Blog - Guy Windsor

Challenge of the Month: Sleep well in March!

2nd March, 2021
By Guy Windsor
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Challenge of the Month, Lifestyle

Ah, sleep. The foundation of all health, mental, physical, or otherwise. One bad night’s sleep can ruin a day, and get no sleep at all for 8 days and you’ll probably die.
But we as a culture do not appreciate it nearly as much as we should.
Your challenge this week is to put sleep first: both sleep quality, and sleep quantity. The key source on this subject is Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. Buy it, read it, it may save your life. But for now:
Turn off those screens.
Cut out the caffeine.
Get to bed early.
You’ll thank me later.

I’ll address how to get better sleep in a moment, but first I’ll catch you up on how last month’s challenge of adding a good habit went for me. As many of the participants have told me, it is much easier to create a new habit than it is to break an old one. Really, I should have switched the order around, but nobody’s perfect. My habit for February was to start each day with creative work, not reactive work. Creative work includes things like teaching a class, writing an article, working on the next book (current working title: The Principles of Solo Training), shooting some video. Reactive work is responding to emails, admin crap, that sort of thing.
This ties in nicely with this month’s challenge, because I found that for no reason I was waking up horribly early- maybe 2 hours earlier than usual. So I decided that when that happens, I’ll just get up, do some meditation and light exercises, then storm ahead with the book. Which is why the draft currently stands at a bloated 82,000 words. And on days when I haven’t woken up so early, I’ve still put creative work first. The feeling of having made something is so much more rewarding than the feeling of having answered an email. Really. Even to someone I like.
On days when I’ve woken up early, I’ve gone to bed early. Our bedtime has generally shifted an hour earlier, and sometimes I manage to sleep through to a reasonable hour- one glorious night I managed 9 hours. Oh, my, goddess.
On the subject of getting up early, there are some truly insane famous people out there who seem to fetishize the time they wake up. Mark Wahlberg springs to mind: he gets up at 2.30 in the morning. I’m glad to also report that he goes to bed at 7.30pm, but simple maths will tell you that’s only 7 hours. I’d suggest getting up an hour later and skipping the fucking golf.
Perhaps even stranger is Jocko Willink. Don’t get me wrong, Jocko is the real deal: ex-Navy Seal, very tough, very strong, very disciplined. But he gets up at 4.30 every morning, and posts a dramatic black and white photo of his manly watch (a Timex Ironman Triathlon, in case you care), on his manly wrist, at about 04.32 every day, and many of his followers are now doing the same. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this behaviour, except I’d like to see him posting his bedtime too, and have that be 8.30pm. 8 hours, people. As it stands, it’s incitement to sleep deprivation.
If you listen to him describe his routines such as on the Tim Ferriss podcast, he is hauling himself out of bed because he’s deeply conscious of there being terrorists hiding in caves planning to get him. That may be literally true in his case, but it’s a terrible example to set: it borders on paranoia. Honestly, I worry for his mental health. And as he is so influential these days (I think 500k Twitter followers counts as influential), it also worries me that his followers will be becoming sleep deprived trying to follow his example. That is not cool.
Getting up early in the morning to get the things that matter most to you done before the day can get derailed is a great habit to have.
But it must, must, must, be balanced by getting to bed early, or by compensating with afternoon naps.
So, as for sleep quantity, you probably need about 8 hours (Walker says so). If your alarm wakes you up, you’ve not had enough sleep. Simple as, and I’ll hear no arguments to the contrary.
Sleep quality is harder to measure. Sadly the wearables on the market (such as the oura ring) are woefully inaccurate on pretty much every measure except heart rate. My oura ring once had me in “deep sleep” while I was walking briskly across downtown Helsinki at about 1.30am. But here are the general guidelines (borrowed from The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts):

