Blog - Guy Windsor

Fiore's 76 Dagger Plays: a complete interpretation

4th September, 2025
By Guy Windsor
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Books and Writing, Fiore Translation Project

dagger, Fiore dei Liberi, Fiore Translation Project

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.

You can find it here.

So what's the book about?

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.

Sound like fun? Preorder here.

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.

You can see this play here: guywindsor.net/dagger064

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.

100 days no alcohol? Why? oh Why??

25th August, 2025
By Guy Windsor
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Lifestyle, Personal

alcohol, health, lifestyle, weight loss

As I posted on Sword People last week, I'm taking 100 days off alcohol. Why would I do that?

Table of Contents

The DEXA Scan: an uncomfortable truth

I was in London a couple of weeks ago for a family reunion, and took the opportunity to wiggle along for another DEXA scan (at BodyScan UK). My last was a year ago. On the positive side, I’ve put on about 2.4kg of ‘lean mass’ (the scan can identify fat, bone, and ‘lean mass’, which is everything that isn't fat or bone), mostly in the upper torso. And my overall fat percentage has come down from 24.8% in May 2024, to 21.5% now. Great.

But my genetics put the remaining fat mostly in my viscera, the absolutely worst place to have it. I had 148

cm² (which is a weird way to measure a volume, but hey) in May '24, down to 115cm² in August '24, but as the muscle piled on (yay!) it brought some fat with it (as it almost always does), and it all went round my organs, so it's back up to 136cm². Boo.

Subcutaneous fat isn’t such a big health problem, in reasonable amounts. But visceral fat is bad for inflammation, blood lipids, diabetes risk, the works. And it seems that’s where I store it.

I've uploaded the results as a pdf here, in case you're interested in the actual numbers: Guy_Windsor_DEXA_2025-08-13-report

So why cut alcohol specifically?

I’m not a big believer in calorie restriction as the main driver of fat loss, because while the laws of thermodynamics are absolute, your body is insanely complicated, and has all sorts of ways of adjusting your metabolism to lose or put on weight depending on various triggers. What you eat, and when, is as important as how much. And don't get me started on gut biome. I first really understood this when I accidentally lost 10kg in three weeks. But if there are a bunch of unnecessary calories coming in from somewhere, that's the obvious place to start.

For me the biggest source by far of “empty” calories is alcohol. My natural state is to have a glass of wine or two while cooking, and another glass or three while having dinner, and maybe a dram afterwards, pretty much every day. I normally get through about 7 bottles of wine a week minimum, without hangovers or other obvious ill effects. I think my soul is mostly Italian!

When I went alcohol-free for a month this Spring (thanks to a bad cholesterol test), I lost about 2kg and 4cm around my waist. It messed with other things though- I didn’t get a word written in all that time, other than newsletters. And I didn’t feel any particular energy benefits. Though I ought to have been sleeping better, I wasn’t waking up full of beans and ready to face the day any more so than usual.

But, several credible sources (the folk I listen to most on these subjects are Dr. Peter Attia, and Dr. Rhonda Patrick) suggest that the real benefits to cutting booze come around the three month mark. Kevin at BodyScan said the same thing. So I’ve decided to take 100 days off alcohol. I started on August 19th. Day 100 is November 26th, four days before my birthday.

Why not just cut back?

It's very hard to measure a small amount every now and then. Sure, I bet I could get most of the benefits if I just had one glass of wine on a Friday night. I've previously established with sleep monitors that a glass of wine with dinner has no measurable effect on my sleep (I eat early). But then what happens to the rest of the bottle? How much wine is that really? What if I swapped out the wine for a dram of Lagavulin? It's just much easier to measure “no booze” than figure out “some booze”. And from a self-control issue, it takes very little effort (for me) to have decided to not drink at all, than to stop at one. The hard part is making the decision to stop. Now that's done, thanks to bastard DEXA, it's really no big deal (for me).

