On March 17th 2001 I ran the first official class of what was then called “The School of European Swordsmanship, Helsinki”, or SESH, in a small room at the Olympic Stadium, in Helsinki, Finland. So today is our 25th birthday: happy birthday to us!
Our classes were held in primary school sports halls:
Training in Töölön Ala-aste koulu, 2001
And even outside, when the Finnish weather allowed:
Training in Sibelius Park, Helsinki, May 2001
It's fair to say we've come a long way since then!
To celebrate, I’ve created a COOL FREE THING. (Well, I've caused to be created by paying the excellent Katie to do the actual work.) Would you like a full-colour facsimile of Philippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, with a second copy with my English translation laid out like the original?
Of course you would. You can use these print files to get it printed wherever you like (I use BookVault in the UK).
While you are there (the files are hosted at swordschool.shop) use the birthday discount code SWORDSCHOOL25! to get 25% off all digital products (ebooks and audiobooks). The code also works on our courses platform: courses.swordschool.com
The code expires at the end of April, so no desperate rush.
Note: no purchase or sign-up is required to get the facsimile print files. It's entirely free. You'll need to put your email address in to download it, but we won't sign you up to anything unless you opt-in during the process.
Written in the 1480s for the court of Urbino, Filippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi is a cornerstone source for historical European martial arts: concise, sharp, and packed with principles that still matter in fencing today—timing, measure, courage, deception, and decisive action. This book is designed to reproduce the experience of reading the original manuscript as closely as possible.
The first half is a full-colour facsimile of the 42-folio vellum original held in Rome. The second half is a layout-matched English translation, replacing Vadi’s text while keeping the manuscript’s structure and rhythm intact.
For clubs, instructors, and independent students, this is Vadi as he should be read: directly, clearly, and in context. And for practical study, every play has video support available via simple links keyed to the folio number.
Made available under a Creative Commons Attribution–Non Commercial–ShareAlike licence, this facsimile is free for anyone to print and share.
For deeper scholarship, footnotes, interpretation, and video-supported training for every play, see the companion volume (available for pre-order, due out in May).
Please note: You will receive a zip file containing the PDF download of the interior file, and a separate PDF cover file. Recommendations for how to have this printed into your own hardback book are included. You can download the zip file from the confirmation page after checkout, and you will also receive an email with a download link.
Please share this post, and the book,with anyone you think will be interested.
So what happened in the last 25 years? I’ll post a lengthy “history of Swordschool’ post next week. In the meantime, avail yourself of all our other cool free stuff:
Free Resources from Swordschool
The Syllabus Wiki. We are currently rebuilding it, but it’s as usable as it ever was during the rebuild process. It’s how we host and organise our free reference resource for syllabus and interpretation. We started it in 2010, and while it was neglected somewhat as we built the online school, it’s still useful, and is being thoroughly re-organised, expanded, and brought up to date. For instance, we have now got the first 20 plates from Capoferro represented with image, text, and video. And we've made a solid start on Fiore too.
The Sword Guy Podcast. I started this during lockdown so that sword people stuck at home and missing the social aspect of training could virtually hang out while sword geeks chatted about swords. It now boasts over 200 episodes, with a range of well-known and less well-known guests.
GuyWindsor.Net. This blog! I started it in 2012, and it now has over 500 posts on various topics. I recently reorganised it and created a ‘start here’ page.
Swordschool Vimeo channel. With over 500 videos, it’s a monster, and hard to navigate, which is why we have the Syllabus Wiki. Almost all public interpretation and training videos are on the wiki (or will be soon). It also hosts backups of our online courses, in case that platform goes down, so not all of those 500 videos are public. But feel free to dig around for something interesting.
The Newsletter. This has existed since about 2015, but I didn’t do much with it until lockdown. Since then it’s been a regular fortnightly bit of swordy positivity in your inbox. About 6,000 people subscribe at present- you should join them! Subscribe below, or click the link for access to all previous emails.
That's a whole lot of free stuff. It's all made possible by the people who actually buy our products: books, courses, seminars; or who support us on Patreon. Until the end of April you can get 25% off all digital products (sadly not physical books or t-shirts: they cost too much money to make and ship), with the code:
Receiving the prize for “because someone had to teach the slot”.
I'm not known as a tournament fencer these days. Indeed it's been well over 20 years since I last officially competed. But one of the great benefits of interviewing so many people on The Sword Guy is that they spark ideas in me that then get acted on. My conversation with Martin Hoeppner included a lengthy discussion of tournament rulesets, and cemented my pre-existing opinion that his club holds great events (I’ve taught at their Swords of the Renaissance four years in a row). A few weeks later I interviewed Maciej Talaga about an academic article he wrote on medieval physical culture, and we got talking about the benefits of tournaments for historical martial artists.
This got me really thinking… I have a decent amount of tournament experience from sport fencing in the 80s and early 90s, but the last time I entered a tournament was in (if I recall correctly) 2003. It was a rapier tournament, in Italy, and I won it. But I had been a professional instructor for two years by this point. If I win, so what? Being a competent fencer is part of my job. If I don’t, then what does that say about my right to teach?
Bear in mind this was a very, very, long time ago.
There are some major equipment issues with modern tournaments: most don’t allow steel gauntlets (I absolutely will not use any of the synthetic gauntlets currently on the market, for the simple reason that they prevent me from holding my sword correctly), and most probably wouldn’t allow my That Guy’s Products mask. In situations where cuts to the head with a heavy weapon are likely, anything built on a fencing mask foundation are simply inadequate.
I understand that creating equipment requirements for a tournament is a nightmare job for the organisers; it’s much easier if you can insist on established brands and models. But the restriction on steel gauntlets extends back to well before the time that companies were making synthetic gauntlets, and organisers were requiring things like lacrosse gloves because “steel gauntlets are dangerous”. Which in an activity that involves swinging steel bars at people’s heads seems at best misguided.
(I think I need to do a deep dive into sparring gear for longswords and other heavier swords… interested?)
I’d heard about the Torneo di Spada through attending Swords of the Renaissance, and checked with them that my mask and gauntlets were allowed. They are!* And they very kindly lent me some of the extra bits of kit (such as forearm guards) that I don’t have. They also asked me to teach a class on the Sunday afternoon, which made the whole thing even easier to approach.
I flew in to Berlin on Friday night, and on Saturday geared up and got stuck in. The first day was sidesword. This was perfect for me because I’m not a sidesword instructor. I haven’t taught a class in Bolognese fencing since maybe 2007, so I could go into it with no particular expectations. My goals were simple:
1. to break the seal on my tournament fencing,
2. evaluate my current level of training,
3. and, most importantly, to embody the spirit of the Art of Arms.
How does one embody the spirit of the Bolognese Art of Arms? In the 16th century duels were very often public affairs. Your reputation is on the line, as well as your skin. The most important thing is to fence boldly.**
The ruleset was simple: hits to the head score 3 points, to the lower leg 2 (hence the need for shin guards), and anywhere else only 1. This is to reflect the opinion of Antonio Manciolino in his 1531 Opera Nova, in which the author writes that the head is the most noble target (a common opinion at the time), and that the lower leg should count higher because it’s so hard to hit without getting hit yourself.***
Every bout consisted of three scoring passes, so the maximum possible points in a bout was 9.
