Guy Windsor

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Archives for April 2018

Free new translation of Vadi!

April 23, 2018 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

Today I uploaded my new book on Vadi’s manuscript De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi to the printer. The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest will be ready sooooon!!!

As with my first attempt at translating this manuscript I’m releasing the translation for free, under a creative commons attribution 4.0 licence. This means you can do whatever you want with it, provided you give me credit for doing the work.

The rest of the book includes a detailed introduction, a practical commentary, and a glossary. Sound like your sort of thing? Make sure you’re on my mailing list, and you’ll be informed the very instant it becomes available.

You can find the translation here: https://gum.co/sXBJh

I’m making it available on my Gumroad account rather than a direct download because that way generous souls can pay something for it if they wish.

But you don’t have to.

But it would really help.

 

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Filed Under: Books and Writing

What happens when you listen to your readers? Eleven five star reviews!

April 13, 2018 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

“This should be the core book in every HEMA practitioner’s library”

Comments like this are what authors live for. My new book The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts has picked up eleven five star reviews on Amazon.com in its first week in the wild. I couldn’t be happier. The reviews come from beginners and highly experienced practitioners, which suggests that the book does what I designed it to do: to encapsulate my experience for the benefit of the entire community.

Here are some of the reviews:

“Guy is one of the best authors writing about martial arts today. He offers a unique blend of knowledge and experience, always with an emphasis on safety. Guy really sets the standard for realizing historical training manuals, but in this book, he presents the reader with a broad based primer historical European martial arts. A great book and a good read.” — James Sanderson

“Though focused on historical European sword fighting this book is an excellent handbook on learning any martial art. As a four decade student of martial arts I especially appreciated his section on developing your own drills and his constant emphasis on safety. In short a guy who knows his stuff (Couldn’t resist.) I purchased a pre-release copy that’s how I can review a book that came out yesterday.”– “Rocky”

“This is a great introduction for anyone interested in getting into learning historical martial arts. Guy has many other excellent books covering various specific historical masters or weapon systems, but this book explains the thinking and process involved in recreating any historical martial art from historical sources. Guy covers topics such as how to read and interpret historical source material, how to construct a core drill, organize a practice group or teach a class as well as principles for monitoring your own skill level and determining what to focus on to improve.” — David Tehan

“Once again Guy has written an excellent book on Historical Martial Arts. This one distils his 20+ years in studying historical texts and applying them using today’s training methods, to provide beginners and more advanced students alike with the skills they need to take a manuscript, interpret it and develop and deliver a training course on it. I’ve been lucky enough to train with Guy at several workshops he’s run and this book feels like I am back in one of his classes, put now I’m getting the expanded and in-depth theory as well as the practice. Well worth the read for anyone into historical martial arts or those who want to improve their training in any discipline.”– “SLW”

“This is the book I wish I had when I started my journey into historical martial arts three decades ago. With the exploding popularity of the subject, we’re seeing an abundance of translations and interpretations of the source material, but very few core sources on how to actually go about using them effectively. This book organizes these elements into a foundation for a personal practice, a study group, a school, or beyond. As an experienced practitioner, it’s helped me reset my priorities and add depth to my practice. If you’re new to the field, all I can say is start here.” — Eric Mauer

I could go on, but you can find them all here. I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to review the book; it’s a major help, and it feels fantastic to know how much you liked it. Perhaps the most useful question is how did I do it? The answer is simple. When I had the first draft finished, I sent it out to a hundred beta readers, and asked for feedback. Most people have no experience in delivering useful feedback to a writer. “I liked it”, or “I didn’t like it” are interesting, but not actionable. To help get the best, most detailed feedback, I created a form they could fill in to tell me what was good, what was bad, and what was missing. You can see the form here if you’re interested in the specific questions I asked.

Then, when the feedback came in, I did what they asked me to do. The biggest single change was I greatly expanded the chapter on tournaments. So it’s no wonder that these good people like the book: people just like them had a hand in creating it (and indeed some of the reviewers were also beta readers).

