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Guy's Blog

Guy frequently keeps this blog updated with thoughts, challenges, interviews and more!

Category: Learning Swordsmanship

One of my students mentioned tendonitis problems in his wrist on the Swordschool Discord server this week. It’s probably caused by holding his sword incorrectly, which forces the small stabiliser muscles to do more work than they evolved for. He is by no means the first student I’ve seen with this problem. It has been my experience that almost every sword student at any level in any style is either holding their sword incorrectly, or at the very least, there was room for improvement. This is partly due to most modern sword makers producing handles that are a bit too big, or a bit too round; and partly due to most people simply not understanding how the mechanics of sword holding is supposed to work.

In essence, your grip strength and wrist stabilisation strength should be acting as back-up systems only: the sword should stay in your hand with almost no strength being used at all, and when you strike, the force coming back from the target should be routed through the bones of your hands and wrist, and thence through your body to the ground, with no need to tighten up on impact at all.

Seriously. Not at all. 

Have a look at this video of me hitting the wall target with a rapier, and bashing the tyre with a longsword. My hand is not just relaxed, it’s actually open, to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that grip strength is not required. 

I have been banging this drum for many, many, years now (I first posted that video in 2012!), and have written this up in many places, and posted endless video content about it, and yet still the sword world has crappy sword holding skills. This is for three reasons:

1. the sword handle is too big 

2. because this is very counter-intuitive

3. and also because most people are strong enough to fake it for a while; they think it’s correct, when actually their muscles are faking it for them. Until the pain in the first joint of the thumb kicks in. Or in the elbow. Or indeed anywhere along the chain from fingertip to toes. 

So how should you hold the sword? 

That depends on what kind of sword it is, and what you want to do with it. 

Generally, the sword is either held back in the hand, like so:

Or extended in the grip, like so:

This is also how most chefs hold their kitchen knives when chopping and slicing.

There are exceptions: we do sometimes support the flat instead of the edge, like so:

The sword is usually held back in the hand when it’s also held back near the body, and extended in the hand when the sword arm is extended from the body. Some longsword folk have half-understood this concept and hold their longsword in the extended grip even when the guard is chambered (such as in posta di donna). Some swords are almost always held in the extended grip; rapiers, foils, smallswords are good examples. The basic rule still applies- the sword is supported by the bones, not tied in place by the muscles.

The extended grip does not depend on grip strength; you can perfectly well hold the sword with one finger, if it's aligned correctly, like so:

I'm not recommending fighting like this, but it's worth making sure you're not depending on grip strength by opening the thumb, forefinger, ring finger, and little finger, and seeing what happens.

One common error is to extend the wrist, rather than extend the sword in the grip. You need to be able to distinguish between at least three positions of the hand relative to the forearm. Three-knuckle, two-knuckle, and one-knuckle. The easiest way to learn the differences between them is through “Eurythmic push-ups”. You can do them on a mat if you prefer, and you don’t actually need to do the push-up bit; just getting the feeling of the different wrist positions is very helpful.

Cocking the wrist between the ‘three-knuckle’ and ‘one-knuckle’ positions instead of allowing the sword to shift in the grip between the ‘chambered’ and ‘extended’ grips is another common cause of wrist problems.

Please pay attention, this may save you a lot of pain, as well as massively improve your general sword handling.

For my Medieval friends: 

I introduce the basics of how to hold a longsword in this video borrowed from my Solo Training course

For my Renaissance friends:

This footage from a rapier seminar I taught in 2012 goes into the correct grip for the rapier in some detail; you can watch the whole thing of course, or skip to about 22 minutes in, where we get into the grip.

If you are already having wrist problems, for any reason, you may find my Arm Maintenance course useful. It’s free, and bundled in with my Human Maintenance course. 

I get asked a lot of questions about the nitty-gritty of swordsmanship mechanics, and interpreting historical sources. I recently received a very long and involved question about the mezani blows in Il Fior di Battaglia from Dustin Jones. In short, he believed that I’ve read the manuscript incorrectly, and these horizontal blows should be done with the false edge from your forehand side, and with the true edge from the backhand side. He came to this conclusion from getting stuck with a specific technique: the breaking of the thrust from the left.