The twist was that the ranking is primarily based not on the points, but on how many passes you survive untouched. Winning 9-3, where you get 3 points in every pass and your opponent gets one, is useless; it’s better for your ranking to win 3-0.
A tournament-minded fencer will then be very cautious, and if they can’t stop the attack, at least go for a double.
To my mind though, to properly embody the spirit of the art, I needed to march in and hit them in the head, with style and control, but absolutely no dicking about at the edge of measure trying to not get hit. So that’s what I did.
The results? In my pool of 8, I had 7 bouts (21 passes), and scored 37 points, of which 33 were from hits to the head. But I had only 5 clean passes. That put me 21st out of 25 fencers. (Where the ratio of clean passes was the same, ranking was decided on points.)
I was delighted. My points per bout were the highest overall (37 out of 7, so 5.3). The next best was 38 out of 8 bouts, so 4.8. The next highest number of head hits was 7 to my 11. And several people complimented me on my fencing style.
Of course, if it was the points that counted, not the clean passes, the other fencers would have been motivated to go for head shots too, they would probably have scored a lot higher: the comparison isn’t really fair, but it is illustrative.
The Rapier Tournament
The second day was the rapier tournament. My goal was the same: to embody the spirit of the art. But the art was different. When it comes to rapier, I’m a Capoferro man, so the year is 1610, the duel is private, the top priority is going home in a whole skin. Fencing to first blood is fine: murder is an option not an obligation. So my fencing was totally different. Not just the style, but also the incentives.
The clean passes ranking was the same. Points were scored so that thrusts to the head or body were 3 points, cuts to the head 2, and cuts or thrusts anywhere else just one.
Fencers could choose rapier, or rapier and dagger, but they had to agree (so, both fencers had the same weapons). I always gave my opponent the choice, because I want their best game. In the end I think I used a dagger in three of my bouts.
In the qualifying pools I had 9 bouts (27 passes) and scored 19 clean passes, so a 70% success rate. I only scored 42 points, of which only 5 hits were to the head. This put me at the top of the rankings for all 30 fencers (the next best was 63%), but lots of fencers scored more points than me.
I conclude from this that the clean-passes ranking system rewards a private-duel mindset and approach.
Safety First
Unfortunately I wasn’t careful enough with one of my opponents. I knew he was wild, but after the halt was called he was chambered to cut me in the head. I stopped at the halt, and so didn’t parry his full-force horizontal cut to the right side of my head. As I was not expecting heavy head cuts in a rapier pool, I was wearing my regular fencing mask (it’s a bit better for face thrusts), with the usual HEMA overlay. This is totally inadequate to deal with that kind of blow, and he rung my bell. He also got a red card.
I sat down for a bit, and thought about my options. I had no obvious signs of concussion: vision and balance were fine. My last three opponents were all relative beginners, and not prone to hard hitting, and I didn’t want to drop out, so I fenced them very carefully (I got three clean passes in all three bouts).
There was about half an hour before the pools all finished up and the rankings to go on to the next round were announced. At the end of that time, over an hour after the blow, my head still hurt. When it comes to brain injury a second hit in the same place is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the first one. And the “champions pool” would have no easy fights in which I could be reasonably certain to prevent my opponent from catching me in the same place. If I had a student in that situation I would not let them continue, so I withdrew.
The organisers and my fellow fencers were all entirely understanding and supportive of my decision. And I should say here explicitly that there was no malice or bad sportsmanship involved in the situation. I should have recovered under cover, not just stopped dead.
I should also say that none of the three medal winners were in my pool, so it could be that I would have ranked less well if I’d had stronger opponents. I don’t want you to think that coming first in the qualifying pool means terribly much. Had I continued I probably had a 50% shot at a medal.
Fitness
At the end of my first bout on the first day I was breathing quite hard. This was odd, because the bout wasn’t that challenging or athletic. It could only be tournament pressure. This was excellent! It meant I had a chance to practice controlling my level of arousal. I cycled in some breathing exercises, and got my breathing and heart rate back down to reasonable levels, and had no fitness difficulties at all for the rest of the weekend.
I could feel my thighs and shoulders a little bit on Sunday morning, but nothing significant.
More critically, my recently-recovered knees were fine, and so were my back and neck. So it seems that my physical conditioning is working really well. Hurrah!
The only point of stiffness or soreness on the Monday morning after the whole weekend was over, was the front of my ankles. A completely weird place to feel a bit of fencing, so I’ll try to figure out what caused that.
I’m being extremely cautious about my head. No alcohol (which I’m off at the moment anyway), and I won’t engage in anything where I’m likely to be hit in the head for a good long while. A minor head trauma is like priming your immune system for anaphylaxis. You have to avoid the stimulus if you don’t want a severe response.
The Tournament Fencer
Quite a few of the fencers there were clearly in it for the tournament. For them, winning the tournament itself was the goal. Medals matter. This generates a fencing style that is like a cross between sports epee and a bit of kendo, with lots of jigging about at the edge of measure and a very fast tag with the sword.
You can tell the competitors because they ask questions about the rules (what exactly counts as stepping out of the ring? Does my foot have to touch the ground? The whole foot? What if it’s just my heel?). They also use their ‘video challenge’ right. In the finals, video challenges were allowed, one per fencer per bout. If the challenge was successful you can challenge again. This means that if you disagree with the judges, you can, in effect, argue with them.
To a tournament fencer, it really does matter who gets the points. It’s what they are there for. To lose a medal because the judge made a mistake would be intolerable.
I would die in a pit of fire before I ever issued a video challenge. If I failed to hit my opponent with such clarity and in such obvious control of their weapon that the blind, drunk, biased-against-me judge who has been bribed by the opposition,** still has to give it to me, then I don’t deserve the point. “Bad” judging (as in judging you disagree with) is part of the tournament challenge. The greater the challenge, the greater the learning opportunity.
It’s really useful to have people like that to fence against, because they are usually very good at hitting you, and in ways you may not expect because they look different to the canonical style. The hit is always right. If you fail to parry, that’s on you. Also, seeing how incentives affect behaviour allows you to learn to predict some of that behaviour. Another useful learning opportunity.
It’s illustrative of the difference that, while I think I won my first bout on Saturday 7-4, and I can work out some of my clean-pass scores, I don’t actually know what my scoring was in any of the bouts. I don’t think I looked at the scoreboard more than half a dozen times in the whole weekend. Because the points aren’t relevant to my aims.
This is not virtue. There is nothing wrong with being a tournament fencer, who needs to track their score because it matters. I’m just playing a different game.
Final thoughts
Firstly, thanks to Stephan, Anna, Martin, and the rest of the Schildwache Potsdam team. Especially those noble souls who gave up their weekend to judged and score. It’s a huge amount of work putting on a tournament like this, and you all made many young fencers very happy, and one old instructor too.
