Guy Windsor

Consulting Swordsman. Writer.

Archives for July 2017

The True Principles of the Sword

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A little while ago I went to the National Fencing Museum to photograph some of Malcolm Fare's amazing book collection. Most researchers and other interested folk find a compiled pdf of the photos much more useful than the raw footage, not least because the raw footage is not usually in order; for technical reasons, the shoot usually takes the recto pages in order first, then the verso pages in reverse order. Plus there are duplicates, duff images, and so on. Also, the raw footage is between 2 and 10 Gigabytes per book, which is way too large. So, the photos are being released as and when the pdfs are ready; these are being done by volunteers from all over the world, so there is no fixed schedule for them.

The first book is now ready for free download, from the Spada.Press website. Prepared by Jim Alvarez, De La Touche's glorious “True Principles of the Sword Alone” is a vitally important book in the history of fencing, one of the earliest smallsword treatises we have. It dates from 1670.

To download the book, go to this address: http://www.spada.press/book/the-true-principles-of-the-sword/ and follow the instructions… please note that while you are welcome to the pdf for free, it is set to ‘pay what you want', so you can chip in if you wish. When the book has raised enough money to pay for the production costs, we will produce an affordable facsimile, so be generous!

If nobody’s mocking you, you’re not working hard enough.

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A couple of neat tricks from Il Fior di Battaglia

If you stick your head above the parapet, someone will take a shot at it. This is true and always will be. It doesn't matter who you are or what you're doing, or how well you're doing it, if enough people see it some of them will hate it. It's just how people are.

But at the same time, all artists need critical feedback. Without it, you cannot grow. And sometimes, even the meanest criticism is actually useful. It pays to be able to distinguish between the criticism to ignore, and the criticism to take on board. Here's how I do it:

  1. Disregard the motives of the critic. Assholes are still sometimes right. You may take their relevant experience level into account, but don't put much weight on it.
  2. Segment the critics into ‘my target audience'/'not my target audience'.
  3. Disregard all in the ‘not my target audience' segment. Does Iron Maiden care that the Opera critic for the NYT doesn't like them? (I made that up– they may be a huge metal fan, but you get the idea).
  4. Sift the remaining criticism for truth. If it's true, it doesn't matter who says it. Learn and grow. If it's not true, then disregard it. How it makes you feel is irrelevant, but scared is usually a good indication that there's some truth there.
  5. Never, ever, under any circumstances, ever, respond to public negative criticism directly, unless you are at fault and should apologise. Then apologise. Criticism given in private (e.g. in an email) can be responded to, but never immediately. Let it settle for a while first.
  6. See rule 5. It bears repeating.

What is so hard about this has been neatly captured by this cartoon from The Oatmeal :

The Oatmeal nails it. Again. Click on the image to see the whole cartoon in context.

We are social animals. When somebody is vile about you, even when you know their opinion is unfounded, it feels horrible. Even kindly meant constructive useful criticism is painful. But then so is doing the last critical rep when exercising. Or getting hit with a sword when you should have parried. In short, growth hurts, and you better just suck it up.

Case Study one: Book reviews

On average, my books get great reviews on Amazon. Mostly 4 and 5 stars. But every now and then, somebody gives me one or two star review, and it feels liking getting kicked in the stomach (I've been kicked many times, and am being perfectly literal here). I always pay attention to those, because that's where the growth lies. Here's one example:

My most recent Longsword book, Advanced Longsword, has 12 reviews on Amazon.com, eleven 5 star, one 4 star (if you've read it, do me a favour and review it!). But over on Amazon.co.uk, it's got two five star reviews, and one ONE STAR review, with this text: “It is a fine book with excellent illustrations, BUT!!! The author uses Italien expression which he has not defined. Instead he refers to another book. Which makes the present book useless.”

Now that to me is a marketing problem. I've sold a book to the wrong person. I know the book is good because the target audience love it (and even this critic says it's a fine book). I did not reply to the review directly, but I responded to it by changing the blurb to make it clearer that you need to read the previous volume first (though it was pretty damn clear already). I will also add a link in the book where readers can get a downloadable glossary if they want one. As it happens, two of my fans responded directly to the reviewer telling him he was supposed to read the previous book first.

The lesson there is be really careful about how you advertise your work.

Case Study two: Online mockery

This video, showing demonstrations of perfectly documentable techniques from Il Fior di Battaglia, got selected for abuse by the anonymous trolls who run a channel that exists only to mock martial artists (think about that for a second).