I know that other people have much more serious issues with alcoholism or other addictions, so please don't read this as minimising their struggles. And I can think of several life events that could occur that would lead to me immediately abandoning this experiment in favour of getting blootered. So no judgement.

The Pros and Cons of alcohol restriction

You may find the pro/con analysis I do for any intervention a useful rule of thumb, so here goes.

Cons first (always):

1. Is there any known, or likely, health downside? If someone were to suggest going without vegetables for 100 days, or going without protein, or going without exercise, or without in-person social interaction, I’d want to see an awful lot of peer-reviewed studies suggesting that it was a good idea. But there is no known health benefit (that actually stands up to scrutiny) of consuming alcohol. So I won’t be sacrificing any useful nutrients. The polyphenols in wine? I get way more of them from blueberries and dark chocolate.

2. The most common downsides of any intervention are time and money. Exercise costs time. Supplements cost money. Cutting out alcohol saves money and takes no time.

3. Alcohol has been a major component of Western culture since at ancient times. The slaves that built the pyramids were fed a kind of beer. 2600 years later Jesus's first miracle was turning water into wine. 2000 years on, not much has changed. Just about every major event is marked with booze of some kind. We drink with friends, we drink to celebrate success, to commiserate in disaster, to raise a toast or to drown a sorrow. Wine, beer, spirits of every kind have been part of our culture (and many others) since forever, and there is a huge amount of artistry that goes into creating a perfect wine to go with your steak, or the smokiest of single malts. That's the only thing that makes this in any way difficult: the sheer number of times already (it's been less than a fortnight!) when I've had to risk being thought anti-social to decline an offered drink. People who like to drink (like me!) can take this as a critique of their current habits. Nothing could be further from the truth. But cutting out alcohol does carry a social risk.

I worked out that the last time I went 100 days with no booze I was 13. It’s been nearly 40 years since I last tried this, and it’s just an experiment, not a moral position.

So the worst-case scenario is I get no noticeable benefit (but save some money), and lose out on some gustatory delight, and some people will find me stand-offish. I can live with that, for SCIENCE. I don't judge other people by what they choose to drink, so have no interest in the judgements of those that do.

Pros:

1. There is good reason to suppose that I’ll cut the visceral fat down, because it’s happened before (between my first two DEXA scans, in May and August 2024 which established a clear correlation between waist size and visceral fat quantity), and because of the waist reduction this year, in just 33 days of no alcohol.

2. There ought to be improvements in sleep quality. This is very hard to measure, and regular readers will know that I’ve tried several different sleep trackers and found problems with all of them. The only metric that seems at all reliable is heart rate. With alcohol, my heart rate is higher and more erratic when sleeping; without it, it’s lower and steadier. I've confirmed this many times since getting my first sleep tracker in 2017.

3. It’s a clear break from a habit I know is not healthy, and a fairer test of sobriety. I wouldn’t necessarily judge the effects of a diet or exercise program after just a month, so it seems reasonable to give no booze a fair crack of the whip.

The best case scenario is that I get amazing health and vitality benefits from this. But that will raise the issue of do I go back or not? I’ll have to entirely re-think the place that alcohol plays in my way of life. So I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of hoping that it doesn’t help much.

It’s important to keep any test to just one variable. If I replaced booze with doughnuts I could reasonably expect to not lose any visceral fat. So I’m giving myself a couple of weeks to let my usual dietary rules slip a bit (I had four slices of my daughter’s banana bread after dinner last Sunday, with marmalade) but once I’m back from Swords of the Renaissance this weekend I’ll be pretty careful about keeping the rest of my diet as it was.

And finally…

I intend to report back here (maybe even with another DEXA scan) in due course. But I keep my friends on Sword People, and my newsletter subscribers updated on all sorts of things, including my various health experiments. Join us there, or sign up for the newsletter (or both!).

And let me just re-iterate: I'm running a health experiment. I have no moral problem with alcohol, and I don't think of myself as an alcoholic. If alcohol is damaging your health, or getting in the way of your goals, feel free to try 100 days off, or better yet get professional help. But it says nothing about your moral worth whether you drink or not.