Secondly, thanks to all my opponents over the weekend. I hope you enjoyed fencing me as much as I enjoyed fencing you. I do wish I’d kept a record of everyone I fenced, but I failed to. If you recall our bouts, feel free to remind me either in the comments or by email.
Thanks also to Malleus Martialis for sending me a delicious sidesword at very short notice. I only signed up for the tournament in mid-December, then realised my old sidesword was not fit for modern competition use. So I contacted Eleonora at Malleus, and a shiny new sword was waiting for me when I got there.
One interesting quirk of the way the tournament was constructed was that fencers in each pool had to find their own opponents, and keep doing so until you’d fenced everyone in your pool. This means that your first interaction with your opponents is face to face, unmasked, and arranging a match together. I didn’t notice it at the time, but chatting with Stephan afterwards it was clear that this contributed something to the feeling of the event. We weren’t fencing against anonymous numbers. We were fencing our colleagues, peers, and friends.
Overall, I’m delighted by the results. I went there to play my game: to use the tournament environment to measure and develop my historical fencing skills against motivated and resistant opponents. Most particularly, to not get sucked in to the competitive fencing mindset, where scoring touches according to the rules is the only consideration.
There was one pass in the whole weekend where I decided to play tournament. In one of my rapier bouts it seemed that the only thing the judges could see was incidental arm touches. Bending my sword on my opponent’s chest was literally invisible. So in the last pass I flicked my point under my opponent’s guard from the edge of measure. Sure enough, point to me. Ugh.
So I stopped that and went back to embodying the Art of Arms as best I know how.
Notes
*The organisers have asked me to mention that “we allow steel gloves only under circumstances where we, as organisers, can be absolutely sure that they are of proper quality, well maintained, free of burrs and sharp edges, and without loose rivets.”
** For example, Leonard Eckstein Opdycke’s translation of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, Book 1, paragraph 21: “ “Moreover I deem it very important to know how to wrestle, for it is a great help in the use of all kinds of weapons on foot. Then, both for his own sake and for that of his friends, he must understand the quarrels and differences that may arise, and must be quick to seize an advantage, always showing courage and prudence in all things.
Nor should he be too ready to fight except when honour demands it; for besides the great danger that the uncertainty of fate entails, he who rushes into such affairs recklessly and without urgent cause, merits the severest censure even though he be successful.
But when he finds himself so far engaged that he cannot withdraw without reproach, he ought to be most deliberate, both in the preliminaries to the duel and in the duel itself, and always show readiness and daring. Nor must he act like some, who fritter the affair away in disputes and controversies, and who, having the choice of weapons, select those that neither cut nor pierce, and arm themselves as if they were expecting a cannonade; and thinking it enough not to be defeated, stand ever on the defensive and retreat,— showing therein their utter cowardice. And thus they make themselves a laughing-stock for boys, like those two men of Ancona who fought at Perugia not long since, and made everyone laugh who saw them.”
“And who were they?” asked my lord Gaspar Pallavicino.
“Two cousins,” replied messer Cesare.
Then the Count said:
“In their fighting they were as like as two brothers;”
[40] Of two playing together, he who strikes in response is more praiseworthy than the one who strikes the first blow, because he reveals himself sooner to become enraged than to lose vigour after the received hit.
[41] It is not licit after the received blow to make more than one response stepping forward with a crossing step; the reason being that one must do well with all of one’s wit, since with that one can recover honour.
[42] The blow to the head, considering the excellence of that member, counts for three; and the blow to the foot is taken for two, having regard for the difficulty of making it so low.
[43] A valorous player is he who redoubles his blows.
****Just to be clear, the judges were of varying levels of experience and skill, but were all wearing any necessary eyewear, sober, honest, and unbiased to the point of spending endless amounts of time discussing what exactly happened because they really, really, wanted to be fair. And the only way to get skilled, experienced, judges is to give less-skilled, less-experienced judges the opportunity to practice. I have no complaints, and much respect for their time and effort.
My friend and colleague Malcolm Fare, proprietor of the National Fencing Museum, would like to know if anyone reading this is familiar with the Grand Salute, as formalised by the Académie d'Armes de Paris in 1888.
As the editor of The Sword magazine, he published an account of the Grand Salute in 1995. You can see the article here:
The Grand Salute article, page 1The Grand Salute article, page 2
The article was prepared by the fencing coach Eric Howlett (1921-2015), who translated the text from L'Escrime et le Duel by Previost & Jolivet, 1891, with captioned photos by Nadar of the various moves.
Here's the text in a more accessible format (this may not be a perfect transcription):
The Grand Salute
Before the days of competition, when important displays of fencing were watched by thousands of spectators, an essential prelude to the assault was the salute. Its purpose was to give both fencers an opportunity of showing courtesy to each other and to the spectators, and of exhibiting their own proficiency in correctness and elegance. Practised in various forms by different schools, the grand salute was formalised by the Académie d’Armes of Paris in 1888. It consisted of 66 movements as follows:
Fencers take up position (fig. 1) just out of distance, masks and gloves laid down to the left of their left feet. Each salutes to the left and right, coming on guard in sixte and then momentarily in tierce; immediately the blades have met, the hands turn to resume the guard of sixte.
One of the fencers, usually the elder, invites the other with the words “You have the honour”; the junior replies “Yours to command” and the senior says “Begin”. The junior fencer then executes a flourish to bring the sword arm in line horizontally and lunges, the point falling short of the target by an inch (fig. 2). He then resumes his standing position with arm and blade at 45 degrees in one movement.
Both fencers, acting together, salute in quarte, then in tierce, resume the first position for an instant, then sweep the foils down and back, pausing with the left hand (knuckles down) on the blade and both arms extended downwards (the blade being horizontal and the point to the rear). From this position the foils rise horizontally (points to the rear) till the hands are as high as possible. The fencers then fall on guard in sixte, the right and left hand separating gracefully; the senior fencer then closes the line of sixte, the junior disengages with full extension, and the senior executes a smart beat in quarte. As the parry is made, the attacker throws his point upwards and backwards past his own right ear with a quick movement of thumb and forefinger (fig. 3). While this swing is taking place, he lunges, and as he does so the defender’s foil passes to septime as if threatening a riposte in the low line. The attacker then resumes the on guard position, bringing his foil in line in the horizontal plane to meet the defender’s foil coming up into a bind of quarte.
The attacker then disengages as before, but in sixte, and the defender beats in tierce, lowering to seconde. On the beat the attacker relaxes his grip as before, but turns his hand on doing so in order that the blade may swing horizontally to his left ear as he lunges.
After these movements, the fencers come on guard in sixte, the attacker with foil and arm extended and the defender with elbow bent. The attacker then does a disengage into quarte and the defender covers into quarte. Both fencers make a cut-over into tierce, the defender staying on guard and the attacker falling back on guard as the blades click. Both fencers immediately beat or call with the right foot and come to a stand (bringing the right foot back) with points up at 45 degrees as in the first position.