• Go to bed and get up at the same time every day. Earlier to bed is better: my Grandma used to say that “one before eleven is worth two after seven,” and as usual, she was right.
• Avoid caffeine (for at least six hours before bedtime). Even better would be to cut it out altogether, as it stays in the body for hours and hours. I don’t touch caffeine after 12pm, usually.
• Avoid alcohol (for at least four hours before bedtime). I find that a couple of glasses of wine make no difference to sleep quality (as measured by heart rate during the night), so long as the alcohol is out of my system before going to bed.
• Avoid eating a heavy meal for at least three hours before bedtime. This makes a huge difference, I find. If my body is working on digesting a big meal, my heart rate remains much higher all night than if I go to bed long after the last calorie went in. If you’re waking up too early due to hunger, then a light snack before bed may help.
• Avoid screens for at least an hour before bedtime. If you absolutely must be using a screen, on an iOS device enable Night Shift, or use F.lux or something similar to adjust the wavelengths of light your screen emits.
• Avoid social media for at least an hour before bedtime. There is nothing more likely to keep you awake than some foolish thing said on the internet. Remember that social media companies hire really clever people whose only job is to get and keep your attention; and nothing says you’re not paying attention like falling asleep.
• Keep your bedroom as dark as possible: use black-out curtains, and cover or switch off any sources of light pollution such as luminous clocks or devices with LED lights on them. This to me is one of the hardest things to get right when travelling. One hotel room I stayed in had an illuminated light switch in the middle of the headboard of the bed. I had to get my old boarding pass out and stick it over the damn thing with chewing gum to get any sleep.
• Create a wind-down ritual that persuades your body that it will be going to sleep soon. Keep it gentle. I find reading a good novel is hopeless, because I stay up late to get to the next bit, but reading a fairly dull but useful non-fiction book is great.
• Get a decent mattress. It’s worth it. You literally cannot put a price on sleep.

So, what are you going to do to improve your sleep this March? And how are you going to know that it has worked, or not?

My Patrons on Patreon.com/theswordguy got this article last week. Want to get everything early? You know what to do…

Challenge of the Month: February 2021

3rd February, 2021
By Guy Windsor
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Challenge of the Month, Lifestyle, Personal, Reflections

No, this post isn't a few days late. I posted this last week for my Patrons on Patreon: rewarding their commitment with early access to the things I produce seems fair to me. Want to join them? There's a link in the sidebar.

Now, on with the post.

Table of Contents

Challenge: February 2021

Well, that didn’t go quite as planned.
It turns out that quitting the booze in January 2021 is way harder than it might have been in, say, May 2019. Michaela and I got to January 20th, then cracked a bottle of bubbly to celebrate Trumperdink’s ignominious expulsion, and especially to celebrate the United States finally electing a woman to the Vice Presidency- and a not-white woman at that. If anything deserves bubbly, it’s seeing women and people of colour advanced to high office.

But that kind of cracked the seal, and while there have been a couple of dry days since, we’re pretty much back to drinking as normal (I'm writing on January 28th).
I’m not sorry though. Here’s why:
If not drinking is good for you, then 20 days of not drinking is a lot better than none.
The benefits I was hoping for from dropping the booze didn’t materialise. I didn’t sleep any better, have not been more energetic, and in general have not been feeling better. It may be that 20 days isn’t enough, but in my experience I would expect improvements within a day or two. Waking up feeling hungover because you got plastered last night is one thing. Waking up feeling hungover when you haven’t touched a drop for ages is quite another. It did reduce my reflux, but it seems that the wine is less an issue than onions and other foods.
Most interestingly, it turns out that literally none of my self-esteem is tied up with meeting arbitrary goals such as this one. I don’t feel the slightest bit like I “failed”. Which is not what I would have expected.
Here’s a question for you: having dropped one bad habit this month, has it helped you any? Do you feel better for it?

So what’s the challenge this month?

Having worked on dropping a bad habit, we’ll now work on creating a good one. Think of one thing you might benefit from, and see if you can create that habit.

Getting up a bit earlier to exercise, meditate, or write?
Eating more vegetables?
Taking up knitting?
Flossing? (Your teeth, not the Fortnite dance. C’mon people.)

Try it for a month, and see what happens.
Here’s how to do it.

start slow. If you want to create a meditation habit, start with five minutes. Not an hour. Eating something green at every meal? That could be just a slice of cucumber, to start with. No need to parboil then chargrill a head of broccoli, served with a freshly-made aioli. At least not at the beginning.
attach it to an existing routine. I get the itch to stretch when watching TV in the evening, because I’ve created that habit. It feels kind of weird to watch TV without getting down on the floor and going through my stretches.
this should be a positive thing. It’s hard to get up early for something miserable, but to practice your hobby? To read a novel? To luxuriate in a meditation? To play with swords? Looking forward to the activity makes it easier to schedule and easier to actually do it.
exploit constraints. I floss regularly, because I eat foods like oranges and chorizo (no, not together, you animal) which get stuck in my teeth. I have to floss to get rid of the annoyingly stuck bits. While I’m there, I might as well do my whole mouth. Make the thing you want to do that bit easier to start (leave your knitting lying around, so you can pick it up any time), or put it in the way of things that you want to avoid. Do you have to move your meditation cushion to get to the TV remote?