In other words, I asked the readers how to improve it, and then (and this is the difficult bit, and the most important by a million miles): I paid attention to their criticisms. Asking is easy, but actually listening when somebody tells you that something you’ve been slaving over for months or years actually needs quite a lot more work is hard. But the results speak for themselves.

 

 

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Filed Under: Books and Writing

Health matters

April 12, 2018 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

I’ve been thinking a lot about health lately, which will come as no surprise if you’ve read my previous blog about injuring my back.

I think of health as a three-legged stool. The legs are sleep, nutrition, and exercise. I cover the principles I use in some detail in my new book The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts, but I don’t go into my personal routines all that much, because they’re probably not relevant to most readers. The underlying message is ‘diligently study to find out what works for you, then do that’. So what do I do?

This morning, I got up before my wife and kids and did about 20 minutes of breathing exercises, 20 minutes of calisthenics (push-ups, stretching and so on), before making my wife a cup of tea and going back upstairs to deliver it before having my cold shower, then getting dressed and having breakfast. This is normal, and doesn’t count as ‘training’.

But today, I did walk the long route to the gym (about 3 miles, fast, with nordic walking poles), and did my 7-way legs, hex bar deadlifts (I’m back up to 60kg, but won’t go higher for a long while as my back recovers), arm exercises (such as the ones on my free arm maintenance course), and the rest of my routines. The walk and gym time totalled about two hours 20 minutes, which means that by the time I got to my office, I’ve done about three hours of health-dedicated exercise. I don’t do that much that often because I’m not a fan of ‘more is better’. I prefer to find the minimum effective dose and do that.

Perhaps the hardest health practice I do is fasting. Not because fasting itself is hard- it isn’t, or at least it doesn’t have to be. The difficulty is I don’t want to normalise not-eating for my daughters. They are heading into the age where anorexia and other eating disorders become a significant risk, and one of the things I’m doing to try to mitigate that risk is model healthy eating and a healthy enjoyment of food. (Other things include never praising them for their looks, letting them not finish their dinner if they are really not hungry, or stop eating when they’re full, and above all giving them a firm sense of being in control wherever possible- this includes things like letting them choose a recipe, do the shopping, and prepare the meal (or more commonly, cake), even when– especially when– I wouldn’t make the same choices.) But they were away for a couple of nights, so I managed to get some fasting in. I set it up like so:

Dinner as normal, but a bit early, on Sunday (roast lamb with all the trimmings). Then Monday morning, a small ketogenic breakfast, made up of some lightly steamed cabbage with a tin of mackarel, some nuts, olive oil, and MCT oil, with a dose of raspberry ketones and a dose of BCAAs. That put me straight into ketosis, which I prefer for fasting because a) it prevents muscle mass being digested for calories and b) it hugely reduces hunger, making compliance much easier. I don’t fast for character-building or spiritual reasons; this is all about biochemistry.

Then I just ate nothing at all until breakfast on Tuesday morning. I drank only water. The only other thing I ingested was, on Monday night, I could feel I was thirstier than normal, and as I usually eat a lot of salt, and had just had a long hot bath, I figured I might be low on salt, so had a pinch (I was right, it helped immediately). Monday was a training day, so I went to the gym for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Being in ketosis means that there’s no problem with ‘low blood sugar’, which (except for diabetics and people with other conditions) is a bullshit reason for feeling unable to train anyway. If you can’t train when hungry, then there’s something wrong with your diet, or your training. If everything is working properly, there should be no energy drop from low blood sugar unless you are fasting the hard way (i.e. not triggering ketosis first), and are in day two or three. If you’ve eaten in the last 24 hours, you ought to be fine. If that’s not the case, then you have some metabolic work to do!

Do I think you should do this? I have no opinion whatsoever, as I don’t know you, your medical history, or anything else. But folk ask me about this stuff, so I’m sharing.

If I had to pick one thing I think is most useful and important, out of all the things I do for health reasons, it would be breathing exercises. I do them every day. They are the one constant over the last 25 years of training. They combine a kind of meditation, some useful movement, and provide a back door into your metabolism that is startlingly effective. That’s why I created an online course covering the basics of several styles of breathing training, so you can find what works for you. I’m offering a 50% discount on the course that’s valid until the end of April, just use this link.