The senior fencer now in turn proves his distance and recovers position. Both salute in quarte and tierce and fall on guard, circling the blades as before.
The senior fencer proceeds to make his attacks, just as the junior did. It is a point of style that each of the lunges be faster than the last. The cut-over one-two to a stance forward and the cut-over into tierce, falling back on guard with the beat of the feet, again follow the attacks.
Next each fencer falls back to the stance with arm and foil up at 45 degrees and then falls back on guard, making a wide cut-over into tierce out of distance; they beat twice with the feet. Then, still on guard, they make sweeping salutes to quarte and tierce and come up to the stance forwards, blades vertical and guards to the lips, saluting each other. Next they lower their foils to 45 degrees (fig. 4), or cut them sharply away with a swish to the low right. Apart from while the words are exchanged, one or both of the fencers are in movement all the time, the whole ceremonial being consecutive and continuous.
Call for videos!
I'm aware of this apparently authentic but incomplete version of the salute here:
Does anyone here practice the Grand Salute, and if so, could you video it for Malcolm? If you do, let me know either in the comments here, or by email through my contacts page above.
I stopped drinking alcohol on August 19th, aiming for 100 days. In the end, I reached 103 days without booze, and without much effort. This post unpacks my 100 days no booze results, including cholesterol, visceral fat, sleep, heart rate, and the strange mysteries of my DEXA scans.
If you want the background and the halfway-point update, you can read that here — but let’s jump into the results.
But the most important finding wasn’t from any measurement device:
My wife and daughters all agreed I was much less irritable when not drinking.
That’s definitive.
The two main metrics I was trying to improve were cholesterol levels, and visceral fat. I was hoping for improved sleep and thus more creative juice too.
Cholesterol and Triglycerides
Let’s start with cholesterol. Here are the results over the last year:
Back on 31 March, my triglycerides were so high the lab couldn’t even calculate LDL. After just three weeks without alcohol, everything had improved dramatically by 22 April.
The 100 Days No Booze Results
After the full 100 days:
•LDL: down from 4.12 → 3.53
•Triglycerides: up slightly from 1.24 → 1.57, but still well within reference range
These numbers fluctuate, and any single blood test is just a snapshot — like a photo of a busy street rather than a full documentary. But overall:
The trend is clear: not drinking alcohol helps my cholesterol and triglycerides.
These things are not an exact science: there are too many variables affecting cholesterol levels on any given day. Any blood test is a snapshot of a moment in time, like a photograph of a busy street. But the trend seems positive. From a cholesterol and triglycerides perspective, it’s clear that cutting out alcohol helps me a lot.
A Coffee Cholesterol Surprise
Two weeks before the final blood test, I learned that diterpenes in unfiltered coffee can raise cholesterol. Since then I’ve switched to paper-filtered coffee. This may have helped too.
Visceral Fat: The Most Interesting (and Confusing) Results
Now the visceral fat. It was baffling to me that at my previous DEXA scan in August, my overall body fat was down quite a bit, but my visceral fat had jumped back up from 115 to 136. This latest scan, on November 28th, was even weirder. According to the weighing scales at the DEXA clinic, I’d lost a total of 1.8kg exactly.
My visceral fat is down to 103 cm2. (Visceral fat is measure in cm2 because it’s a calculation of the area of the cross-section of your torso at the navel. So if you cut me in half with a very sharp sword at my navel and measured the total area of fat, it would be 103cm2 out of a total of about 730)
This is excellent, and what I was hoping. But here’s the thing. A bottle of wine is about 700 calories. I was averaging a bottle a day. So over 100 days, my overall calorific intake was down by about 70,000 calories (not counting the extra food I would have also eaten, because drinking with food tends to increase how much you eat). Fat stores about 9000 calories per kilo, so that’s about 7.8kg of fat.
But I’d lost a total of 785g. What the actual? That’s maybe 10% of what one might reasonably expect.
The rest of my weight loss came from “lean tissue”, mostly in the torso. 1.929kg from my trunk to be exact. That’s obviously not muscle (or at least mostly not muscle). There simply isn’t that much muscle to lose- and I’m stronger now than I was in August, including in my so-called “core”. So that’s either fluid, or organ mass, with perhaps some of it being gut contents (though my bowels were fine both that day and for the previous scan).
I also don’t understand how I can be 1.8kg lighter, having lost 2.631kg of lean mass and 785g of fat. That’s a total of 3.416kg… so where’s the extra 1.616kg? I certainly haven’t added that much to my bones! And I wasn’t bloated during the previous scan.
This was baffling enough that I contacted the company, and after a bit of email back and forth got on a call with one of their technicians. He pointed out that in my previous scans the DEXA total mass measurement agreed quite closely with the impedance scale measurement, except for my August 2025 scan, where it disagrees by just over 2kg. The simplest explanation is that the technician on the day recorded my weight wrong: he put 80.6kg in when it should have been closer to 82 (the DEXA recorded it at 82.298).
It’s normal for the DEXA scan to calculate total body mass about 2-400 grammes higher than the scale weight. But not 1.7kg high. And that 1.7kg is very close to the 1.6kg discrepancy in these figures. So if we correct that weight measurement, the numbers basically add up.
Here’s another mystery. According to the scan, I’ve gained 98g of lean mass (probably muscle) in my right leg… but lost 718g from my left leg! Without any noticeable change in relative strength (and yes, I am right handed and footed, but I do all my training on both sides, and in August, they were basically equal).
So, getting back to the actual point of the scan: it does seem that cutting alcohol cuts my visceral fat, but does nothing at all for my other fat. And it’s somehow fucked my left leg, even though it feels fine.
That was Friday, day 102 of my 100 days. So I had a small glass of wine that evening, and a few more on Saturday (my wife’s birthday), and a lot more on Sunday (my birthday). My reflux did not approve, but it was worth it.
Alcohol vs. Heart Rate: Oura Ring Data
Leaping down off the wagon like that gave me an opportunity to double check alcohol’s effect on sleep, so just for fun I put on my Oura ring and measured my heart rate. If you’re familiar with my Oura woes, I don’t take anything it measures seriously except heart rate, temperature, and HRV. It certainly can’t tell the difference between me lying in bed trying to sleep and me actually sleeping. But I do think it measures heart rate pretty well.
Here’s what the graphs look like. In each case I went to bed sober, and stopped drinking by 7pm, four hours before lights out.
Friday:
Saturday:
Sunday:
So whether I actually feel better or not, it’s really obvious that my heart prefers me to not drink at all. I mean, average HR 45, lowest 42, that’s pretty decent. Generally speaking, any night when I haven’t drunk any alcohol, it’ll average something below 50, and get down to 45 or below.
Just for fun: here’s what it looked like after I got accidentally shitfaced at my friend’s party. Last booze in about 4pm, I think.