Update at 50 Days

50 days into this experiment: so far, so good. The hard part was making the decision. Once it was decided, not drinking is normal. There are open bottles of booze in the house, but no temptation. Every now and then I fancy a drink, but the urge passes quickly. This was as true on day 1 as it is on day 50.

The closest thing to an exception has been a couple of social events in pubs, where I had a low-alcohol (0.5% or lower ABV) beer. I’ve done that twice. I don’t think it matters particularly, but I’ve decided to be careful in the last 50 days to stay off even that.

My weight is down about a kilo and a half (3.5lb), and my waist is down about 2cm. These are averages: weight fluctuates a lot during the day and from day to day: have a glass of water and you gain half a pound or so. Eat more fibre the day before and there’s more water held in your gut. So I measure weight and waist every day, and average them up over the week. Waist is especially problematic to measure, as it’s me with a tape measure, trying to be consistent about exactly where on my body I’m putting it, and exactly how tight, at what point in my breathing cycle. Sucking in my gut gets me down to 84, expanding as much as possible gets me to 96 (which is significantly smaller than my relaxed measurement in May 2024). So I’m not treating these figures as hard or accurate, but they are a reasonable guide to progress.

The oddest thing about this is that all of the weight and waist gains occurred in the first 25 days; they have been basically stable since then. Though I suppose it’s possible I’ve been losing fat and gaining muscle (or the other way round) since then. My weight training is the most reliable guide to muscle mass until the next DEXA scan, and I’m getting gradually stronger (as one would expect), so I doubt I’m losing significant muscle mass. I’m also careful to keep my protein intake quite high (about 1.5g/1kg of body mass, so about 120g/day for me).

I’m not sure if I’m sleeping better or not. I don’t wake up feeling any more rested than I did before, but I have several times slept a lot longer than I used to, for no apparent reason. I’m hoping that my brain is adapting to the lack of booze and getting better at staying asleep, but it’s too early to tell. Sleeping longer means I’m waking up later, so my usual habit of getting an hour or so of writing in before the house wakes up isn’t happening, but that’s ok; I seem to be productive enough.

On balance, this has been underwhelming in terms of health gains so far. I was expecting significantly more benefits already, given that I’ve come down from drinking an average of a whole bottle of wine every day. But who knows, maybe the next 50 days will hold some surprises.

This experiment is an example of my overall guiding principle of training: figure out what works for you, then do that. Both of those aspects are challenging: how do you figure out what works for you? And how do you maintain the practice of applying it? I go over all these things and more in The Principles and Practices of Solo Training.

Get Started with a New Beginner’s Course in Historical Martial Arts

27th June, 2025
By Guy Windsor
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Learning Swordsmanship

Table of Contents

Find Your Way Into the Art of Arms: A New Beginner’s Course in Historical Martial Arts

When I started out in Historical Martial Arts, it was an entirely new field. There were no maps, no guides, and no signs. Fast forward a couple of decades, and we’ve built a thriving, global community. That’s wonderful—but now the problem isn’t a lack of direction. It’s too many options.

There are dozens of systems, hundreds of schools, and more online courses, books, videos, and interpretations than ever before. For the curious beginner, it can feel overwhelming. Where do you start? Longsword? Rapier? Sword and buckler? Italian? German? English?

To help with that, I’ve created a brand-new course:

Introduction to the Art of Arms: Get Started in Historical Martial Arts

This course is designed as a clear, accessible starting point for anyone new to Historical Martial Arts. You don’t need prior experience, expensive gear, or an encyclopaedic knowledge of medieval fencing masters. You just need curiosity and a willingness to explore.

We begin with gentle, grounded instruction in the core principles of movement and mechanics—how to stand, how to move, how to hold a weapon. From there, the course expands into two complete beginner paths:

•Fiore dei Liberi’s Armizare: A system of knightly combat from 15th-century Italy, covering longsword, grappling, and dagger.

