a swordsman must possess. The others, for non-Fioreista readers, are audatia (boldness), forteza (strength) and avvisamento (foresight)). There are two key models for developing speed available to us. These are the sporting approach, and the musical.

The most obviously applicable is that of sports. High-level sportsmen, in games like tennis and fencing, must be quick. This is trained mostly by repeating explosive movements, to encourage development of type II fast-twitch muscle fibres, and to task those muscles with the motion desired. In this model, actions should pretty much only ever be trained at speed. If you do the action slowly too often, you end up training to use type I “slow twitch” fibres instead, and the maximum speed of the action is diminished. This sort of thing tends to emphasise gross motor movements, such as extending the arm, rather than fine motor movements such as manipulating with the fingers. As Johan Harmenberg writes in his must-read book Epee 2.0, “only simple movements are used (even an action like a disengage is not very common in a World Championship final)” (p28). He attributes this to the stress that the fencers are experiencing. At this level, “the pressure is so intense it is impossible to describe” (p 43). Harmenberg won the epee world championship in 1977 and Olympic gold in 1980, so may reasonably be assumed to know his stuff.

In music though, speed of execution is attained through getting it right at slow speeds first, then letting the phrase get faster and faster. A good example of astonishing speed of execution can be found here:

Wynton Marsalis playing the carnaval of Venice by Jean-Baptiste Arban. If music’s not your thing, just scroll ahead to 2.40, where he plays the 8th variation so fast it sounds like there are two cornets being blown- one for the tune, one for the accompaniment. The fine motor control is just dazzling. I have been taught to play this (though I never got close to this level of execution) and can attest that is is simply appallingly difficult to do. And under the stress of the performance, even worse. But the advice I was given (and every musician I have ever met would agree) was to get it absolutely accurate slowly first, and then speed it up. As my teacher Mr Foster wrote on my sheet music- “go at the speed of NO mistakes”.

We find a remarkable similarity between training to play a musical instrument, and combat shooting. In shooting al actions are trained slowly first, to become smooth and efficient, and then speeded up. I’ve been shooting pistols since I moved to Finland in 2001, and I have never, ever heard an instructor tell a shooting student to hurry up. Not only because mistakes can cost lives (just like in a sword fight) but also because shooting requires fine motor control, which if speeded up too soon becomes inaccurate. In both areas, music and shooting, the goal is to enable the practitioner to execute complex motor skills under high levels of stress.

I can attest to the stress of performance: I played the trumpet at school, and developed an absolute phobia of playing solos, despite being a member of several bands and orchestras. Though I was never under any direct physical threat (there were no beatings for splitting a note, nor would anyone have shot me for fluffing a phrase), I was at times incapacitated by fear when a solo was coming up. I never actually vomited, but it was pretty damn close. Yet, I still did them. And while they were never perfect, and I could always play a lot better in practice than performance, I was able to produce a passable result. The training worked. The level of stress is probably much higher for a professional musician, as not only his ego but also his career rides on the quality of the performance, and much higher still for a soldier or policeman facing an armed assailant, but the process is the same.

In both these areas, you’ll hear the phrase “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. In other words, get the action right slowly, and let it speed up as you practice. Keeping it smooth will allow it to become fast.

We can summarise then by saying that if you think of swordsmanship as a fine-motor-control skill, the musical/shooting model is best. If you think of it as a gross-motor-control skill then the sporting approach will work best. In my experience, students training to win tournaments should emphasise the sporting approach; students training to recreate historical duelling arts should emphasise the musical approach.

It is of course possible, and often desirable, to do both- swordsmanship for sport or murder have some overlap, and for those elements of the sporting game that are improved by fine motor control, use the slow-smooth approach, and for those elements of the martial art that involve improving explosive power, use the sporting model. For example, if a student is having difficulty lunging with sufficient speed to take advantage of tempi that he ought to be able to strike in, the critical skill for the instructor is to diagnose the problem; are the mechanics of the lunge at fault? If so, then slow it down and smooth it out. If the mechanics are ok, then apply drills that develop the raw speed of the lunge. Just don’t try this with a disengage- it’s so much a fine motor skill that trying to speed it up by making the student go faster will just make it clumsier and slower. Get it smoother and smaller to make it faster.

In swordsmanship, speed serves two functions: damage and timing.