What 100 Days Without Alcohol Really Changed
Putting aside the data inconsistencies, the genuine results are:
Positive effects
Major improvement in visceral fat
Lower LDL cholesterol
Overall waist reduction
Less irritability (confirmed by independent household authorities)
Significantly lower resting heart rate on sober nights
Little or no effect
Sleep quality (subjective)
Subcutaneous fat
Negative effects:
None.
So what am I going to actually do now?
I’d like to get my body fat percentage below 18. Here’s how I’ll approximate that:
1. Waist measurement down from 88 to 86cm.
2. Weight down from ~79kg to ~76kg.
Approach:
1. Restrict booze. Generally speaking, no drinking unless it’s a special occasion. Tuesday is not a special occasion.
2. Go slow-carb. It worked very well for me before, let’s try it again. Being careful to maintain protein intake, and continue with weight training, to preserve muscle mass.
3. Cycle on and off, cutting weight (which gets rid of fat and a bit of muscle), and bulking up (which adds muscle and a bit of fat).
4. Fast occasionally. I normally have about 15 hours between last calorie in at night and first in the morning anyway (just because it’s more comfortable for me). Increasing the fasting time to 18 hours is not hard, so I’ll think about doing that more often, with an occasional 24 hour fast, or even longer. I train too much to want to fast too often- I’m concerned about losing muscle mass.
4. Track weight, waist, and strength. If my waist is down and my strength is up, I’ll call that a success, whatever the scales or DEXA says.
December is not the month for this, so I’ll play around with various things as convenient, and get consistent and serious about it on January 2nd. Another 100 days no booze, with a strict slow-carb diet (no starch, no sugar, lots of veg and protein), will take us to April 12th. I will probably make exceptions to the no-booze thing, but only for very special occasions. There is a world of difference between two glasses of wine in a fancy restaurant every couple of months, and two glasses of wine before dinner every evening.
Final Thoughts on 100 Days No Booze Results
The headline takeaway is simple: Alcohol has a strong negative effect on my visceral fat, cholesterol, irritability, and sleeping heart rate.
It doesn’t magically melt fat off me, but it clearly improves a bunch of meaningful health indicators.
The basic idea behind all of my training and health related activities is this:
Find out what works for you, then do that.
Both of those components are hard. Healthcare professionals can tell you what the current-ish state of the science suggests should work for most people most of the time, but they aren't much good at targeting what works for you specifically. The only way to know what works for you is to try it, and track the results.
Then, having discovered that doughnuts make you fat, or alcohol is bad for you, or whatever it is, you have to figure out how to incorporate that insight into your daily life. That can be simple and easy, or it can be really hard, especially when it involves going against mainstream cultural expectations. Even if the intervention is simple, it may not be easy. I'm lucky in that this one was both simple and quite easy, but many others I've tried are a lot harder.
My book The Principles and Practices of Solo Training covers this approach in depth and detail. If you've enjoyed these alcohol posts, you'll probably enjoy that book. And we have a sale on until the end of the year: use the code GUYSBIRTHDAY25 for 25% off any digital product, and BIRTHDAYPRINT10 for 10% off any print product, at swordschool.shop.
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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 really looking forward to it, and enjoyed the lack of distraction very much indeed. Days one and two were very relaxing. For reasons I can’t pin down, but which may be related to withdrawal, I was grumpy as hell for days three and four. Oddly though I didn’t have any urge to get online, so I don’t think it was withdrawal exactly. Then things perked up immensely on days 5-7, and I got a bunch of things done that I’ve been meaning to get round to. More on that below.
So what filled the void created by the data detox? That gaping chasm of boredom and ennui that our marvellous machines cover up with clicks and scrolling?
1. I’ve thought a lot. It’s actually nice to be back in my own head a bit more.
2. I’ve did a lot more actual sword practice, in addition to my usual physio/fitness/strength stuff.
3. Coincidentally (I think, because these were planned ages ago) I went to the actual theatre, and met friends for lunch in the pub (yes I’m still off booze, 50 more days to go), and been to a talk (given by Roland Allen, of The Sword Guy and A History of Thinking on Paper fame). All analogue, real people in a room together, offline goodness.
I should point out that I was not religious about this. I used my wife’s laptop to print out crosswords, and fired up my phone to be able to navigate to drop off my daughter at a friend’s house for a party (I don’t have a paper map of the area, which I should!). But outside some very sensible exceptions, I’ve kept the phone turned off, and did not check any messaging apps or email when I did turn it on. The computer was not turned on at all.
I finished making my mum’s birthday present, put a new base on my pell so it stops falling over when it’s windy (see the photo above), and rearranged my study such that I could get my point control wall target up (it needs a sturdy wall to hang on, and room in front and to the sides for footwork).
I also planned a new launch, thought about the overall structure of my business, and got a bunch of CEO stuff done. I don’t think my visionary woke up particularly, so I need to think about how to make that happen.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how we have all sorts of social rules and norms around other addictive behaviours, such as drinking and smoking. If someone offered you a glass of wine at 11am you might say “it’s a bit early for me”. Because these days it’s normal to avoid drinking during the day. Likewise smoking. It used to be everywhere, all the time. But now it would be very very rude to light up inside someone’s home without asking, and most smokers would automatically go outside.
But watch any TV show from the 80s and just about every rich person is having a drink at 10am, and everyone rich or poor is smoking indoors at all hours. These healthier rules around smoking and drinking are relatively new, and relatively unconnected with legislation.
I do well with rules if they’re my own. (I do much less well with other people’s rules.) Both phones and computers are incredibly useful. But they are inherently built for distraction. So here are my rules for using my computer and my phone.
Rules for the Computer
1. Be a cat. I’ve borrowed this from Jaron Lanier’s excellent 10 Arguments for Deleting All Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Cats don’t try to please people. They just pursue their own agenda, and allow the people in their life to serve their needs. If a cat wants stroking, you’ll know. The computer belongs to me. It’s a critically important tool for writing books, editing video, running my business, and communicating with people.
But it’s been warped by the internet into also being a major source of distraction. So I will approach my computer the way a cat approaches the humans that feed it. I’ve always had all notifications turned the hell off, but that doesn’t stop me from getting distracted.
2. Decide what I want to do before waking it up. That could be work on the next book, or some critical business task like paying a freelancer, or emailing someone about something. Then do that thing first. After my week away I have a long list of things to do, including drafting this blog post, that comes ahead of checking my emails. Happy to report I’m following my own rules.
3. Unless I have a good reason, don’t open any communications app before 2pm. Exceptions include scheduled zoom sessions (running a trainalong or doing crosswords with my mum are both good reasons), or if I’m expecting a time-critical message about something actually important.
4. Turn off all comms apps at or before 5pm. Exceptions as per rule 3. And take at least one full day per week off all comms. I think probably Thursdays, which I generally keep free anyway.
5. Be a cat. It’s worth an extra rule to be reminded of the first one.
What do I want my Fondleslab Distraction Engine (aka “phone”) for?
There are many excellent things about the phone that I want to keep, that I missed during the data detox. In no particular order they are:
Camera
Podcast player
Music player
Sound recorder (when recording videos etc.)