This was one of those times when it’s really tempting to retreat into authority: “I’ve been doing this for 20+ years, this is how it is, shut up and stop bothering me”. I have absolutely no doubts about my interpretation of these blows and which edge comes from where in terms of the written sources, and I have tested pretty much every imaginable way of doing them, so I am 100% satisfied with my position on this. We hashed all this out in depth and detail many years ago, and have tested it with hundreds of students over the last decade-plus. 

And that’s really, really, dangerous, on two fronts. Firstly, it’s simply wrong for a teacher to answer in that way. Any student (someone who is working from my books and/or courses) is entitled to at least a considered response, explaining why I think it is the way it is. Sometimes that is something along the lines of “check pages x-y in book z”, sometimes it’s something I haven’t covered in detail elsewhere so I need to write it up. And secondly, as soon as an interpretation becomes unquestionable it becomes dogma, and the learning process grinds to an abrupt halt.

Examining your assumptions, and the parts of your interpretation that have become so ingrained they are assumptions, is an essential part of continuing to grow in the Art.

But of course, there is a limit. Having listened to their side, and explained my views in depth, my obligation ends. I have on occasion had to block a person’s email address because they behaved like a five-year old with the ‘but whys’, or insisting on a definitive answer to a question that doesn’t have one. 

Dustin’s original email included a 1,450 word explanation of his point of view, which is too much to quote in full, but referred to the mechanical difficulties he was having with the mezani as I do them, and laid out his position drawing on his reading of the Italian, and mentioning the zwerchau which indeed is a horizontal blow done with the true edge from the backhand side, false edge from the forehand side.

I wouldn’t normally read such a long question- I have been known to reply with a request for the edited highlights- but the tone of his request felt appropriate, and understanding his position did require the background he was providing.

So here is the answer I sent:

Hi Dustin,

Thanks for getting in touch. You’d be surprised how many questions I get from folk who haven’t bothered to read my books, so it’s nice to hear from someone who has.

This is a pretty long and detailed reply, so I’ll work it up into a blogpost- you’re probably not the only person out there who’s had trouble with this. Would you like to remain anonymous, or should I mention you by name?

It seems to me that you’re having mechanical difficulties with the forehand mezano, and extrapolating from that to ‘the interpretation is wrong’. Let’s start with the language issue. Let me quote you:

“When it comes to Fiore’s instruction for the colpi mezani he does say “E andamo cum lo dritto taglo de la parta dritta”. Which you interpret as “and we go with the true edge from the forehand side”, but it seems this can be interpreted as “and we go with the true edge from the right” and you could then read “E de la parte riversa andamo cum lo falso taglio” as “and from the left side we go with the false edge”.

Fiore does not explicitly say “from my” or “from your” or “from your opponents” right or left. This does kind of leave this up to interpretation.”

There I’m afraid you’re simply wrong. Dritto can mean ‘right’, of course. But ‘roverso’ does not ever mean ‘left’. It means ‘backhand’. A left-hander would strike a roverso from their right hand side. (Left hand side would be lato sinistro.) And the blow goes from you to the target. “Andare….de” means “To go…. from”. Not “to.” So you cannot reasonably interpret Fiore’s instruction as going with the true edge “to” the right side. This is standard Italian usage, and is consistent across all sources I’ve studied. Viggiani even goes off on a riff about how the forehand blow is more noble because it hits the left side of the opponent where his heart is. (Never mind his poor understanding of anatomy- the usage is consistent and clear.)

The cut to the throat after the break is a mezano simply because a sottano would get caught on the shoulder. To get to the throat, you have to cut horizontally. And the mezano is clearly illustrated as a horizontal cut to the throat. 

So the next step would be to have a look at why you’re having the trouble. You can see me doing a basic version of the breaking of the thrust from the left in this video:

You can of course flick the false edge across the throat from your right side- it works just fine. But mechanically, the true edge is stronger and more stable from that side. It’s also true that the roverso tondo described in the eighth play of the master of coda longa on horseback, done to the back of the opponent’s head, would be done with the true edge. But Fiore doesn’t call it a mezano.