Try it out! The course comes with a 30 day money back guarantee, so if it’s not your thing, no harm done.

I look forward to seeing you on the course.

 

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Filed Under: Lifestyle

The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts

April 6, 2018 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

My latest book encapsulates my entire approach to recreating historical martial arts; 25 years of experience in 350 pages!

With this book you can train your mind and body to become an expert in historical martial arts. It includes the seven principles of mastery, considers the ethics of martial arts, and goes into detail about the process of recreating historical martial arts from written sources.

On the practical side, I explain how to develop your skills, and lay out the path for students to become teachers, covering the basics of safe training, looking after your body, and even starting your own training group and teaching basic classes.

Please note, this is not a training manual for a specific style; it lays the groundwork for becoming expert in any style.

Roland Warzecha of DIMICATOR had this to say about it:

This is a comprehensive guide to the rewarding pursuit of historical martial arts, from choosing a source, study and research of historical manuals to developing and conducting a training program that serves your purpose best. Benefit from the experience of one of the most accomplished experts in the field. A must-read for beginners and advanced practitioners alike.

This book has read and edited by over a hundred test-readers, who have made suggestions and corrections, to make the book as useful as possible. So far, the reviews are good:

As a long time solo student of Historical Martial Arts, The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts and Guy’s other works have encouraged me to take my training to the next level. The advice in this book has helped me start a small club and provided well grounded advice for developing classes and instruction based on the author’s experience. Guy’s book also has plenty of advice which has helped me better plan out my personal training and to help me make better use of the original sources. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in HMA, particularly those in need of advice for getting started with planning a training program.
-Cameron Atkinson, Canberra.

It is now available on all platforms, in hardback and ebook formats. The paperback will follow later in the year.

Buy the book from any of these retailers, or you can order it from your local bookshop

 

 

 

 

Or you can get a free 70 page preview by signing up below:

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Filed Under: default

Recovering from injury: six useful ideas

April 2, 2018 By Guy Windsor 7 Comments

I’m in the process of recovering from a nasty injury. Why am I telling you this? Because shit happens to everyone, and I thought it might be useful to you to see how I deal with it. This is not my first training injury, and I’d be very surprised if it was my last. My basic approach is the same as for training when sick: fuck it, but don’t poke the bear. It boils down to a few key mental principles applicable to most difficult situations, and a couple of guidelines for treating the actual injury, which are applicable to most injuries.

Before we take a step further, while I am technically a doctor now, I’m not a medical doctor. And even if I were, I’m not your doctor. So this is what I do, what works for me, in case you might find it useful or interesting. Do not under any circumstances mistake it for qualified medical advice.

In the course of writing this article, I formulated the principles that I’m following to get through the problem. They are:

  • Keep gently moving (I’ll expand on specific treatment too)
  • Keep a sense of humour (even when you can’t pull up your trousers)
  • Fear is the enemy (much worse than pain)
  • Use professional help (it’s often worth it)
  • Get back on the horse (because fear is still the enemy)
  • Perspective (viewed from the right angle, even severe injuries aren’t that important)

So, what happened?

On Monday January 29th I was in the gym, and managed to sprain my back doing a hex-bar deadlift. (A hex-bar is a weights bar in the shape of a hexagon, which you can step inside of, and lift like picking up two suitcases. You can see the lift discussed and done here.) It was one of those situations where there were no obvious mistakes: my form was correct, I’d prepared properly, I was paying attention, it was a weight I’d lifted before, but for some reason my right thigh declined to take its share of the load half way up, and so the whole lot came onto my lower back. Ow.

I hobbled home, took some ibuprofen, and not to my surprise could barely get out of bed the following day. Major ow.

The injury is on the right hand side of my lower back, between my hip and my spine. When I very carefully levered myself out of bed on January 30th, I ran through some range of motion tests, and found that I could do just about everything except bend forwards. Normally, I can lay my palms flat on the floor with locked-straight legs. Now, I could reach approximately one inch down my thighs.

