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Guy's Blog

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

Category: Learning Swordsmanship

We all have gaps in our knowledge and skills. To a large degree, training in any martial art is a question of discovering what you should be practising next, and then practising it. The key is discovering the gaps and filling them, before a serious opponent discovers them for you.

These gaps can be in your breadth of knowledge (such as, you don't know how to deal with a particular attack), or your skill (you know perfectly well what you should do, but you just can't do it).

Especially for less experienced students, it can be difficult to know what questions to ask, what gaps to cover next, what skills to practice. I have a process for teaching this ability to choose the right gap to my students: it is an essential part of being truly self-directed. This process is essentially theory, and so is easily adapted to online learning. It is primarily a question of spotting gaps in the breadth of your knowledge, and spotting shallowness in the depths, and having criteria for prioritising them.

This class is a short summary of my approach, followed by a more lengthy question and answer session. I’ll run the first session on this topic on Saturday December 5th at 3pm UK time. You can register for it here:  https://bookwhen.com/swordschool

The class will run for 90 minutes, and tickets are £10. Free tickets will also become available tomorrow afternoon. This class is too useful to keep behind a paywall. If you can afford to support the work please do, but if you can't, that's ok, come anyway.

See you there!

I have been teaching a lot over Zoom since the Coronavirus epidemic screwed my usual teaching schedule. The primary benefit is that people and groups who couldn’t afford to fly me out to teach them can zoom me in instead. But it comes at a cost: it is astonishingly tiring to teach through a screen. I’ve been thinking about why that would be, and have come up with the following thoughts:

1. There is much less personal interaction. The sound quality and lag times mean that you can’t talk naturally with the group. Everyone takes a turn to speak, and it is really hard to generate useful discussion. My classes are usually very interactive, but teaching online is much more like giving a presentation. It’s all on me, all the time.

2. It is very hard to read the students. So much of my job is feeling the room, adjusting what I’m teaching on the fly to take the students’ affect into account. If they are flagging a bit, I’ll ginger them up or slow things down; if they are over-challenged, I’ll ease off; if they are under-challenged I’ll up the complexity. 90% of the information I get from a class isn’t verbal. It’s the sound of their feet, or their blades, or their breathing. The pattern of movement across a group. Very very often, they say they want one thing, their bodies say something else, and the body is always right. But not online- most of that information is just not available so I’m left with the unreliable verbal communications only, and what I can see on the screen, usually a partial image on a dodgy webcam.

3. 90% of swordsmanship is learned from the person you’re crossing blades with. That can’t be done over the internet, so we’re left with the 10% of material that can be taught online. This is less true when the students have a training partner in the room with them; I can usually tell the partner what to do to create the environment the student I’m working with needs. But it’s very clunky compared to being there.

4. The computer itself is built as a distraction engine. I’m conditioned to use it to check email, check social media, play videos. It takes a small but consistent mental effort to not do that. This is a form of ego-depletion, a drip drip drain of executive function, making the whole process more tiring. My students deserve and get my undivided attention, but giving them that on a computer is much harder than in real life. To get real work done I usually turn everything internet-related off. But unplugging the internet would naturally bugger the zoom call. I’m thinking of having my zoom account on a separate profile on the computer, one with nothing else in it.

But, and it’s a huge but, it is getting easier, and I am getting better at it. At the end of every zoom class I teach, I ask for feedback on what could be done better. The students are having to think harder for longer to find things to critique, which is excellent.

You can find the current online class schedule here: https://bookwhen.com/swordschool

If you have a topic you’d like me to cover, and/or a specific time you’d like me to do it at, feel free to ask!

I've been thinking a lot about teaching over the last dozen years or so, and have put together an online course to help historical martial arts instructors teach better. You can find it here: https://swordschool.teachable.com/p/how-to-teach-historical-martial-arts-or-anything-else

Do you want to learn precise control over the sword, for enhanced speed, power, and the ability to deceive the opponent?