One word of warning: if your new habit requires getting up earlier to put first things first, as I would highly recommend, then it must be accompanied by going to bed that much earlier.

HEAR ME, PEOPLE: do not sacrifice your sleep for anything.

(OK, babies get a pass. If your child needs you, wake up for her. Everyone else, including you and your late-night gaming habit? No.) Sorry to get all shouty at you, but this is really important.

Me, I'm going for a fairly ambitious goal: meditation and progress on one creative project before checking any kind of social media, messages, emails, anything. Five days a week. So, I will get up, do whatever limbering I need to do to be able to sit or lie comfortably, meditate for at least 20 minutes, then get started on (probably) writing the book I'm currently working on. Let's see how this goes… I'll report back in a month, and issue the challenge for March. (There's a giant clue regarding March's challenge in this post.)

So, what new habit will you create this month?

Coaching Coaches, Teaching Teachers

6th January, 2021
By Guy Windsor
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Learning Swordsmanship

It can be a lonely business running classes or even a whole club, taking responsibility for everyone’s safety, helping students to progress down the path towards mastery of the Art of Arms. My friends and I started a historical fencing club in 1994 to attract people to fight with, and we soon realised that the interested folk showing up would have to be taught how to fence before we could fight them. So I slipped into teaching swordsmanship by accident and by default. Then I found out I loved doing it.

I’ve been teaching professionally since 2001. Finding applicable pedagogical training was very difficult, but with the help of colleagues in other arts, and travelling to events to meet colleagues in my own arts, I managed to improve as a teacher, and become part of a community of like-minded instructors to bounce ideas off and get support from.

I think many folk start out teaching in much the same way, and it can be extremely difficult. You need to be able to continue your own training, and develop your teaching skills, and keep the classes running. I’ve started a monthly Q+A and support group session for us to get together and help each other. The sessions will be structured: I’ll kick things off with a question for the group, we’ll break out into small groups to discuss the question, and come back for group discussion. Then I’ll open the floor to the attendees to ask me, or the group, any question they like.

We do this for our students- they deserve the best instructor they can get. While this is intended for instructors, and we will stay at least generally on topic, it is absolutely appropriate for people just thinking about starting to teach, as well as those of us with decades of experience, and everything in between. I hope you can join us.

Training Instructors Q+A, Saturday January 9th at 3pm UK time. Sessions will last about 90 minutes.

Tickets are £12, £6, or free. https://bookwhen.com/swordschool

I know this time doesn’t work for everyone, so if you’re interested but can’t make it then, I’ll run one at any time between 8am and 8pm UK time, any day of the week, if you can find five other people to commit to coming.

See you there!

Happy New Year! Your challenge for January 2021

1st January, 2021
By Guy Windsor
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Challenge of the Month, Reflections

Happy New Year!

Though really, this is just an arbitrary calendar change. Years, solstices and equinoxes are real, observable, astronomical events. But this dating system is entirely human and arbitrary. And wouldn’t it make much more sense to date the New Year from the Spring Equinox? But I digress…

I don’t do resolutions. They don’t usually work, and this is entirely the wrong time of year to be making serious changes, especially if you live in the Northern hemisphere. Back when I was a member of a gym, I just did not go for the first couple of weeks in January, because it would be chockablock with enthusiastic unfit people, almost all of whom would quit within the week. Which is a shame, really, but it’s an inevitable outcome of the resolutions model.

So what does work?

Good habits and good people.

A rising tide lifts all boats (though may sink the boatless), and I am blessed by the enthusiastic and engaged students I interact with. If there is one key element to my success as an instructor, it has to be the calibre of the students I get to work with. Most of the time I spend interacting with students these days is through my zoom classes, through my mailing list (there’s a link to join below this post, if you’re not already on there), and most recently through a Discord server that I set up for the students at SwordSchoolOnline.Com (If you’d like to join us, and you’ve enrolled in any of the paid online courses, please drop me an email and I’ll send you the link.)

One of the students on the Discord server suggested we do a monthly “challenge”, where I set a challenge for students to have a go at. Of course I have to lead by example, right?

We started this in November, and my first challenge was to post a video or photo of yourself working outside your comfort zone. I had just started playing with GMB Fitness online courses, and so posted this:

December’s challenge was to add at least one rep to your maximum in any exercise: I did push-ups, and went from a rather pathetic start to a much more satisfactory maximum set. I won’t share the numbers here, because they are not relevant. Depending on your own experience of push-ups you’d be either intimidated or decidedly unimpressed (probably the latter!).

The challenge this month, for the start of 2021, is different.