I should also say that I can make perfectly good false edge cuts from left-side high guards (I’m a right-hander). And while it’s true that the zwerch is done the other way round, it’s only ever done with the hands above the head, and the sword opposing the opponent’s weapon from above, which changes the mechanics considerably.

I’ve shot a video for you of me doing the mezani from the break on both sides, and from posta di donna. You can find it here:

Please don’t share it at this stage. I made it with the blog post in mind, so it’s not addressed to you directly.

If that doesn’t sort it out for you, send me a short video, shot from the front (max 30 seconds, no talking required), of you doing the mezano the way I describe in the book, and I’ll trouble-shoot it for you.

It’s always a tricky moment when you have to point out a clear error in the student’s line of thought (in this case the translation of ‘roverso’ as ‘left’). It’s a test of their character. I’m glad to say that Dustin took it like a champ, and replied back saying that the technique is working much better now. He also mentioned that the key to making the forehand throat cut after the break from the left work properly for him was seeing how it related to the first part of the motions for the break and/or exchange from the right. I shot the video off-the-cuff, before breakfast, and threw that bit in because it just occurred to me at the time- and it turned out to be the most useful moment! You never can tell what will work for any given student.

So here are the takeaways:

1. For any interested Fiorista: “This is how Guy does mezani

2. For students who have done the reading/training/reasonable due-diligence: this is the sort of response you can reasonably expect from your teachers, and an insight into what they might actually be thinking when they do respond.

3. For teachers: beware the instinctive retreat into authority. It’s a chasm you may find it hard to climb out of.

[Update:] One reader of this post, Jukka Salmi in Finland, who has been a student of mine for many years and knows a lot more about mounted combat than I do emailed me with this comment:

I wholeheartedly agree with your interpretation on mezzani strikes, but I'd argue that even the tondo on horseback should be done with the false edge. If I recall correctly Fiore doesn't specify the edge used and a false edge cut would be more consistent with the overall mechanics regarding horizontal strikes in his system. But more importantly it has some significant advantages in said situation. With a false edge cut you can reach further and having the palm up you're not limiting the rotation of your sword arm. One can easily test how far behind them they can reach with raised arm palm down versus palm up. This makes a tangible difference when riding past one another and not stopping – a true edge cut easily falls short of the target. This can also be easily tested on a pell while walking or slowly jogging.
He raises a very good point. We have abundant examples of true-edge roverso tondo blows in the Bolognese, and it can certainly work, but Jukka's observation about measure does suggest that it's likely that this particular tondo should be done with the false edge.
You can't eat too many vegetables…

Last month’s challenge was very simple: prioritise sleep. While sleep quality varies hugely, it’s still basically the same thing for everyone: there’s good sleep, there’s bad sleep, and there’s enough sleep or not. We all know what we mean by ‘sleep well’. But what do we mean by ‘eat well’? ‘Eat well’ is incredibly varied. Eat well for what? The challenge this month is simply this: pay attention to what you eat and why.  

No area of human health is more riven with controversy and ill-feeling than discussions around what we eat. Very few people are actually rational about it, and I’m certainly not one of them. 

You can optimise your diet for many different things, and they will all look different. Here are some common priorities, in no particular order:

1. Athletic performance in your chosen field. Should sprinters eat like marathon runners? Probably not.

2. Muscle gain. All serious bodybuilders have pretty strict diets, and are often eating far more than they really want to, to persuade their bodies to store so much protein as muscle.

3. Fat loss. Probably the most common reason people pay attention to their food habits, and also an area where emotions run very high. 

4. Pleasure. Many pleasurable foods are contraindicated by other priorities. If only chocolate was disgusting…

5. Ethics. The food you choose to buy has been produced, distributed, and sold by people. All three of those steps have ethical considerations. Animal welfare is one; the environmental impact of crops like soy is another. How far the food has travelled is yet another. 