Maps/navigation
Payments
Wallet for tickets, boarding passes, etc.
Calendar
The Sword People app for keeping in touch with my sword people and posting sword photos
Calculator
Notes app for when I don’t have a notebook or pen with me. Rare, but it happens.
StrengthLog app for tracking weights workouts
Family Whatsapp channel. I’d like to move it to Signal, but I don’t think we’d get everyone on board with it (my siblings, their kids, my kids, it’s actually quite a lot of people).
Some friends prefer Signal, so I have that for talking with them.
One dear friend, and my godson only really use Discord, so I have that too.
But other than those excellent things, why would I want to be continually distracted?
Rules for the Fondleslab Distraction Engine
1. Be a really fucking grumpy cat.
2. Delete all addictive apps. No games, nothing that makes me likely to scroll (Ebay, Vinted, Chrono24, etc.). No emails. I have the accounts still there in the system settings, but I’ve turned off the email function. That way if I need to be able to check email on my phone for some reason, it’s easy to turn back on, but it’s not on by default.
3. Turn off all notifications. All of them. Especially badges (those red things that flag the app's icon). I’ll check the apps when I want to. The phone still rings if you call me, but that’s it.
4. WhatsApp, Messenger, etc. are strictly friends and family only. I have SwordPeople for work-related messaging. (Feel free to sign up there if you want to be able to message me outside email.)
5. Switch off the phone completely for at least one full day per week. So e.g. turn it off in the evening, and not turn it on until the morning of the day after next.
Final Thoughts on the Data Detox
I’m also thinking about getting a new phone number, and relegating the current one to a no-data phone, so I can use it for two-factor authentication, and as my “business” number, and keep my other number entirely private, so only people I’ve actually given it to will have it. My current number is clearly on too many databases, given the number of spam calls and texts I get.
I’m not alone in fighting this fight. Useful resources are the aforementioned Jaron Lanier’s 10 Arguments. Also Cal Newport’s Deep Work, and for non-algo-poisoned tech solutions, the Creative Good forum has all sorts of options and suggestions. Once you have all this distraction-free time you'll need to learn to prioritise, so you may find my post about deciding what to focus on helpful.
It's worth explicitly stating that I welcome emails from my students, readers, friends, family, and even some newsletters and other things. Email isn't the problem. It's letting it spill out of a confined space to take over my brain that’s the problem. The same is true for messaging apps generally. I've broken the cycle of reflexively checking for anything new coming in with my seven days off, so now I need to keep that cycle broken. Or I'll end up having a (metaphorical) whisky and a cigarette for breakfast again.
Every project, no matter its size, needs five people. Most of us have only one: ourselves.
I was chatting with a friend the other day, and he mentioned a framework that his dad, a very successful entrepreneur, came up with. According to him, the five people every company needs are: The Founder, The CEO, The Project Manager, The Engineer, and the Builder.
For some reason this stuck with me, to the extent that I’ve been making weird pentagonal drawings on the back of random printouts:
It's always a sign that something is brewing when I start spontaneously doing geometry. For weeks I couldn't get this idea out of my head. It explains many of the challenges I've faced running my business, and has highlighted some areas I need to work on.
The catch? In my world, and probably yours, all five roles are played by the same person. But they are very, very different roles requiring unrelated attitudes, aptitudes, and skills.
The aptitudes are:
Vision,
Execution,
Management,
Design, and
Craftsmanship.
Very few people possess all five personalities and skillsets. I certainly don’t. But using this framework I can see why and how I’ve ended up outsourcing the things I’m not good at, and also confirmed what I absolutely must not outsource.
Case Study: The project roles you need when writing your book
Let’s take a concrete example that many folk can resonate with: writing, publishing, and marketing a book. These are separate processes, so while the visionary and CEO are hopefully leading the way, and the project manager is coordinating the three processes, it makes sense to treat them separately, as the design and craft teams are different.
When we think of “writing a book”, we tend to focus on the craftsman: the writer actually putting one word after another, like a bricklayer building a wall. But what colour bricks, in what pattern? Where should the wall be, and how high should it go? That’s up to the designer. In this case, the overall structure and content of the book. What does this book need to contain, in what order, to what depth of detail?
Most writers act as both Designer, shaping the structure, and Craftsman, laying down the words, but a developmental editor can help with design while a copy-editor polishes the craft. So you will only need to wear your writer hat to get this part done. And most writers I know identify only as writers. This is the hat they want to wear. But here's how it should go:
The Visionary has the idea. I want to create this thing. A single book, perhaps. An entire business, for another perhaps.
The CEO figures out how the vision can be made manifest in the real word. What project management, design, and craftsmanship will we need? It’s in a CEO’s nature to veer away from the vision towards the practical. So the visionary must keep an eye on things and make sure their beautiful idea doesn’t become watered down for business or other practical reasons.
Taking a step back, who decides what book, when? How does this specific project fit into the overall strategy of the business that is being an independent author? Many writers, including me, just write whatever they want, when they want, according to no plan of any kind. But most of the really successful ones have a strategy in place. This series in that genre, spread out over this timeframe, for this business goal. That’s CEO territory. My CEO quit a long time ago in frustration and disgust. But once the decision is made, the order comes down: this book, now.
The project manager steps into office. Ok, I’m going to need the following: a writer, a developmental editor, a copy editor, a layout designer, a photographer, an admin assistant to handle the publishing platform accounts, oh, and a marketing team when we’re ready.
Then the designer (or developmental editor) looks at the brief and decides what the overall structure of the book should be, and why. Some writers just start writing and see what structure emerges (‘discovery writers’); others plan things out in detail (‘outliners’). So the designer and the writer must get along pretty well, and pass the job back and forth as necessary. Unlike creating an engine or a building, you really don’t need detailed plans in place before starting work on a book if that’s not the way your brain works.
I’m a woodworker, and when I make a piece of furniture I usually start with the overall dimensions so it will fit where it’s going to go, and that’s it. No detailed drawings, no plans, no measurement. I’m a bit more structured when it comes to books (I usually sketch out the table of contents first), but I’m nothing like Saul Bellow, who famously planned his (Nobel Prize-winning) novels “down to the last flicker of an eyebrow”.
The draft emerges and goes through the necessary rounds of editing until it satisfies the project manager. Not the writer. Writers generally don’t like people messing with their words. But they are not in charge of this bit. The fight is usually between the craftsman wanting to tweak more, and the project manager who can see that the project meets spec and so should be pushed out the door.
Then it goes to layout, and the designer, writer, layout person, and editors fiddle about with the laid-out book until again the project manager signs off, and out it goes to the publishing team.
Publishing your book
Creating the book itself, the actual print files, is down to the graphic designer. Again, some writers can do this themselves, but most really can’t, or shouldn’t. Graphic design is its own thing. This, I would say, is still craftsmanship, but in a field that most writers have no knowledge of. For simple text-only books there are tools like Vellum which put simple book design within reach of the graphically unskilled, but for more complex projects (like my From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice series, or my workbooks) you absolutely need a professional.