In this seminar we will cover some basic handling drills, then move on to the specifics of shortening the path the sword must take. Beginners require a long movement to generate speed and power, experts accomplish the same action in a much shorter path, which of course takes less time.
These skills apply to any weapon, but we will focus on the longsword, with applications from both Fiore and Liechtenauer.
The seminar will run from 7pm to 8.30pm UK time, and there will be time for questions etc built into the schedule.

I highly recommend watching the general mechanics seminar recording first:

https://vimeo.com/475021509/e974ae88fb

This seminar will take the concepts taught in the general mechanics seminar for granted, so please do watch it first.
The seminar Zoom meeting will start about 10 minutes beforehand. The class itself will start on time at 7pm, and end on time at 8.30, but I'll stay online to take questions and hang out for a while afterwards.

Please note that the time is 7pm UK, which is (for example) 5 hours ahead of EST.

You will need:

  • As much space to move in as you can reasonably manage.
  • A longsword or longsword simulator.
  • A practice partner is optional, but helpful.
  • Common sense, and a commitment to safe practice.

Reserve your place at https://bookwhen.com/swordschool

Tickets cost £10. Free tickets will become available on Thursday 19th. Lack of cash should not prevent anyone from learning.

Feel free to share this with anyone you think may want to improve their longsword skills.

The day has dawned… the newly updated Solo Training course is live, and ready. It is a huge amount of material, enough for years of training. I am offering it at half off the regular price of $600 (plus tax in Europe), for one week only. The discount is available for the one-off purchase, or you can spread the cost over ten instalments. Join us here.

As with all my courses, there is a cast-iron satisfaction guarantee- if you buy it, try it for up to 30 days, and don’t like it, then you get all your money back.

If you are currently unemployed or in difficult circumstances, email me and I will gladly send you a 90% discount code, or let you in for free. No questions asked. These are hard times for many people.

One student on the course, known as ‘The Anonymous Scandinavian’, had this to say about it:

”It has been a great pleasure for me to study as a student in the Solo Training Course. I have experience in martial arts beginning from the 1982 and I have done my share of teaching too.

To see new training methods and approaches to individual problems has been a refreshing experience! The pell-part totally blew my mind and next day I had one in my yard.

I sincerely recommend The Solo Training Course as a tool of self-improvement for both the beginners and more advanced students of Historical European Martial Arts regardless of their style or discipline.

Solo training is the secret behind all truly excellent martial artists' accomplishments. All world class sword people and martial artists spend much of their training time on solo training.

If you live miles away from the nearest fellow martial artist, don't worry, this course does not require training partners. Instead we cover everything you can reasonably do alone to improve your swordsmanship skills.

If you have regular access to a school or training partners, you can still dramatically up your game by incorporating intelligent solo training into your schedule. This course will teach you how. On this course you will learn ways of developing your mind, your body, and your technical skills, no matter what your starting point is. From absolute beginner to senior martial artist, we have you covered.

The Solo Training course includes these standalone courses:

  • Meditation for Martial Artists This course covers four different kinds of meditation, aimed at improving your state of mind and making you a better martial artist.
  • Fundamentals: Breathing This course will teach you how to breathe properly, and how to develop anaerobic and aerobic fitness without injuring yourself.
  • Fundamentals: Footwork This course will teach you how to move like a martial artist, whatever style you wish to practice.
  • Recreating Historical Swordsmanship from Historical Sources This course will teach you how to study the sources and create useful training syllabi from them. Most of such work can indeed be done alone.

Plus:

Jessica Finley (author of the book Medieval Wrestling) will teach you solo wrestling training.

Gindi Wauchope (professional historical swordsmanship teacher from Melbourne, Australia) will teach you Bolognese swordsmanship, with the sidesword, sword and buckler, and the two-handed sword.

I will teach you to train alone with

  • The Longsword
  • The Rapier
  • The Smallsword
  • The Spear
  • I.33 style Sword and Buckler
  • Sharp Swords and Cutting practice

As well as give you instruction on:

  • How to build a pell and a wall target
  • How to create handling drills for any weapon
  • Solo training drills for a range of weapons (with more being added over time)
  • Stick handling drills to improve strength and weapons control
  • Instruction on how to create a daily practice, and to train for longer term goals

Sometimes all this choice can be overwhelming, so there are over 30 trainalong workout routines lead by me, each about 40 minutes long, and requiring very little space or equipment. Just hit play and join in!