6. Longevity. This usually revolves around restricting calories, fasting, and other unpleasant practices.

7. Social connections. Many food practices have social dimensions. I have dinner with my wife and kids every day. We sit down together for it, no screens. Sometimes what we eat is affected by that priority; if we’re running late and the kids are hungry, I might make something quickly so we can eat together. Making something that is a treat for the kids usually means it’s not good for my longevity, athletic performance, or fat loss. But it’s very good for my mental health to have strong bonds with my children.

8. Convenience. How often have we eaten a less-optimal food because it was right there, instead of taking the time to make or find something better?

9. Cost. Many people can’t afford to buy enough of the higher-quality food that would be better for them. Some people just don’t prioritise food in their budget the way they prioritise other things.

The principles of nutrition are quite straightforward: eat enough of the things you need but not too much, avoid the things that are bad for you, and spend enough time without eating for your gut to rest. Given that we live in a culture of abundance we tend to classify diets by restrictions, and take the “getting enough” side of things for granted. Those restrictions are:

1. Restricting specific foods. Many cultures have a taboo food that other cultures suffer no ill effects from. Most weight-loss diets have some form of ‘don’t eat sugar’. Vegetarianism restricts all meat.

2. Restricting food quantity. You can have this much ice-cream, but no more. For most of my lifetime, most of the popular weight-loss diets have been about calorie counting, and reducing the overall quantity of food. 

3. Restricting when you can eat. Most traditional cultures have periodic fasts, and we all fast while we’re asleep. One currently popular form of this (which I actually find very useful for my body and my purposes) is the not-very-well-named “intermittent fasting”, in which you restrict food to an eating window, such as 14 hours of no food, 10 hours of food (so if you eat breakfast at 7am, you need to stop eating by 5pm). Popular versions of this include 16:8 and 20:4. 

But my own parents remember food rationing during the war. Perhaps half the people currently alive and 99% of all humans who lived before the 1950s are far more concerned with getting enough food than with being precious about when and how much they eat. There are also psychological costs to viewing food as something to be restricted, so you may prefer to think about how do you get enough of the high-quality food, rather than restricting yourself.

So what should you do?  

The Challenge this month is: examine your priorities regarding food, and make choices consistent with those priorities.

I did say that’s a challenge. It’s really, really, hard for most people.

 I would start by asking yourself what your priorities are. Are they even on my list? Then look at what you are actually doing, and decide how closely your actions match your priorities. It might be better to do that the other way round- look at what you are doing, and from there deduce your priorities.

Some priorities are mutually exclusive. Generally speaking, dietary practices associated with longevity are not associated with muscle gain, or pleasure. But most people have many conflicting priorities. So prioritise! Which do you want more? And can you balance your priorities in a practical way?

Then look at the downsides. Swordsmanship is awesome good fun: until someone loses an eye. So we wear fencing masks.  What can you do to minimise the downsides of your priorities?What are the ethical implications of your muscle-building diet? What are the longevity implications of your pleasure-focussed diet? In all things, you want to cap the downside.  Can you minimise the ethical problems of some of your choices, by choosing a different brand or supplier? Can you minimise the health problems of your pleasure-focussed diet by for instance intermittent fasting?

With your better sleep, and your ability to acquire or drop habits, you should have the internal resources you need to make whatever changes you want, for your priorities.

My only specific advice is this- leave virtue out of it. Deciding you want pleasure in your life does not make you a bad person, and deciding you’re going to cut out meat and fast every week does not make you a good one. Any extreme is self-indulgent: It is no less self-indulgent to starve yourself than it is to stuff yourself. 

If you are looking for ideas about how to proceed, then you may find my other posts on nutrition helpful:

Eat Right for Fight Night

The Myth of the One True Diet

Skittles Beat Watermelon 

How I lost 10kg in 3 weeks without effort or hunger

You can get this post as an episode of The Sword Guy podcast, here:

 

On March 17th 2001 I taught my first class as a full-time professional instructor of historical fencing, at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki. I had expected five, maybe ten people to show up, but to my astonishment and delight, the place was packed with perhaps 70. Some had driven for hundreds of kilometres to be there.