Then who organises the planning, writing, editing, and layout, and gets the finished files uploaded to the right places, so the book is actually published? That’s project management, pure and simple. A lot of Indie authors do this for themselves too, and many stumble at this point. Because it’s hard, not least because emailing an editor to say the book is ready to be edited, or sending the edited files to the layout person, feels like handing your baby over at the daycare centre.
Then it goes to layout, and the designer, writer, layout person, and editors fiddle about with the laid-out book until again the project manager signs off. The writer, layout person, and editors, are all craftspeople, with their own areas of expertise, which often expand into design territory.
Then it goes to the admin assistant for publishing. The careful uploading of all the right files to all the right places, with metadata and all the rest, is a craft.
Marketing your book
At some point in the publication process the marketing team gets to work. Usually some time before the book is actually finished, sometimes before it’s actually started. Tragically often, after it’s already published.
The marketing team report to the project manager. What kind of campaigns should we run? Paid ads or no? Content marketing? If so what kind? The marketing approach should be engineered to fit with the vision, the overall strategy, and the project management of the book itself.
Most writers have a severely under-developed and under-staffed marketing team. The writer says “I’ll mention it on my socials” or “I’ll let my email list know” and that’s that. The question really is how does the marketing strategy fit with the overall strategic vision? If my strategic vision is “I want to write my books and don’t care how they sell”, then no marketing plan is required. If my strategic vision is “these books should pay the mortgage”, then a marketing team (usually still just another facet of the single person doing all these roles) needs to make that happen.
A common problem with marketing teams is that they mess up the vision, just like CEOs. It may be part of your vision that your work is at the luxury end of the market (super-fancy $100+ special editions), or that it’s as accessible as possible (hello free ebooks), or some combination of both. But the vision will determine the price-point, which is the starting point for the marketing. It’s easier to persuade people to buy a $10 book than a $100 book, but pricing is related to value, so you need to have a clear idea how much value your books will deliver.
My books are generally much more expensive than novels (my paperbacks go for about $30), because I’m not selling a few hours of entertainment to a broad range of people, I’m selling months or years of utility to a narrow range of highly interested people. That comes from the vision, which determines pricing. I also have premium-end books (in the $60 full-colour hardback range), and ebooks priced to be accessible for anyone who really wants the information ($10). I make about half my income from book sales: they literally feed my children. That’s both a product of the pricing strategy, and one of the reasons for it. But my marketing really needs work.
If you're looking for help writing, publishing, or marketing a book, my marketing team would lynch me if I didn't mention From Your Head to Their Hands.
How much time does each project role get?
80% of the work is done by the craftsman. Typing out the right words in the right order, deciding what images are needed and where they’ll go, producing the file that goes to the editor and then to layout.
10% is done by the designer. Organising the material, making sure the whole thing will hang together.
7% is project management, getting the craftsman, designer, editor, and graphic designer talking to each other.
2.9% is the CEO making sure the project manager is on the right track. Once the team is assembled, the CEO is really only there to keep things on track with a gentle hand on the tiller.
0.1% or less is the actual spark of vision. The visionary can literally be done and dusted in a second. The idea strikes, and that’s that.
Let’s put this in a Fiorean framework, just for fun (Fiore was a 14th century master of knightly combat). The Visionary is Ardimento, boldness. It takes courage to see through what is to what might be. The CEO is Avvisamento, foresight, the strategist. The Project Manager is Presteza, speed, making sure everything actually gets done on time. The Designer is Forteza, strength, which comes from structuring everything correctly. So who is the Craftsman? Every single master, remedy master, counter-remedy master, and scholar in the treatise. They are actually putting the plan in action in the real world.
The most obvious thing I’ve noticed in my own work using this framework is that my craftsman, designer, and project manager are getting lots done. I produced six books and two online courses in 2024. This year so far I've produced four new online courses (Vadi Longsword, Vadi Dagger, Body Mechanics, and Introduction to Historical Martial Arts), and one or two more books are expected out by the end of this year. I think that counts as “lots”.
But my CEO is usually on holiday, and the visionary gets almost no time at all. Which is ironic given how this all started, with an actual vision on a Scottish mountain a quarter of a century ago.
Wearing All Five Hats as a Solo Creator
This framework matters because it is very useful for making decisions. Which of the five project roles should be to the fore, which hat should I be wearing, when I decide a book is ready to publish? Really, it should go through all five.
Does this book come from an authentic vision?
Does this book meet our strategy goals?
Is this book technically ready to publish?
Is this book well structured, so it will do its job?
Is this book well made, in terms of writing, editing, and graphic design?
My current work in progress is From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the Dagger Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi. It’s with the editor now, and available to pre-order here. See? The marketing team is on the case even while the publishing team is in play. The vision is clear: this is 100% on-mission, making my interpretation of Fiore dei Liberi’s art of arms more available and completely transparent (the book includes every single dagger play in the treatise, with the image from the manuscript, my transcription of the text, my translation, my interpretation with academic justification, and a video of how I do the play in practice).
The CEO thinks it aligns with the strategy.
The project manager is keeping an eye on the editor and has the layout professional ready to go (and in communication with the editor directly).
The designer is happy with the structure and overall content.
The craftsman was sure he was done tinkering and needed a second opinion before further improvements could be made, so agreed to send it to the editor.
Phew.
I’m also working on a new facsimile project, similar to my Flower of Battle. It will have the straight, unaltered, facsimile of Philippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, and a second facsimile with my translation superimposed, and a link on each page to a video of my interpretation of the play. It’s a lot of work, but most of it was already done for other projects. The translation comes from The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest (with minor edits that will also result in an update to the book), the video clips come from my Vadi Longsword and Dagger courses.
The project manager was perfectly happy just using the videos as they are; all of the dagger plays are edited page by page, but the longsword plays have a video each (they are more complex to set up and explain). For this project, I really ought to create a new set of title cards, and re-edit the videos so that there’s one video per illustrated manuscript page. That’s about 56 videos.
The project manager was horrified by how much time that would take, for what is basically a cosmetic improvement.
The craftsman told him to bugger off.
Which role is not getting their fair share of my attention?
As we've seen, from the project manager on down everyone is working pretty hard. But the CEO hasn't got a lot of my attention lately. The last formal CEO thing I did was attend a business seminar with Joanna Penn and Orna Ross on The Creator Economy in 2022. And when was the last time I sat on a mountain?
To give the visionary a fighting chance (and maybe to get the CEO to return to work) I’m taking a week off from all screens and inbound traffic. No email, no socialz, no phone. Which means no actual making stuff unless it’s woodwork or bookbinding. No writing unless it’s pen on paper. No distractions. Give the inner voice a chance to be properly heard. We’ll see what comes of that. My feeling is that anyone who knows me well enough to need to contact me urgently will also be able to contact my wife and/or kids, so can find me that way. Everything else can wait a week without the sky falling.