We all have habits that do not serve our long term goals. They vary hugely from person to person, and can range from negative self-talk to smoking cigarettes, with almost infinite variety in between.

So here’s the challenge. This month, drop one of those habits. Just for the month. You can take it up again later if you want to.

The habit I’m dropping for the month is drinking alcohol. I love drinking. Especially wine. But I tend to drink more than I should, and more often. It’s bad for my reflux, and bad for my sleep. Cutting down would make sense, but it’s really hard to quantify and stay on top of. So for the whole month of January, I won’t touch a drop.

That should help my sleep, at least. And my finances. And my reflux. I’ve been meaning to take a month off the sauce for ages, but haven’t done so for at least two years! So it’s about time.

Drinking alcohol is a simple, clear, easy-to-keep-track-of habit to break. There is no fudging it- I either consume an alcoholic beverage, or I do not. But others are much more elusive, such as negative self-talk. And the essence of a habit is you can unconsciously start doing the thing- it’s become an unconscious response. The loop goes like this: stimulus-habitual response-reward. The habit can be broken at any of those three points, and it’s worth taking some time to be very clear about what those three points are for the habit in question.

You can avoid the stimulus.
You can change the response to the stimulus.
You can change the reward.

Changing the stimulus usually requires changing your environment. The old adage for alcoholics is “if you don’t want to slip, don’t go where it’s slippery”. So, if you normally drink in bars, don’t go to bars. Meet your friends somewhere else instead! Or if you usually smoke when you have a coffee, switch to tea. (Unless of course coffee is an addiction, which you might need to break before you quit smoking).

Changing the response is basically learning a new habit that gets you the same dopamine hit. The stimulus for me to have a drink is usually making dinner. Changing that would be very hard, somebody has to feed the kids! So I’ll need to do something else instead, to get the ‘reward’ which is actually the feeling of “I’m done for the day”. Having a drink is for me a signal that it’s ok to switch off. So I need to find something else.

Negative self talk is much harder to break at the point of stimulus, and at the point of response. But it’s possible to change the reward to something negative. One trick that works for some people is having a rubber band around your wrist, and when you catch yourself in negative self-talk, snap the band, which stings. If done consistently over time, this can lead your brain away from the behaviour that causes the sting (brains are weird- you’d think you’d just stop snapping the band, but it’s much easier to control that active choice than it is to control an unconscious response).

It is much easier to change a habit if you have social support for the change (good people, remember?). I’ve let my wife and kids know I’m off the juice for January, so they will expect me not to drink. Do what you can to recruit some social support. This can be positive, such as joining a group that’s centreed around quitting that habit, or negative, where you set up some consequences for failure. One classic is to write a cheque for a painful amount of money, to an organisation you despise. Then give the cheque to a friend who will send it to that organisation if you fall off the wagon. Personally I don’t like this approach, seeing failure as a one-time lapse and you’re done. I prefer to think of failure as a normal part of the process. If you could quit completely cold turkey with no lapses, you’re either extraordinarily motivated, or the habit wasn’t that strong.

Expect that it may occur (snap that band if you have to), and get right back on the wagon again. No negativity, no judgement. It’s like when meditating, and you’re supposed to be focussed on your breath. When your mind wanders notice that it has done so, and bring it gently back. The practice is not focussing on your breath. The practice is returning your attention after it has wandered. Same with this challenge.

I'll post this challenge in the Discord, and will be happy to discuss it there. Especially for habit-changing, getting the support of a community is incredibly helpful. See you there!

2020 review

29th December, 2020
By Guy Windsor
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Reflections

What a year. It’s been great for some people, disastrous for others, and overall I’ve been very lucky. So what went well, and what went badly? I’ve had a look at the most important decisions I’ve made that have affected how I’ve managed to stay afloat, and they boil down to getting rid of debt, starting the podcast, starting teaching online, and looking after my health. Let's start with the money.

Money

About seven years ago, when I turned 40, I realised in my bones that I wouldn’t be able to make a living teaching in person forever. Sooner or later my body would fail, and my income was entirely dependent on my showing up and teaching classes, so poor health would be accompanied by destitution. Not a good combo. My approach to the problem was quite simple:

1. Create scalable assets. In other words, things that I could make once, and sell many times, such as books, and eventually online courses (the first of which went live in July 2016). This ensures that I have some passive income.