Over the twenty years since that day, my school has grown from a small club in Helsinki training in parks and school gyms, to having its own permanent salle, branches popping up all over the world, and since 2016, online classes too. The online courses have literally saved us during the pandemic, when my usual travelling to teach became impossible. In all that time, my sword people have made it possible for me to do the work I love.

Usually, we'd have a seminar and a party at the salle to celebrate. But that's out of the question, so instead I've decided to throw the doors open, and give anyone that wants it a full month of free training.

This magic link will take you to the Master Historical Swordsmanship (Access to Everything via Monthly Membership) course page, where you can sign up for a free month. https://swordschool.teachable.com/p/the-everything…

Or you can use this discount code here: SWORDSCHOOLIS20

This is valid only until March 18th. The coupon will expire then. Because birthdays don't last forever.

Feel free to share this as widely as you like, on the socialz, etc. Everyone is welcome.

Be warned though, at the end of the month the subscription will automatically start charging you, so if you want to just take the free month and then stop, you'll need to remember to cancel it. All the content is downloadable, and it is perfectly ok to sign up, download everything, and then cancel. I'm working on a few assumptions here:

1. People who can't afford the monthly fee won't pay it anyway- so they might as well have the material and train. Swords are good for you.

2. People who just want free stuff won't pay anyway- so they might as well have the material and train. Swords are good for you.

3. People who appreciate the work, and can afford to pay for it, will stay on the subscription for a while at least. Swords are good for you.

So, go forth and share, my friends.

Folk who are already enrolled should have got an email from me about a free consultation session, to make up for not being able to use the free month offer (thanks to technical stuff I don't understand). If that's you, and you haven't had the email inviting you to book a time, then please let me know and I'll send you the booking link.

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…

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.

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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?

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!

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!

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 20th 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.

  1. Keep them extended but not locked, as much as possible.
  2. Bent legs, straight arms.
  3. 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.

A very inexperienced Guy teaching class in 2001

Teaching can be daunting, especially for less experienced sword people. But the future of the Art entirely depends on people stepping up to lead classes. Eventually all the existing teachers will be dead- if we have no teachers coming up behind us, the whole glorious progress of the Art of Arms will falter and die. So it is very important that we lower the barriers to entry, making the process of becoming an experienced teacher as easy as possible to begin.

I do this by creating a very simple standard to live up to: are your students better off with you or without you? To start with, the teacher only needs to create a safe training environment for the students to practice in. That's it. You don't need to be particularly skilled, and certainly not more skilled than the students. You just have to be willing to take the responsibility of making sure the training environment exists, and is reasonably safe. Just doing that means the students are better off with you than without you. Job done.

Then when that’s comfortable, it would be nice for students to learn one thing per session that they didn’t know before. This requires you to know one thing more than they do. That may not actually be the case, in which case you need to know how to set up drills such that they can find out what they need to work on, and how to work on it.

It’s helpful to distinguish between teaching and coaching. Teaching is the process of adding breadth: showing the students something they didn’t know before (such as a new drill). Coaching is the process of adding depth: helping the students become better at doing something they already know.

It is much easier to teach than to coach, because it takes much less nuance in constructing the training environment.

A much more experienced Guy teaching a I.33 class in the Lonin loft.

The hardest thing for most teachers is to get out of the way and let students practice. This includes senior teachers handing over their classes to beginner teachers. It’s hard because you know that you could teach the class better. The students would improve faster. But put the long term benefit to the student body and to the Art ahead of the short term skill improvement in one group of students in one session. Over the long term, we need more teachers, and those same students who are getting a less perfect class today will be able to get great classes in the future, because the beginner teacher was give the chance to practice.

As you can probably tell, this is a very deep rabbit hole, and one which I have explored in depth and breadth for many years. I cover it in The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts, pages 197-231, and will be expanding my thoughts into an entire book, hopefully in the next year. In the meantime, you may enjoy my post on how to teach a basic class.

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