Keep gently moving

This is a musculoskeletal sprain, in which there is some damage to the muscles, but also to the soft tissues (ligaments and/or tendons). This sets my expectations, and my approach. Using agony as a useful guide to whether a motion was a good idea or not (if it causes shooting pain, don’t do it), I gently kept moving for the next few days, and the spasms eased off, and by the Friday (2nd Feb) I was able to go up to London as planned to see a friend. At the weekend I ran some errands, and even managed to drive (though driving was unpleasant). I was taking about 400mgs of ibuprofen three times a day, to limit the inflammation, and doing very gentle range of motion exercises to maintain flexibility as much as possible without aggravating the injury. Pain can be a learned response, a habit. ‘Doing this movement hurts this way’; the pain becomes associated with the movement, and it can persist long after the initial cause for it has gone. So it’s really important to learn to move without the pain, and to break the connection as quickly as possible, which is done by doing the movement right up to the point just before the pain starts, and gradually pushing that range of motion further and further without triggering the pain response.

The specifics:

  1. Keep moving as much as possible, but be gentle and attentive about it.
  2. Rest often. Many short sessions, punctuated by many rests, is better than long sessions that induce fatigue.
  3. Regain range of motion before adding weight. It’s critically important that the injury site is returned to a reasonable range of motion before you add weight to the movement. When you have an injured spot, your body will tend to immobilise it, so your range of motion comes from other areas. I think of regaining mobility like making a bow. The idea is to avoid stiff spots or hinges, so the stress of the draw is evenly distributed along the limbs. If the bow hinges at any spot, that’s where it will break. I really don’t want to acquire a compensating over-flexibility next to the stiff area in my back. So I have to be very careful about locating the motion in the correct place.
  4. The timeline for soft tissue injury is at least 9-12 months for full recovery of tendons and ligaments (because they have a very poor blood supply, as they are not very metabolically active). So I will be taking this injury into account in my training for at least a year. Once the worst is over (which it already is) that just means paying attention to the area, doing exercises to build strength there, and retain mobility, and watch for signs of strain. Muscles heal in 3-6 weeks, usually, depending on how badly they are damaged. Muscle damage doesn’t worry me, I only have to make sure that I don’t trigger protective spasms which will slow the process while I stimulate the ligaments to repair themselves.
  5. Breathing and meditation. What, you didn’t think I’d forget about breathing, did you? The best ally you have in healing is your brain. By focussing attention on the problem area, you can persuade your body to send resources to it. I do this by breathing into the area itself (in this case, as if my breath is inflating my arse. Great image, huh?), and by simply sitting (or for the first few weeks lying down, because sitting aggravated the problem) and paying gentle attention to the injury. Not interfering, just noticing.
  6. Medication: no more than two weeks of continuous painkiller use (for me); I can go back to them if needed after a week off. Anti-inflammatories work best if they build up a bit in your system; they usually take a few hours to work their magic. So taking them on rising, on going to bed, and maybe once more during the day, is much better than taking them when the pain happens to peak. I am also using my magic medicine (lotion from a kung-fu instructor) which is great for bruises and sprains, and for pain control, ibuprofen cream on the sore spot. I also found this “Advance 7” cream to be really effective (thanks Sam!).

Keep a sense of humour

Monday morning, Feb 5th, I woke up, moved an inch, and regretted it deeply. Somehow during the night the injury had gotten ten times worse. I lay there with a full bladder, and seriously considered not getting out of bed to get to the bathroom. My wife was away and the kids were in bed, so there was nothing for it but to keep everything as still as possible, while nonetheless getting out of bed onto the floor, from the floor to upright, and making full use of the walls and doors, get to the loo. That done, I woke the kids, and told them they’d be walking themselves to school. Bless their little hearts, they had no problem dressing, getting their own breakfast, and getting on their way. I called the doctor just to check that I didn’t need to go into A+E, and he confirmed that this was common for a back sprain, and told me what symptoms to watch out for (e.g. nerve pain radiating out, or numbness) in case it was something worse.