•Ridolfo Capoferro’s Rapier: A sophisticated fencing tradition from the early 1600s, ideal for those drawn to the elegance and precision of the Renaissance duel.

These two systems offer very different approaches to the Art of Arms. Having a grounding in both gives you a solid foundation and helps you discover what kind of swordsmanship you’re drawn to.

Once you’ve completed those, we move into the “tasting menu” section of the course, with short, practical introductions to other traditions:

•Vadi’s Longsword – bridging Fiore and later traditions

•Liechtenauer’s Longsword – from the German school

•Von Baumann’s Wrestling – late medieval grappling, straight from the manuscript

•Dall’Aggocchie’s Bolognese Swordsmanship – a Renaissance civilian sword style

•Sword and Buckler from MS I.33 – the oldest known fencing manual

Each of these tasters is designed to be doable, not daunting. You’ll get a feel for the system, the weapons, and the movement, without needing to dive straight into full commitment.

The idea is simple: give students a real, physical sense of what each system is like, before they choose what to specialise in.

Why So Much Content for So Little?

The course is available by subscription, at just $10/month. I don’t believe beginners should have to drop hundreds of dollars just to find out if Historical Martial Arts are for them. This format means:

•You can try it for the price of a couple of coffees.

•If it’s not for you, you can cancel anytime—no questions asked.

•You can explore at your own pace, with guidance and structure when you need it.

•And yes, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee—just in case.

Who Is It For?

•Complete beginners, curious about swords but unsure where to begin.

•Students returning after a break, who want to rebuild foundations.

•Instructors, looking for a structured, beginner-friendly course to recommend to new students.

•Writers, re-enactors, and gamers, who want to get hands-on with authentic historical movement.

Ready to Begin?

You don’t need to be a knight or a duellist to train like one. Just be curious, willing, and maybe a little sword-obsessed.

👉 Start your journey here

Let me know what you think of the new course—I’d love to hear your feedback.

Salt, Steel, and Serbian Hospitality in Belgrade

17th June, 2025
By Guy Windsor
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Class Reports, Travel

capoferro, longsword, teaching, travel

I flew to Belgrade last week to attend the Sword and Balkan event. I arrived on Thursday evening and spent Friday exploring downtown Belgrade to get a sense of Serbian culture. I’ll write that up properly next, but in the meantime: if you’re visiting Serbia, do not skip the National Museum on Republic Square…

The event began on Saturday morning, and right from the start it felt different. We were all invited to break off a piece of bread, dip it in salt, and eat it (I just had the salt, being allergic to wheat). This symbolic act made us part of the family—and that sense of familial warmth and camaraderie set the tone for the whole weekend. Literally everyone I interacted with was relaxed, friendly, and there to enjoy some good swordy fun. It was especially nice to catch up with Francesco Lodà after more than 20 years!

The event’s principal organiser, Željko Glumac, was a game designer before devoting himself fully to swords—and I’ve never encountered a more gamified (in the best possible way) fencing event. There was a creative and intricate token system: participants earned tokens through various activities and could use them to bid for spots in the final tournament, choosing weapons like rapier, smallsword, and so on. You could win tokens from fellow fencers in challenges—unless, when revealing your secret team card (Fiore, Hutton, etc.), it turned out you were on the same team! When challenging instructors, they would award you 1–3 tokens based on the quality of your fencing (regardless of the score).

No wonder the reception table looked like this:

That’s Željko on the left.

I knew Željko is a Capoferro man, but I also knew he’d be swamped with organisational duties, so I kidnapped him early Saturday for a quick fencing match. It was a joy. Sometimes fencing feels like an argument between people who don’t speak the same language—but this was a vigorous and friendly conversation between two native speakers of the same dialect.

My class that morning was Skill Development with the Longsword. About 26 students attended, with a wide range of experience levels. They were all a pleasure to teach, and I think everyone got something useful from it.

