Guy Windsor

Consulting Swordsman. Writer.

Archives for September 2018

Unveiling the new workbook format!

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I spend a lot of time thinking about how to teach swordsmanship through books and videos. It’s not a simple problem, not least because every student is different, and has different needs and preferences. How the material should be ordered and presented, what photos may be needed, how much explanation is sufficient (oddly, more is not usually better — just enough for them to be able to start playing with it is usually much more effective). 

When it comes to organising the material, there are basically two options: the organisation that best suits modern practitioners learning an unfamiliar physical skill, and the organisation that best suits modern historians learning an unfamiliar theoretical construct. For the former, starting with basic motion the student can do, then giving them good practical reasons for modifying them in the direction of the desired style gets the best results. For the latter, an annotated edition of the source text is my preferred approach (such as The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest). 

When it comes to learning movements, video is of course vastly better than static photographs. Nothing beats in-person instruction, of course. But at least on video your mirror neurones can go crazy copying the feeling of the motion. 

I’m an avid note-taker, to the point that I make my own notebooks because I just can’t get them the way I like any other way. Moleskine? Crap paper. Leuchstemr? They’re ok, maybe, but the layouts are never quite right. A good notebook must lay flat, be made of archival paper that takes fountain-pen ink nicely, be robust enough to throw in a pocket or bag, and so on. At my seminars, I see lots of students taking notes- on their phones, on scraps of paper, even in beautiful leather bound journals with purple ink. 

So I have been thinking about ways of combining the virtues of a notebook, a text book, and video courses, and have come up with a workbook format that has it all.

  • Clear references to the source? Check.
  • Links and QR codes to video clips? Check.
  • Option to download all clips to go train in places with no wifi? Check.
  • Plenty of room to take notes? Check.
  • Left-handers are covered too: every video is shown both ways, and there will be a version of the workbooks that have the space for notes on the left-hand page.

I’m working on the assumption that this format will not work for everyone: some will just prefer proper books, and some just want 100% video. But I think there is a large number of people between those two extremes for whom this will be a game-changer in terms of learning swordsmanship without a formal teacher in the room.

If this seems like a great idea to you, I have a question. How would you like the notes area to be presented? Currently I have left the space completely blank, as that’s what I would prefer. But should it have a box round it? Would you like it lined (for handwriting guides)? If lined, heavy, or light? Spacing?

Tell me your preferences and I can take them into account…

Let me know in the comments below, or by email to guywindsor@gmail.com

I’m currently working on three different series: Rapier, Armizare, and Fiore’s Longsword. 

The Rapier Series

Book 1: This covers the fundamentals, from holding the sword, footwork, guards, and basic actions. This is now done, in final layout, and I’m looking for a better print on demand solution.

Book 2: Complete the Basics. This is about half-written, and will cover all the basic actions, including passes, voids, feints, and so on.

Book 3: Skill Development. This is about turning your rapier knowledge into fencing skill, and will include a lot of material on coaching practice.

Book 4: Rapier and Dagger. Once you have a solid grounding in single rapier, you really should get your other hand into play…

The Armizare series will approximately follow the first four levels of the Swordschool Basic Syllabus, which includes wrestling and dagger plays as part of teaching the Longsword material. You can see the syllabus here: 

The Fiore’s Longsword series: this will be an annotated interpretation of the Longsword sections of Il Fior di Battaglia, going through the source play by play, with video clips of how I do each action, and detailed discussion of why.

I’m also thinking about doing workbooks on conditioning, and on teaching.

Many years ago, in the tv show Friends, episode “The One with the Princess Leia Fantasy” Rachel persuades Ross to tell him his fantasy (which you can guess from the episode title) by saying “if you tell me, I might do it”.

Of course, it doesn’t quite work out that way for poor Ross, but if there are any elements of the format you’d like me to tweak, change, or add to, now would be a good time to let me know. And if there are any topics you’d like to see workbooks on, feel free to ask… if you ask me, I might write it…

The first workbook is currently uploaded to Lulu, from whence came the printed copy you see in the photos. The layout is not final- the book is being proofread at the moment, and it will be professionally laid out to improve the look, so don’t worry about that at this stage. My concern is the print quality. The paper stock is quite thin (60#, or about 90gsm), and while it seems to take fountain pen ink without too much bleed  through, you can see images from the other side through the paper. See here:

Finding better quality printing is not hard, but I do not want to spend any part of my working day packing and shipping books, so I needed a print-on-demand printer with distribution, that can do a better printing job than Lulu. Lulu do offer better paper, but only with a full colour interior, which is literally ten times more expensive (even if the internal print file is black and white- you still pay for colour). Ingram Spark don’t do spiral bound, and these workbooks must lie flat, so they’re out. Kindle Print don’t have better stock quality than Lulu, so they’re out. Blurb have the same colour-option problem as Lulu.