Damage first: The speed of the sword determines how hard it hits. E=mv², so the energy available for damaging the target is proportional to the striking mass and to the square of its velocity. Double the mass of the sword and you double the impact; double the speed and you quadruple the impact. This assumes of course that to make the sword go faster you haven’t made the motion less efficient, so energy is wasted on impact. There is a huge difference in practice between the amount of energy technically available, and the amount actually delivered into the target.

I believe that the sword should act as a labour-saving device. Its function is to destroy certain types of target, and it should require less effort to do so with the sword than without. So there is limited virtue in simply making the sword go faster and faster to hit harder and harder; at some point, there is sufficient energy to do the desired damage, so additional speed is wasted effort.

Now Timing: the purpose of speed is to ensure that your strike arrives before your opponent’s parry, and your parry arrives before his strike. It is therefore proportional to the motions of your opponent. The key skill here is to be able to adjust the acceleration of the weapon, rather than attain a specific top speed. There is a lovely section on this in Karl Friday’s excellent book Legacies of the Sword, on pages 74-5. Especially the graphs showing the different rates of power applied to the weapon by beginners versus experts. The graphs look like this:

The key point is that the expert can accelerate the weapon quickly; the total force exerted is actually a lot less. But the weapon is moving fast enough when it needs to be. The key to this kind of skill is to eliminate inefficiencies in the starting position, minimise the tension in the muscles about to act, and develop perfect mechanics for the strike itself. The importance of early rate of acceleration over final speed attained is elegantly demonstrated by this exhibition at the Heureka Science Museum in Vantaa, in which two tennis balls are rolled down two slopes. One slope is straight, the other curved. Though both balls are moving at the same velocity when they get to the end, the ball on the curved slope always arrives first as it has a higher rate of acceleration at the beginning of its movement compared to the other. They would both hit with the same force, but one would arrive long before the other.

The easiest way to reduce the time in which an action is done is to make the action shorter. So, a great deal of speed training, training to do an action in less time, is to eliminate any extraneous motion; to pare the movement down to its absolute minimum. To take a beginner’s marathon and create an expert’s 100m. There are several ways to do this, from the obvious: select a starting point that is closer to the end point; to the more sophisticated: tuning the path taken between those two points. In general, the sword-hand should move in the straight line from A to B. But sometimes it’s the middle of the blade that does that, sometimes other parts of the weapon or wielder.

In practice, it is useful to be able to adjust the path, and the rate of acceleration at various points on the path, for best effect. To simply hit hard, make sure the sword is at maximum velocity at the moment of impact. But to make the hit more likely to land, adjust the acceleration pattern and the path taken to best fit the tactical circumstances. Easier said than done. It is always slower to lift a heavy weight than a light one. So speed training is also about reducing unnecessary tension, making the action as smooth and efficient as possible, expending the least possible force to get the job done.

So, as we would expect with a medieval virtue, cultivating speed for its own sake, simply going as fast as possible, is a route to ruin. It takes an essential quality that should exist in equilibrium with others, and makes a vice out of it. This is a common theme in medieval thought (and should be still today). That which is virtuous when in balance becomes vicious when done to excess. Excessive courage leads to foolhardiness, excessive strength leads to stiffness and slowness, excessive speed leads to weakness and overextension, excessive judgement lead to cowardice.

In the case of speed, emphasising raw speed over speed in proportion to your opponent’s movements, leads to getting hit through being over-committed and over-extended. It is also hell on the body because explosive force applied to the joints is only safe when the motion is being done perfectly.

In every discipline there is usually an optimum balance between youthful vigour and the experience of long practice that can only come with age. A sportsman usually peaks between the ages of 20 and 40; a concert soloist somewhere between 35 and 60. A martial arts instructor normally peaks somewhere between 50 and 70. Fiore says he was about 60 when he wrote his book. So cultivate speed carefully, getting the mechanics absolutely right before you put a lot of energy through them, and make sure you develop the muscular support of your joints to absorb any slight errors. Muscles and bones last forever- the weak spot in any mechanical system is the joints.The syllabus wiki has some of the school’s joint-care curriculum uploaded, including wrist and elbow exercises, knee exercises, and joint massage. I do these a lot, because I intend to hit my peak in about 15 years, and need to make sure my joints can handle all that energy. Which brings me on to strengh, forteza, which I’ll write about next month.

In the beginning was the (s)word…

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One thing I have never done before is keep an exact record of what I (and others) teach over the eight weekly sessions of a beginners’ course at the Helsinki branch of my school. Of course it is never exactly the same twice; every group is different, and as we usually have only two such course a year, there is time for my opinion to change about what are the essential first steps. The two critically important things are these: that I show them a clear and accurate picture of the Art that I serve, and provide a safe welcoming environment in which to learn. That way, if someone comes to try this path, and finds that it is not their thing, then the Art has not lost a potential exponent, but gained one more person who has seen and done, and knows that this is real and alive.