The breadth and depth of this course is spectacular, providing years of training material.

As with all Swordschool Online courses, you are welcome to try it for 30 days, and request a refund if it doesn’t do it for you. You are always welcome to email me with questions, and send me video clips of anything you may want help. Despite the name of this course, you are NOT ALONE. Over 900 students have taken this course so far: join them!

Chris Kerr, in Canada, says this about it:

There are a lot of reasons why we train solo: there are no martial arts groups in our area; we’re starting the martial arts group in our area but have to learn first; we’re on vacation; we’re in another country with different traditions. I’ve been all of these at various points.

This course is excellent. Guy Windsor is engaged and responsive: you aren’t just buying a series of YouTube videos here. With his years of experience and his focus on and dedication (and interaction) with his students, this is a course to take seriously – and it’s pretty much unique, so get it while you can!

You can find the course here. The discount ends on September 27th, so don’t miss it!

Please feel free to share this with anyone you think may be interested.

Meditation is a crucially important practice for martial artists. It enables you to gain control over your state of mind, your level of arousal, and above all teaches you to be able to direct your attention. I have been teaching meditation in one form or another for many years, but never before over the internet. I began by running a live class over Zoom for six weeks, then took the insights from that and created a complete online course. Interested?

In this course I will teach you four different types of meditation, beginning with a simple awareness of breathing, then the body scan, using mantras, and moving meditation. This will enable you to make informed choices about what kind of meditation you want to include into your daily life.

Awareness of breathing meditation is the foundation practice, in which you learn to pay non-judgemental attention to your breathing, and to return your attention to the breath when it wanders. This improves your ability to direct your attention.

Body Scan meditation is the practice of paying attention to one part of the body at a time, moving through the whole body, noticing what is going on without interference. This is helpful for many reasons, not least it can make you more aware of the side-effects of our other training.

Mantra meditation is the practice of using a short phrase, repeated over and over. This can be a way to enter a meditative state, and also serve as positive self-talk leading to better outcomes.

Moving meditation is the practice of moving mindfully. It can be extremely helpful for learning new techniques, as well as for smoothing out and improving any kind of movement. The class includes moving meditation while seated, for students who are unable to stand.

The course includes some very short meditations (the shortest takes only six breaths), which are useful on their own and can plant a seed that may grow into a solid practice habit.

The course is organised into six weeks of practice (which may take longer- there is no rush- but should not be compressed into a shorter timeframe unless you are already quite experienced). Week 1 is for Awareness of Breathing; week 2 for Body Scan, week 3 is for consolidating our practice so far; week 4 is for introducing mantras, week 5 for introducing movement, and week 6 for consolidation and revision. At the end of the six weeks you will have an informed base from which to create your own meditation practice, suited to your mind, your body, and your needs. Once you have bought the course you own it outright, so you can keep using the content forever: six weeks is just the minimum normal time to work through the whole course. All of the content is available straight away, so you can survey it all before you begin, if you like.

Meditation is a very subjective practice, and its effectiveness can only be judged by the practitioner. If you practice for at least ten minutes a session, five sessions a week, for two weeks, you should experience an improvement in your state of mind. If you have done the practice and are getting no results, then I invite you to apply for a refund, no questions asked, and no offence taken. I do not expect this course to work for every mind, but there is good reason to believe it will be helpful to many minds.

You can find the course here: https://swordschool.teachable.com/p/meditation

This raises the thorny problem of what and how to charge for it. On the one hand, meditation is too useful, especially to people in stressful situations (such as, oh I don’t know, a global pandemic), to keep it behind a paywall. On the other hand, I have to feed and clothe my children, so I need people to actually pay for the things I produce. Here’s my current solution:

1)  I have put the first section of the course in the free Body Maintenance course. This way everyone can get started, regardless of income. Go, meditate, it’s good for you.