2. Reduce debt as far as possible. At the time I had mortgages out on both my apartment and my salle. I have always paid them off a bit faster than the bank required, and I took every opportunity to reduce the load. For example, consolidating several smaller mortgages into one with a lower interest rate. And stopping repayments on the ones with the lowest rates, putting all the repayment money into the one with the highest interest rate, so paying that off faster. The bank employee was startled by my proposal, as she’d never seen it before, but she couldn’t argue with the maths!

3. Find ways to live a full life on a low income. That’s actually not hard. Most of the things many people seem to think are essential expenses simply are not.

By 2016 there was enough money coming in from my books and from renting the salle to the Helsinki branch of my school that I was no longer dependent on teaching in person to make ends meet. It took about five years to get there. And by 2019, I had sold the apartment in Helsinki, paid off all the mortgages, and we were debt-free. Hallelujah. I cannot overstate what a relief it is to not owe money to anyone. I’d had mortgages of one sort or another for twenty years by the time the last was paid off.

So my main sources of income going in to 2020 were:

1) Online course sales

2) Book sales

3) Rent on the Salle

4) Teaching in person

The coronavirus killed #4: I haven’t done an in-person seminar since 2019. But, I have managed to create a trickle of income from teaching online classes, such as the Meditation Course in June, my morning Trainalongs, and some short seminars at the weekends. So far it’s brought in about a third of what I’d normally make from my travels.

Rent on the Salle: no classes= no income for the Association that rents it, so I dropped the rent in April down to just covering the service charges on the building. Thank the goddess I paid off the mortgage last year. So far I’m down about €13,000 in lost income. That’s very much not a trivial sum, but we can get by like this for as long as necessary. I will not let the virus kill my Salle.

Book sales have been ok; I’ve had to spend more money than I’d like on advertising, but overall it’s about the same as 2019.

Online course sales have saved us. By serendipity alone, I happened to create an online course on Solo Training last year, which happened to be exactly what a lot of sword people needed this year. A strong candidate for my best idea all 2020 was to drop the price by 96% to $20. I did not expect hundreds of people to take me up on the offer, but they did, which meant that I didn’t have any immediate money worries. The relaunch with extra content in September also went pretty well. About 5% of the new students on the course took me up on the offer to get in for free. This cost me nothing: they weren’t going to buy it at any price, because they had no spare money. But this way they get to train, and that will help keep them mentally and physically healthy, which improves their chances to get back on their financial feet, at which point they might buy something.

The net effect is that financially we are about even. Down a bit, perhaps, but with no debts to service that’s liveable. Making the decision to prepare for being unable to teach due to ill health fortuitously also worked when I was unable to teach because of other people’s ill health. Financial security is a massively reassuring. I’d be remiss not to mention Joanna Penn here, because I’ve learned a lot from her about how to create and sell scalable assets. Here’s a blog post I wrote about it, years ago: Things I’ve achieved thanks to Joanna Penn.

I’ve also found the Mr Money Mustache blog helpful. I don’t go to those extremes, but his core idea of creating passive income that covers your living costs, and working both ends of that equation (increasing passive income and reducing living costs) has been really useful.

The Sword Guy podcast

Another strong candidate for best idea of 2020 has been starting my podcast. I’m not exactly sure how that came about, but one day I found myself having signed up to the necessary services (I’m using podbean.com for hosting, and doing most of my recordings over zencastr.com), and getting it done. I decided not to launch until I had six episodes in the bag. We’re now at episode 25, so nearly 6 months of weekly shows, and I’ve got the next 13 recorded already.

By November I was getting thoroughly overwhelmed by the relentlessness of a weekly schedule (I totally understand why many shows stop after a few erratic months!), so I hired an assistant to take up the administrative slack. Katie has been a godsend, creating the transcriptions, uploading everything, writing the shownotes, and generally making sure that the ball doesn’t get dropped. It’s thanks to the online course sales that I can actually afford to pay her.

I think I’m getting better at the interviewing side of things, but the technical issues around sound recording have been problematic. The quality of the sound is not up to the standard of the shows I usually listen to, which is an interesting evidence for growth: six months ago I couldn’t tell the difference. But the really great thing about the show for me personally has been the cast-iron excuse to get in touch with some old friends, and to reach out to people I have never met, and end up making new friends. It’s been a wonderful experience all round. It also tipped the scales in favour of starting a Patreon account, to help cover the costs of producing the show (which is still actually a net financial negative, but money very well spent given the benefits).