Many of my fans jumped up and down and posted comments and suchlike in my defence, which was heartening, and I appreciate it. But there was no way that they were going to dissuade the armchair warriors of the internet from ridiculing the video. That's ok. That's what trolls do, and trolls are a regrettable but apparently ineradicable part of the internet's ecosystem. A bit like mosquitos, but their bite is never fatal while mosquitos can actually kill you. It might be possible to educate some of them, but I wouldn't bet on it: even if they are generally sensible people, the mindset they are in when piling on a troll thread is not conducive to learning things. When a friend informed me I had been singled out, I responded to him (not on the troll page) like so:

Honestly chaps, it's not worth reacting to. Those with half a brain or more can see the difference between a set drill for beginners, and “self defence”. Those that can't are just too dumb to bother with. And there's no such thing as bad publicity, for a writer, at least. Thanks for the heads up though.

I try to practise what I preach. A few weeks ago, I preached this: To share or not to share? 3 simple rules for knowing what to do which is why I haven't linked to the perpetrator's website here. But I took a look at the criticism, to see if there was anything valuable there. If the critics are right about this video, then the following things must be true:

  1. Fiore dei Liberi was not a great martial artist, he was full of shit. His book is rubbish. (One dingbat actually says so!!)
  2. Slow technical training has no place in martial arts training.
  3. You can't grab a sharp blade without getting cut.

I know from research and experience that the first is wrong, and I know from experience that the second and third are wrong too. The criticism in this case can be safely disregarded. As to the motives of the trolls (which are not relevant, but one can't help wondering), I can only guess that they think they are helping to keep martial arts ‘real' and ‘unsullied', by ridiculing anything they think is not properly ‘street'. And to be sure, some of the videos they post are ridiculous. As to whether mine are? I leave you to judge.

Make Good (Martial) Art:

In martial arts, any and every conflict situation is either combat, or training. If there is no direct, real, existential threat, then it must, by definition, be training. And in both cases above, however those situations may have made me feel (neither were pleasant), there is no actual threat. So there is no need to defend myself or others. (If the trolls or critics were posting my home address and incitements to violence, then it would be very different; that's a police matter. But this is just mockery and can be ignored). It is therefore not combat; it must be a training scenario, in which the key thing is to identify what the situation can teach you. In this case, I think it's probably just practice at not reacting to ridicule, nor descending to the level of the opponent. And as a martial arts teacher, it is of course also a teaching opportunity, hence this post.

Martial arts training is all about responding optimally, and not reacting in exactly the way the enemy wants you to. At the end of the day, it comes back to Neil Gaiman's advice, Make Good Art. I have a body of work that has benefitted thousands of people, and my work speaks for itself. What do these dingbats have, other than too much time on their hands? Nothing.

Combat veterans, police officers, security guards, in short, people who can spot martial arts bullshit because they have used their skills against genuinely non-compliant, sometimes murderous, opponents, come to my classes and tell me they love them. But some fool on the internet can't tell the difference between scenario training and technical practice? I should care exactly why? For me at least, making it onto the radar of this very popular martial arts mockery channel is a significant indicator of success!

Which is why I only sat down to write this post after I had finished my ‘make good art' work for the day. Because even though some people will hate it (if they ever see it), I know that the project I'm working on is good, and I know that my fans will love it.

Remember, no matter who you are or what you do, if your work gets around at all, someone somewhere will hate it. And if it's on the internet, they'll post shit about you there. It's worth reading the “Man in the Arena” section of Theodore Roosevelt's Citizenship in a Republic speech given at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910.

It is not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs,
who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows great enthusiasms,
the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst,
if he fails,
at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

The Theory and Practice of HEMA

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I’ve been taking a break from working on The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest: Philippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatioria Dimicandi (the long-awaited second edition of Veni Vadi Vici), and putting my shoulder to the wheel of getting my Magnum Opus ready: this is the accurately but not very inspiringly titled The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts. It’s a big book (it stands at about 105,000 words, about 300 pages in paperback, more if I use a lot of images), which covers the fundamental principles of all aspects of HEMA; from how to work with historical sources, to how to train for tournaments, and everything in between. I’ve been applying the feedback that I got from my beta readers in February this year, clarifying points here, adding whole sections there. There are one or two gaps that I know of; I need to write the section on Syllabus Design, for instance, but the book is not that far from being done, I think. I drew out the sections on a whiteboard today, you can see it here (click on the image for a readably large version):

Let me walk you through the structure of the book, so you can tell me if it makes sense to you, and whether you think there’s anything that ought to be covered that I’ve missed. I’ve published a great deal of this book as instalments of The Swordsman's Quick Guide, as blog posts, and as parts of my Recreate Historical Swordsmanship from Historical Sources online course. This has been deliberate; it allows me to perfect each section is in isolation first, and to break up this monumental undertaking into manageable chunks.