I was faced with a problem of needing to keep moving, a bit, to prevent everything seizing up completely, and yet every movement creating blinding pain. My solution was to dose up on a bit more ibuprofen, and watch Altered Carbon on Netflix; 45 minutes or so of lying down, then get up at the end of each episode and move a bit. Work of any kind was out of the question, as I couldn’t be in an ergonomically acceptable position to use the laptop (standing or even sitting) for more than a few minutes. And the last thing I needed was to bugger my wrists by typing lying down. Also, the pain was too bad for the kind of work reading I need to do (the kind where you have to pay close attention to something that is not particularly gripping). So no work for me! I did manage to shepherd The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts through layout and into print, but that was it.

The next day was about the same, only worse. Sat on the loo, ready to get back up, I tried to reach down to snag the hem of my trousers between the extended tips of my fingers to pull them up, but it caused a spasm of pain so bad I nearly passed out. I managed to lever myself up, and shuffle to the bedroom and lie down on my side on the bed, and bring my ankles back towards my arse; once there, I could snag the trousers, and pull them up. Picture the scene. I did, and it was bloody funny. Dignity can go fuck itself.

Really. If you’d been there, and had your empathy circuits temporarily removed, you’d have been laughing your arse off. Creating a little distance between the agonised carcass you live in, and the you that’s there to notice it, makes handling the injury easier. It’s a bit less personal. Most comedy revolves around pain of one sort or another- why not your own?

Fear is the enemy

It would be easy to imagine all sorts of horrible futures in which the injury is permanent, I’ll never swing a sword again, all that terrifying shit. But it’s also possible to imagine a future in which the back injury is a funny story about events long passed. Focussing on the worst case scenario is borrowing trouble that hasn’t happened yet. How mobile I used to be, and how mobile I may become, are both irrelevant. The only thing that matters is how mobile I am now, and what I can do to make that better. Banish ‘if only’ statements. “If only I’d stopped one weight earlier”. “If only my back didn’t hurt”. And so on. They are useless bullshit to be eradicated. It’s perfectly possible to make yourself miserable by grieving for an imagined future *that might never have come to pass*. For all I know, by staying home for a few weeks I may have avoided a fatal car accident that would have killed me had I not been too injured to drive. There’s no way to know, so speculation is futile and counter-productive. If you must project into the future, make it positive. “I will get better” or, “even if I don’t get better, I’ll be fine; I can cope.” But it’s much better to just deal with the current situation without judging it relative to past or future.

For me at least, Pain ≠ Suffering. Pain + Fear = Suffering. I can’t avoid the pain, but by eliminating the fear, there’s no suffering. I’m fine, it just hurts.

Gradually, being careful to limit my painkiller intake, and keeping moving, and doing as much of my usual training routines as the injury allowed, it got better over the course of the week— and Altered Carbon was awesome. I probably wouldn’t have got to watch it otherwise, as my wife isn’t into that sort of show and we usually watch stuff together.

After being on painkillers for two straight weeks, I decided to come off them and just live with the pain. I really don’t need a painkiller addiction, nor the kidney or stomach issues they can cause. Two weeks to the day after starting to take them, I stopped.

Get professional help

The following week I was still stuck in the house, unable to walk more than a few steps, or drive at all, pretty much until the weekend, when I had a seminar to teach on the Sunday. Doctor Theatre took over, and the seminar was fine, but it was a stretch and I was very careful not to demonstrate more than absolutely necessary. Progress continued slowly but surely for the next week… Then on Monday 26th February when I woke up my lower back was sore but still getting better, but my neck had seized up. This was not surprising, as I have such a long history of neck issues, and the back injury had prevented me from doing the full preventive routines.  By being super-careful, I didn’t make either problem worse, and on the Wednesday I was well enough from the chest down to walk, and so could get out of the house and to go see an osteopath to fix my neck. It took three sessions over the course of the next couple of weeks, but by the second week of March, I was pretty much back to normal.
There are professional services that can sometimes help. Use them.