I’d twisted my right knee on Wednesday morning, so I was being careful—short lunges, no unnecessary pressure—but still managed to get in two bouts after lunch. First, with Thomas Tassie on smallsword (a quick fencer with a lovely circular parry in quarte), and then with Branislav Petrović, another Capoferro fencer. He hit me with Capoferro’s scanso della vita—a rare thing to see in freeplay! But a little later I got him back with the same technique, which may have been my personal fencing highlight of the weekend.

By evening I was fairly worn out, but I really enjoyed chatting with Viktor, Veronika, and Elay. Fortunately, V and V are early-to-bed types like me, so they gave me a lift back to the hotel and we turned in around 11:15. But I must say—those Serbs understand carnivory at a high level.

On Sunday morning, I did a thorough physio session to keep the knee and neck issues at bay, and then fenced with Karl Rapp from Vienna. We hit each other quite a bit—but he managed to catch me twice with the same move: a thrust to the flank after covering my blade with his left hand. Son of a bitch! (In the best possible way.) It was a delightful bout, swiftly followed by another with Viktor Kachovski—good thing we both got to bed at a decent hour!

That day I taught a smaller class, Skill Development with the Rapier, which meant we could go deeper into the subject. Again, the group included both beginners and veterans with over a decade of experience, and again, everyone was a joy to teach. Special thanks to Pavle Ilijašević (in the red and black poofy pants) for demonstrating with me—with sharps!

After lunch (and a bit of tech wrestling with the projector), I gave an hour-long lecture on syllabus design. I think it went well—when I formally ended the session, the room stayed for another 45-minute Q&A, mostly on pedagogy. I sometimes ask the audience to vote on the best question of the session. This time, Daniel won the prize (a Swordschool patch) for getting me going on teaching mixed-level classes.

You may have noticed the total lack of photos or videos of me fencing. That’s because I was having too much fun to remember I even own a phone.

The event wrapped up with the challenge tournament. I was absolutely knackered by this point, but it was clearly enormous fun for everyone involved—team members cheering each other on and nobody taking it too seriously.

All in all, a thoroughly delightful event. Željko and his team got the tone exactly right—and everything else flowed from there.

Vadi Lives! The awesome new Vadi Longsword Course is live!

15th April, 2025
By Guy Windsor
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Learning Swordsmanship

filippo vadi, longsword, Philippo Vadi, sword class, sword drills, video

It’s a great week for Vadi fans. My comprehensive new course “The Philippo Vadi Longsword Course” is now live on both Teachable and Swordpeople, and my friend Michael Chidester has also just launched his new crowdfunding campaign for a very high-end and beautiful facsimile of Vadi’s treatise, De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi.

This was a coincidence, and not ideal from a marketing perspective, but it does open up possibilities for co-operations and collaborations. For instance: Michael is offering a $25 discount (that’s over 10% off) on his facsimile for anyone who buys my course. We’re working out the technical details, and I’ll put the discount code in the course materials as soon as I have it.

Speaking of discounts- you can get 40% off the price of the course, in one payment or spread over ten equal payments, while the launch period lasts.

You can find the course here: https://swordschool.teachable.com/p/the-longsword-of-philippo-vadi?coupon_code=VADITASTICLAUNCH&product_id=6204895

If that discount code link isn’t working, go to courses.swordschool.com and use the code VADITASTICLAUNCH at checkout.

So what is the Vadi Longsword course, and what does it cover?

This isn't just another sword course. I've meticulously reconstructed Vadi's complete system from his treatise “De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi,” presenting it in a logical progression that takes you from complete beginner to confident practitioner.