Introduction

The book opens with an introduction that sketches how HEMA began as a thing, how I got into it in the very early days, and what I think HEMA is. After the introduction, the book is divided into Theory and Practice:

Theory

The theory section begins with the 7 Principles of Mastery, which covers how to learn anything. It goes on to define and describe Fencing Theory, and from there how to choose a historical source, how to work with translations if necessary, how to create drills from the source, and how to structure those drills into a coherent, focussed, syllabus. The theory section concludes with a short section on ethics: if you are going to be practising murderous skills, you need an ethical framework for them.

Practice

The practice section begins with Safety procedures, protective equipment, then how to choose a sword. It follows with the basics of striking, then with Skill Development how to get from knowledge to skill, from set drills to freeplay. From there we look at how to start a HEMA club, how to teach beginners, how to teach a basic class, how to teach an individual lesson, how to train for tournaments, how to win them, and how to use them for your training. That leads us on to physical training: nutrition, flexibility, strength, and speed, which lead me (as a Fioreist) naturally on to training for foresight, and training for boldness. This in turn leads us on to meditation and breathing exercises.

The book concludes with a bibliography, a recommended reading list (not the same thing!), then the complete text of my Ethics instalment, a beginner’s course diary from two separate beginners courses, and finally credits and acknowledgements.

Please note, this is not intended to be a training manual for any specific style; this is supposed to define the foundation of the entire HEMA project, and provide the principles with which to solve any HEMA problem from identifying the key techniques in a source, to getting your or your students' strikes longer and faster.

Did I miss anything?

I’m also toying with titles at the moment, so suggestions are welcome! Please leave your comments below; I might not see them on social media threads, but I will definitely read every comment posted here. Thanks!

The Ring of Power- return it to Mount Doom?

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The OURA Ring: the future of fitness wearables?

One of the challenges of maintaining my fitness since retiring from teaching classes four nights a week is getting reliable feedback. I’ve been looking into heart rate monitors for this purpose, specifically to track recovery times (how long it takes my heart rate to come back to normal after I max it out for a while), and to track the effects of specific exercises and foods on heart rate. I wanted something that was not a chest strap (because I’d never get round to putting it on), and ideally not a watch either, because I can’t type while wearing a watch. I always remove mine before typing anything longer than an email. This is because my wrists always swell slightly within 5 minutes of typing. (I have a tendency to tendonitis, that is 100% managed through massage and exercise: if I do my exercises, there are no problems, but neglect them for a week and my wrists are in agony. If you have similar problems, you might find my free online arm maintenance course useful). So for continual monitoring, I need something I can wear at my desk.

I’m on Kevin Rose’s monthly email of cool stuff, which covers everything from interesting quotes to good books to gadgetry. He recently included the OURA ring, and as it claims to be a super-accurate heart rate monitor, is not a watch nor requires a chest strap, and came with a 25% discount to Kevin’s readers, and is from a Finnish start-up to boot, I bought it. As it’s a new product, and a complete re-think of a common exercise tool, I thought you might be interested in my impressions.

1) Build quality. These are not cheap (mine cost about 200 euros because I get the VAT back), but they are beautifully made, with the same kind of attention to design detail that you get from Apple. It’s worth getting the free ring-sizing kit they offer; these are a complete set of model rings that look just like the actual ring, down to the sensor bumps on the inside. It made choosing the size much easier. The ring is robust; I’ve worn mine in the shower, doing kettlebells, drilling into a brick wall with a hammer drill, cooking, doing woodwork, playing with my kids, and there have been no issues. It’s a quality piece of kit. I’d take it off to fence in, because it won’t fit nicely inside steel gauntlets, and it’s not designed to be sword-proof, but that’s equally true of probably any wearable.

2) Interface. The ring has no controls on it; it is managed entirely through an app on your phone. The app gets data from the ring when you sync it, and crunches the data for you to give you three main metrics: Sleep, Activity, and Readiness.