Also, I bought a pair of those nordic walking sticks, that make you look like you forgot your skis. I was a tad dismissive of them in my previous post, but damn, they make a difference. After having them for a day, I was already able to walk further without hurting my back, and then had a chance encounter with a friend who happened to know how to use them properly and taught me the trick of it. Hot damn, it’s like you can push yourself forwards even when your legs are knackered. Now I use them everywhere I go (despite the constant ski references). I exchange knowing nods with fellow un-embarrassable stick users, and indeed with stick-wielding pensioners. The only really odd thing about them is that I’ve never caught myself using them in a sword-like fashion. Normally, any long object in my hand gets automatically converted into a sword, but for some reason, these haven’t. Maybe it’s the hand grips.

Get back on the horse

By gradually increasing the amount of exercise I was getting each day, and being strict as hell about my spine maintenance routines, I was fit to go back to the deadlift on March 16th.

“WHAT???” I hear you cry. “Are you mad?”

No. When I say back to the deadlift, I mean *just the bar*, a very careful single rep to check out the system, a couple more because it was ok, then a few more pulling from the rack (so the bar is held up off the ground). Other than that I did some bench presses, pull-ups, the usual, but all still quite light, and well “in the pocket”. The critical point was getting back on the metaphorical horse; interacting with the bar again to re-learn that it’s a tool for creating strength not injury. Since then, I’ve built it back up to nearly half of the weight that I was lifting when the injury occurred. I’m in no rush. I think it’s vital for long-term psychological health to get back on the horse.

I had a similar injury some years ago doing kettlebell swings with my 24kg bell. It turns out, after careful examination of the evidence and my experience, that kettlebell swings and my spine are just not made for each other, so I don’t do them any more. But I do do clean and presses with the bell, Turkish get-ups, and similar. I’ve rehabilitated the equipment, but learned to avoid that specific exercise with it.

Perspective

My final thought on this is perspective. I don’t view my training goals in increments of weeks or months; I usually think in terms of two to five years. In any five year period there will almost certainly be periods of at least a few weeks where training is impossible for one reason or another. Flu. Injury. Family crisis. Something will come up. But even a major setback is unlikely to take me far away from my long-term goals.
This graph shows the US stock market over the last century:

from http://www.theamateureconomist.com/is-the-u-s-stock-market-going-to-crash/

My back injury is like one of the dips. Shitty to live through, but even the monster crash of 2008 bottomed out at a higher point than the best of the 1960s, and recovery was pretty damn fast. An injury like this, handled right, is just a blip.
This analogy only holds good up to a point: the human body is much less resilient overall than the stock market; its 100 year old self will never outperform its 20 year old self. A body is easy to permanently damage or destroy. I have a friend who has had to quit historical swordsmanship after 20 years because of damage to his knee- he’s right to put his health over the Art, and my heart breaks for him. But my point about perspective stands; by viewing my progress over a long enough time span, I don’t have to worry about short-term dips like the one I’m just pulling out of. This perspective is also very useful for maintaining a sense of humour.

In the grand scheme of things, my back is the very tiniest of tiny problems. Yes, when the spasm hits it seems to take over the entire world, but that’s an illusion caused by faulty perspective. To put it another way; I’d trade my kids being healthy for my back being fucked any day of the week. On the same day that my back took a turn for the worse (February 5th) two people I care about died. My mother in law Bridget, age 79, after years of ill health, and my friend Hugh Hancock, age 40, with a heart attack out of the blue. Compared to this, a sore back is a minor temporary inconvenience at worst.

You may recall I’m doing a 106km walk on the first weekend of May; the Isle of Wight Action Challenge. This injury has royally fucked my training program, of course. But it has given me at least one very useful practice: keeping moving despite severe pain. I wouldn’t be surprised if, around kilometre 90, that’s a more useful ability than simple fitness. I’m doing the walk in aid of Room to Read, a charity promoting education in the developing world. If you’d like to support it, please go here and be generous!

To sum up, those points again:

  • Keep gently moving
  • Keep a sense of humour
  • Fear is the enemy
  • Get some help
  • Get back on the horse
  • Perspective

They serve me well: I hope you never need them, but in case you do, I hope they serve you even better!

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Filed Under: Reflections Tagged With: injury, training, training mindset

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