Every martial art is a way of moving and a set of tactical preferences. In this course I have included a lot of movement drills, and a large range of technical and tactical drills: everything you need to become proficient in Vadi’s art. (Except the equipment (swords, masks, etc.) and a training partner (because that would be illegal). But I do expect you to share your course with at least one training partner.)
You will get over 75 video clips, organised into 8 sections:

Introduction & Safety
Footwork and Sword Handling – Warm-ups, footwork, grips, and mechanics
The Blows of the Sword– Vadi’s blows, including drills based on the guards
The 12 Guards – Every position explained and drilled
Basic Training and Setting up the Plays – Solo and pair training to build a solid foundation
The 25 Plays of the Longsword – All 25 plays from De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, step-by-step
Plays from Chapters 11 and 15 – Extra drills from Vadi's theory of fencing
Skill Development – Fencing games, timing, and troubleshooting

As you can see, we cover not only all of Vadi’s longsword plays, but also basic sword training, how to get into the plays tactically, and how to become skillful in their application.

Curious? Here’s a sample video, on one of my favourite Vadi-style sword exercises:

Here’s the discount link again: https://swordschool.teachable.com/p/the-longsword-of-philippo-vadi?coupon_code=VADITASTICLAUNCH&product_id=6204895

If that discount code link isn’t working, go to courses.swordschool.com and use the code VADITASTICLAUNCH at checkout.

AMA with Guy about Swordfighting

20th March, 2025
By Guy Windsor
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Books and Writing, What I'm Working On

I started editing the second edition of my book Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists a little while ago and pretty quickly it developed into a total rewrite, aimed solely at writers. I’ve cut 45,000 words already, and will probably end up redoing the whole thing from scratch. Good writing is all about the reader, so I created an online form for writers to ask me questions, to help me figure out what they need to know. Many of the responses have been very on-topic for the book I’m trying to write, and I’ll answer those questions in due course in the book.

But some folk took the opportunity to ask me whatever they wanted (and why not?). As there’s no reasonable prospect of addressing the questions in the book, I thought I’d do it here instead. Some of the questions have lengthy answers that I've already given in books and courses, so while I've tried to give a brief stab at it here, I'll also link to the relevant longer work. I’m running a Swordschool birthday sale until the end of March 2025: use the code SWORDSCHOOL24 at checkout to get 24% off any digital product (ebooks, courses, etc.).

There were a bunch of questions about Vadi, and how he relates to Fiore. I’ll start with them:

Q: I am curious, working from my own copy, how Vadi's implicit tactics compare to Fiore's?

A: Both masters include attacking and countering the defence; and waiting for the attack to counter it. They both agree that you should control your opponent's weapon. Arguably Vadi makes more mention of feints, but other than that I don't see much difference.

Q: Would you include discussion of Vadi's use of measure, feints, and counter-cutting vs slicing-off vs blocking passively in an interpretive section, or within the main body of the text?

A: I wouldn’t include it at all in a book on writing swordfights. It’s way too specific to one source, and way too technical. Also, slicing-off and passive blocking aren’t mentioned anywhere in Vadi that I can find. He also doesn’t explicitly discuss measure.

Q: How do Vadi's regional origins contribute to which techniques or tactics he emphasises (eg does the law code of Vadi's residence effect what kinds of executive action he favours, as compared to other contemporary fencing treatises)?

A: We have no way to know. There are no contemporary sources at all: Fiore was 70 years earlier, the first Bolognese sources 40+ years later. Vadi doesn’t mention law at all, and while there may be a connection between local law codes and what he recommends, it’s impossible to say. Are we talking in Urbino, where the dedicatee was Duke? or in Pisa, where Vadi came from?

Q: Which works were influenced by Vadi's work?

A: I’ve not found any direct evidence of Vadi’s influence in any later works. I go through the possible relationship between Vadi’s guards and the Bolognese guards in the introduction to my book The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest.

Q: How does Vadi's work relate to Fiore's work?

A: It’s a short question with a very long answer, which you’ll find in the introduction to my book The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest. Basically, I think it’s unlikely that Vadi was taught in a direct lineage from Fiore, and he may or may not have read a version of Il Fior di Battaglia. There’s not enough internal evidence to say for sure.

Then some more general questions:

Q: Learning fight choreography is challenging enough without running out of breath or not being able to fight with a sword in rehearsals and the actual performance. How do you train actors to get fit for stage sword fighting if they have not already been sword fighting before including arm strength and endurance?