My one main criticism of the interface would be that there is no web based version, so you can only access the data on your phone, and as far as I can tell there is no way to download the raw data to do your own analyses on. This also means there’s no backup. If the company goes under, you’ll lose all your data (unless they do something to prevent that). You’re basically at their mercy.

3) Data. The ring collects an incredible range of data: it measures your heart rate, your heart rate variability (the variation in the timing of the beats), motion,  and temperature, and uses the data to calculate your activity levels, sleep quality, and ‘readiness’, a measure of how hard you can push yourself today. But here’s the funny thing. This outstandingly accurate HRM doesn’t tell you your heart rate. It only measures HR when you are asleep! I contacted them to ask what was going on, and got these replies:

“OURA doesn’t track your heart rate, only resting heart rate”.

To which I asked why the hell not, and was told:

“The ring activates the HR monitoring only when user is in rest or sleeping. There is no daytime HR provided by the ring”.

So I asked why the hell not again, and got this:

“Daytime is for activity tracking based on 3D accelerometer.”

So I asked for their reasoning AGAIN, and got this:

“Training by HR is only valuable at low HR levels. Even high-end coaches rely on Rate of Perceived Exertion. Also, we do provide a recovery score each morning, which is based mainly on sleep, HRV, and temperature”.

So, basically, “we’ve decided to arbitrarily disable the most important feature of the device because our customers should only be interested in the data that we have decided are important”. Let me say that again: you’ve just bought a phone and find out that it is programmed to only make calls between 9am and 4pm, because that’s what the manufacturers think is useful. WTF? [This, incidentally, is a classic Finnish customer service response. Ten years ago or so, I was up in Oulu and happened to meet a Nokia engineer. I mentioned that my Nokia phone (one of the early colour screen versions, quite high-end at the time), was not very good. He took a look at it, handed it back, and said “no, it's a very good phone.” Engineer right, customer wrong, end of discussion. My interaction with OURA gave me the exact same feeling.]

So this ring doesn’t tell me what effect a given exercise has on my heart rate, nor tell me whether a particular pattern of breathing reliably brings my heart rate down after exertion, something every other HR monitor on the planet can do with more or less accuracy.

So how accurate is the sleep monitoring? It seems to be pretty good most of the time, but it failed to register a nap I took in the afternoon as actual sleep, and it told me that I was in light sleep and REM sleep between 5am and 6.30am this Sunday morning, when I was actually awake and trying to get back to sleep. So it’s not that accurate then. I’d want to calibrate it with another device to see how reliable it really is.

Relying on the accelerometer alone as a measure of activity intensity is not very helpful either; for example, it registered me dancing with my kids (which I can keep up for hours, literally) as “High Activity”, but my “as many push-ups as I can do while fully exhaled” (which is brutally hard), as “Low Activity”, because my hands weren’t waving about. If it was using heart rate as another data point, it probably wouldn’t make those mistakes.

This ring is an amazing device, crippled by the arrogance of its creators in deciding what data the customer ought to get at what time of day. I got no sense from the company that they were planning on offering ‘turn on the HR monitoring during the day’ as an option, nor any sense that they were listening to their paying customer. It saddens me to do so, but I think I’m going to have to return it. What it does do is quite good. What it could do, would be amazing.

What are your thoughts? And recommendations for an HR monitor that actually, I don’t know, maybe monitors your heart rate during the day?

More Hema geekery: discussing the term “piede fermo”

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Last week I checked Piermarco Terminiello’s translation of Giganti’s Second Book, published in 1608. I took issue with his translation of tirar di punte di piede fermo as “delivering a lunge”. I would render it as ‘thrust with the fixed foot”.

This sparked a very useful discussion thread on Facebook, which was far too interesting to be left there so I have the participants’ permission to post it here (I’ve edited their words slightly for clarity, and I have left out all the digressions, requests for clarifications by beginners, and statements of opinion unsupported by evidence). It began with Mike Prendergast (a long-time friend and serious rapier practitioner) writing:

Loving this already, Guy. To niggle on your niggle about ‘lunge” versus ‘thrust with the fixed foot”, I would say that that several rapier masters of this era seem to distinguish a thrust executed with a pass, from one executed with an increase of pace of the lead foot, by using the term fixed footed thrust for the latter (it's the rear foot that is fixed). So while Piermarco Terminiello has not literally translated this word-for-word, I would consider the terms functionally equivalent. This is off the top of my head.