This has lead me to partner up with Fallen Rook Publishing, run by Keith Farrell. He uses print on demand with distribution too, but he also uses short print runs and distributes books himself. So when this goes live in a couple of weeks, there will be an option to buy the print files from my Gumroad account if you want to faff about printing them at home (or can print it out for free at work), or you can buy the printed books from Fallen Rook. While you’re there, they have a ton of other interesting books you might also want to pick up…

It seems you *can* learn martial arts from books….

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You can’t learn martial arts from reading a book… or can you?

I’ve always thought so; in fact, I make my living by teaching martial arts I’ve learned from books. Very old books. But *reading* a book doesn’t help on its own; you have to put the work in figuring out in practice what the book is trying to teach, and, in short, training your arse off.

As did one indirect student of mine, Tony, who wrote me this email a couple of weeks ago:

Dear Dr. Windsor,

I’ve been diligently studying the videos on swordschool online, reading your books (so far I’ve worked through The Medieval Dagger and Medieval Longsword and am working through Advanced Longsword. I’ve also read Charrette’s Armizare and am reading Tom Leoni’s translation of the Getty manuscript) and practicing daily. 

Last night I was engaging in free play against a more experienced opponent who was using German longsword techniques. Our blades crossed way too close, in the middle of the blades, with points high. He reacted first, letting go of his sword with his left hand and stepping in, ready to finish me off. I countered by stepping inside with my left foot, letting go of my sword with my right hand, and wrapping his sword arm until I found the elbow and got him in a ligadura mezana!  First problem solved, I rotated my sword in a wide counterclockwise arc and gave it a good yank to free the point from his grip. Then I stabbed him in the face. (Obviously we were wearing full sparring gear, including masks.)

I’ve always heard that the gold standard demonstrating that you’ve mastered a technique is whether you can pull it off in freeplay against a non-compliant opponent, which I accomplished for this technique the first time last night. 

Anyways, I just thought I’d share. 

Thanks for all of your fine books and videos. I didn’t learn this from anyone else, so I consider it proof that yes, you can learn swordsmanship online or from a book. Or, more accurately, books and videos can be important components of a training program. 

Tony

I couldn’t agree more with this statement: “or, more accurately, books and videos can be important components of a training program”. Obviously, Tony himself deserves the credit for *putting in the work*. Probably the most important phrase in that email is “practising daily”.

He followed that up yesterday with this epistle:

Dear Dr. Windsor,

It gets even better. This week, my sparring partner managed to disarm me, my sword flying across the room as he came in for a pommel strike, sword in left hand, pushing my left arm with his right hand. This was obviously embarrassing, especially with five beginners looking on and audible gasps throughout the gym.

First, I attempted to execute a ligadura mezana with my left arm to trap his right arm, which he was leading with, but this failed. As his pommel came in, I grabbed his left wrist, (clumsily, because I was wearing the SPES heavy gloves) twisting it until he dropped HIS sword.

From here, I attempted a forward throw (9th play in the abrazare section, I think), but was again too slow. We eventually ended up in a configuration similar to the 10th play, the Gambarola, which Fiore says is dangerous because either partner can be thrown. This time however, I got the advantage. (Safety note: this maneouver was fine with my partner, who had a wrestling background, and I did not execute a volta stabile. Instead, I took it just until he lost his balance and he went down slowly.) My partner was actually pretty excited about the outcome, and I was pleased myself.

Three things I learned from this:

1. Fiore’s dagger material works equally well against an unarmed opponent or one armed with a sword.

2. As Fiore says, if one technique doesn’t work, quickly shift to another remedy.

3. Despite what I’ve heard from some modern critics, you absolutely can win in a fight if you’re unarmed and your opponent has a sword.  The dagger material is absolutely relevant and valid for the unarmed vs. longsword context.

Tony

As you can imagine, I'm pleased as hell with his results, and very proud of him for putting the work in.

The resources he has been using are my Medieval Longsword, Medieval Dagger, and a slew of my online courses, including the Breathing Course, Footwork Course, Dagger Course and Longsword Course. That's a lot of courses, all of which (and more) are included in the Mastering the Art of Arms Bundle, which is only $35/month (plus sales tax in the EU).

Reading the books and watching the videos won't make you a decent fencer or martial artist, but following the instructions and doing the work? That will.

SwordSquatch 2018: The nail polish has worn off but the feelings remain.

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Not long ago I braved the North Passage and flew to Seattle via Iceland. This was about my twentieth trip to Seattle, but my first to SwordSquatch. The event is run by a group of Lonin students who got together a few years ago to create the event that they would want to go to. This is its third incarnation. I can’t speak to the first two, but if my Facebook feed is anything to go by they were awesome. My expectations were very high, and increased by the instructor line-up, which included the likes of Jake Norwood and Jess Finley, as well as a host of less well known (for now) faces.