This year’s Autumn course was fully booked; we cap it at 24, and thanks to two cancellations being matched by two late registrations, we were able to accommodate everyone. I always get there early for the first class, as one or two students, not wanting to be late and having made an unfamiliar journey, tend to arrive very early. Our first arrived at the same time I did, a full hour before class. All I tend to do is point them to the changing rooms, and if they start extending fingers towards swords they don’t own, gently steer them away.

At 6 on the dot (by the salle clock, which is and has always been five minutes early to discourage lateness), I called them together, and gave a short speech of welcome, in which I a) praised them for finding the place; b) pointed out that salle time is different to Helsinki time; c) told them what I expect and require from them: that they behave at all times as reasonable adults; and d) explained the one rule: EVERYBODY MUST FINISH TRAINING HEALTHIER THAN THEY STARTED IT. No macho bullshit allowed. If your knees won’t do squats, leave them out. Then we went for a short walk around the salle, where I pointed out things like the kitchen, the office, which rack they should take weapons from, etc.

This introduction took about 5 minutes. I then had them spread out for the warm-up, in which I went through everything slowly, and taught the more complex exercises (squats, push-ups, starfish, roll and up): I included a very brief demo, and one thing to watch out for when practising.

This segued nicely into the basic falling exercise, starting on their knees. We were very full so I had them pair off, with one student spotting for the other, and giving a gentle nudge to indicate a safe direction to roll into.

This was followed by “how to NOT fall”, starting with finding the best part of the foot through which to root the weight. One student stands with their weight on their heels, feet shoulder width. Their partner gently presses in the centre of their chest, to check how stable the position is. Then the weight is shifted a little forwards on the foot, and check again, etc etc. After five minutes everyone in class has some idea of where their weight should be for maximum stability. And the idea of checking everything, and finding what’s right for them, is established. I could just tell them where to place their weight- but this is much more effective at getting the message across, and the correct technique is learned without ever being taught.

From here we grabbed an imaginary Ken’s throat to create posta longa (I got to grab the real Ken’s throat, of course!), and passed back and forth across the salle. Then a quick trip to the book to see that this extended -arm position is “historical”; a short word about how the guards are the ways by which we define and measure movement, and I gave them the other three guards; first zenghiaro, then porta di ferro and frontale as a pair.

Having given them four guards, it made sense to give them the four steps; one they already knew, the pass, plus tornare, accrescere and discrescere. I spent very little time on the terminology, and plenty on having them actually do the steps.

I finished off this section (it was almost 7pm by now) by giving them 2 minutes by the clock to practice and remember what they had learned. A nasty trick, as it proved beyond reasonable doubt that they could practise on their own, unsupervised, for two minutes— and so could do that easily every day between now and their next class.

I then took them to the rack and showed them how to take a sword down without blinding anyone, and when they were all armed, lined them up and taught them the salute. From there, we split up into two groups, one watching and the other doing, and had them swing the sword from shoulder to shoulder, relaxed and easy. While they were doing this I directed them to swing the sword at head height. Once both groups had a few minutes of this, I took the first group four by four up the salle, swinging the sword and allowing a step to follow it. Pretty quickly this segued into the whole class swinging four by four up the salle. There was the usual mix of initial errors, of course. By far the hardest part of my job is to shut up and let them get on with learning, rather than badger them with corrections. It was rewarding to see some of them start out and get their feet mixed up… then correct it themselves without my intervention. I stopped the class to give them all one extra thing- the line the blow should pass through, slicing with the edge from jaw to knee. And then carefully did not make any corrections while they absorbed all this.

With about 7 minutes to go I brought them back to the book and showed them that they had been doing mandritto and roverso fendente, from posta di donna through posta longa. I saw a couple of light-bulbs go off. And noticed that the first time they had come to the book I was given a wide berth, lots of personal space; by this time they were more relaxed, and were crowding in to see the book. They then had another five minutes to go back to the swinging/cutting drill, knowing what they were actually practising.

We finished with the salute at 7.30, of course.

In all it went very well, not least as 23 out of 23 (the 24th emailed in sick and will join us next week) filled out their course membership papers and handed in our half of the form that very night. Several stayed and practised until about 8, the last one was out the door a full hour after class had ended.

A very promising beginning!