Piermarco himself chimed in:

When I translated Alfieri in 2011, for what it's worth I translated “pie' fermo” as “firm foot” – but I've come to consider this as clunky.

I'd contend that “firm foot” is the pretty standard early 17th century term for a lunge, considering that the early Masters don't use the modern Italian term “affondo”.

This is Alfieri's definition:

“There are two principal ways of attacking: from a firm foot, or with a pass or other type of movement.

The attack from a firm foot can be accomplished in one of two ways. The first is when you strike by extending your arm and your body without moving either foot. The second method, having your weight over your left foot, is to carry the blow forward by stepping with your right.”

The same with “ferire”, in 2011 I translated it as “wound”, however since there are several examples of “ferire” being used when the action doesn't actually land, I'd contend that “attack” is an easily defensible and arguably more apt choice.

Although note that Parise uses “firm foot” to describe a simple lunge into the late 19th Century.

In his translation Chris Holzman notes (from the 1884 edition of Parise):

“he uses the term firm-footed to describe the lunge, since the rear foot remains in place, or firm on the ground.”

So at best, according to your interpretation, Capoferro would be some kind of weird outlier (in his specific usage).*

Tom Leoni in his translation of Giganti's 1606 translates piede fermo as “firm foot” however he adds the footnote:

“Firm-footed attack (ferita a pie' fermo): an attack with footwork other than a pass, i.e., a lunging attack or an attack without a motion of either foot”.

Which of course perfectly corresponds to Alfieri's very straightforward and clear description. Note that Tom also translates “ferire” as “attack” and not “wound”.

It is clear from this that Piermarco’s translation choices are defensible, whether I agree with them or not. Regarding ferire, I would say that strike is much better than attack, because it doesn’t come with the necessary condition of the strike landing (as wound does), nor with the fencing-theory baggage that “attack” does.

Regarding the strike of the fixed foot; I would say that though Piermarco has made an excellent case for “lunge” being an appropriate interpretation of Giganti’s meaning, I still do not see it as a good translation of what Giganti actually wrote. This is because we have somewhat different theories of translation; I hew very closely to the original phrasing of the source, and will only translate something using a completely different expression if it’s a case of an idiom that is simply nonsensical when translated directly, which I don't think is the case here. At the very least, a footnote would have been a good idea.

In case you are a complete beginner to academic discussion I should point out that this sort of back-and-forth is a) completely normal b) implies no disrespect and c) is the engine that drives all development. As I said in my previous post, Piermarco’s translation is excellent, well worth your time, and I have nothing but respect and admiration for his work. But translation is always at least in part a matter of judgement, and as I am a raving pedant and have a different view of the job of translator, in my considered opinion, I wish some aspects of his translation were different. Now that I have a copy of the original book I can simply use that, but also, now that I have checked to see what kind of judgement calls Piermarco makes, I can use his translation in an informed way.

And incidentally, this is exactly why, in my opinion, professional HEMA instructors (by which I mean people who do this for a living and therefore should be held to the highest standards) should only teach from sources they can read in its original language. However *good* a translation may be, it is still always, by definition, something of an interpretation.

If you find this kind of discussion interesting, you'll probably enjoy the story of how it was established beyond reasonable doubt that I was completely wrong in identifying the poison-dust-pollax ingredient…

*It’s somewhat off topic here, but my rapier background is in Capoferro’s style, working from his 1610 book Gran Simulacro.

There he wrote in paragraphs 46-48 (which you can see in the image above; click on it for a high-res photo):

46: The wide measure is, when with the increase of the right foot, I can strike the adversary, and this measure is the first narrow one.

47: The fixed foot narrow measure is that in which, by only pushing my body and legs forward, I can strike the adversary.

48: The narrowest measure is when the adversary strikes at wide measure, and I can strike him in his advanced and uncovered arm, either that of the dagger or that of the sword, with my left foot back, followed by the right while striking. (In Jherek Swanger and William Wilson's CapoFerro translation (click on the link to download in pdf))

It is perfectly clear then that for Capoferro the strike of the fixed foot is not a lunge. Piermarco is right in that Capoferro is an outlier in this (as indeed he is in many other respects too), but given Capoferro’s status in the rapier world, this by itself is sufficient grounds to expect at least a footnote to explain that the original term being translated as “lunge” is “fixed foot”.