From outside HEMA these included the legendary Ellis Amdur, who taught a fascinating polearms mechanics class, and Da’Mon Stith, who taught a variety of African sword arts, the first time I’d ever seen any. Let me put it this way: it’s a good thing Da’Mon is a nice bloke, so I never have to fight him.

The organisers (Beth, Shanna, Erik, Aidan, Leigh, Olivia, Shane), clearly think outside the box- as well as core HEMA subjects, such as wiktenauer maestro Michael Chidester lecturing on Liechtenauer, there was also Mary Mooney lecturing on European magical traditions and how they relate to swordsmanship. No wonder the event was magical. They booked a magician! (She also gets props for the best class handout ever.)

But it wasn’t really the instructors and classes that made the event for me. Nor even the three hour open session in the flying trapeze tent. (I went three times. It is very frightening.) 

It was the atmosphere. I saw a diversity of people there, on either or both sides of the teacher-student divide, all of whom were getting on with each other. For such a large event (over 150 people) it was remarkably free of politics and ego tripping. As Aidan Blake, one of the organisers, put it on his Facebook wall:

From day one, our goal for Swordsquatch was to create an inclusive, safe space where people could experiment, fail without judgement, and grow from it. Play, Fight, Learn. We wanted a place where everyone, regardless of their level of experience, gender, orientation, religion, race or anything else, was welcome. We also wanted to throw an event where tournaments were not the most important thing, but workshops are.

I’ve never been to an event with more prizes awarded- mostly paper plates with drawings on, also some medals, and a pink plastic unicorn, but also a few seriously good sharp swords. And I think that’s part of the secret sauce. The organisers have given themselves permission to reward the behaviour they most wish to see, regardless. And it works. It tells everyone what is valued in that community.

The Open Tournament was deservedly won by Jan Deneke. He got a medal and much congratulation. Yay!

But Sihong Fu, who came third, won a brand-new Angus Trim sword. Because in the opinion of the organisers and staff, he earned it through the way he pushed himself, without pushing anyone else. As I would put it, in their view he best represented the spirit of the Art.

I enjoyed my three classes; the students were bright and engaged, even in the post-prandial slump (teaching at 2pm is the hardest slot, I think). I revelled in Neal Stephenson’s Indian Clubs class, though had to bow out of the heavy stuff thanks to my still-recovering back injury. Ellis’ polearms mechanics was fascinating; it’s quite different to how I’ve been doing things, and he freely and clearly taught the inner mechanics that are often buried behind mystic bullshit or clan secrecy. 

SwordSquatch brings out the good crazy.

This is me playing flaming tetherball with Alex Hanning.

You read that right. A roll of toilet paper soaked in what Americans call “white gas” (something a bit like diesel, I think), fixed to the end of a chain, and set on fire. Then you bat it back and forth. It is oddly very very hard to see the ball of fire coming towards your face…

It’s also the only event at which nail-painting is strongly encouraged. I got into the spirit of things and let Kaja Sadowski loose on my cuticles.

Normally my nails only get a bit of bling when my kids want to play beautician. But one gay friend of mine at the event told me that my teaching in painted nails sent a kind of welcoming bat-signal to the non-heteronormative students in a really clear and unambiguous way. So don’t be surprised if you see me wearing it more often. It’s not really my style, but it’s a very small thing to do to encourage students who might otherwise feel automatically excluded.

If I had to define the event in three words it would be these: Kindness. Community. Quirk. I was right at home. And proud as hell of my Lonin crew for pulling this off.

Seminars in Finland, October 10-14

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Back in the Salle!

I got back from the amazing SwordSquatch on Tuesday, and I'm processing the experience; expect an event review soon. But in the meantime, I am looking forward to my upcoming trip to Helsinki, where I'll be seeing old friends, making new ones, and teaching a lot of swordsmanship at the Swordschool Secret Hideout (aka The Salle, Luiskatie 8, 00770 Helsinki. So, not that secret then):

On Wednesday 10th October, 18.00-19.30 I'll run a Rapier coaching class, no charge (this will be videoed for part of the new Rapier Course).

Friday 12th, 18.00-20.00: Breathing exercises. This will cover the basics of breathing training, with more advanced exercises for the more experienced, cost: 20€.

Saturday 13th 11-17.00: Rapier seminar, suitable for beginners and advanced rapier fencers, cost: 40€.

Sunday 14th 11-17.00: Longsword seminar, suitable for beginners and advanced student,. cost: 40€.

All my classes begin with a survey of the students, in which you get to ask for the things you are most interested in. So if there is any aspect of these subjects you'd like me to cover, come along and we'll do it if possible.

To register for any of these, please send an email to info@miekkakoulu.fi

I hope to see you there!