2) I will also be adding the complete meditation course to the Solo Training course curriculum in a month or so. Anyone who has bought the Solo Training course (which can still be had at a 95% discount (look for the Corona price), or free if you email me and ask for the code) will get full access to the meditation course then. 

3) It will also be added to the Mastering the Art of Arms subscription plan (which gives access to every course I have, for a monthly fee) in due course.

4) In the meantime, if you’d like to buy the course, and have the funds to do so, please do! It’s only $129 (plus tax if applicable) payable as one lump or as 6 monthly payments of $21.50 (plus tax), and comes with the usual 30 days money-back guarantee. You can find the course here: https://swordschool.teachable.com/p/meditation

See you on the course!

Hello.

I’m having trouble making sure I hit all the pain points in my own training. I have a simply enormous variety of exercises and practices that I should be keeping up with. Such as:

Meditation: Awareness of Breathing, Body Scan, Mantra, Movement.

Breathing exercises: Wim Hof method, standing qigong, the Crane, 9 breaths, the Health QiGong form.

Bodyweight exercises: push-ups (many kinds), pull-ups, plank/killer plank, squats (many kinds), quadruped movement.

Leg technique: kicks (front, round, side, back, hook, stomp, crescent inside, crescent outside), leg swings. Footwork drills (accressere discrescere, 4 guards, rapier footwork form, smallsword footwork and lunges etc. etc.) 7-way hips.

Weights: Kettlebells: overhead press, Turkish Get-Up. Small dumbbells: turns, rolls, wings. Clubs: figure 8s, cutty-cutty, krump-schiel-zwerch, squats. Long stick: figure 8s, static catch, twisting catch, feed-through, prima-quarta extensions, play. Short stick: shoulder mobilisation routine, shoulder stretches.

Stretches/ flexibility training: Hamstrings, single leg extension, back arch, forward bend, side bend, twists left and right, four-way wrists, shoulders.

Skills practice:

Pell: sword and buckler, longsword, rapier, sabre, sidesword

Point control: sword and buckler, longsword, rapier, sabre, sidesword, smallsword

Handling drills: sword and buckler, longsword, rapier, sabre, sidesword, smallsword, long stick/spear.

Forms: Longsword, Rapier, Sword and Buckler, T’ai Chi, Health qg.

Massage: knees-feet; elbows-hands

(All of these except the meditation are included in depth on the Solo Training Course. I’m currently working on a standalone meditation course based on a six-week series of classes that is just finishing up.)

There are lots of ways to categorise these activities. Some are very much therapeutic (such as the forearm turns, rolls, and wings with small weights, which are part of my tendonitis prevention routines), others are more about developing or maintaining overall strength and fitness. Massage is only remedial, some skills training is also conditioning (such as kicks), some don’t seem to fit in a simple box. This makes organising them into a clear system hard.

My usual approach is to simply do what my body feels is necessary. My body is very good at telling me what it needs now, but not so good at predicting what it will wish it had done in five years’ time. I need to take a more deliberate approach. This may mean dropping some training altogether- as a deliberate choice, rather than an accidental ‘oh, I haven’t done that in two years’ realisation, and doubling down on the things that work. 

The overall goal is to be fit enough and skilled enough to do my job properly now, and sensible enough to be still able to do my job properly when I’m 70 or 80 (because why retire? From swords? Really?). Most of my exercises are either sword-skill specific, or establishing the necessary ranges of motion under load (so, strength/flexibility combinations), or about creating a state of mind, or deliberately adjusting my metabolism.

I probably could develop a simplified routine that hits all the bases, but I’d get bored of it quite quickly, and it would inevitably become less effective as my body adapted to it. And I’d lose a lot of the fun stuff. As it stands, a normal session will include some breathing, some conditioning, some skills, and some remedial work. I usually do the meditation separately, and the flexibility stretches also separately, at night.

I control my weight through diet (following the principle that you can’t outrun your mouth), so weight loss/gain/control is not a consideration.