I’ve done similar retreats before, but this one will be a bit different, as I’ll be home, and not on holiday in any way. It’s work, just of a different kind. Meditation, exercise, writing, reading, thinking. Not typing, editing, or responding to external requests for my time. That’ll run from Wednesday October 1st to Wednesday 8th because I have a regular zoom call with my mum on Wednesday mornings where we solve cryptic crosswords together, and I’m not cancelling that. But it’s all screens off the moment we hang up, until it’s time to get cracking again the following week.
The visionary’s whisper can’t be heard over the noise of constant production.
So whether you’re writing a book, starting a historical martial arts club, or building a shed, ask yourself:
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!
Improve your structure, flow, and control in Fiore’s art of arms
Good movement is the foundation of great fencing. It keeps you safe from injury, helps you control your level of force, protects your training partners, and lets you fight harder and longer without fatigue.
In this full-day seminar, you’ll develop practical skills to make your fencing smoother, stronger, and more efficient. Together we will cover:
1. Analysing and improving the structural qualities of Fiore’s guard positions
2. Refining transitions between the guards
3. Different ways to hold the sword for specific purposes
4. Centres of rotation and how they affect different plays
5. How to strike with speed, power, and control
6. Applying these mechanics to wrestling, dagger, and longsword plays
Event Details
•When: Saturday, October 18 · 11am–5pm (with a lunch break)
•Where: The Coddenham Centre, Mary Day Cl, Coddenham, Ipswich IP6 9PS
•Cost: £50
•Bring: Longsword, fencing mask, dagger (if you have one), water, lunch. Freeplay kit is optional, but bring it if you like.
I would highly recommend having a look at my free Fundamentals: Body Mechanics course to prepare (or in case you can't make it over here from New Zealand). It will familiarise you with my approach, and the more people who know the basics of this method, the more stuff we'll be able to cover on the day.
Alison Balsom is retiring this week, quitting after 25 years at the very top of the classical music world. She is probably the most famous classical trumpeter of her generation, and certainly ranks with the greats: André, Marsalis, Hardenberger, Harjanne (go Finland!). She’s 46.
I have several of her 17 albums, and she is an astonishing player. I've played the trumpet enough to really get how fabulously skilled she is.
So what? You may very well ask. Here’s the thing that really caught my attention. When asked by Classical Music magazine what she was going to do next, she said:
“I’m not going to be a world-famous anything else I don't think, but I really want to paint. I really want to make things, I really want to draw and learn another instrument… I have these recurring dreams about playing the viola and the cello and the violin… also I just have always wanted to design things. I just want to sit quietly and design things. That's what I was maybe supposed to be, a designer.”
She’s world class, and she’s quitting at the very top of her game. I have to respect that, and also, isn’t it an extraordinary thing that she thinks that maybe she should have done something else? She also said:
“I’ve followed my particular path, very honestly and with authenticity and I feel that I've come to the end of that path.”
Knowing when to quit is one of the most important skills in life. Dropping something even though you’re good at it (and she is the best), even when you’re successful, just because your heart isn’t in it any more.
Go Alison.
The night after I found this out, I had a weird dream in which I was at a concert where she was playing, and she was having all sorts of crises of confidence. I told her two things (just to be clear there is absolutely zero chance she would ever come to me for advice. This was my subconscious telling me something).
1. Your true fans care about your wellbeing more than about any one performance.
2. Play the music of your heart.
I’m not in her league in any field, but I am pretty well established in my profession. And yet every now and then (not less than once a month) I wonder whether I’m still doing what I’m supposed to be doing (whatever that means). Am I following my particular path with authenticity?
The one thing that reliably makes me feel like I’m in the right place doing the right thing is teaching in person. Having a classful of students growing in the art with a little help from me. Everything else, the writing, courses, all the extra stuff, is a maybe.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but it feels like a clear reminder that above all else I should be playing the music of my heart, whatever that is.
On Monday this week I sent the final draft of From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the Dagger Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi off to the editor. Hurrah! There's a lot of admin work to do from here, checking edits, sending to layout, making sure all the links work etc., but let's put it this way: if I became incapacitated, my highly competent assistant could get the book finished and into your hands no problem. Some authors call this the “truck draft”, as in, if I were hit by a truck, the book would still come out.
Which means that it's ready to preorder, in ebook, paperback, or hardback. I expect the book back from the editor this month, and back from layout in October, so if all goes well it should ship in mid-November.
It's my complete interpretation of Fiore dei Liberi's dagger plays. Every single one of the 76 plays we see in the Getty manuscript is there, with the illustration from the manuscript, my transcription, my translation, my explanation of how it works, and a link to a video clip showing my interpretation in action.
There is also a comprehensive introduction about Fiore himself, the treatise, and the four known manuscript versions of his work, and various asides and digressions about elements of practice. Going by word count, the actual dagger plays and interpretation text are about 60% of the book, so there's a lot of extra material.
Here's an example of what you'll get (it will look better when the layout is done by a professional: this is just me pasting stuff into an email program).
The Seventh and Eighth Plays of the Ninth Master
F18v
La presa del mie magistro non abandonai in fin che questo zugador vidi vidi che non lassava la presa. E luy se inchina cum la daga in verso terra. E io subito piglai la sua mane cum la mia mancha per enfra le soi gambe. E quando la sua mane hebbe ben afferada, dredo de lu passai. Comomo possete vedere chello non si po discavalcare senza cadere. E questo zogho che me dredo posso fare. La man dritta dela daga lassa, e per lo pe lo vegno a piglare per farlo in terra del tutto andare, e a torgli la daga no mi po manchare.
I will not abandon the grip of my master so that this player saw that he could not leave the grip. And he leant down with the dagger towards the ground. And I immediately will grip his hand with my left hand between his legs. And when his hand has been well secured, I will pass behind him. As you can see, he cannot dismount [from my grip] without falling. And this play that is after me I can do. The right hand leaves the dagger, and I will come to grab him by the foot to put him completely on the ground, and I will not forget to take his dagger from him.
Questo scolaro che me denanzi a fatto lo principio, et io fazo del so zogho la fine de mandarlo in terra como ello ha ben ditto. Per che questo zogho non habia corso in larte, volemo mostrare che in tutta liei habiamo parte.
This scholar that is before me has done the start, and I do the end of the play, by sending him to the ground as he has well said. Because this play is not common in the art, we want to show that we have a part in all of it.
This technique is fascinating, and lots of fun to practice if you’re careful. It works best if the player is pulling back on contact, or you can create some space for it by a sneaky backfist to the groin with your left hand. Having made the cover, you slam their wrist into their groin, then let go with your left hand (unless you already did to do the backfist) and reach around their leg to grab their wrist again from behind. This is quite easy because you are just finding your own right hand. Then let go with your right hand and bring that around too. You’re now holding their wrist between their legs from behind. If you just yank upwards they will fall on their face, or you can grab their ankle and yank that up for extra vim. Fiore recommends doing the disarm too, which we see in the first image.
I'm hoping it's really obvious to you whether this is your kind of thing or not. If not, no worries, there's plenty of other material for you. But if it is your thing, you can preorder here. And if you think your friends will like it, do share.