Speaking of friends, I really miss them. I hadn’t fully realised how much of my social life actually happens when I travel. I’m a hugger, and not getting to physically touch the people I care about has been really hard. It doesn’t help that most of my close friends live in other countries. I’d see them when I travelled to teach. But over the course of this year I’ve actually spent more time with a few of my friends than in any previous year. Fortunately I much prefer one-on-one conversations: I don’t need the buzz of a group to feel connected (I’m fundamentally more of an introvert, yet another thing to be grateful for this year). I’ve been getting together regularly for social catch-ups and chats, sometimes playing board games over the web, with several of my friends, and even doing crosswords with my Mum online. In many ways, I’ve been more connected with some of my friends than ever before. This zoom thing is no substitute for in-person meeting, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing. Two of my friends have gone through the kind of crises where I’d probably get on a plane to go look after them in normal circumstances, but being available to them through the net has been a lifesaver (for me at least).

Creating a discord server (which is like a social media group, but way better) has also been awesome- having my students interacting with each other, though they may be continents apart, is wonderful to watch and take part in. If you've bought any of my online courses, you're eligible to join and should already have had an invitation by email. If that didn't happen, just drop me a line and I'll sort it out for you.

Health, physical and mental.

My third candidate for best idea for 2020 would be my morning Trainalong sessions. I have normally done some training first thing in the mornings, right after getting up. Breathing, calisthenics, stretching, that kind of thing. As lockdown ground on, I was getting slacker and slacker about it. One morning I did a couple of squats and a push-up, and called that done. I realised that this was not likely to lead me to my desired long-term outcomes, and wondered what the hell I could do to fix it. What began as a “get Guy out of bed in the morning” has become one of my favourite parts of the week. Monday Wednesday and Friday mornings from 8.30-9.30am UK time, I lead a conditioning session that’s fun and effective. The half-dozen or so regulars have coalesced into a group that even get together at other times to train when I’m not there! Having students show up makes it super-easy for me to be awake, engaged, and actually train. New members are always welcome, if you’d like to join us. The exercise is great for my physical health- I’m way fitter now than I was in June. But actually the short chats we have at the end of the session are really good for my general mental well-being too.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my shed this year. Easily enough to have written another book- but I haven’t had the spoons for it. While my 2020 has been way easier than many people’s, it has nonetheless been pretty rough in the mental health department, and spending time woodworking in my shed is both de-stressing, and occasionally produces something pretty. I did get one book out this year:

From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice was ready to go to press by February, so I just had to jump through the last few hoops to get it out. And just in time for the end of the year, the audiobook version of The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts has been recorded and uploaded to Findaway- it will percolate through to the various audiobook retailers over the next couple of weeks, and of course I’ll let everyone know as soon as its available.

The biggest mental problem caused by the plague is a sense of helplessness, which leads to all sorts of negative outcomes. The single most effective way to avoid helplessness is helpfulness. So I’ve spent as much time and energy as I have available in trying to help my people. Making training available free (literally every class and online course I’ve produced this year has been free to anyone that asks for it). Thinking up blog posts that might make sword people stuck at home unable to train feel a bit more empowered, a bit more sword-y. Making time for my friends who are in difficulties (which is lots of them). I’ve also given more to charity this year than usual. I’m using LendWithCare.com to make small loans (and I mean tiny- usually between £20 and £50) to small businesses in places like Peru and Bangladesh, which seems to have a bigger impact than simply giving the money away. Most of the money comes back eventually, to be immediately turned round and lent out to someone else. It’s really satisfying.

A great deal of the successes of this year are down to luck. We happened to be able to pay off the mortgages last year. I happened to have just the right online course already up and running when lockdown hit. Nobody in my immediate family has been killed by the virus. But some of it is down to processes and decisions: I did decide to become independent of my in-person teaching. I did decide to start the podcast, start the trainalongs, and to make my Solo course as accessible as possible. I guess it’s like everything: luck matters a lot, but luck favours the prepared and the disciplined. In lieu of internal self-discipline, I have the external constraints of my students and my mission. You can’t do anything about your luck, but there is much that remains within your control.

Viruses can’t tell time, and are unaware that an arbitrary human count has clicked over one more notch. So there is no immediate likelihood of everything suddenly magically getting back to normal just because it’s 2021. But I am hugely optimistic. There are vaccines coming online. Plagues have always passed before- even those that are much more fatal than the ‘rona. We are the most resilient, adaptable, and resourceful species this planet has ever seen: it may take some time, but we’ve got this.

I’ve written several posts on lockdown survival, which are here.

You have one job. Some thoughts on how to do it.

Thoughts on “you lack discipline”

Bored? Make Jam.

Information Hygiene

Lockdown progress report

And I’ll be posting twice on January 1^st: the next episode of The Sword Guy, and the beginning of a series of monthly challenges for 2021… See you there!