I know from experience that writing out a training program for a weekly or monthly routine will be an excellent theoretical exercise but I won’t stick to it for more than maybe a couple of days unless I’m doing it with a group of people. So one option would be to lay out say a month’s worth of training sessions and publish it as a class program, recruit students onto the course, and then I’d have to stick to it.

Another option would be to just keep all my toys handy, and play with the ones I feel like every day. That’s pretty much what I’ve done in the past, and especially with the help of the regular Monday, Wednesday, and Friday exercise sessions, it works quite well but not perfectly. If you'd like to join in you can find the sessions here.

The Zoom recordings (when I remember to hit the button) are uploaded on the Solo Course. You can see today's session on my vimeo channel here:

Friends, readers, and students, lend me your brains. What should I do to bring order to this galaxy?

And while you're here, let me invite you to the best party this weekend: my AMA video hangout with Jess Finley on Sunday. Join us!

Well, anything within reason…

I’ll be going live on Reddit this evening at 10pm UK time, which is currently UTC +1, on the “swords” subreddit, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SWORDS/

(note, not the WMA subreddit that I mentioned in my last email, sorry). I'll be on for an hour, and typing as fast as I can!

The first episode of the podcast https://theswordguy.podbean.com has been well received, thanks to everyone who dropped me a line to let me know. Some have questions for my illustrious guest, so I thought we should get together for a chat…

Jess and I are doing an online pub night AMA (or rather, A us A) over Zoom at 10pm UTC+1 (that’s 4pm in Kansas) on Sunday July 12th. This is a ticket-only event, and tickets are strictly limited. There are some at £12 (buy us both a drink), some at £6 (buy us a drink), some at £3 (buy us a cup of tea), and some are free. Please leave the free tickets for people who genuinely can’t afford unnecessary expenses at the moment, or are coming in from a country with a terrible exchange rate.

We will start with hellos, and kick off by answering questions that ticket-holders send in. About 20 minutes in we will split up into breakout rooms for a short while, so you can chat with fellow sword people. Then Jess and I will come back together for more questions.

The event is scheduled for one hour, but it’s very unlikely we’ll stick to that. Once we get going it’s hard to stop!

The event will be recorded (assuming it all works as it should), and attendees will get access to the recording

You can find the event here: https://bookwhen.com/swordschool#focus=ev-smtk-20200712220000

See you there!

There is a lot going on in the House of Windsor.

The Sword Guy podcast is live, episode one with Jess Finley is up here. It will trickle through to the normal platforms (such as Apple’s itunes etc.) in due course. The second episode will go live on Friday.

I’ve got another 7 episodes in the bag, and have three more interviews set up for this week alone, so it looks like the first season will be at least 12 episodes long.

Jess and I will also be doing a webinar AMA soon, for follow-up questions you may have from the podcast. We’re aiming for some time around 9pm GMT (that’s 4pm in Kansas, 10pm in the UK at the moment) on the weekend of July 11-12, but I’ll keep you posted.

I am running another AMA on Reddit on Wednesday evening (July 1st) at 10pm UK time, 5pm Eastern Standard. The last one went really well, so I thought I’d do another. I think it’ll be on the wma subreddit, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/wma/

I’ll send out a reminder with the exact details on Wednesday.

My morning training sessions are going swimmingly. If you’re free at 8.15am UK time (currently BST) then do join us! You can book in here.

I’m recording them and uploading them to the Solo Training course so you can do them any time. I occasionally forget to hit the record button, so the only way to be sure not to miss one (and to ask for specific exercises or help with training problems) is to join us live.

Here’s one from last week:

I’ll be on BBC Radio Devon tomorrow at 12.30 BST, being interviewed about the solo course.

And I’m charging ahead with a new book idea, about how sword training applies to real life decision-making. The draft is forming before my very eyes…

I've been on local radio in the UK a few times in the past week.

Friday 19th June:

BBC Radio Hereford and Worcester, with Malcolm Boyden: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08fx649 Interview starts about 8 minutes in.

BBC Leicester, with Martin Ballard: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08fx8h7 Interview starts about 3 hours 22 minutes in.