A: I don’t. But I do train anyone who wants to learn, regardless of their physical fitness, so my system includes a huge amount of training solutions for range of motion, strength, joint health, and fitness. You’ll find them in the Solo Training course, or in my book The Principles and Practices of Solo Training.

Q: I'm a martial artist (Shito-Ryu karate) and one of my biggest shifts for fencing vs karate is what moves first (I tend to move hip first/at the same time for MA and have been repeatedly reminded that it's sword first for rapier fighting). Do you have any recommendations to facilitate the change in mindset between picking up a sword in ongoing training and my continuing karate work? IDK how question-y my question is: rewording is sort of how to keep my karate habits and rapier habits separate I guess? While still actively training and building in both and acknowledging that there is crossover for pieces like some stances, mindset, footwork, etc.

A: Yes I do. In short, if you understand why you move in a certain way, not just intellectually but at a fundamental ‘this solves a problem’ level, then you’ll move correctly for whatever you’re doing. In other words, if your mind is on the right thing (solving the problem presented by your opponent), and you’ve been trained to solve that problem correctly, you’ll do it correctly. It’s not a matter of style (which you have to remember), it’s a matter of function (which is made obvious by the context). In the same way that you might talk shit with your mates, but speak politely in a business meeting, you’ll initiate with the hip when doing karate (because it works better that way), and with the point of the sword when doing rapier (because it works better that way).

The best example of this was teaching a student to do a scannatura with a rapier (plate 13 from Capoferro). He kept binding the opponent’s point down and walking onto it, because he wasn’t leading enough with the sword. I took a sharp rapier off the wall and took the part of the opponent. He bound that sharp scary stabby thing the hell away from himself and then stepped in. Problem solved. Don’t try this at home, but you get the idea, I hope.

Q: How would you describe the difference in fighting styles between a Fiore fighter and a Chinese Jian user?

A: I wouldn’t, because I don’t know any Jian users who actually fight. (I’m sure there are many, I just don’t know them). My first step would be to find such people, and watch them train and fence, and ideally fence with them. Then compare that to what I know (Fiore stuff). As a writer, you could find someone using a jian online in the way that works for your character, and someone doing the same with a longsword, and compare what you see.

Q: I teach a Beowulf camp and include a HEMA section. I use Liechtenauer. Is that a good source to pair with Beowulf?

A: No. It’s many centuries later, and a completely different weapon. Beowulf dates to around 1000AD, so they would be using what laypeople think of as “Viking” swords, shields, and armour. The closest we have to that is probably I.33 sword and buckler. (I have a course on it here.) There are folk online working with swords and shields from that period, but it’s always going to be reconstructive archaeology, not based on written sources (because there aren’t any). Doesn’t mean they’re wrong though!

Q: What would be the best content to teach writers as a HEMA instructor? I teach at a writing conference and do the basics of long sword and short sword over three days. My goal is experience over sitting, but there's so much to offer!

A: AFAIK there’s no such thing as “short sword” in historical martial arts. So I don’t know what you’re teaching there. But I’d say that all writers would benefit from either longsword, or rapier, or both, because they are the two most common types of swords used in historical fiction and fantasy. Of course historical fiction writers would be best served with a style from their period. E.g. smallsword or backsword/sabre for Napoleonic era swordsmanship, Liechtenauer or Fiore for late 14th-early 15th century, etc. But that’s probably out of scope for this kind of intro class.

If you have questions you’d like to see answered in the book, here’s the form: https://forms.gle/QHspLZNQ2Lw7A1nT9

Questions that are off-topic for the book are best asked on my social media platform, swordpeople.com in the “advice wanted”, “pub”, or “salle” spaces.

If you want access to any of the courses, the best value is probably the subscription package: access to everything for $45/month. You can get 24% off with the code SWORDSCHOOL24 The code also works for ebooks and audiobooks at swordschool.shop. The code expires on March 31st.

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