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I Don’t Respect Your Beliefs | Charlie Glickman

May 27, 2012 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

This is a very well expressed post (as one expects from Charlie); it's been bothering me for a while that in our accommodating culture we are expected to “respect” other's beliefs if they are based on religion, but not necessarily if they are based on facts, experience or reason. I think that makes no sense, and well done Mr Glickman for pointing it out.

I don't even discuss my theological views because they are entirely subjective, based on my personal experience and not therefore verifiable, or deserving of the slightest thought on anyone else's part. The idea that my opinion should get extra credit precisely because it has no basis in objective reality is nonsense.

I Don't Respect Your Beliefs | Charlie Glickman.

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Filed Under: Reflections Tagged With: belief, opinion

Entering the Fray

May 19, 2012 By Guy Windsor 4 Comments

One of the benefits to running an intermediate level class first thing every Monday evening, is that I get to put the seniors under a bit of pressure, make them work outside their comfort zones, and see what cracks. If a classful of students have difficulty with the same thing, it's a pretty clear indication that their training is at fault. This occurred recently, when saying goodbye to a well liked and respected student who was returning home to Germany. Goodbye SES style generally involves a bit of violence, and in this instance we had him face the entire class one at a time, such that they entered measure and attacked, and he just had to defend himself. Over and over again 🙂

It became abundantly obvious very quickly that most students had no clue about entering into measure in style. They could walk up, set themselves in guard, and launch, and God knows they can bugger about on the edge of measure forever. But marching forward swinging a sword and be in the right place to attack without pause, and without creating a tempo in which the defender could reasonably enter, was beyond them. Clearly, there was a gap in the basic syllabus. So I immediately created a set of drills to fix it. They are:

1) On the pell: start from way out of measure, i.e. from across the salle, and enter smoothly, with full blows, moving only forwards, and arrive in the right measure with the right movement to strike the pell in perfect control (of course). This puts a strain on the imagination, and requires constant tiny adjustments to familiar movements to be in exactly the right spot to strike.

2) Add a step before step one of a basic drill. So, the defender stands still and waits, the attacker normally starts from a set guard. In this version, he has to precede the attack with a pass into measure with a blow that chambers the actual attack (e.g. the attack is mandritto fendente; chamber it with a roverso fendente). Once this sort of thing is comfortable, we must guard against false times and creating tempi for the enemy, and so the defender can strike if the chambering action leaves the attacker open. In practice this means chambering with an action that is differently timed to a normal strike, in which the sword is at maximum extension as you arrive in measure. That would leave you standing still with the sword leaving the centre, in measure- a gift to the opponent. So instead the sword tends to travel past it's maximum extension earlier, so as you arrive in measure it is coming back to the centre.

3) Add a step before step 2 of a basic drill: so the defender steps into measure with a blow that creates the starting defensive guard of the drill: the attacker uses that motion as his tempo to strike. So the defender has to be able to enter measure and respond to the attacker's attempt to take time on him.

This can all be done with other weapons, but its natural home is the longsword. This also prefigures the use of assalti in the Bolognese system, which can serve as set ways to enter boldly to the fray. You can just walk up to someone and start the fight, but it is psychologically advantageous to do so boldly, dramatically, and hopefully terrify them into immobility by your martial vigour. And now we have a way to practice that.

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Filed Under: Learning Swordsmanship Tagged With: intermediate swordsplay, learning, longsword, sword drill

Bleeding headwound, anyone?

May 14, 2012 By Guy Windsor 1 Comment

I have often remarked in class that I have broken bones in training so that my students don't have to. In other words, the safety regulations we have were arrived at through my getting hurt and figuring out ways to avoid it happening again. One of my favourite such examples occurred at a training session at the Dawn Duellist's Society, a historical fencing club I helped to found back in 1994. I had challenged a dozen or so folk to duel at the weapons of their choice. My last fight of the evening was with the redoubtable Kieran Robb, who was a) very tired and had to be persuaded to fence (mistake no.1) b) using a flamberge bladed longsword (mistake no. 2). I was also tired (mistake no.3) and was using just a normal fencing mask with no back-of-the head protection (mistake no 4.).

Merrily I attacked and lo, he stepped offline, parrying my blow and letting it go by, and his sword crashed into the back of my head. The moment was caught on camera.

That's Kieran on the right, in red, me getting whacked on the left, in green.

Assessing the damage. After this shot I tootled off to casualty for three staples in my scalp. But not before assembling a group shot with all my opponents of the evening, holding the weapon we fought at:

This was an important evening for me as it established in my own mind my willingness to take serious physical risks in pursuit of the art- and of the need for better safety standards for the school I was planning to open. My decision to open a school was made in September 2000, this photo was taken in October, and the school opened in March 2001. Not long after this I got a broken finger playing around with longswords- while my steel gauntlets were in my bag about 5 feet away. We had no proper rules, and so laziness and stupidity got me hurt, twice in a couple of months. Doh.

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Reflections Tagged With: injuries, learning, safety, teaching

Welcome

May 11, 2012 By Guy Windsor 1 Comment

Ragion de Spada is the title of one of the chapters in De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, by Philippo Vadi. It means type, reason, principle or system of the sword. Basically, the ordering into a rational construct of the essence of the sword. Principles of swordsmanship is close.

Welcome.

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Filed Under: Learning Swordsmanship Tagged With: welcome

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