How to get the most out of a too-advanced class

15th December, 2020
By Guy Windsor
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Class Reports, Learning Swordsmanship

I am often asked by students if they are “ready” for a class with me. It's a common insecurity- nobody wants to feel that they are holding the class back, or be overwhelmed by a fire-hose of information. I actively seek out opportunities to be a beginner, partly so that I can better understand and empathise with the beginners who train with me. One such opportunity occurred earlier this year. I started bouldering (indoor climbing on low routes, no ropes) a couple of years ago, and on January 20^th 2020 took a class with Neil Gresham, at my club, Avid, in Ipswich. It was a great example of being in a class way over my head. But it has been really useful, and while the specific insights regarding bouldering are probably not useful to you, the process of extracting the most value out of a class that is way beyond your current level will be.

There were 10 students, varying in experience from dazzlingly good (from my perspective), to my friend Katie and I (one year of about once a week). One person in the class had been climbing for only two months but was elegantly smashing routes I can’t do (yet), so Katie and I were definitely bottom of the class. Which is the best place to be- literally everywhere you look you can see someone more experienced doing something interesting. You should never give up the opportunity to take a class with a great instructor just because you’re “not experienced enough”. Sure, your brain may fill up in the first ten minutes, but that’s ok, there are ways of capturing the rest of the class for future reference. I’ve been working on the insights from this climbing class for nearly a year now. Money very well spent! But that's only possible because I captured the class outside my brain, and then refiled it.

In short, the process is this:

1) expect to be out of your depth, and to stop taking in new information early in the class

2) take detailed notes (I use pen and paper with stick-man sketches, but any system that works for you by definition works)

3) write up your notes as soon as possible after the seminar. Ideally on the same day. Notes work to trigger memory, and the longer you leave it, the less effective the trigger will be

4) summarise the key points.

Here is my somewhat edited write-up of the seminar, with topics bolded so I can find them easily:

We began with some opening remarks, Neil introduced himself, asked a couple of questions to get the feel of the class. Then we warmed up. The instruction was to do vigorous exercise for a few minutes to get the blood pumping. Wind sprints, burpees, and running were suggested. I did all of those, plus some monkey walks.

Then Neil lead us through some basic joint rotations; shoulders (as front crawl, then reversed), hip rotations (forward-back, then side). He advised to avoid passive stretching before climbing (I agree 100%).

Then it was shoes on, and to the wall. When warming up on the easy grades, here are the rules for improving footwork:

1. No sliding your foot down the wall onto the foothold.

2. No re-placing the foot after contact with the hold.

3. Silent feet.

4. Watch your foot until after you’ve made contact with the hold.

Goal: to improve precision in footwork that will help with harder climbs.

Practice. I spent some time on a green-grey (easiest) grade. It’s surprisingly hard to be that precise, even on really easy climbs. This one approach had me thinking two things: 1) why the hell didn’t I think of that? It’s so very like how I teach swordsmanship footwork: use very basic drills to concentrate on foot placement. And 2) I’ve got my money’s worth already. Everything after this is a bonus.

Then we re-gathered, and Neil talked about arms.

Keep them extended but not locked, as much as possible.
Bent legs, straight arms.
Keep the shoulders engaged though, so you’re not hanging on your joints.

Practice: back on the easy grades. Indeed, as he said, especially at the start, it’s tempting to step up onto the footholds, pulling yourself into the wall. It’s better to hang from the handholds, bending the legs as much as necessary.

Finally, grip: we re-gathered and Neil challenged us to climb easy routes using the minimal tension in our grips. “Use the friction of your skin” to hold on.

Practice: with precise feet and straighter arms and relaxed hands.

Summary: when warming up on the wall, use these rules to encourage precision and minimal strain when climbing. This mental focus will also help transition you mentally from normal life to climbing.

This was followed by a discussion of bouldering training sessions: either volume, or intensity. Volume sessions involve a lot of easier grade climbs. Intense sessions involve working on a few very hard (for you) problems.

Techniques for overhangs:

We went to a part of the wall that overhangs, and Neil talked about how to do it. Fundamentally: left foot goes to right holds, and right foot to left holds. This allows you to reach with an extended arm. No frog-clambering (my term, not his). This did make life a lot easier, where the holds were set up to allow it.

If you have a right foot on a right hold, or vice-versa, you can “flag”: if there’s space, reach through with the other foot inside the one on the hold. If the foot on the wall is too high for that, you can flag “outside”. This has a similar body placement effect to having your left foot on a right hold, etc.