Monday June 22nd:

BBC Somerset with Simon Parkin: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08gng7b Interview starts about 3 hours 16 minutes in.

Thursday June 25th:

BBC Radio Suffolk with Stephen Foster: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08gnq1z interview starts about 1 hour 37min in.

Tuesday June 30th:

BBC Radio Devon with David Fitzgerald: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08h0nn7 Interview starts about 2 hours 34 minutes in.

These links expire four weeks from the date of the interview.

It's quite scary going on the radio, for no good reason- it's not as if the presenter is trying to kill you! But it was a great opportunity to practice fear control in a safe setting 🙂

I was also interviewed for the East Anglian Daily Times, the article came out on Wednesday July 1st, a nice two-page spread:

And you can find the article online here: https://www.eadt.co.uk/sport/ipswich-swordsman-teaches-sword-lessons-via-zoom-1-6727131

 

 

What's Guy doing here?

One of the reasons I teach is that I need my students to train for. I literally can’t be bothered to learn anything I’m unlikely to pass on, and I’m not actually particularly interested in my own level of fitness, sword skill, etc. I train to remain able to do my job, which is teaching, and to set a good example to my students. Yes, I love swords, and being good at using them, but mostly because of the effect that has on my students.

Thanks to Corona, all my seminars are cancelled, and I can’t go anywhere. There was a time (a very long time) in which even if I didn’t get round to much personal training, I’d be in the salle for 12+ hours a week, and leading a bunch of warm-up sessions in that time. And even when that time of my life passed, I’d be travelling around teaching seminars, and needed to stay fit to do that properly.

In lockdown I have been trying to keep up a basic level of fitness, but the sad fact is I’d rather drink too much wine and sleep it off. So I have decided to create some positive constraints. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 8.15am UK time, and for the foreseeable future, I’ll be doing my morning training *in public*, leading whoever shows up through my usual routines. Sessions will be fairly gentle, and emphasise getting your body ready for the day. Expect some breathing exercises, some range of motion exercises, some strength training, and lots of joint care. Having even just one student there means I can’t skip it. Please note I won’t be doing technical sword training in these sessions, at least to start with.

This is not a class as such- you won't be taught how to do the exercises in any detail (you can find instruction at https://swordschool.teachable.com/p/solo-training), and there will not be time for questions etc during the session, but I will be talking you through what I’m doing, highlighting key safety issues, and so on, just as I do when leading a warm-up in class. Eventually, I expect to be taking requests from the regular attendees, and it may evolve into a more formal class. But I’m very much in favour of starting small, and creating better habits.

This project will do the following things:

1) guarantee that I actually get some physical conditioning training done

2) help anyone that wants it to do the same

Regarding equipment, I’ll use any or all of the following:

  • A mat
  • A short stick
  • Bladebells
  • Small dumbells
  • Kettlebells (not too big)

If you think you may have a shortage of equipment, you should watch this video on improvised training tools 

I’ll be doing these sessions in my study, i.e. in a small space with normal ceiling height. You won’t need much space around you to follow along, but you will need a decent internet connection.

I have created BookWhen entries for the next few weeks. There are an unlimited number of free tickets so cashflow issues are no impediment, and for those of you that have the cash and want to support my work, I’ve also created tickets at £5 each. Cancelling all those seminars has dented my cashflow, so every little helps!

If this becomes popular and people in inconvenient time zones want me to do something for them, I’ll think about introducing an evening session as well. In the meantime, I’ll record the sessions and drop the videos into a section of the Solo Training course, so you can do them whenever you want. If you haven’t signed up to the Solo course yet, you should- it’s only $20 for the duration of the Corona crisis, or free if you can’t afford it. Just email me for the free entry code.

Interested? you can find the sign-up for tomorrow’s session here: https://bookwhen.com/swordschool

P.S. If you need a live class at a time when I’ll be tucked up in bed, by all means go train with my friends at Valkyrie Martial Arts Assembly in Vancouver, Canada. You can find their live online schedule here, and they also do entry fees on a sliding scale starting at free: http://boxwrestlefence.com/valkyriewmaa/remote-class-quick-guide/ 

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