Note: “avoid a pull-ups competition”. Good advice, especially for me. I tend to rely on strong arms more than is gracefully optimal.

Volume sessions: When doing a volume session, try a pyramid approach: start easy, get harder, hardest climbs at the mid-point of the session, then ease back down. (Same idea as our pyramids: 1 pull-up, 2 push-ups, 3 squats; 2,4,6 etc. Until you max out on one (e.g. 4 pull-ups). Then back down the pyramid: 3-6-9, 2-4-6, 1-2-3.)

“Project” sessions: warm up with 10-12 easier climbs, then pick 2-3 hard problems and work on them. Not too long on any one, or you’ll get tired. Rest: rule of thumb is 1 minute rest for every hand move.

Using the circuit board (a wall with graded routes that go in a circle round the wall, for endurance training): two approaches:

1. “Strength”: pick one hard circuit and go round once. Rest, etc.

2. “Endurance”: pick an easier circuit, and do laps (e.g. 3-4). This trains you for longer climbs, such as rope work outside.

I didn’t mention in class that I find going round once on the easiest circuit to be a sufficient challenge to my endurance! But I’ll work on it, starting by just doing a few moves after the end of the first circuit, to get out of the habit of automatically stopping at the end.

“Supportive Conditioning”: for injury prevention. Assuming you’re not a gym rat (good call).

#1 most important exercise to prevent tendonitis: finger extensor training, opening the hand against resistance, e.g. using an exercise band. 3 sets of 20, 2-3 times per week. Yes this is useful but I think I should do a class on forearm maintenance for climbers. They all seem to get tendonitis! (You can find my forearm conditioning training here: go.guywindsor.net)

#2 easiest supportive conditioning: push-ups. 3 sets of 10-25, twice a week.

#3: TRX handles on straps (I’d use my gymnastics rings at home). 3 exercises shown, all knees on floor to start:

1. Push-ups

2. Pec fly, arms out to the sides at shoulder level, recover.

3. Plank, extending the arms out in front like diving into a pool, recover.

#1 stretch, after EVERY climbing session: hand flat on wall, shoulder height, fingers pointing down (extending the wrist). Extend other arm about shoulder height like in a pec fly, look out over your extended hand. Seems useful.

Other stretches recommended:

1. feet wide, knees wide, squat and push knees apart to open hips.

2. Standing, knee to chest, pull knee in to stretch hip.

Best takeaways:

1) After the usual warm-up, warming up on the wall with: precise feet, extended arms, and minimal grip.

2) Flag on overhangs.

3) Pyramid sessions.

4) Use circuits more.

5) Why have my rings been in a box in the shed for the last year?

And finally:

As you can see, that is a TON of information, way more than even the more experienced climbers will be able to remember the next day. How many sets of how many push-ups was it?
And here's the kicker. I'd accidentally left my notebook and pen at home, so I borrowed a pencil and a single envelope from the reception desk. Literally ALL of that was captured in note form, covering both sides of an ordinary envelope (about 4 inches by 9, or 10cm by 22). Notes do not have to be extensive to be useful.

The specifics I tried to capture were notable phrases (such as “avoid a pull-ups competition”), the overall pattern of the class (or I would certainly have forgotten entire sections), and as many specifics as possible (such as “finger extensor training, opening the hand against resistance, e.g. using an exercise band. 3 sets of 20, 2-3 times per week”). Then when writing out the notes, I added as much detail and experience as I could recall.

Experienced students are able to remember more than the less experienced simply because they can chunk the information, and fit it into pre-existing patterns in their heads. I didn't have the experience to chunk the information, nor the pre-existing patterns of climbing theory, terminology, and practice. But even though the class had way more information than I could possibly make use of at the time, and so way more than I'd be likely to remember, I could effectively use the class insights months later when I was ready for them, because I have a way to file them outside my brain.

This is actually better than videoing the class, because it depends on the write-up immediately afterwards. Information outside your brain is of no practical use. To be useful, it must be stored inside your brain. Having a video of the class will tend to let you believe that you have it all available, and so you'll forget to ever watch the video, and the information never breaches the world/brain barrier. But having dodgy notes on a scrap of paper that simply must be written up soon or it will become useless forces you to re-enter the information in another format, which massively improves retention. I saw and heard the class, and experienced the exercises, now I have to recall the class from notes and memory, and re-create it as text. That regurgitation process is absolutely key to getting your brain to hold onto the information.

I hope this is useful, and perhaps persuades at least one beginner to jump in the deep end and take a class above their level. Feel free to share.

Guy's Blog